I think about all the times he bullied me and tried to intimidate me. Ignoring my feelings, calling me a “victim” when he didn’t like me telling him how his words would hurt me. He would constantly blow up at me, hang up on me, and block me. One day he made me beg him to forgive me. I had to apologize over and over, virtually on my knees, only for him to then say “ok, I forgive you”. That was one of the many times I lost my self-respect. If I wasn’t begging him in some way, he was cruel to me until I did. Other times he would laugh at me, use sarcasm or belittle me if I spoke out against the way he was treating me. He ran an “experiment” on me. This is what he called it.
He once created a scenario where he pretended to be upset in order to show me that I had somehow done wrong. He wasn’t upset by my actions, but he yelled and screamed and chastise me, making sure that I felt like shit about myself afterward. And only once I started crying and shaking, did he stop and tell me it was only an experiment.
For me, it felt like it was the equivalent of being stripped naked for public shaming. I continued to cry, trying to process how the man I loved could do something like this to me. How could he cause me such emotional distress, all to prove some point he was trying to make. After his “experiment” he apologized and said he shouldn’t have done it. I continued to cry. I was inconsolable. He said he wanted to just end the call for the night because nothing he said would make me feel better. He intentionally tried to destroy my mind that night, but couldn’t handle hearing me cry, so he wanted to hang up.
