Submissiveness vs control, and when does it become abuse?

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whatevergirl said:
I’m so sorry for what you’re going through, and have been through. Your husband sounds like he has made some positive changes, but still has a long way to go. May I ask–was he like this whatsoever when you dated him? Condescending? Groping? Rude? Overly critical?
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Jesus mercy Mary help.

If you have been beaten up less than 1000 times then you do not know what marriage is all about.

I have been assaulted around 25,000 times over 30 years,

I used to work 15 hours a day to keep my wife in the luxury to which she became accustomed. She ate the best foods, wore the best clothes, drove the best automobile, while I wore rags, drove a banger, was starved so that I had to steal food to eat. often had to walk home when my car ran out of petrol.

She controlled all the money. I was penniless.

She was violent aggressive [no one liked her], used to scream and shout, could produce ghosts and used to go to her private room from which she used to haunt our house, I used to tell her to stop haunting and the haunting ceased. No idea what she did to do it but it produced real tangible visible little ghosts which I have seen. They were bluish grey with no particular shape but could move faster than the human eye could track them.

Before marriage we talked about children and pets, after marriage she told me she hated kids and animals. Told me ‘a woman’s perogative was to change her mind so she could not be held accountable to her marriage vows but a man’s word was his bond!’

She used to argue with everyone. Everyone found her really obnoxious. She had no friends. After a shopping outing, I used to have to phone stores to complain about how badly she was treated by their staff knowing all the time it was probably her at fault but if I did not phone and complain about certain staff, she would assault me.

My poor old testicles have been kneed, punched, grabbed and squeezed more times than imaginable. Small wonder I am now sterile.

I was mis diagnosed by our local hospital where they said I would become a liability to her. She wanted me out of her life asap. That was for me Divine Intervention. I have never been so happy since we have been apart.

I still visit her, cut her grass, do her jobs and in return she does nothing for me. But I am completely healed [by the mercy of God] that I can now see it all for what it was.

I am now against marriage. If I can convince just one man not to marry, then I will.

I believe in every thing in the bible except for marriage. I really do believe it is better to live in sin.

Blessings and peace
 
Ummm, Lilyflower, what you describe in this and other posts is NOT a marriage. You have been advised by others to pursue an annulment. Please do not confuse your dysfunctional relationship with a valid sacramental marriage and then go on to advise others to sin.
 
😛
Liberanosamalo said:
Why are you still mowing her lawn?

Geez!
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Because I am a sicko pervert 😛

Actually, I feel very sorry for her. She is obviously damaged.

Anyone so damaged needs our help not our condemnation. Plus I guess I am still under her spell.

Isnt it a fundamantal requirement of Catholicism that we submit to all, take all manner of abuse and let bullies do their worst to us because we a Christians are supposed to put up with abuse for some [God knows] greater good.

I don’t understand it, am just trying to follow my religion that is all.
 
Lilyflower said:
Isnt it a fundamantal requirement of Catholicism that we submit to all, take all manner of abuse and let bullies do their worst to us because we a Christians are supposed to put up with abuse for some [God knows] greater good.

I don’t understand it, am just trying to follow my religion that is all.
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No, it definitely is not a requirement, nor is it a good idea. By cow-towing to her ridiculous demands, you only enable her. You only encourage her that her selfish and abusive treatment of you is effective.

You are a man. You seriously need to put your foot down and put an end to this nonsense.
 
Lilyflower said:
Jesus mercy Mary help.

If you have been beaten up less than 1000 times then you do not know what marriage is all about.

I have been assaulted around 25,000 times over 30 years,

I used to work 15 hours a day to keep my wife in the luxury to which she became accustomed. She ate the best foods, wore the best clothes, drove the best automobile, while I wore rags, drove a banger, was starved so that I had to steal food to eat. often had to walk home when my car ran out of petrol.

She controlled all the money. I was penniless.

She was violent aggressive [no one liked her], used to scream and shout, could produce ghosts and used to go to her private room from which she used to haunt our house, I used to tell her to stop haunting and the haunting ceased. No idea what she did to do it but it produced real tangible visible little ghosts which I have seen. They were bluish grey with no particular shape but could move faster than the human eye could track them.

Before marriage we talked about children and pets, after marriage she told me she hated kids and animals. Told me ‘a woman’s perogative was to change her mind so she could not be held accountable to her marriage vows but a man’s word was his bond!’

She used to argue with everyone. Everyone found her really obnoxious. She had no friends. After a shopping outing, I used to have to phone stores to complain about how badly she was treated by their staff knowing all the time it was probably her at fault but if I did not phone and complain about certain staff, she would assault me.

My poor old testicles have been kneed, punched, grabbed and squeezed more times than imaginable. Small wonder I am now sterile.

I was mis diagnosed by our local hospital where they said I would become a liability to her. She wanted me out of her life asap. That was for me Divine Intervention. I have never been so happy since we have been apart.

I still visit her, cut her grass, do her jobs and in return she does nothing for me. But I am completely healed [by the mercy of God] that I can now see it all for what it was.

I am now against marriage. If I can convince just one man not to marry, then I will.

I believe in every thing in the bible except for marriage. I really do believe it is better to live in sin.

Blessings and peace
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It’s never better to live in sin. Your “marriage” was not really a true, loving marriage, obviously. I’m sorry you went through all of that, but don’t turn to sinning, just because you married someone who was clearly not the right person.
 
peach24 -

It sounds like you already know the answer, but you’re having a very difficult time asserting yourself. Unless there is someone he will listen to and take seriously, you will have to make the shoe drop or sit in limbo and suffer forever. Since the two of you have children you can’t walk away from each other forever. Chances are, he would contest a divorce but he can’t contest a separation. It’s sad if it has to come to that, but it doesn’t sound like your relationship is the kind that is just a misunderstanding. However, this could open up a new can of worms, like fighting over the children, but you have to weigh that against what is happening now and what could happen in the future. You may have grounds for an annulment if your husband has a personality disorder. Many people with personality disorders have mood disorders are well, but it seems as if he’s got more than a mood disorder.

And if my husband had grabbed me and hurt me, chances are, I probably would have ended up slapping or punching him in the face. But you’re more patient than I am. I probably wouldn’t let him touch me at any other time, because I couldn’t trust him. Keep asserting that he is wrong to do that - if you can’t convince him, at least you can remind yourself that he is wrong and that you have a right not to be hurt.
 
*You know, in reading through parts of this thread, and just thinking about domestic violence in general…it dawned on me that this type of treatment from a stranger, would land the person in JAIL. Assault is a crime, why do we tolerate it in our relationships with husbands, wives, boyrfriends, girlfriends? If someone at the grocery store became angry with me, and punched me in the face…I would be calling the cops, yet it becomes so complicated when in a relationship, and this SAME thing happens.

It’s just an interesting thing to ponder. *
 
I regret being so explicit in text on a family forum where children may have access.

Thank you for everyone’s kind words of encouragement and support.

I never forget that before Almighty God, I am as great a sinner as my wife if not more so. She does not know for certain whether Almighty God exists, I KNOW BEYOND ALL DOUBT!! Yet knowing beyond all doubt, still sin!!

Our only mitigation is that as mere creatures [albeit intelligent ones], we cannot comprehend the degree of offence when we sin.

So that I may be forgiven, forgive her from the bottom of my heart.

God has healed me. I have no regrets or feelings of anger, I feel only compassion and pity for her. That in itself, is not of me but of Christ through me.

You havce rightly pointed out my sin in not being firm enough.

Blessings and peace
 
Dear Peach, I’m sorry for what you’re going through.
My husband is in a wheelchair, which I think makes him lean toward being controlling. He likes to give orders, in the interests of efficiency and being helpful. I always try to help him out when he asks for something for himself, since it’s harder for him. But generally I ignore other suggestions.
I would recommend that you just do as you please and not argue, just order what you want at dinner. If he makes going out to dinner miserable, take the kids and go by yourself next time. Call a friend and ask him to help you with the plywood. If he comes up and tries to grope you, say “Stop that.” instantly put down whatever you’re doing and walk away.
If he gets angry or violent, that’s a clue that you can’t continue in the relationship. If he shrugs, or leaves you alone, you’re a step closer to being your own person.
 
Another very good book is “Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men” by Lundy Bancroft (see here).
 
Seems to me both men and women experience violence in reliationships.

It has never ceased to amaze me how it is treated by society as a purely ‘male on female’ thing.

I recall a few years ago when a guy in Lowestoft Suffolk England, was stabbed by his wife. As he lay slumped on the floor, he used his mobile phone to call the emergency services. The police arrived first. They entered the property, stepped over the bleeding casualty to ask her if she was alright! 😛

Similaraly the Probationary Service of England and Wales runs programmes to help treat male propagators of domestic violence. There is no provision in law for women to attend these courses even though Home Office statistics show that men are just as likely to be victims as women. :confused:

A female victim of marital abuse is treated very sympathetically by the criminal justice system whereas a male victim is told to ‘grow up’ and ‘be a man!’

Seems feminism has won the day. Men can be stabbed and the police are more interested in checking the welfare of the female offender than the welfare of the victim.

I am very sorry for all the women who are abused. I have little or no time for a system that says ‘it is 100% man on woman problem!’

Female victims treated with compassion, male victims told to ‘grow up!’

It is a fact in UK law anyone dare challenge me?} a female victim is taken very seriously. A male victim is not only not taken seriously but chances are, the male victim is more likley to be prosecuted than the female abuser. Male victims also at risk of prosecution for ‘wasting police time’ for reporting female on male abuse. :rolleyes:

A male is likely to be prosecuted if he assaults a female. A female is likely to be prosecuted only if her assault proved life-threatening or there was a male accomplice involved.

So far as I am aware, annually some 40,000 men are prosecuted annually for assault on a woman, less than 5 women are prosecuted for assault on a man. Statistics show that men are just as likely to be victimised as women! Where are the other 39,995 female abusers? Why are they invisible to the criminal justice system!!!.

I hope USA has more sense. I suspect it has.

Blessings and peace.
 
LilyFlower, the police take a view that you may disagree with. But in MOST cases, the violence is man on woman. Or often the first perception is a woman injured a man because she was defending herself against his initial assault. I was always afraid to retaliate against my abuser because he would have called the police on ME and accused ME of attacking HIM, even if it was in self defense. I would have been the one to go to jail. Because he lies.

MOST times the man has an option, if his wife is abusive, of walking away and HE has the financial upper hand. Women MOST often are the ones who are reduced to poverty by divorce. Plus they are MOST OFTEN physically smaller. It is perceived in MOST cultures and societies that a man has more flexibility to leave a bad situation than a woman.

Feminism has nothing to do with this. Reality of the abuser/victim statistics affects it.

You are in a minority. I am sorry for what you went through. I am sorry police didn’'t take you seriously. For a long time that’s how women were handled by the police when they came to a domestic violence call. They were told to go make him a nice dinner and the police treated the battering man like a buddy.

Finally society is taking this crime seriously.

But economics dictate that it’s easier for a man to leave a woman than the other way around. So men who stay and put up with physical assault… I don’t get it. If I didn’t have small children and a scary man threatening to kill me if I took his kids I would have been out years before I finally got away from him. Plus I had followed HIS job around and had no money of my own. Something a lot of women have happen. It’s just a different dynamic and that’s why you perceive the courts are more solicitous of the women involved. They are often more vulnerable than a man in the same situation.
 
Peach, I wish you the very best, and I hope that you will be very vocal in real life about what is going on in your marriage.

I walked out of a marriage like that nearly a year ago. I have had these months to find my own internal compass again and learn to feel my own feelings instead of being required to mirror my husband’s.

I’m not advocating divorce for you; that’s a last resort. However, you need lots of voices telling you that what you have is not a marriage. It’s somewhere between slavery and indentured servitude. You have the right to insist that your husband respect you, and if he doesn’t, you have the right to separate. Submission should be safe not self-destructive.

Be warned, though, there will be women out there who insist that it is better to know you are “pleasing” God by submitting and accepting abuse. You may have to do some hard things, and there will always be naysayers to tell you that you did the wrong thing. Find yourself a trusted priest or spiritual director, where you can hang out all your dirty laundry and they can help you see how awful it really is,without judging you for doing the best you could to cope in a bizarre situation.

And when you bump into those people who tell you that you should kowtow to your husband, turn around and walk away. Those same people are often the ones who announce that they don’t have any idea why women who are being abused can’t just pick up and leave. They really, really don’t get it.
 
Thank you, Evelyn!

This kind of insidious abuse is like a neutron bomb that leaves the building standing but the people inside dead.

The body is there but it kills the person from the inside out. First you lose touch with who you are. THEIR feelings and changing moods become your internal compass. (Great word!) THEIR opinions become the ones you act on. (Yours are too stupid.) You do what THEY want to. You begin to view yourself through their eyes. Every action you do is measured by how they would react. So you in essence have to think like them all the time to predict what they will do. You lose yourself. You become depressed. Angry. But some call that submission. :eek: God is not pleased by someone treating one of his children that way. We all were given free will and intellect. The spouse of an abuser is told to check theirs at the door and do what someone else’s free will and intellect says. Does that please God? Does such a “marriage” give honor and glory to God?

Especially when the next step comes around. Years of such treatment, that usually becomes physical, leaves someone in fear and mistrust of their own family and a sense of being abandoned by everyone, even God Himself. (If God cared, how could my marriage have turned into this. I stayed to help him save HIS soul. Why isn’t God helping me?) Does God want you in a situation where you begin to doubt His love? Does the “love” of such a spouse mirror Christ’s love for the church.

And then you see that abuse play itself out in the final end sometimes (too often!) in violence, either suicide or homocide, as one spouse tries to leave eventually. And children who watch this excuse for “love” think that love means controlling and abuse and obsession and selfishness. And they continue the pattern in their own lives. Sons grow up to beat wives and daughters grow up to find a spouse whom they can never please.

Who, in the name of everything that is holy, would recommend someone stay in such a situation?

Only someone who has never lived it and has a false sense of just what God wants us to do to save our souls. Even HE told the disciples if they aren’t accepted in a town to shake the dust from their feet and leave. A wife who cannot win her husband over by her good works and prayer eventually needs to leave while she’s still able to pray.

I stayed so my abuser wouldn’t lose his immortal soul. Guess what? He left anyway. And now he never goes to church. And some of my children don’t either.

😦

How can you tell if your marriage is fixable? Well, when it gets hard, the other person cooperates a LOT because they want it to work too. THEY pray and go to church and increase their spiritual life so that they can be better spouses/parents. They seek to find out what they are doing wrong and make an effort to help you be happier and better.

Absent any change like this, you have a poor prognosis. Giving a man a pill and he still blames you is not fixing anything. The kind of man who knows there is no money and buys himself big expensive televisions and stuff and takes care of #1 has learned nothing.

This whole situation is made doubly hard by some men who look sane and pious on the outside to the world but inside the house with the doors closed they are diabolical. I would suggest any woman who tells you to stay with him should live with him for a week and then come back and tell you that again with a straight face. No one who has never lived with him should have a say in what you do to stay sane. And any “marriage” that threatens your health, sanity or safety is one to leave. If something happened to you, would you feel comfortable with him being the only one to raise your children?

If you have any doubt as to the answer, get out now while you are still sane, safe and healthy.
 
I agree…accepting abuse is not what God meant by ‘submission.’ 😦
 
There are days when I wonder if I’m just going through the motions, staying because I can’t make myself drop that other shoe. But then I feel like that’s not fair, not fair because I wouldn’t be giving the marriage a true chance, and not fair to the kids to take them away from their dad -which they wouldn’t understand at all, especially with the super dad he’s been lately. I do feel that I have to give him this one last chance to prove that he has really, or is really changing. I stayed with him through all of the really bad parts, I got him the psychological help, got him in counseling, so it’s almost like I can’t quit now. He’s been doing really well for the past week, no arguing, no groping, no telling me how to do everything.

Since he’s been home from the hospital I have been taking more “me” time and going out with friends. At first I was really uptight about it, trying to “figure out” what to tell him so that he wouldn’t get mad at me; but now I just tell him that I’m going out after work and give him an estimated time I’ll be home and I feel so much better, just by not worrying about that one little thing.

One of the big things that we’ve been talking about for the past few months, both the two of us alone and in therapy is him wanting me to say that I’ll be with him forever. Of course that’s what I promised in the wedding vows, but with the way things had been, I told him I wasn’t sure I could honor that promise anymore. I could tell him I want to be with him forever, but I couldn’t say that I knew for sure that I would be. He’s been hounding me for months to get me to say it, giving me the guilt trip because I obviously don’t love him as much as he loves me, and telling me that it’s an easy answer, either it’s yes or it’s no. I finally decided that his need for me to say that was like his “security blanket”. So I if I said it, it would mean he’d feel comfortable that I was completely committed, and with that, there was a good possibility that if he were going to start reverting to form, this would be when I would start seeing it. So, Saturday morning I looked him in the eye and told him that we would be together forever no matter what (and then I whispered an apology to God and added in my head my little disclaimer…“unless you start abusing me or the children again”). Is that wrong? Am I just setting him up, waiting for him to fail so I can say “ah ha”?

As of today, he has been behaving remarkably well. I can’t say he’s perfect, but it’s a far cry from the control freak and manhandler he’d been until a couple weeks ago.
 
I’m not telling you to pack your bags, but please don’t ignore any red flags.

He may be better for the moment, but do ask yourself who treats you better–your male friends or your husband? Watch how your girlfriends’ husbands treat them.

Think about whether you want your sons to think they should treat their wives like your dh treats you. Ask yourself what you would tell your daughters if they came back to you as adults and said that their husbands were doing to them what your dh does to you.

Watch everything with your eyes wide open. Things may change, or they may not, but please make your own choice. Don’t let anyone boss you into leaving (which won’t work, anyway), and also don’t let counterfeit voices in your brain boss you into staying.

You look, and you choose.
 
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