Maybe I deserved it.  I left my wife and children for my abuser.  I was aware that she suffered from agoraphobia and panic attack disorder.  What I didn’t realise, until this week – from reading websites such as this, was that this disorder was entwined with a narcissistic personality.  I was so stupid.  I gave her almost seven years of my life.  She just took and took.  At first it wasn’t so bad.  No, it was bad.  I soon realised that her agoraphobia was going to be my prison as well.  I was cut off from friends and family.  I was constantly criticised for working shifts, or for working, even though I was solely supporting her and her daughter.  Whatever I gave was never enough.

The rages were incredible.  Refusal to talk, refusal to sleep in the same bed, her running around the house at night, smashing and destroying things that I had bought her.  I would be sleep deprived and pushed to the brink.  During one such episode she recorded me losing my temper, and used it as a threat, that it would be published on social media, I order to show what a monster and abuser that I was.

I was constantly suspected of cheating.  Phones, bank statements, computers regularly checked.  Any contact with my wife – and we share a severely disabled son.  I would be scrutinised afterwards, made to feel uncomfortable about contact with my family or children.  I said the first few years were not so bad, what I meant was that I thought that I was helping her defeat her agoraphobia.  I was extending my prison by extending hers.  But she gave up, lost interest.  Buried herself in New Age religious obsessions.  So my world became smaller and smaller again.  I was allowed days out – to buy her things.  But I would always have to give an exact time back, keep in constant text contact, be scrutinised when I returned, and of course accused and punished.

I was punished for taking my severely disabled son out for dinner one day.  I had left her alone.  I was harassed by text at my father’s funeral.

I spent a fortune.  I gave her absolutely everything – all of my income, inheritance, every spare moment of time caring for her phobic avoidances.  But it wouldn’t be good enough.  I wasn’t romantic enough.  I should get a day job.  Get a divorce.  I was a cheat.  I didn’t like her family.  I was lucky to have her, a younger woman with a good body, especially a grumpy cheating old man like myself.

I left her once.  I was utterly humiliated on social networks and in front of friends and family, even work colleagues.  I withdrew from online activity.  Like a complete idiot though, she talked me into returning.  I loved her.  I thought that she loved me.  A big mistake.  It cost me another 20 months of my life.

Sex was a favourite control.  I’d be teased with carrots on a stick, but then always let down at the moment.  Sex became less and less frequent.  I was an abuser for wanting it.  I’d be told to go masturbate. I was left feeling humiliated and unattractive.

I couldn’t understand.  I kept trying to talk about what was making me unhappy.  Each time, she would instead of caring, and trying to work on solutions, would punish me for days with silence, even rage.  By the way – the rage did sometimes turn physical.  It’s not easy for a man to admit that a five foot woman abused him to this extent.

She knew I was getting close to running away again.  She discovered that I had applied for a job that would most probably be too far to commute to from my prison.  I could hide nothing.  Eventually it exploded – her rage.  She attempted to stop me taking my things, whilst attacking me physically.  I got out.

I was broken hearted.  I couldn’t move on.  Therefore for three months I still let her abuse me by distance.  She managed to hide many of my belongings – heirlooms, passport, car documents, clothes. She would play games, letting me collect some things, but never the really important things.  Meanwhile she found a new man – very quickly.  I do wonder if it was already going on.  I was blocked from online accounts, while she would continue to control me.  I know though that on social media, she was courting her online audience to how I abused her, how she was a victim of a monster.

It was always critically important to her, that she was seen as a victim, never as guilty of any part.

She as now officially entered into a new relationship.  I still want my belongings.  I now realise that it would be best to just give up, move on.  Cut off any more contact.

I came across this website, because she told me that her audience had told me that I was an abuser and a gas lighter.  When I looked these things up, my abuser came screaming out of the descriptions.  I had no idea.  It actually hurts me even more rather than helps.  It means that for seven years, I gave all of my life, time, love, care, and money – to someone that is not capable of love herself.