Red Flags

"I think EVERY SINGLE TIME we planned on a special vacation, she did SOMETHING to make sure I started it angry, frustrated and sick at heart. " -- LoveFraud
When life is out of control and abuses are invisibly administered, we tend to repress and question our feelings -- at least I did. As a result, I started journaling to help me understand the hidden pain. Unless someone has lived that reality, any reader would find this boring or conclude I'm exaggerating.

Anyway, this post is written for my therapeutic healing and maybe a little raw. I'm taking baby steps to describe what I think went wrong: No one else can do this homework for me.

Instead of responding to the red flags that appeared in my relationship with P, I accommodated to her Dr. J & Mr. H personality from the first day of our honey moon (that was twenty years ago).

On the first evening of our honey moon, P and I were watching an exotic tropical dance presentation (similar to Hawaiian Hula) by a group of young woman inside a lush beach resort. When I casually turned to my side, she had disappeared leaving me to guess her “where abouts”. Having searched in vain for what seemed an eternity, I decided to go back to the hotel room and guess what? Yes, she was there. When I entered, the room vibrated with tension. P then unleashed a series of insults with a twisted expression in her face accusing me of being grossly lustful and that she was ashamed to be around someone so grotesque who called himself a Christian. I felt like I was dying.

That was only the beginning of more scary scenarios. In the midst of her tantrums anything was possible. P immersed our wedding cassette tape under the faucet (I tried to rescue it but the mold destroyed it), she tore up a book I gave her on the Christian's view of romantic love; she ripped up our wedding certificate (though she didn't know it was just a copy).

In a journal entry written a couple of years later I wrote the following:
"Today has been a most discouraging day. P and I spent it totally immersed in arguments and debates about the finances. I sensed incredible resentment in my wife with a desolating sense of entitlement -- desolating to me. I feel worn out."

At first I thought my crisis was part of the natural breaking-in process to new marital responsibilities, a new culture and the rest of the mishaps I've already written else where. I have no idea how to put limits on P's abusive behavior. I question my value as a person. Every occasion of celebration (or of rest) triggers ugly scenes. I feel trapped and helpless..."

~ Reflector