How I Forgave My Abusive Ex-Husband

I lived with a narcissistic sociopath for 7 years of my life. It’s been 8 years since we’ve had any contact. The emotional scars he left on me are deep. Finding forgiveness has brought me closer to healing.

At 33, Damon was the first person that I fell deeply, hopelessly in love with. He was tall, dark and handsome. Damon was also the proverbial charmer — he could make me feel like a billion bucks.

Gradually, I found out that there was a different side to him.

When he got angry black vitriol would ooze from him. He would call me names, put me down or dismiss me altogether. He destroyed my property. He would throw things at me. Drive the car recklessly to terrify me. Then there was the black eye he gave me for our honeymoon.

I knew his behavior wasn’t my doing and pleaded with him to get professional mental health help.

I was continually walking on eggshells to keep the peace. I never told a soul what was happening behind closed doors.

As time went by his behavior only got more volatile.

He eventually went to a therapist and things began to deteriorate more rapidly.

He pinned me down on the bed and screamed in my face. Knives. Then one night, he pinned me against a wall with his hand around my throat. I finally realized looking into his snake-black eyes that he had nothing but hatred for me.

I finally began confiding in my therapist and best friend.

We separated for a month. I would do anything to save our marriage. My therapist urged me to have a packed suitcase and safety plan.

In a phone, he had given me to use I found evidence that proved to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had been living as a swinging single outside of our marriage.

I fearfully confronted him one morning. He didn’t fight, he simply said there was nothing to say. That afternoon I came home to find all of his belongings gone. He had left me.

“What a relief!” I think as I write this, but that was not how I felt at the time.

I was in sheer agony and felt as though my heart had been ripped out.

I would walk around my empty home and have long conversations with him when he wasn’t there.

I started having flashbacks and my fearfulness grew believing that he was after me to finish the job. I pleaded with the laborers who were working on my building at the time to move their ladders away from my side of the building.

I had hallucinations and saw him everywhere out of the corner of my eye.

Time was suspended and I had difficulty managing the simplest of tasks. Getting ready for work required a morass of confusing steps that I struggled to put in order. I was late daily.

I would feel inexplicably overwhelmed, vulnerable and terrified. I would shut the shades in my apartment and wrap myself in a blanket until I calmed down.

I was deeply afraid that I was going to lose control of my mind again and end up in the hospital.

My therapist and I began to meet twice a week. Then I signed up for a class in DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) once a week. My psychiatrist prescribed Ativan for the panic attacks. A Facebook friend recommended a book on healing from Narcissistic Abuse.

I began to heal.

I baulked angrily when I read or someone suggested to me that I should forgive him. Having any empathy for Damon felt emotionally repulsive to me.

Raging against him felt justified.

I gradually began to realize that holding on to anger was unhealthy for me. The strong emotion kept me thinking of him.

A quest for forgiveness became about me, not him.

I began to explore how I could possibly forgive.

I realized that this process could be a private one. Nobody else needed to know — especially not Damon.

I discovered that there was a difference between forgiving and condoning his treatment of me. I could hate what he did to me without hating him to his core.

He was a broken person. The result of a traumatic childhood.

This doesn’t change our story, but it lightened my load.