PART I: IS IT ME?

Recently, my ex asked me to be flexible and allow him to see the kids at a time he wasn't scheduled. And I said "yes".  Then he asked me to drop the kids off at a different time, could I do that.  And I said "yes."  And he  called me back and said, could we change that time and do another time.  And I said "yes."  And then he called me back and said return would be a problem, could I meet him sooner.  "And I said "yes."  


And before you knew it I was twisted up in the biggest visitation pretzel imaginable.  I was doing all this work in order to have him benefit, and he was still asking for more.  That's when I stopped and said, you know, I just can't do this.  And then he went off in a rant and rave.  When I got off the phone I said to myself, "I know better.  I know better.  I know that when my ex wants to break the visitation schedule, when he wants me to be flexible and change this arrangement and that arrangement, he is just playing with me.  So what in the world led me to do this again, when I've done it before and gotten the same results."  


"Is it me?" I asked.  Am I somehow inviting this behavior by my willingness to go along with it?  Am I this masochistic, abuse inviting, self destructive, person?"  How can I understand this?  


In the course of my divorce, I had a therapist whom I later ditched, who would flinch at the word "victim."  Don't call yourself a victim, he would say.  You aren't a victim.  Don't talk like you are a victim, don't walk like you are victim.  Whatever, you are bad if you try to say you are a victim.  Of course, my point in calling my self a victim was to affirm that I had been abused and I was not a perpetrator and the disaster that my ex had made of my life and that of my children was not my fault.  We didn't deserve it.


Unfortunately, among many in therapy circles calling yourself a victim is not considered politically correct, certainly not in a mental health environment in which victims are suspected of secretly being the cause of their own abuse.  Yet, in my mind, by calling myself a victim, I was simply trying to distinguish myself from the perpetrator of the abuse, and I was stating that whatever wrong that had been done had been done against me and I had not done it.  No more blaming the victim for me.


But could I really say that when my ex was overstepping his boundaries that I didn't know what he was doing?  Didn't I know that when my ex started to ask me could I change the schedule, and switch the plans around, that this was simply a preamble to further abuse?  Was a kidding myself?  


Not really, I'd say, this was the essence of the problem--that the abusive behavior arose from the ordinary, everyday conversations and activities of life.  I mean, the whole conversation was couched within the umbrella concept of my ex having the opportunity to spend time with the children he loved.  As a mother, how could I stand in the way of my children getting the love they need from their father?


Take some greater good such as maintaining a frugal budget. My ex would come to me and say the economy is going to go downhill, you need to economize, you need to cut back on expenses.  And he would show me articles on the subject and have  conversations about the possibility of economic disaster.  And I'd agree with it, that, indeed, all couples should exercise financial caution.  Our Church even had homebuilder seminars on the subject.  


Except, as the weeks would go by, I'd find myself in a situation where my ex was rigidly controlling every penny that I spent and going over all my accounts and scrutinizing me closely and cutting me off from our bank accounts.  Somehow, ordinary frugality had transformed into straightforward abuse.  


Then when I tried to explain the situation to friends or to a therapist, it was hard to tell them exactly what was going on.  I'd say, "He is really concerned about the economy."  Well, isn't everyone concerned about that?  I often had no words to explain that my ex had concerns about economizing and the economy that had elevated to the point where he was totally controlling my life and harming me.  


Often, I didn't have the words to explain what was going on in a way which could make people understand what I was going through.  Then I'd get these looks like "What is her problem?"  And since my ex had already gone around saying I was crazy, my inability to express myself, to distinguish the kind of ordinary behavior that they were used to from the abusive behavior my husband regularly got up to, left me isolated, misunderstood and alone.  


So, it was sort of like my friends, my family, my therapist
--they were in denial, so I wanted to be in denial too.  I didn't want to admit the abuse any more than they did.  It meant rocking the boat!  It meant, maybe filing for a divorce.  It meant walking away from the evil I knew, my abusive marriage, into a possible evil I didn't know, such as single parenthood which I knew nothing about at the time.  


I questioned my sanity, was I really going to break up this family because my husband was trying to save money for the future?  I didn't want to think about whose future he was really saving up for, and had been for some time--his own!  And so I went back and forth.


So, was it me?  It some ways maybe "yes"--my yearning for everything to be normal and Ok sometimes overwhelmed my better judgment, and let the abuser in the door.  Still, the fact that you can abuse, doesn't justify abusing, i.e. my ex's abuse.  And the fact that the abuser chose to abuse didn't mean I deserved it.