I’ve Earned the Right to Tell My Story

My exhaustive timeline of leaving an abusively controlling man

I experienced an abusive five-year divorce preceded by several years of my husband uncharacteristically abusing alcohol. I just wanted our marriage to work and to heal. And then I just wanted out.

My husband had other plans.

Or should I say his own abusive agenda?

If you haven’t experienced extreme control, let me explain the depths of desperation it will cause. You can’t get this individual to work with you and you can’t free yourself from them either.

Here’s a marital divorce timeline of a crazy-inducing controller.

It’s why I’ve earned the right to tell my story. As you follow it, you will understand the severe emotional and financial abuse and the anguish of escaping the inescapable controller.

Timeline:

My husband and I begin to have marital problems.

He starts behaving badly and scaring my children and me.

I beg him to either stop drinking, address what’s bothering him and making him act this way, or leave. Three times while I hold my crying children’s hands he walks out the door.

Why?

You have to understand the controller.

I want the marriage to work. He must maintain control. He won’t do what I want at any cost. I do not want my marriage to end. He shows me he’s in control by leaving.

Then the true craziness begins.

I’ve had enough of his leaving, promising to go back to marriage counseling, and returning. Four to five times a year he’s upsetting our household to an extreme. I won’t tolerate his angry drinking.

I’m done.

I want him out.

Now what does the extreme controller do?

He refuses to leave the house.

The same man who watched his little boys cry as he left them three times before, for months at a time. He digs in his heels. He says he can’t afford to move out. He says we can’t support two households. I know this is a lie. I built the business with him. I am aware of all of our costs.

I spend the better part of nearly two years emailing a member of his family.

I copy my husband on the emails.

He still flagrantly denies the ability to move out.

Another family member of his suggests I include them in the email. They understand he won’t be able to lie to the extended family. I logically state we have let go of a sales representative and have sold one of our investment properties.

It’s blatantly clear my husband is lying.

We are six figures ahead.

There’s plenty of money — this is control.

I want him to leave and he’s going to show me he’s in control. He decides what happens. He will not do what I want him to do. He will never leave what he refers to as ‘his’ house.

My friend expresses her concern.

“That’s weird,” she says. “What man refuses to correct a bad situation and not temporarily leave? If that happened to me, my husband would agree to separate. And we would see if we could work out our problems or if we had to get a divorce.”

It is weird.

A rational, normal, healthy person would never do this.

Extreme personalities will do this.

Extreme personalities will not negotiate or compromise.

I was married to a man with a diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder. A narcissist seeks to control and win. A narcissist who feels wronged because you leave them seeks to control, win, punish, and destroy.

Alas, there is finally relief and my husband moves out.

He can’t fool his extended family so his hand is forced.

He’s not happy about it.

We are separated for eleven months. He calls and says if I do not let him return home he won’t send our oldest son to college. I’m not stupid. I realize he is trying to get back into the house before the year mark. But I don’t want my son to pay the price.

It’s the worst decision I make.

I should never have allowed him back home.

I should never have succumbed to his financial threat.

A year later, I’ve had enough. I’m no longer courting the idea of separation. I know I want a divorce. The eleven months without my husband has solidified this. And living with him again has only strengthened my resolve.

I borrow the money to get a divorce.

I think I am on my way to freedom. I am singing in the shower again. This is not hyperbole. I am literally singing in the shower. I feel tremendous relief. I feel the return of joy.

It is short-lived.

My husband refuses to move out and withholds grocery and school supply money.

He watches friends and family bring food, dinners, and what my children need to begin the school year. He shamelessly eats the food. I tell him he can’t.

He says, “Your friends and family owe me.”

I can only guess a nod to our beach house and dinners over the years.

I finally get him out three months later, but the true brutality begins. I receive foreclosure notices, canceled health insurance, and more. The electricity is turned off, repo guys are in the driveway, and on and on.

The divorce goes on for five abusively long years.

I’m at my wit's end.

I couldn’t get my husband to work on our marriage, I couldn’t get him to stay and repair the damage when I didn’t want him to leave. Then I couldn’t get him to leave when I was done with our relationship.

Then I finally get him to separate and he controls me with threats.

And then I can’t even divorce him.

But it gets worse because the extreme controller is never satisfied.

The divorce is finalized and he is in immediate contempt.

He won’t sell the house as we have agreed to do. He doesn’t make the first alimony payment.

It’s never enough for the abusive controller.

He lied, cheated, and stole every single dollar of our savings and retirement. He lowered the income of the business I built with him so the monthly amount I receive is roughly 25 percent of what I should be getting from my hard work and investment.

He threatens bankruptcy on our house.

I’m exhausted.

The overwhelming stress and duress and sleep deprivation are intolerable.

I’ve barely slept in five years. I can’t think straight or concentrate. The constant unpredictability of what type of abuse he will inflict next has me a wreck. I can’t remember things. I am slowly becoming a shell of my former self.

He finally agrees to sell the house.

In no small part, I’m sure to the good college guys I knew. I reached out to two of his friends begging them to convince him to sell our home and not leave a legacy of bankruptcy to our children.

Once again, the outside world exposes the controller and he can’t hide.

He can’t get away with his typical abuse.

I think I am free, finally free of an abusive, exhausting narcissist.

But the extreme personality of the controlling narcissist is never quite done with their prey. My husband begins to say he will stop paying the alimony. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with alimony. I earned that money in the years I was a stay-at-home mother.

But what is galling is that I was his business partner.

It’s not alimony, it’s a portion of a business I sacrificed an income to build.

I then suspect he’s ruining his credit again. He did this during the divorce to make himself appear poor. You can do that when you have hidden millions of dollars. Why I ask myself is he ruining his credit again?

In order to declare bankruptcy.

My husband told me as much when he said he could get out of paying alimony.

An extremely abusive controlling personality will never let you go.

And they will never ‘in their eyes’ let you win.

I’ve earned the right to tell my story, even if my husband doesn’t like it.