Don’t fear for me…
8 08 2006I’m so glad I came to this website to blog about my experiences. Everyone here is so honest and helpful. Thank you for reading and commenting and advising.
I know I’m not ready yet to give up, though. I wish I could say, “YES! You’re RIGHT, I SHOULD leave right now!!” But, I’ve known him for eleven years and this is the first incident where he’s been pushed to the point of striking, and it wasn’t a beating, but eye poking, threatening and I was held by the throat for an instant. NOOOOOOO, I’m not justifying what happened or making excuses. Please, don’t think me ignorant.
What I need is advice on how to get him to talk to me without escalating things. How to turn things back to the way they were in the beginning. If a man brings you flowers to say he’s sorry for yelling in the first months of a relationship and it works, why doesn’t he know to do things like that again later in the relationship? How can men forget like that?
How can they be reminded without telling them what to do? Are there magazine articles I could leave somewhere that he’ll see? I need to know what makes him tick and how to bring back the man I fell in love with so many years ago. I know he’s inside this creature of stone I now live with, but I need someone to help me find him. I’m forming a search party. Bring your flashlights, bloodhounds, magnifying glasses and metal detectors (for the steel plate that is apparently in his skull these days).
I’m okay in the house. He’s not a monster, just someone that lost control. OH, and I liked the advice about him needing therapy. I’ve been saying that for a while. I’m going to have to work on that as well. I have insurance that covers such things and if I can convince him to go to couples counseling (how do I do THAT, btw??), I’m sure the therapist will see him individually sometimes too.
This is all a good start. Thank you.
I don’t know what kind of man you’re dealing with. Why not try to be completely upfront?
Just tell him that you think therapy is something you both would benefit from as a couple, and that the alternative might be something worse. Not as a threat, mind you, but as a solution to bring you 2 back closer to where you were.
Don’t take it as advise, since only you can judge your situation. It’s merely a thought to ponder.
First and foremost: to be able to completely love someone else, you have to first love yourself. Make sure to feel good about your actions, whatever they are.
Take care.
If talking won’t work, have you tried writing? Maybe that will work. Maybe he won’t respond to you verbally, but if you were to write to him, he would read it and respond back? I don’t know. He seems really hard-headed like my husband. However, I’ve realized that my husband does respond when I write to him.
And again, quoting Voff!, “… to be able to ocmpletely love someone else, you have to first love yourself.” That is so true.
Both are great advice and I think I shall do both. I will be direct and write to him about needing to seek therapy together. He has responded in the past to writing, but as you said, he is hard-headed so I have to choose words very carefully. I’ll get started on something today. TY
The other thing to think about is how often you’ve had to get those flowers?
I’m sorry to say this, but the lesson I’ve learned after many of my own painful experiences is to ask yourself this question:
He says he loves you. But if this is the way he treats people he loves, do you really want to be one of them?
I know it’s not always that simple, but trust me, without some serious intervention, it gets worse, not better. Yelling leads to screaming leads to threatening leads to “a little” abuse, leads to a LOT of abuse. Right about the time you start using “choke” in a sentence, you have crossed into some very dangerous terrority.
I realize you don’t know me from Jake, but there’s my two-cents worth.,