MM,
Think of this as a crash course in my abuse.
shes the only one I wasnt afraid to be with. I dont know why, it just was that way since the beginning.
I posted here on the board, and have told people over and over the last 14 years, that I recognized my wife as the woman I would marry from just a single glance as she walked through my office. Believe me, I know that there is love at first sight, though I don't know how to explain it.
I trust her, but I cant break my silence about the most disgusting events in my life.
I told her everything I could think of telling her in our first few months together. Oh, except for the little detail about repeatedly being raped when I was 16.
Of course, as I continued to hide this small matter, and I continued to solidify dysfunctional behaviors, and sexual dysfunctions, too, our marriage suffered. We nearly lost it before I finally disclosed to her last summer, the first time I had ever so much as hinted to anyone. Hiding that from her was the worst mistake of my life.
Id like to have a happy family too, but I'll never feel safe enough to have children, Im not able to express emotion to them, while she hugs and kiss all kids, Im scared to death to be seen hugging them, I dont want them to fear that I may be a molester.
I have three children and I have never molested them. I feared that I would. I have imagined that I am being watched when I tuck a child into bed. "Someone is trying to catch me hurting them."
That's part of the insanity that I developed. My love for them is too great. I have my personal knowledge of the anguish of abuse to remind me that there are things I do not want them ever to experience.
Dave is right. You are not an abuser. Whatever is in those who become perps that takes them down that evil path is not in you. Try to imagine yourself seeing one of the children at the lake being raped. Feel that anger? That outrage? That reaction is your true nature.
In the last week Ive been suffering from headaches that lasted for days or longer,
For several years I had headaches that lasted for days at a time. No aspirin, codeine, alcohol, demerol, etc could bring relief. I had some kind of unspecified seizure disorder, unspecified because there was never any abnormality in any test results.
Thats the only thing I really wanted to forget everything and live in peace.
I posted here about how I had a physical reaction to my attempts to remember more. If I couldn't complete remembering, then I wanted to complete forgetting. As the song says, "But things ain't quite that simple."
but everytime we start to make love, I have those images coming back
I wrote this next bit back in early May:
On a more personal level, having started to recover from the effects of those nights so long ago, I have found that I sometimes have flashbacks. These seem to occur more frequently during times of physical intimacy with my wife. Spending those precious moments with me in a frozen state of horror and shame, begging an abuser to leave me alone is not the way my wife and I imagined our life together.
On a couples' weekend workshop, when we were feeling good about our relationship and working together to make it better, I had the flashback from hell, or to hell. When I came out of it, I heard her calling, "Joe!" in a distorted echo-like voice. I felt as if I were waking up from one of those unspecified seizures.
MM, there are guys here who have felt the kind of pain you feel. This isn't a politician who "feels your pain." This is real life. This is a place where people who have endured terrible injuries can share with one another as we try to make it back to a good life.
Take what you can from our words. Especially, please remember what BT said above:
Thanks,
Joe
