How a Sweet Relationship Turns Emotionally Abusive

Add a pinch of gaslighting and a touch of jealousy

This morning started fucking awesome. I’m driving home, feeling good, and cranking up some tunes on the car radio. In a world of social distancing, driving and listening to music is a rarity. Then a love song comes on the radio and I’m immediately transported back to twelve years ago.

The song a pretty rock ballad. The kind that guys in the 80s played from their cassette players when trying to get laid. Unfortunately, it reminds me of Mark. Twelve years later and he still has an emotional chokehold around my neck.

How did I fall so deep down the rabbit hole of emotional abuse? I’m a staunch feminist. I was financially independent. I had a powerfully strong emotional support system. No one would ever guess a loudmouth like me would let a guy play his psychological mind games. And yet, I spent months in a constant panic to not upset him.

It started off sweet…

I met him when separating from my husband. Still relatively young-ish, I went out and met plenty of guys. Getting male attention felt foreign coming from my dead bedroom and insecurities around my husband’s porn addiction. With low self-confidence, I was a breeding ground for manipulative men.

I met Mark online with no pretense of dating or sex. Just a fun friendship. On paper, he was your stereotypical bad boy. Incredibly attractive, loads of tattoos, new in town, a troubled past, and a fresh stint in rehab. He didn’t have his ears pierced…he had “gauges” (which my uncool self had to Google just now to find the name. Those circle things you can fit a finger through in your earlobe) which made him seem ultra bad boy-ish. His former life as a marine was the icing on the cake.

I’ve since learned that bad boys are usually emotionally insecure men who cry a lot and engage in attention-seeking behaviors. Unfortunately, twelve years ago, I didn’t know.

He was enamored with me from the start. Mark showered me with compliments, like how Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire” was written about me (not the aforementioned song that triggered this article) or how smart I was because of my line of work. If a stunning woman with a revealing outfit walked by, his eyes stayed fix on me. How could I not fall for a guy who wanted me and only me?

The descent…

I didn’t know drama followed him wherever he went.

First, he got into a horrific argument with the woman who owned the house where he rented a room. She kicked him out. With his “I’m still saving since I just got out of rehab” schpiel, I agreed to lend him $1000 (I think it was $2k but for the sake of my sanity, let’s pretend it was $1k) in exchange for his grandmother’s wedding ring as collateral. On the day he needed to put the deposit, the ring ever-so-tragically went missing. Still, I stupidly lent the money.

Then Mark lost his job. Drama-filled people always lose jobs. I needed him to pay me back the money. I became deeply invested in him finding a new job. I tried helping him get a new gig. Except he preferred to lament and moan about his life instead of looking for work.

Mark’s insecurities crawled into our relationship. Pre-smartphones with lock screens, he’d snoop through my cell phone. He questioned comments other guys wrote me on Facebook. With every accusation, I took it as yet another hoop for me to jump through to desperately show him I was loyal and dependable. It wasn’t enough; he just raised the hoop higher every time.

The rollercoaster drop…

Figuring he just needed to meet more people, I invited Mark to join my kickball team. Kickball is the easiest sport adults can play that allows them to do minimal exercise while maximizing drinking. The league was huge and the parties were fantastic. He agreed that since many of my friends (who were also friends with my husband) were on our team, that we would keep our relationship a secret. I was separated but I wasn’t ready to start the gossip train that would lead to my estranged husband.

Mark went berserk when I was too chatty with our teammates. After every game, he grilled me about different guys. I unsuccessfully pointed out that I wouldn’t have included him in activities with my friends if I was going to hook up with other men. Again, I tried to show my loyalty and affection by including him in my circle. It wasn’t enough.

I didn’t realize the extreme lengths he’d go to until one teammate tried to chat with me during a game and he stepped in to block him. Mark put his hand on the guy’s chest and lied that I didn’t want any of his attention. Mixed with alcohol, it became a dramatic mess. Always a dramatic mess with him.

When I wasn’t with Mark, I received hundreds of texts from him. If I didn’t respond quickly, he accused me of being with other guys. I see now his manipulative trick: pick a fight, engage me by text all night which ensures I’m not out chatting with men and finally give a very heartfelt, loving apology at the end. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I dreaded seeing movies because I had to turn off my phone. After seeing a movie, I immediately checked my phone and prayed I didn’t have dozens of voicemails accusing me of shady acts. My purse accrued movie tickets as evidence.

I attended a charity event with a girlfriend. She drove and I spent the entire car ride with my face in my phone, dealing with Mark’s endless texts. When we arrived, I hadn’t paid attention to where we were going or what banquet hall we were in. Later, when he drilled me for details, he went berserk when I said I couldn’t remember where the event was held. It didn’t matter that I pointed out how I texted with him the entire time, he used my lack of awareness against me.

My anxiety went through the roof. I felt like a criminal despite being innocent. I had to keep a perfect memory of all events; one slip up of “last Tuesday” instead of “last Monday” meant I was a liar, I was out to hurt him, I was “playing” him (not sure of what, since he was the one who owed me money), and I needed to confess what I was up to.

The emotional warfare meant I had alibis ready at all times. I kept all receipts and tickets with times and locations. If I brought him something and an old receipt was in the bag, he drilled me endlessly (your Honor, I don’t remember why I got gas in that city three months ago at 9 pm!).

His constant barrage of questioning led me to hide innocuous activities that might cause problems. A text from a male friend that might be interpreted as flirty got deleted. If I scribbled a coworker’s phone number for a work call, I would write a female name above it. It was bad enough that I had to stay on top of my actions, I also had to audit every innocent behavior to avoid the drama.

Why did I continue to stick around? Throughout all this, he still showered me with affection. It got into my head that he adored and loved me, so I must be doing these crazy things to make him doubt me. The off-the-charts sex was also a draw, coming from a home with a dead bedroom. Our relationship was bipolar; the lows were brutal but the highs…oh those highs were amazing. Every time he knocked me down, I yearned to get back into his good graces again so that he could fill the void in my self-worth.

After a failed marriage, I assumed the problem in any relationship was me.

Oh, it got worse…

Unbeknown to me, he was back on drugs.

With his approval, I briefly used Mark’s laptop one day. Big mistake. He insisted that I was a hacker who remotely logged in daily to mess with him. He insisted someone was going in and messing with his laptop files. Mark invented ridiculous excuses to pinpoint me, such as asking me “Do you know what SEO is?”. When I replied cautiously, “Search Engine Optimization? What does that…” he yelled, “A-HA! See! You DID hack into my computer!”

He upped my disloyalty accusation to where I was now a hacker out to get him. He had lost his apartment and was couch surfing off strangers’ goodwill. Part of me hoped I’d somehow get my money back if he finally found a job. Another part of me hated anyone thinking that I was a criminal. I’m loyal to my friends down to the core; at the time, it mattered more to me that I seemed disingenuous than him being Mr. Crazy Town.

I couldn’t leave anyway. He blackmailed me with secretly-recorded videos to keep me from leaving. He figured out my cell phone account password, took the phone numbers I texted, and Googled each one, then accused me of fucking people and “playing” him for a fool. He regularly threatened to forward our communications to friends, family, and my employer.

The wild accusations were everywhere. He perused the Missed Connections section of Craigslist and insisted vague messages from strangers to strangers were posts I made. When Mark developed a random leg infection, he insisted I gave him Chlamydia from all my secret men (I did not, and have not, had Chlamydia).

And yet, he still lavished me with affection, attention, and compliments. He constantly apologized and blamed his life situation for his behavior. I felt like a dick if I didn’t forgive him. Plus the blackmail meant I had no choice.

We got into an argument in a parking lot. More accusations. At my wit’s end, he knew which buttons to push and I screamed my defense. Two police officers arrived and separated us. I have a healthy fear of the law and was terrified of getting arrested (I have a clean-cut history). Instead, the concerned police officer repeatedly asked if I was alright. I wasn’t, but not knowing the consequences of admitting that with Mark’s rage wasn’t something I wanted to risk. I understand why women don’t run to the police; eventually, the man is released from police custody and she’ll suffer the repercussions.

He only once called me a bad name, which I thought was the definition of emotional abuse. I had no idea the slow, psychological mind game he played was also abuse. My mental health plummeted.

After months of my sanity and well-being shot to hell, I stopped caring about the blackmail threats. I didn’t care about anything. I wanted him gone. It took me following a lawyer’s instructions for him to stop bothering me and him getting sent to federal prison for carrying drugs across the border for me to stop feeling scared.

The aftermath

The incident left me terrified of the dating world and I felt ill-equipped to handle more of it so I rushed back to the safety of my husband.

It took four therapists and many years for me to stop getting jumpy when I got a text in the middle of the night or to not keep receipts for every purchase. I kept tabs on his public prison records; upon release he moved to another state.

It’s been over ten years and I’m (trying) to divorce my husband. I’m nervous that I’m such a bad judge of character, this incident will happen all over again. It’s on me to figure out why I allowed myself to continue the mental mind tricks and make sure I bail out as soon as boundaries are crossed.

I never did get my $1000 back.