abuse by proxy

Grief over being abused–and the abuser getting away with it

I believe Tracy’s husband should have taken swift and decisive action to end her verbal and physical violence at home,

because by staying with her and not forcing her into counseling or some other thing,

he essentially taught her to believe it was okay for her to assault people and expect them to jump to her demands, accept her assaults, and not demand an apology or kindness from her.

That’s part of the trouble with Stockholm Syndrome.  How he can stay with someone who not only verbally but physically abuses him, and claim to still love her, I do not know.

How he could tell me that he deserved the way I saw her treat him during the weeks they lived with us, I do not know.

How he could blame her jealousies and rages on hormones, stress, or whatever, and not walk away, I do not know.

How he could endure all this crap from her, see the crap she threw at me, see what she did to the kids, and still call her “awesome” and “sweet,” baffles my mind.

How can he not be scared of her?  How can he not find her meanness a huge turnoff?  I didn’t even want to be in the same room with her most of the time!  Why would he want to be anywhere near someone like that?

I just don’t understand it, because if a man ever hit me, I’d lose any attraction and love I felt for him, real fast.

I was once with a guy who was emotionally and verbally abusive with the threat of physical abuse to come; we were together for less than a year, and it took only several months afterwards for me to realize he was no good, to move on and find somebody better.

But then, I should take care not to blame the victim, since Stockholm Syndrome is quite common among abuse victims.  Also, men especially have trouble with leaving or reporting abusive women because society, the police and the courts tend not to believe the man is the victim of domestic abuse.

Richard kept telling me how he was trying to get her to stop, how she’d act sorry and talk about changing; he kept telling me it was pregnancy hormones or whatever else was going on with her at the time.

But I saw this cycle going again and again, even when she was not pregnant.

And then for her to treat me like, my wanting to be buddy-buddy with her was a test to prove how trustworthy I was with her husband–it was just ridiculous.

I just don’t understand how Tracy can be so cruel and abusive to another person, then blame that person and shun her at church for ending the friendship.

Or how she can treat it all like it’s all about her and her being offended, when the truth is, Jeff and I both threw up our hands, decided that she and Richard were both being too violent and ridiculous, and apologies were not forthcoming from them, so we had to leave to protect ourselves.

For me it was finally a reason to stop being obliged to hang around with an abuser, someone who bullies everyone around her (except for the ones on her “approved” list) until they either leave or cower in submission.

(Before, our two families were so intertwined that I saw no way to extricate myself from her.  Forget the usual advice to just see your friend without the spouse if you don’t get along: She wouldn’t allow it!)

My husband and I finally decided we were better off being alone and lonely than having ungrateful and unkind friends like these.

I just don’t understand how she can live with herself, let alone take the Eucharist.  You’re supposed to confess at least occasionally–has she confessed these things?

And if so, then why doesn’t she try to make amends with me and be kind instead of carrying on this ostracism of me from her family?

Why doesn’t she come to me and apologize for all the things she’s done? the barbs, the false accusations, the knee-jerking, the ridicule, the ingratitude, the verbal abuse, the threat of physical violence?

I never even got so much as a thank you from her for providing her family with shelter and food despite great inconvenience to us.  I tried so hard to be nice to her, even while breaking off the friendship, but got venom back from her.

I said as little as possible to her during the breakup to try to avoid arguments because I knew I was no match for her abuse, but her angry words just kept coming and coming.

It’s hypocrisy like this that turns people away from the Church, and even I with all my strength of faith have had to struggle to hold onto it–and not abandon the Church completely–while dealing with this.

Richard, after all, had much to do with me finding my way.  He was my spiritual guru, my spiritual idol with clay feet, someone to look up to.  I thought he could show me the way to religious enlightenment.

I thought he was devout, but instead he was violent.  I thought his violence was in the past, tamped down by religion, but it was still there, waiting dormant.  I saw the verbal violence arising in political comments he made on Facebook.

(You’ll note from what happened to Congresswoman Giffords that such political verbal violence leads to crazy people carrying out physical violence.  This article has a disturbing resemblance to Richard drawing a middle finger on a letter he received from our senator Feingold, then returning it to him.  Is that any way for a Christian to act?)

With the way Richard and Tracy both are about politics, actively working with their favored parties, and Richard’s attitudes to the opposition (actually using the word “hate”), and how upset I am at what is going on in Wisconsin since the last election put their people in power–

–how all the things I love about my state government are being yanked away and civility is now dead–

–I think being friends with them now would have been impossible anyway.

I think they would have been unbearable, that they would have looked down on Jeff and me for disagreeing with them, called us “sheeple” and “socialists,” all that crap going around these days which is making me start to look at their parties as the Enemy because they have acted out of anger and set up my side as their Enemy, rather than working together.

The following clip from a website of personal abuse stories, reminds me of Tracy telling me I needed to “grow up” and get over hurt feelings from her verbal abuse (according to her, caused by my behavior), rather than breaking off relations with her, and of Richard telling me that saying little to her was somehow worse than so-called “harsh words”:

After I confronted her about her having no right to lay a hand on me and my fear of what she would do to our future children, she replied, “if you’re going to get your tiny feelings in a bunch over a little slap, you need to keep going to therapy TO WORK ON YOUR PROBLEMS.”

I bet Tracy says this to her children and husband as well when they get zinged by her for stepping out of line.

This sounds very much like how Tracy acted at the end–and Richard was getting this way as well near the end, which is where the problems between him and me started.

I am so fed up with all the cattiness, abuse and bullying Tracy has thrown at me over the years in return for all the ways I’ve helped her and her family (sometimes at great personal trouble).

I am so fed up with how I was expected to just take it and try to befriend her, and if I complained about how she treated me and her husband and children I was a horrible, horrible person who was “biased against” her and didn’t “respect” her and interfered with how she dealt with her husband (because I didn’t think she naturally had the right to treat him like property and act jealous) and was too lax with my son and wanted to steal her husband.  (I have a good one of my own; why would I want hers?)

I tried so hard to quell my resentment, to do nice things for her, to spend every Lenten period trying to forget it and her lack of apologies.

Meanwhile she just kept nursing her grudges and the things I had done that were supposedly so horrible, and saying things to Richard like, “Did you just spend a couple of hours chatting with that woman online?”  (What?  Since when were we not supposed to chat online?)

While blaming me for not being all open and outgoing with her, she kept ignoring the crucial things that would’ve changed everything: her apologies, her changing her own behavior not just with me but with Richard and the children.

I could never be close friends with a child abuser, a spouse abuser, an aggressive person, a mean girl.  Yet Richard complained to me that he couldn’t go get coffee with me, as if it were my fault.  Jeff was very angry with Tracy, and often got annoyed with Richard as well over the whole thing.

Three unexplained incidents happened.  I will present only the facts so you can draw your own conclusions.

The first incident, was the five disappearing e-mails.  We were all on the same forum and I would often send Richard private messages that way, about life or issues or books or movies or whatever.

He hadn’t been on the board for a while, so there were five messages waiting for him from me.  This was in early 2008.

I had gone to visit Richard and Tracy; I told him the e-mails were getting backed up and had been waiting for weeks so please check them.  Tracy was sitting next to him at the time.

A day or two afterward, I went on my account and the e-mails had vanished.  They were not in my sent box.  There was no trace of them in the message tracker, which would tell me if they had been read.  Richard said he never got them.

I feared my account had been hacked, and changed the password.  The owner-administrator, Todd, didn’t know what happened; we figured maybe it was our usual board stalker/troll, who had a bug in his butt about Todd and kept causing trouble.

But this guy would get blamed for everything that went wrong there, and I knew of one case (the forum hack) where he was blamed for something Richard did.

Tracy and Richard were both admins on that board.  Richard never got the messages….From what I recall, the messages were about books and some other things, nothing that would cause a wife alarm.  And I never heard of e-mails or any online communication being forbidden, never had any reason to think this.

The second incident, at the end of May and the beginning of June 2010, which was also right after Memorial Day, when Tracy was snarky with me about my backpack, and then in the following few weeks she continued to be snarky in response to posts I made on Facebook, and also there was lots of drama between her, Richard and the children whenever Jeff and/or I would visit–

All of a sudden, Richard’s Facebook account had blocked me and hers had unfriended me.  I don’t remember if Jeff had been unfriended by her account, but he was not blocked from either.

I kept trying to send her friend requests, but they didn’t seem to be getting through–some weird glitch, I thought, due to Facebook doing a major change in privacy settings.

I’d see “Awaiting Friend Request” keep changing back later on to “Request as Friend.”  So I kept re-sending them.  I certainly had no reason to think she was denying my requests.

Richard told Jeff he certainly wouldn’t have blocked me, and he couldn’t find my account either, so I should look at my account to see if there’s something weird on my privacy settings.

I sent him messages through Jeff’s account, saying that nothing was amiss in my settings.  I also tried setting up a new account with my business e-mail, on June 2, but even then I could see that Richard had an account, but I couldn’t look at his public profile or send him a friend request.

Then a few days later, he discovered he accidentally blocked me somehow, unblocked me, and my latest friend request to Tracy finally resulted in re-friending.  I thought it was because FB changed settings, but I did not have this problem with any of my other FB friends.

The third incident, on September 26, 2010, a few months after the 7/1/10 Incident, my innocent little boy went into Tracy’s cafe on Cafe World on Facebook.  He did stuff to help her out like people can do in their neighbors’ cafes, even after they’ve blocked your account.  (This time, not only was Richard’s account blocked from all three of us, but hers was too for a while.)  The game left traces of my son being there.

The following day, September 27, my son’s account was suddenly shut down.  The message said he was too young, but did not explain how they found out, who told them.  (We kept track of his account, who he friended, his privacy settings, so he was in no danger.  He was there so he wouldn’t keep using his daddy’s account to play Cafe World and the fish game.)

It hurt to hear my little boy cry.  🙁   (I later discovered that this was 6 days after Richard choked his eldest child, and 5 days after that child reported Richard to the police.)

Table of Contents 

1. Introduction

2. We share a house 

3. Tracy’s abuse turns on me 

4. More details about Tracy’s abuse of her husband and children 

5. My frustrations mount 

6. Sexual Harassment from some of Richard’s friends

7. Without warning or explanation, tensions build

 
8. The Incident

9. The fallout; a second chance?

10. Grief 

11. Struggle to regain normalcy

12. Musings on how Christians should treat each other

13. Conclusion 

13b. Thinking of celebrating the first anniversary

14. Updates on Richard’s Criminal Charges 

Sequel to this Story: Fighting the Darkness: Journey from Despair to Healing

 

Grief over being falsely accused

Losing friends can be particularly difficult for introverts because we don’t surround ourselves with people. We prefer a few intimate friends to lots of less-intense friendships, and deep discussion with one person to a party full of festive chitchat.

For us, losing one good friend can leave a larger hole in our lives than it might for an extrovert with 25 best friends. –Dr. Irene S. Levine, The Inside Scoop on Your Introvert Friends

The really sad thing is all they had to do was apologize.  I already apologized for hurting them because in no way did I mean to hurt anybody by anything.

All I needed from them was to admit to going over the top with the expressions of anger, acknowledge misinterpreting my e-mail, listen to what I really meant by it, admit to having been abusive–and that abuse is never justified, no matter what the offense, whether intentional or not.

I needed Richard to recognize that by throwing me under the bus instead of explaining to Tracy what my e-mail was really all about, he had implicated himself and declared himself guilty–that by demonstrating to her my innocence, he also would’ve demonstrated his own.  

Then we could’ve sat down and talked like adults.  

But because they dug in their heels and justified what they did, and Tracy just kept spewing out more and more abuses at me, the friendship is over.

Even the Bible says to have nothing to do with the unrepentant user or abuser (1 Corinthians 5:9-13).  

There is no way to restore a friendship without mutual forgiveness and apologies, and there cannot and will not be any sort of friendship between us until the abuse stops: the abuse of her husband, the abuse of her children, the abuse of me.

I will not be friends with people who justify abuse of their children.  

I will not be friends with a woman who justifies abuse of her children and of her husband.  

I will not be friends with people who justify bullying not just of children, but of grown adults, to get their way.

This quote sounds exactly like Tracy in our e-mail exchanges during the Incident and a month later on 8/1:

Like many abusers, this woman didn’t even mind it if the things she said made her sound like she had mental problems and I wound up thinking she was just nuts, as long as she could still delude herself into believing that she “won” the argument.

These strategies are referred to as “crazy-making” because they are used to make you think YOU’RE the crazy one.

But they usually have exactly the opposite effect as you start to think the abuser would have to be mentally ill to come up with the wacky, outlandish, completely ridiculous things she says, and to say them with all seriousness.

It is at this point that many victims and bystanders decide that they’re not running a mental institution for abusers, and it’s time to cut bait and to run for the hills.

Although she was attempting to get me to “see things her way”, absolve herself of any wrongdoing, and have me validate and agree with her, what this abuser actually did was to make herself look far worse.

Once the phony mask of righteousness dropped off, no preconceived notion that I may have held about her was anything close to as bad as she really was.

While trying to justify her point of view, she gave away many clues as to her true nature, inadvertently revealing an unloving heart controlled by envy, pride, resentment, bitterness, competitiveness, jealousy, and hostility–and all masquerading in the disguise of a “good Christian woman”. –Rev. Renee, The “Christian” Abuser: Twisting God’s Word to Justify Abuse

It’s so frustrating because they kept pointing to me and saying I needed to respond to Tracy trying to start a conversation with me.  Tracy kept complaining to Richard that I wasn’t responding to her attempts.

But I never noticed her doing it; most of the time she said very little to me.  I kept hearing she felt snubbed; I had no idea when.  Even Jeff never noticed me being rude with her, never noticed her trying to start conversations with me.

It’s especially frustrating because I’ll look over websites on abuse that say, “Abusers will tell you they have no idea what you’re talking about, say the incident never happened.”  But I’m not saying this to be abusive or gaslight anybody!  I truly have no clue what Richard and Tracy are talking about.

So even if we had the “conference” Tracy was asking for, her yelling and screaming at me would have made no difference, because I still would have acted the same–not out of stubbornness, not out of rudeness, not out of a desire to snub her or be unfriendly, but because they treated my pleas as excuses and did absolutely nothing to help me know she was trying to start a conversation with me.

Perhaps I had no idea what to say next: This happens to me quite often when someone speaks to me.  It’s not rudeness: I just have nothing to say.

Maybe I don’t know enough about the subject.  I’ve heard of extroverts or neurotypicals “faking” knowing a subject for the sake of conversation, but I could never do such a thing.  If I don’t know about it, I’m not going to fake it.  I wouldn’t know how to do it even if I wanted to.

But I have no idea if this is it, because I don’t remember her doing anything most of the time that would seem remotely like starting a conversation.

[2014 note to demonstrate this: I had a similar problem at work once.  I was a secretary for an insurance agent, but I was not licensed, so I was not allowed to give advice.

[However, one day my boss complained that I should be giving advice, even “fudging” answers to people who call, like he overheard from the secretaries for the other agents in the building.  This made me extremely uncomfortable, so I didn’t do it.

[Not only was this illegal, as I later learned, but it was impossible for me to do this.  Not only do I resist lying, which this would feel like, but it’s neurologically impossible for me to “fudge” answers I do not have.]

All Tracy’s badgering, all this hearing long after the fact that I’ve somehow annoyed her but having no idea when or where, all her punishing me for something I couldn’t notice or do anything about–It made me loathe her.

Richard complained, during our arguments in June 2010, that I told him about things I had trouble with long after they happened, so he couldn’t remember them.

This complaint baffled me.  I told him my problems with him, right away.  I only waited once, and only because I had to resolve within myself whether I was the one with the problem before bringing it up.  I had to see if it happened more than once, while normally I would try to bring up a problem as soon as possible.

But Richard and Tracy constantly waited till long after the “offense.”  Tracy kept quiet until July/August 2010, then came out with it–but I already heard it all from Richard and stopped what she hated a year or two previous, so I don’t know what the point was of rehashing it.

While Richard kept scolding me for some way I “snubbed” Tracy long after it happened, so I could remember none of it.  It was very hypocritical of him, obvious projection of their problem onto me.  

All I knew was that I had not snubbed her on purpose.  Heck, I see websites on how to spot a liar that say a liar uses too many words, saying “honestly” or “truly,” etc.  But I use many words here and other places to explain myself, not to be deceitful, but because I’m trying to make a person understand that I am telling the truth.

Many of the tips on spotting liars actually pinpoint behaviors that people with NLD and Asperger’s do naturally that have nothing to do with deceit, such as using a lot of words, not making eye contact, twitching, etc.

I can certainly tell you that I have always had a lot of trouble with eye contact.  It’s taken a lot of time and work to get to the point of being able to look someone in the eye while they talk to me.

And still it feels far more comfortable to look away.  It’s far less distracting from their words, if I don’t have to keep thinking, “Now look in the eyes, but not too long or they’ll think you’re staring.  What is that on his face?”

Table of Contents 

1. Introduction

2. We share a house 

3. Tracy’s abuse turns on me 

4. More details about Tracy’s abuse of her husband and children 

5. My frustrations mount 

6. Sexual Harassment from some of Richard’s friends

7. Without warning or explanation, tensions build

 
8. The Incident

9. The fallout; a second chance?

10. Grief 

11. Struggle to regain normalcy

12. Musings on how Christians should treat each other

13. Conclusion 

13b. Thinking of celebrating the first anniversary

14. Updates on Richard’s Criminal Charges 

Sequel to this Story: Fighting the Darkness: Journey from Despair to Healing

 

The monster comes back out: Tracy punishes me for long-dead issues

Warning: The following contains venting of anger, to get it out of my heart and onto the page, to make the story authentic, and to show other victims of abuse that I feel your rage.

Before we were to call, I wanted him to read the e-mail and respond.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited.

I got the idea to suggest a movie night to Tracy through Facebook, as a peace offering, and expected a kind reply.

However, though I told Richard that if we were to work on reconciling, I couldn’t take being spoken to the way Tracy had done a month earlier, and though she seemed pleasant enough that day when face-to-face, via Facebook message the monster returned in complete disregard of my feelings:

She said she’d blocked my e-mail address from his, so he never even got my apology!  She said he consented to this, which showed that he out-and-out lied to me in the church basement!  (What was the point, then, of him telling me to re-send it?)

That she made him block his Facebook from our entire family, not just me but Jeff and our little boy as well!

Then she justified it because during the Incident, when she used his Facebook to send me her raging e-mails, I had tried to defend myself and find out from him what the heck was going on!  She said this made her “sick.”

Well, her saying this, makes ME “sick.”  That sick you get when you see something repulsive, disgusting, horrendous.

Somehow this made her think she should treat me like some kind of stalker–even though we broke things off with them!

You see how bizarre her thinking is?  It also fits what Sam Vaknin writes here:

Because of the distorted perceptions that the abuser has of rights and responsibilities in relationships, he considers himself to be the victim.

Acts of self-defense on the part of the battered woman or the children, or efforts they make to stand up for their rights, he defines as aggression against him.

He is often highly skilled at twisting his descriptions of events to create the convincing impression that he has been victimized. —The Mind of the Abuser, Sam Vaknin

It also matches what Anna Valerious writes here:

Recognize the reality that the narcissist will never give you “permission” to defend yourself against them. Quit being confused as to your rights to self-defense when confronted by the threatenings and breathings against you by the narcissist for doing so.

Is it reasonable to expect the despotic ruler to grant you the right to mount a defense against his capricious demands? Hardly.

It is time to recognize your fundamental right to live which is connected to your fundamental right to defend your life against threats. This is as true in the emotional, mental and spiritual realm as in the physical. —Your Most Fundamental Right

I never had any intention of stalking Richard, was blocking him out of my life: I took out Firefox bookmarks for a couple of forums he used to run.

I even deleted my posts from his Facebook wall and pictures on July 1 before sending a good-bye message and unfriending him on Facebook the morning of July 2.

I only sent one e-mail–the apology–to find some peace and close the book, and he never even got that.

In fact, from what I recall, I deleted his e-mail from my computer address book (but then put it back so I could send this e-mail), and deleted their numbers from my cell phone.

Was she projecting onto me what she herself would have done?  

Based on her behavior toward me described in this linked post, I believe she was indeed projecting.

So blatant lies–in church–from him, and more ridiculous and overblown behavior from her which, of course, she said I deserved.

Insult piled upon insult!

She pulled her claws out again and petulantly said that “YOU were the ones who ended it and unfriended us on Facebook, not US” [the YOU being Jeff and me and the US being her and Richard], that THEY didn’t want to, and that Jeff “stormed into” their place and broke things off–

–Um, as opposed to her “rational” behavior, I suppose?

I tried very hard to restrain myself and speak to her kindly, in hopes of turning away her wrath in the way prescribed by Proverbs.  I sent her a copy of the apology e-mail, hoping that it would calm her down, show her the misunderstanding, and inspire her to apologize for her overreaction.

But she wrote all sorts of things that showed not only did she not care about my feelings or trying to break things to me gently, but she was still steamed over things I had long since apologized for and/or stopped doing.

Richard had told me he blamed himself for everything, so I knew if it were just him, we could work things out.

But Tracy was another story.  She seemed to pay no attention to the things I actually wrote in my e-mails, but twisted them into what she wanted them to say, so she could feel justified in raging.

She went on and on about things I had supposedly done that were so horrible, saying “you were wrong” about things that I still do not feel I was wrong about, that I should’ve known this or that was wrong or against convention (when no, I hadn’t, and had seen no evidence of such conventions among friends).  I go into this in previous chapters.

No matter how many times I said I was sorry for offending her, no matter how kindly I wrote to her, no matter how much I bit my tongue and how little I said, no matter how much I refrained from defending myself or telling her how badly she had been behaving all through this–it made no difference, put no chink in her rage armor.

I couldn’t think she was right and I was wrong when I found plenty of blog posts, forum posts, articles and the like which actually sided with my way of thinking.

Expecting me to act the same way she did in the same situation, when no, I think about these things entirely differently than she does, haven’t reacted like she did in similar circumstances, or wouldn’t react like she did.

How could I possibly have known that she thought befriending the wife before doing stuff with the guy friend was a form of showing respect for the wife, when I didn’t demand such things from my husband’s female friends?

She said everyone knows this, learning disability or not–er, no, NOT everybody knows this.

I do not know this, never required it from my husband’s friends, never expected it, never even would’ve thought that she would require it until she started treating me like a slut and getting enraged at every little thing I innocently and obliviously did that she didn’t like.

For me, respect from Jeff’s friends simply means they’re not mean to me; I do not require them to befriend me as well!

It was impossible to tell if she was completely wrong about this being a convention that “everybody knows,” especially with the way so many of the old conventions were done away with and people started doing their own thing in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s–or if this was yet another example of people telling the NLDer, “I shouldn’t have to tell you!”

I also go into this here.  But now, after a bit more experience added to what I already had, I see that no, Tracy was wrong, though she tried to tell me I was:

There is no such rule as the one Tracy stated.  This is a do-as-you-want society, where fixed social rules have long since been set aside.

I’ve had other friends whose spouses do NOT require this, such as my old college friend Mike.  I don’t know his wife, who won’t even friend me on Facebook because she doesn’t want to friend his friends.

Ever since they got married, they’ve lived too far away for me to get to know her.  Yet she has absolutely no objection to me chatting with him on Facebook, occasionally (innocently) flirting with him in those chats, exchanging e-mails, or, several months ago, having lunch with him when he happened to be in town.

No, she was NOT there, and neither of us had a “wing man” which some people think is “proper.”

I’ve also seen post threads on a local social network which showed that many people find “wing men” to be unnecessary, that all you need to do is let your hubby know you’re meeting this friend, and it’s totally proper.  Assuming your intentions are honorable, of course.  Your husband does not have to know the guy, you don’t have to know the woman he’s meeting.

Other people I’ve known and all sorts of comment threads I’ve found on the Net, tell me that Tracy’s rules are far from fixed, that it’s incredibly common to have the more trusting, do-as-you-want attitude I have lived and encountered.

Here’s one right here, Is She “His” Friend or “Our” Friend on Chocolate Vent:

I have a girlfriend who swears that married men should no longer have female friends once he’s married. Instead of just being his friend that woman should then become “our” friend.  I think that’s ridiculous, but I wonder how many women & men actually enforce that.

I mean why should I have to be friends with some woman just because my husband was friends with her first? And same with my male friends – why should my husband be forced to make a new friend just because I was friends with him first?

….I don’t think that anyone should be forced to be friends with someone that they don’t know.

If my husband has female friends before we marry then those should be his friends & his friends alone. Of course, I’m sure I’ll end up meeting all of my husband’s female friends, I just wouldn’t want to be forced to befriend them just because we’re married.

After all, if I couldn’t trust him I should’ve never married him.

A commenter wrote,

I have friends my husband has no interest in socializing with, in fact he would rather cut his own throat than be forced to attend any event with. He has friends I feel the same about.

This includes both single and married friends, those we knew prior to our marriage and those we have met since our marriage, those of the same gender and of the opposite gender.

Apparently Tracy knows absolutely nothing about NLD if she thinks she did anything here but prove my assertion of NLD!  Apparently she has no concept of how NLD and Aspergers affect the brain so that even common social conventions, things that people can intuit without being told, are unknown to the NLDer or Aspie.

She talked as if I couldn’t blame this on a learning disorder, as if I were just being stupid or stubborn or malicious or “moving in on” her husband, when the reality was I could very easily blame it on a learning disorder!

Not only that, but more and more, I am finding officially diagnosed NLDers who identify with what I write about my experiences. The more she argued against my NLD, the more ignorant she made herself sound, yet she probably thought she was winning the argument.

And not only that, but the things I wanted to do, for two months Richard had freely done these things with me, and never gave me any reason whatsoever to believe that they were in any way “inappropriate,” so I had absolutely no reason to think that they had to be cleared with Tracy first.

Such as, the way he and I would talk for hours, or going out for coffee/ice cream.  This is crazy-making behavior from Tracy, more of her obvious borderline personality disorder/malignant narcissism, no matter how much she may try to spin it into somehow being her “right.”

The “shoulder thing,” as Richard termed it, hadn’t been done for more than two years because it upset her, yet here she was bringing it up yet again, as if we had never stopped doing it, as if I needed to be lectured again and again on how evil this was–even though at the time it had been done innocently of wrongdoing.  Jeff, too, was upset over how I was being treated over it.

I was already sick of hearing about it because it kept getting brought up by Richard all the time, even though it had stopped, and because Richard once told me how she kept bringing it up again and again with him as well as an example to him of how horrible I was.

She used it as a tool to defame my character to Richard, when I have never done anything even remotely like cheating on Jeff.  I found it horribly embarrassing and I just wanted her to shut the **** up about it, yet here it was yet again.

Did I mention I had only done it a few times, and only because Richard had done it first and taught me that it was perfectly fine and ordinary and innocent for platonic friends to do, and we hadn’t done it for more than two years?

I also have another friend who does this with his friends all the time, and right in front of his wife, who laughs.

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems, making a mountain out of a molehill, so that I greatly resent being treated the way I was over it.

What about this was worth all the fuss?  The same behavior made Jeff shrug–and it had been Richard’s idea in the first place.

There is absolutely nothing sexual about it, or else I’d have to push my son off me when he does it.  There are far worse things that people do, things Richard and I did not do, and steered clear of out of respect for our marriages.

And I have no problem with anyone who wants to sleep on a friend’s shoulder.  I have no problem with a woman, maybe late at night around an SCA campfire, falling asleep on Jeff’s shoulder, even if I don’t know her.

Tracy assumed that I would, but I wouldn’t–and my husband wouldn’t, either, because he saw the same thing, shrugged, remembered all the faithfully married people he knows who do such things with friends, and went back about his day.

I have no problem with Jeff wanting to hug a friend.  I have no problem with Jeff e-mailing or online chatting or phone chatting with any of his friends, female or male, whether I know them or not.

I do not bother “approving” his friends, and find that to be very controlling and infantilizing.

Some people are reserved, and some people are touchy-feely, comfortable touching close friends, anybody they talk to, co-workers, whoever.

I always just stuck Richard in the “touchy-feely” category.  I saw him online and off, flirting with his male and female friends, and asking female friends for “huggles”; that’s just the way he is.

If he meant more by it than he let on, that’s not my fault, that’s his.

Just because my boundaries are looser than Tracy’s, does not make me wrong or a whore.  It just means I disagree with her, which I should be allowed to do without her verbal abuse.

In fact, I believe that more people should do what I did, that American society should be more open and free with affection for all loved ones, not just children or spouses or romantic partners.

I want to be more like this, myself, which I have trouble being because of a lifelong reserve, but I see people around me in the SCA being far more open all the time.  Caring gestures, hugs, sleeping on shoulders–I want to do all these things freely with my friends, male and female, and break out of that shell.

I find Tracy’s reaction to these things, her refusal to rest until I heard every little thing she considered to be “inappropriate,” her character assassinations of me, her insistence that I agree with her that they are “inappropriate” even though they in no way involve sex or groping–to be very offensive and close-minded, very backward-thinking.

I’d rather follow the philosophies of the Cuddle Party people, not the must-not-touch philosophy of American reserve!

So I will freely admit these things here, because I feel I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of, or that Tracy has any right to make me feel as if I did!

If that makes me a hippie, so be it–I’ll fit right in in the SCA!

As Ayla felt in Jean Auel’s “The Mammoth Hunters” when thinking over her past, a Cro-Magnon girl being raised by Neanderthals:

She, too, had broken taboos and paid the harsh consequences, but she had learned from them.  Perhaps because she was so different to begin with, she had learned to question whether what she had done was really so bad.

She had come to understand that it wasn’t wrong for her to hunt, with sling or spear or anything she wanted, just because the Clan believed it was wrong for women to hunt, and she didn’t hate herself because she had stood up to Broud against all tradition (p. 259-60).

Also, on page 649:

He began to understand that just because some people thought certain behavior was wrong, that didn’t make it so.

A person could resist popular belief and stand up for personal principles, and though there might be consequences, not everything would necessarily be lost.  In fact, something important might be gained, if only within oneself.

Since many social conventions seem like a waste of time to me, I’m not so judgmental of people who break them.  It’s a good brain for a writer to have. —Writer Nalo Hopkinson on Learning ABILITY not DISability

Sociologists representing symbolic interactionism argue that social rules are created through the interaction between the members of a society.

The focus on active interaction highlights the fluid, shifting character of social rules. These are specific to the social context, a context that varies through time and place.

That means a social rule changes over time within the same society. What was acceptable in the past may no longer be the case. Similarly, rules differ across space: what is acceptable in one society may not be so in another. —Convention

I don’t need someone like you
Expecting me to share your views
‘Cos I don’t expect that what you see has anything to do with me
—“Your Crusade” by Jesus Jones

I saw this very same disproportionate rage come out when Tracy raged at Todd over a game.

I saw her disproportionally rage at Richard, or at her children, on many occasions.

Being told her rage over this was somehow justified, that most people would be worse–tells me that maybe Richard and Tracy have been spending too much time around other narcissists and have a perverted view of what’s “normal” or “justified” behavior.

Richard’s hints that he would assault and possibly kill if his wife ever cheated, are very telling.  Richard’s wanting to assault the woman who sent him an eviction notice, is very telling.

There were other things that I had apologized for a year earlier, by e-mail with her and over the phone (with tears) to Richard, that hadn’t been done since, yet here they were being brought up yet again.  During the conversations a year earlier, I felt horrible about the things I was told had been seen in my behavior.

Things came out horribly badly and, though they weren’t meant that way, I could see the problem, could see, for example, that a certain action had been manipulative; it had actually been Jeff’s idea, so I went along thinking maybe he knew best, so he felt horrible as well; I apologized and never did those things again.

For months I kept feeling horrible over them, even though they weren’t meant the way they were taken, even though I had confessed and been absolved by my priest.  For some months I had every reason to believe that the past was now over in her mind as well, and I tried to move on from the past.

But here, in August 2010, I was being accused all over again of things that had not been done for at least a year or two.

Over the month since the July 1 Incident, I had also reflected quite a bit over my own behavior, and repented to her now for some things (even though, on reflection, I wonder why I thought I needed to, and think it was her poisonous verbal abuse working on me).

But instead of pacifying her, it only seemed to spur her on to more verbal beatings and more descriptions of how horrible I had been.

It was as if she saw me as somehow unable to change from past offenses, that she had to beat me for them over and over again.  (Richard also complained that she treated him this way.)

Meanwhile, she treated her own offenses as if they did not exist, as if they were her right to do them, as if I deserved them, and I remember she got angry when she overheard me telling Jeff what she had done.

On the one hand Tracy claimed she knew I didn’t mean anything nefarious, yet on the other she treated me as if I did, playing with my head, pulling up things I had supposedly done which really weren’t so bad, but she had a way of making them sound bad.

I almost wish she had indeed tried to kill me when she had the idea: Jeff would have pulled her off and had her arrested, thrown her out of our house and into jail on a domestic abuse charge, and the friendship and our support would have been over right then.

But it was more than a year before I even heard about this, more than a year of wondering why the heck she refused to like me and I just seemed to be treading water with her, more than a year before I knew just how violent she could potentially be.

It confirmed that she was not the type of person I wanted to befriend.  But I was being forced to do just that.

On August 1 and for a day or two after, I showed her e-mails to Jeff.  He also thought they were over-the-top, nasty, blaming–and, at times (such as the “shoulder thing”), he’d say, “Oh, baloney!”  

There was no openness here to different points of view, no hint of conceding that she could have done some things wrong as well, no hint of apologies for her nastiness over the years or on Facebook or on the day of the Incident, nothing but wanting me to bow down and submit to her and say that everything she said was correct.

Yet with all this, she kept saying there was MORE to be said.  I didn’t know what on earth could be left to say: I had done nothing else!

All the things I could think of, were done more than two years before, and not again unless and until I was led to believe that it was safe.

And how was it such a terrible breach of boundaries, etiquette and respect for her, for me to want to speak privately with or go to a coffee shop with my BFF, after having already spent several weeks living with Tracy and getting to know her and telling her secrets?

It would not have been a secret meeting, but one I fully expected Richard to tell her about.

Isn’t living with someone the most effective and thorough way to get to know them, far better than small talk?

And didn’t I watch movies with her, joke around with her, have long talks with her, change her baby’s poopy diaper while she was in the shower, keep an eye on the kids while she walked to school to pick up the eldest?  Did this count for nothing?

I was being treated as if things I had no desire to do, were in my heart.  And I was sick of and disgusted with it.  It’s bad enough being blamed for things you actually have done, without being blamed for things you have not done.

And false accusations like this are common from abusers, especially insidious because they have a way of getting under your skin and making you think they’re right and you’re the one with the problem.

(I recently read a blog comment from a guy whose wife had so convinced him he was the one with the problem that he spent years in therapy getting nowhere, until he finally realized that she was sneakily abusing him, that she has borderline personality disorder.  He got out, but still struggles with feeling like he’s the one with the problem.)

Table of Contents 

1. Introduction

2. We share a house 

3. Tracy’s abuse turns on me 

4. More details about Tracy’s abuse of her husband and children 

5. My frustrations mount 

6. Sexual Harassment from some of Richard’s friends

7. Without warning or explanation, tensions build

 
8. The Incident

9. The fallout; a second chance?

10. Grief 

11. Struggle to regain normalcy

12. Musings on how Christians should treat each other

13. Conclusion 

13b. Thinking of celebrating the first anniversary

14. Updates on Richard’s Criminal Charges 

Sequel to this Story: Fighting the Darkness: Journey from Despair to Healing

 

 

Shock: Richard and Tracy at my church

A month to the day after the blow-up, August 1, 2010, I went to church expecting a normal Sunday.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I thought I saw Richard get out of a van, but pushed away the thought: I expected they’d never come near me again, after blocking me on Facebook, and certainly wouldn’t come to my church ever again.

But then Jeff said, “They’re here.”

!!!!!  It really was them!  The whole family, at my church!

I wondered, are they here to torment me or to make peace?  Why are they here when they prefer their own church?

The oldest kid started saying, “There’s Jeff!” and getting all excited.  Jeff told me later that Tracy seemed to yell at her for this.  Richard waved at Jeff, but Jeff ignored him.

I wanted to get away from there as soon as possible, especially since Jeff was going to his own church and I was there alone, without Jeff or my son as moral support.

I shook so badly that I feared I’d start a fire lighting my candle.  I trembled all through the service.

I spent it in torment, nervous, anxious, shaking, wondering what they were thinking, wondering if I’d make it through without fainting or crying, praying to God and Mary for help.  (We fast all night and morning before Eucharist, hence the fear of fainting.)

My emotional state was so bad that I had to go to the bathroom at least once, to deal with how my nerves were affecting my body.

Just a few days before, I dreamed the children came up to me somewhere and started begging me to come see them, but I was sad because I couldn’t.

And now here they were, in real life.  The kids avoided me and said nothing to me, looking very subdued, and it almost killed me.

In the lines going up to receive blessed bread from the priest, which were two lines coming from either side of the church, Richard and I ended up across from each other, at the head of our lines, receiving bread from the priest at the same time.

I looked at Richard, to try to transmit–at the very least–a silent message of no hate, but he avoided my eyes.  I knew it was on purpose.

I called Jeff to pick me up as soon as the service ended, told him I couldn’t take it much longer, and went to coffee hour to spend the ten minutes or so it would take for him to get there.

They came to coffee hour.  I can still remember that it was strawberry cake.

None of them spoke to me except for one or two of the children.  They said very little to me though, which made me wonder what their parents had told them.  Usually they jumped up and ran over to greet and hug me whenever they saw me, but now they were subdued.

It broke my heart.  I wondered if the parents were angry at me, or if they were actually waiting for me to make a move, when I’d been waiting for them.

Coffee hour was in the basement, such a tiny basement that I could sit on the opposite side and still hear every word they said.  I heard Richard say he’d been told the floor was brand-new; I thought, “Yes, because I’m the one who told you!”

The elderly lady next to me said how nice it was to see kids in the church, referring to Richard and Tracy’s kids.  (Nowadays, you see many children coming to this church again.  But back then, there were few.)  I just quietly agreed, saying nothing else, hiding my true feelings from her.

And the whole time, I kept one eye out for Richard to go off by himself, away from the shrew.  You see, ever since I sent the apology e-mail, I wondered if I should have Jeff say something about it if he ran into Richard at the grocery store, which was bound to happen eventually, and did on occasion.  I would have no peace unless I made sure he actually got it.

Finally, Richard went over to chat with some young men, one a member of the church and the others his friends.  So I went over and quietly asked, “Did you get the apology I sent you?”  He had not.

The others soon drifted off, as if realizing we had to talk privately.  I wondered if one of them, an altar server, had overheard the talk I had with my priest a few weeks before about this.  (In any case, I did eventually tell him everything, in I believe February 2012.)

Richard said, “It’s all good.  I blame myself for everything.”

I said skeptically, “You do?”  But this was promising.

He hadn’t gotten the e-mail.  He made it sound as if it had been lost among hundreds of political e-mails he’d been getting, and many e-mails about stuff that was going on in his family.

I had no idea he was actually lying through his teeth, in the church basement–and easy as you please. 

That in reality, he had blocked my e-mails. 

That his wife had made it impossible to even make peace with him. 

That she had his balls in a vice, controlled his every move with us, and he couldn’t even do the right and Christian thing by Jeff and me without her approval.

I said, “If you want to make peace, all you have to do is say so.”

I meant this as, if they wanted to apologize, but later realized he may have taken it as us apologizing, when it was no such thing.

He told me to call them later about it, and to re-send the e-mail so he could read it.  Which makes his lies even more infuriating, because he knew it was blocked, so why tell me to send an e-mail he can’t receive?

I told him I couldn’t take being spoken to the way Tracy had spoken to me.  This is when he made the ludicrous and appalling remark, described here, “Are some harsh words as offensive as not saying two sentences together to her for a month and a half?”

WHAT?  (“Harsh words” is extremely understated!)   WHAT month and a half? 

And I don’t count my sentences! 

What, ANOTHER rule nobody told me about? 

To this day I have no clue WHAT month and a half this was. 

I am naturally shy and quiet, always have been, and even when I’m not shy with someone, I still tend to say very little in common conversation. 

When we were in the same room, I behaved with her the exact same way I behave with most people, friends and strangers. 

This had not changed one bit in the past month and a half, or whenever the heck he was talking about. 

So I was being falsely accused and blamed for Tracy’s verbal abuse.

And he knew very well, from a conversation we once had, that this was my natural state:

Some time between 2008 and 2010, I told him my aunt just revealed that she always thought my father or brothers must have sexually abused me, because I am so quiet.  I said nothing like that ever happened.

Richard asked if I behaved then as I do now, “Never speaking except when spoken to?”  I said yes.  So he has no excuse for treating me this way and blaming me for Tracy’s abuse, because he knew this was my natural temperament and not meant to offend.

So being naturally quiet was somehow worse than being verbally abused???

Being wary of someone who’s been bullying you for two years and has recently upped the intensity, is worse than being verbally abused????

And this to a person they already knew to be extremely quiet in most social situations?

What kind of people are these two, anyway?

This was yet more proof that my e-mail was not the problem. 

That it wasn’t about me violating Tracy’s rules. 

That it was actually because they are prejudiced against introverts and people with NVLD. 

They couldn’t plead ignorance, because I made it very clear how my brain worked, how my socializing was, and what I needed, but they didn’t listen. 

In July 2010, August 2010 and probably for some time after, I shared a lot of articles on Facebook about how introverts are maligned and misunderstood, and posted that my ex-friends bullied and abused me for being an introvert.

But back to August 1.  Richard invited me to sit at his table.  I saw Tracy there and said, “Is it safe?”  He said, “She’s not a monster.”  He also said–showing that he obviously did get my good-bye message on Facebook–“She never hated you.”

I beg to differ.  I have to go by Tracy’s actions, not Richard’s lies.  And her actions made it very clear that she hated me for the past two and a half years.

But I reluctantly decided to trust him.  Big mistake.

I tried to be pleasant with Tracy, ask how her summer was going, relay a funny story about my son at T-ball.

She seemed pleasant, smiling and such, which I should have approached warily, but instead I saw it as a good sign that she was ready to apologize for her actions.

The kids were happy to see me and chat with me and the like.

Then Jeff showed up, very surprised–and displeased–to find me sitting with them.  He said nothing to me about it there, but he was very gruff, very reserved with Richard and Tracy.

Richard told Jeff his D&D character (Friday campaign) was “fighting monsters in the void.”  (He said nothing about our characters in the other campaign we’d been doing, with my character Phoena.)

It makes one wonder if he expected us to “come to our senses” and come back, so he kept the character waiting in the wings, rather than coming to us and apologizing.

Oh, no, an apology would be beyond him, because he’s a narcissist….

Jeff hugged the kids, since we missed them and they weren’t a part of this.  Richard told Jeff to give them a call later.

I complained to Richard for blocking us on Facebook, said the apology e-mail was sent three weeks ago but he never responded.

He said something about blocking us because he didn’t want a flame war, and the blocking being temporary until everyone cooled down.

Another lie, but I didn’t know this at the time, that the truth was Tracy had him by the balls and made him do this.

I had seen it as a sign that he didn’t want to speak to us, so we should leave him alone.

He told me we should let them know when/if we want to sit down and talk.  Then Jeff and I quietly left; I don’t remember saying good-bye.

At home, I re-sent the apology e-mail, cutting out the bits about reconciliation being impossible, maybe tweaking one or two things.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. We share a house

3. Tracy’s abuse turns on me

4. More details about Tracy’s abuse of her husband and children

5. My frustrations mount

6. Sexual Harassment from some of Richard’s friends

7. Without warning or explanation, tensions build

8. The Incident

9. The fallout; a second chance?

10. Grief 

11. Struggle to regain normalcy

12. Musings on how Christians should treat each other

13. Conclusion 

13b. Thinking of celebrating the first anniversary

14. Updates on Richard’s Criminal Charges 

Sequel to this Story: Fighting the Darkness: Journey from Despair to Healing

 

Struggling to process what the F**K just happened

Warning: The following contains venting of anger, to get it out of my heart and onto the page, to make the story authentic, and to show other victims of abuse that I feel your rage.

On July 22, I sent this e-mail to Jeff:

Actually, near the end of [watching] “The Burning Bed,” I was suddenly inspired to go into the e-mails and find out just what Richard wrote you on Facebook on about 6/28, when we were arguing about NLD and such.

I saw 3 messages he wrote to you that night, including the one about hitting you with a brick and not having been that mad in years and being easily provoked to physical violence. It was…scary.

It was hard to say if he was actually threatening you, but it was scary that he would even think that–and that there were at least two earlier drafts which could’ve been even worse.

I mean, WHY? What about what you wrote, or what I wrote, could’ve provoked him so much?

It reminds me, also, of how Tracy blew up a few days later, and that when she was living at our house, there was a time when she got so mad at me that she, according to Richard, almost killed, or could’ve killed me…I forget the exact wording. I don’t know if he meant it literally or verbally.

I remember Tracy’s e-mail to you included something about “self-diagnosed learning disorder.” Which I thought Richard said should never be brought up to her.

I remember this sense that it could make her mad, that it might be dangerous to mention it to her. And I wonder when/why Richard mentioned it to her.

These are violent people. And something seems to have been stirring them up, because I don’t know what we could’ve done to inspire the verbal tirades we were getting those few days.

Or what I could’ve said in my e-mail to him, near the end of May?, about [the Creeps who sexually harassed me], because that also provoked him to write a rather nasty e-mail (the final draft of many).

All I know is that for the past year, I’ve really struggled with getting friendly with Tracy because on some night that I can’t identify, she could’ve attacked me in my own house–for something that seemed to me perfectly innocent.

The thought of her possibly taking her fists to me has haunted me many times. I imagine you coming into the room, whether from the basement or your bed, screaming at her and throwing her out of the house. Me going to the hospital.

This has gone through my mind many times for the past year, since it was a year ago that Richard told me about this. And yet, somehow, *I* am painted as the one who has just been too stubborn or mean to treat Tracy right.

Right now, rather than wishing to have my friend back, I just feel this weird sense of having escaped but still dealing with the traumatic fallout…..

Jeff and I both feel that the e-mail that sparked the “incident” did not deserve the reaction it got.  Yes, he saw the e-mail, and when he told a group of our friends about it, they all agreed that it’s something that friends will tease you over and embarrass you over, but that would be that and everyone would move on.

But a woman who is so full of jealousy that she feels she has to approve her husband’s friends, who is so full of jealousy that saying “I’ll miss you dearly, but have fun” sparks a rage episode from her—

–She’s not rational, and anything she says in such an irrational, raging state should be taken as just a bunch of BS that should never be taken to heart.  

She must have been reading this Wikihow-to on how to isolate your man from his friends.  (Check the comments, too: the later ones sound very familiar.  Here I link to a blog post about the Wikihow-to, but the original is here.)

More than one person has commented that Tracy is never satisfied; I saw this for myself because she was never satisfied with me.

My mistake has been going over the things she said again and again in my head as if they should be taken even slightly seriously, as if maybe there were something to my actions that was shameful.

But I know what was in the e-mail, what it was for, what it was about–and that it was all perfectly innocent.  My husband, too, has read that e-mail and the ones after it, and to him also it’s all perfectly innocent.

I did not deserve Tracy’s response.  

And Richard was Judas because he allowed her to do this, when he knew dang well that there was nothing about what I said that was in any way shameful or that in any way deserved her response.

There was nothing sexual in my e-mail, though it was treated like some sort of proposition.  Heck, I did not even want to see Richard naked, so why on earth would I proposition him?  My e-mail was that of one close friend to another.

Richard should be the one ashamed.  

Tracy should be ashamed of herself.  

I was sick of all the accusations coming from left and right when I had done nothing wrong.

But because I believed Richard, because I trusted Richard, Tracy treated me this way.

This made me feel set up by Richard, that he wasn’t telling her his part in the whole thing, but throwing me to the wolves for something that he did.

I thought Richard had eradicated the violence that had once been in his heart and actions, only to find it still there.

It makes me want to seek out the ones who love, and who want to stamp out all forms of violence, hate and suspicion, since I know they’re out there, finding traces of them on the Internet and in music by the Beloved, Shamen, and the like.

Even if they are some other religion than my own, they express the love for mankind that my own religion is supposed to be about,

instead of the hate I found here in two members of my own religion.

After all the loving things we had done for Richard and Tracy, to help them, to be there for them, things which I had been the one to initiate, Jeff the one to carry out–I was being treated like sh**.  I was told to f*** off.  I was treated like some hoebag slut.

After we had given them what they needed again and again and again, I was treated like some skanky tramp who steals husbands.

All because I reminisced over an innocent hug.  A hug!  A hug which had no groping, no kissing, no hands in the wrong places, no gazing into the eyes, nothing loverly, but was an expression of platonic love and caring for a dear friend who had helped Richard’s family!

I was full of rage, of fury.  Yet unlike Tracy, I did not throw f– bombs around, did not start cussing and screaming at her, kept myself in check, kept my tongue in check, though I was rapidly losing my temper and part of it was spewing into my messages.  I wrote, for example, “WHY AM I BEING TREATED LIKE A WHORE????!!!!!”

You’d think this would be a big huge flag that I did NOT see anything about my behavior that was whorish, that she should calm down and find out the true meaning of my message instead of reading all sorts of crap into it that wasn’t even there.

But no.  She’s always right about everything.  What she says your motives are, are indeed your motives.  If she sees your Facebook post of “I’ll miss you dearly, but have fun!” as moving in on her husband, then that’s indeed what it is.

Truth be d**ned.  The only truth is HER truth.  Whatever she dreams up in her pathetic imagination, is Truth.

–And don’t forget how cool Richard had become to me because I didn’t agree with his TEA Party politics, because I didn’t agree that Democrats and liberals were Antichrist, because I thought that Universal Health Care would be a good thing if Congress could get it to work.

My husband became furious with Tracy and Richard both for treating me like sh** over the e-mail.  

He was so furious with Richard and Tracy that he said to me that Tracy needs to go sit in a corner like a naughty child,

that there was no call for her to throw f-bombs at me,

that no she does NOT get her way this time,

and that he wouldn’t allow me to try to patch things up with them until Tracy got down on her knees and apologized to me.

When I was still in shock over everything and mourning what had happened, wishing the friendship would be restored, my pastor friend Mike asked WHY–saying that even if we did reconcile, this would always be between us, and that whatever friendship had been there in the past, “these people are TOXIC!”

Catherine, when I told her Tracy took my quiet nature as a personal attack, laughed and said, “How long has she known you?”  She also said that it sounds like Richard talked a lot but didn’t really listen to me.

Jeff even got upset with me during the week or two after the “incident” for even considering making apologies and reconciling, for thinking this is what the Orthodox Church says I should do:

Though he missed the children, as far as he was concerned, it was good riddance to Richard and Tracy after the way they’d treated me (and him for sticking up for me).  

He felt that if anyone was to apologize, it was her to me.  

He wouldn’t let me anywhere near her.

Table of Contents 

1. Introduction

2. We share a house

3. Tracy’s abuse turns on me

4. More details about Tracy’s abuse of her husband and children

5. My frustrations mount 

6. Sexual Harassment from some of Richard’s friends

7. Without warning or explanation, tensions build

 
8. The Incident

9. The fallout; a second chance?

10. Grief 

11. Struggle to regain normalcy

12. Musings on how Christians should treat each other

13. Conclusion 

13b. Thinking of celebrating the first anniversary

14. Updates on Richard’s Criminal Charges 

Sequel to this Story: Fighting the Darkness: Journey from Despair to Healing

 

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