Assclowns & Douchebags- #4

see more crazy cat pics

This is a long one kids!

After #3 was finally gone, I began to pick up the pieces of my shattered life and finances. My biggest concern, of course, were my girls. Beautifuleldestdaughter talks to this day about how much she hated him and she couldn’t figure out what she’d done to make him hate her so much. She was 15 when we married. She is very quick to point out to me these days that she understands that she is better, stronger person because of her experiences. Thank God she has such a strong character or what was to come next would have surely broken her.

#4

I met #4 online. I had dated a guy from Kansas City for a couple of months the summer before, been dumped, and gotten back together with him for another couple of months before being dumped again. If memory serves, it was about a month, maybe two, later when I met #4.

He was a shoe buyer for a local discount store chain. He began by taking the girls and I to his office to ’shop’ for samples. Come on…a girl with a hella shoe addiction? Who wouldn’t fall for that?

That was just the beginning. Four months after we started dating, he took me Vegas. There were live concerts, tons of them, and trips all over the place. He was fun, if a little eccentric, and we were having the time of our lives.

Right up until we moved in together. Never mind after the wedding. Lord God! I had no idea a person could hide who he really was so well. He immediately started nagging on beautifuleldestdaughter. One of his biggest issues with her was that she didn’t keep her room clean. I mean really? She was a straight A student. She didn’t drink, smoke, do drugs or run wild all over town. She held a job beginning when she turned 15. If there was such a thing as a perfect teenager, she was it.

When he would start complaining, it was without compassion. I pointed out what a wonderful kid she was and how we should be thankful she wasn’t out engaging in drinking, drugs and premarital sex. He had no use for her and it was the basis for most of our arguments. I remember one particular fight later in the marriage. I asked him if he had any idea how much it hurt me when he said such horrible things about my daughter. His reply was, “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.” I asked if he would still call ‘em as he saw ‘em knowing how much it killed me. He said, “I have to make my point. I’m right.” It was a that moment I knew the marriage wouldn’t survive. After all, he obviously had no care for my feelings at all.

At the same time, he treated Beautifulbabydaughter like she could do no wrong. He spoiled her rotten and did everything for her while her sister watched. It was heart breaking.

Meantime, he sucked me further and further in, completely taking over my life. He took over everything. I was cut off from family and friends and really had nothing outside of work and home. There was no one to talk to. He belittled me and treated me as if I were a child. An ignorant child at that–not an intelligent adult who had graduated second in her class and had gone on to earn a 4.0 GPA on her Master’s work.

Every idea I had, he shot down telling me how stupid I was to even consider such a thing. One evening we were out to dinner. I was pretty unhappy with my current teaching situation and had been thinking perhaps I should go back to school to get my secondary teaching certification. It would, after all, make me more marketable.

He shot me down so fast, I didn’t even know what hit me. He said that I was going to have a kid in college the next year and it was stupid to take on more debt and expense. I’ll never forget sitting in the restaurant in tears feeling like I just been rebuked by a parent. Incidentally, that secondary certification would be very handy to have right now as I am teaching high school but can only teach at the 9th grade level. It has cost me income as I’m not qualified to teach summer school which would be a pretty significant income subsidy.

As time went on, he became more and more controlling and meaner and meaner. In an odd twist, when BED went off to college, she became the favored child and BBD could do nothing right. Imagine how confusing that is to a 14 year old girl. At one point, he even accused her of sniffing glue. It was ridiculous.

Now the child’s not perfect, but a glue sniffer she isn’t. You’ll never know how I proud I was the night he screaming at me about what a horrible, ungrateful wife I was and she stood up all, all 5 foot of her, got in his face and said, “Don’t you ever talk to my mom like that again!” Believe it or not his reply was, “You’re going to defend her?” He actually tried the same tactic with my mom on the day we were moving out of the house. You know, the one he sold out from under us giving us a week to find a rental and move. Anyway, he approached my mom who was waiting in the car and began trying to explain what a nasty person I was and to fill her in on all of the horrible things I had done to him. She simply looked at him, shook her head, and rolled up the window.

Things deteriorated rapidly at that point. When I began to break away to spend time with family and friends, he panicked. He knew that if I spent time with those people who cared about me outside of his control, I would eventually see that he had completely taken over my life. And he had.

When I called my parents to tell them we were getting divorced, my mom said, “Thank God! We’ll finally get our daughter back. He completely took over your personality.” As I was driving at the time, it’s a wonder I didn’t wreck the car! She went on to point out that everything that defined who I was in terms of my style and personality in the house were stored in the basement. He took over decorating our home which was something I had loved to do. All of my precious sentimental belongings from my grandmother were pronounced “junk” and stored in the basement.

He proved this in a parting shot. During a discussion involving the property settlement, I pointed out that I would need certain items including furniture and appliances as I had sold most everything when we moved in together. His reply? “It was a crap anyway. You didn’t have anything before you met me.”

When we moved in together, he bought the house assumed all of the costs. He paid the mortgage and the utilities, the groceries, and he paid for necessary home improvements. He took over all of my bills except my car payment. He continued to plan trips and take us to concerts.

It wasn’t until the end of the marriage that I realized these actions were not based in generosity. They were acts of manipulation pure and simple. He believed that by controlling my finances, he was holding me in the marriage. Knowing my penchant for shopping, he believed I would spend all of my money on that pursuit and would, therefore, be financially unable to leave him. His other parting shot only confirmed this. He blasted me with, “You didn’t have two nickels to rub together before I came along and you’ll have nothing when I’m gone. What kind of existence is that?” Point made.

The End

Wow! Had his opinion of me always been so low? Apparently. But then again, so had my opinion of myself. Otherwise, how could I have been so easily manipulated and controlled? What he saw from the moment we met was someone who believed in her heart she wasn’t good enough. That without someone to mold her, she would never be anything let alone have anything. My own self-imposed limitations had allowed him to come into my life and take over.

Tune in tomorrow for final thoughts…

The series…

Assclowns & Douchebags-#1
Assclowns & Douchebags-#2
Assclowns & Douchebags-#3
Assclowns & Douchebags-#4
Assclowns & Douchebags-The Wrap Up
Assclowns & Douchebags-The Return
The Girl in the Mirror
The Journey Begins…Again…

Share and Enjoy:

I Do, Now I Don’t When my last marriage ended, things were a little...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Posted by lisaq on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 and is filed under Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.