This is a true story, the only thing I change are the names.
Trevor came into Sonia’s life like a hurricane. He virtually swept her off her feet. He seemed to love her so much and she didn’t love him that much, so felt a little guilty.
Eventually, they got together, and the emotional abuse began. He would say things to make her cry, do things to make her angry.
He moved to intellectual abuse by ridiculing what she said, always doing the opposite, until she learned how to ‘play’ him. If she wanted to go out, she acted as if she wanted to stay home.
He separated her from her friends and family, until he was all there was.
He began to insult her, and do things to annoy her.
Then he moved to physical abuse.
She left him.
Trevor went on to marry Yvonne. It was the same thing, and Yvonne left him.
That was thirty years ago.
He began emailing Sonia and she had to be in his city for an important business meeting. He offered to house her and she accepted.
From the moment they encountered he began to play the same role he had when they were married. With a smugness he said; “I told you to meet me at Gate 3…” and looked at her as if she were very stupid.
But Sonia was a successful professional. She knew she was quite bright and that he was nothing. He had no real job, he was not important in his city, not even on his street.
So the smug face and insulting words had the opposite effect. They did not make her feel stupid, they confirmed her belief that he had often tried to hurt her feelings.
Sonia had spent years reviewing how she could have been an abused wife. She wasn’t weak or dependent upon him, she didn’t fit the ‘pattern’ as she imagined it.
Hearing and seeing him now, years after she left him, she confirmed the correctness of her action.
During the few days they were together, all his actions to annoy her failed. They failed, because she knew he was doing them to annoy her.
It became almost funny for she watched him disrupt his own life to try to offend her.
On her last night, set to leave at 6 am the following day Sonia went to bed early in the tiny flat. He began running a paper shredder at ten p.m.
She hid under the covers, laughing, for he would be driving her to the airport, he was disrupting his sleep as much as her’s.
She knew, in the old days, when they were married, she would have exclaimed, angrily, about deliberately disturbing her sleep, so unnecessarily. Today, she cover her face to hide her amusement.
The next day she smiled brilliantly as she bordered the plane, for it had been the most revealing few days of her life.
Here was a man she had loved. A man who had abused her. A man whose abuse she had mapped during the years apart. She had wondered if she wasn’t adding or fabricating his virtual ‘need’ to annoy her. But spending those days with him; she had not been dishonest.
Why run a paper shredder at night to keep her awake? He wanted a ‘rise’ out of her. The same way he began their encounter with the Gate argument.
She realised that he had never changed and never would.
Sadly, he is about to marry another woman, who will, of a certainty, know what it is like to live with an abusive man.
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If a woman had been abused, then it is better to break free. It is not healthy and needs to protect oneself. Some women cannot just go on to their lives. Friends who are so concerned about them can step forward and help them while there is a chance. Because of an abusive situation, some women have fears to their partners. They need a support system in times likes this. A family is also a great part for the recovery of being battered.
Most abusive men cut their wives off from their friends and family so he can operate without witnesses. The process of domestic violence wears down the victim to the point where she doesn't realise she is a victim.
It's sad that she has to be with him again, hoping that he will change. The fact that the second wife next to her eventually left him also, means he hasn't changed but have the same ways.
It's even more sad that she has to really study why is he doing those to her. She is not after all an intelligent woman. The husband is, because he can really make things to abuse her.
No. The fact was, she had done a retrospective so she was not shocked or surprised. She believed he had never changed and was proven right. His attempts to annoy her were assumed before she arrived, and proven right.
One of the most important things an abused wife must internalise is that she was an abused wife. That none of the evil was 'her fault' that she didn't 'jump to conclusions' that she didn't 'give him a chance.'
Many women suffer for years in the belief that they were wrong or misinterpreting. Because she had done all that mind work before she left, had gone over it during the years apart, when she saw him again he was as able to hurt her as a snowflake falling two blocks away.
She returned home in a state of bliss because all her 'assumptions' were not assumptions.
Unfortunately, this is the experience of many women and it is a sad fact that emotional abuse eventually leads to physical abuse. Few understand this until it is too late because the emotional abuser leaves the person wondering if they are really over reacting or to blame.
Exactly right. Without the first steps of emotional abuse, the physical would be immediately reacted to.
To some point this story makes me laughed especially when I read how Trevor was making a fool of himself. Would i be right to say that he was in a competition with himself? It sounds so silly, but again it's very unfortunate that women go through this problem so many times. That's the reason why people are always told to attend marital counselling before they get married, that way they would know how to deal with issues that come their way in their marriage. It was a good idea that Sonia was able to know who she really was and put a stop to the emotional abuse that she was facing. I like the fact that Trevor got just what he needed in the most unsuspecting way. Men should know that when they do wrong, women can do some pretty bad stuff to them but they choose not too because they know what will work for them or against them.
Trevor didn't realise that Sonia saw through him. He could have been mad of glass. He just made a clown of himself.
To run a paper shredder at night... no one does that... esp. not when someone had to get up early. But he, in his evil did it until he realised, he has to get up even earlier...he has to drive Sonia to the airport. She can sleep in the car. He can't.