Do you think maybe one day I'll look back on this and wonder why I didn't get out sooner? Or do you think I'll look back and realize that I really was the abuser? That he was right? That I should have taken more xanax and just been a kind and forgiving person.
How advantaged are women, really?
Those in power will always fight not to give up any portion of it.
I can't believe that he's playing that through, but he is. He has had the dominant hand in every aspect of our relationship since it began. And now, the smallest things, the smallest favors or respectful behaviors, seem so very unfair toward him.
But they aren't. They aren't unfair to anyone but me. How can you love somebody and not listen to them, consider them, or want them to be happy?
I don't think that he does love me.
I think he's used to me stroking his ego. And now that I have to worry about myself, I'm a real cunt.
Last night, I took a closer look in my head at a behavior, a nonverbal (well, sometimes verbal) communication between us that always, always fails.
When he grabs my ass. When he growls, sucks in air, or stares. When he offers to rub my feet but instead tickles them or rubs them on his crotch. The little things he does that remind me that my body is only here for him. The things he does that make me feel like an object. The things that are ONLY ever done to gratify him and not to pleasure me. There are no instances where things are different. There are no other sides to this behavior. I don't do the same things to him. He doesn't do things that turn me on. He doesn't pet my head. He doesn't bite my shoulder. He doesn't nibble my ear. No, the only things he ever does with my body without my permission are things that satisfy him.
Or comments about what my body does for him.
And I don't care how they are SUPPOSED to make me feel. Because how these things ACTUALLY make me feel is objectified, and like I might as well be a faceless pillow or sex doll because I'm not...I mean I don't even really have to be in the room. I'm just a thing. And that's when I shut off, because that's been sex for too many years. Sex with a thing. A thing that doesn't need to be present. A thing that doesn't have needs or interests.
These behaviors put me back into that place, that mindset, and it should matter. My whole body tenses up and I get angry. I get guarded against being used. I don't want to be a thing anymore.
So I suggested a change that I thought could benefit us:
I suggested that from now on, he only touch me when he's first considered how the touch will affect me. I didn't say he couldn't touch me, or he had to touch me differently or less. I only said that I needed the INTENT to change. That instead of touching me to satisfy himself, I wanted to be touched to be satisfied. He doesn't have to magically know what I like (although by ten years you'd kind of think he would). He just has to touch me from a different perspective.
Well, you'd think I said he'd never get laid again from the response I got.
I mean, I tried to reverse it, just to explain. I tried to explain the difference in compliments and assessments. Like when he comments on my body. I tried to say, situation A) *brushes hair to the side* "Does this feel good?" and situation B) *Pulls at hair to look at it* "Your hair turns me on." I tried to explain compliments phrased around the commenter vs the commented on. "You look pretty," versus "You turn ME on."
He just told me I should take it as flattery that I turn him on, and that I should definitely care about how my looks impact him. Then he flipped my entire argument around to make me seem like the perpetrator, my whole argument used against me, saying that I never consider him or something? I don't even understand it, he just started complaining, and it was like he just fucking copied me right back at myself.
I mean, this was a whole thing.
We got nowhere.
The only way he knows how to function around me, touch me, or talk to me, is in the framework of how I impact HIM.
I will literally never matter to him outside of that.
You know what's really weird, though? People who like each other. My friend posted about getting laid, spanked, and feeling so good. I just thought, "How fucking odd. They WANTED to touch each other? They WANT to be around each other? They CHOSE to fuck and they ENJOYED it? It wasn't just a quickie to get him to behave human again?" I mean that's weird, right?
Another friend talked about taking his girlfriend on dates to this one restaurant. And I thought, what even is that. Dates? Do people really still put forth that kind of effort? I'm lucky to talk to him without one of us yelling. Usually the only conversations that don't escalate are the ones that are strictly business.
I mean, is it over and I'm just...wasting my time? Are we too far gone? Is there a world where I could be happy again?
And the bigger question - are these issues ACTUALLY issues, or just problems fabricated from my skewed, panicked, "the world is ending right now" mindset of my PTSD?
Is it ACTUALLY urgent?
Are we ACTUALLY fighting?
Or am I just picking at scabs so I can see them bleed again?
Who is the real abuser here? Am I the person I'm calling him? And he's wondering why *I* keep turning everything around?
