"You are disgusting and disgusting"

Retrieved from: Morgunblaðið 25.05.2013. Article author Egill Ólafsson

"He stood in the bedroom door and wouldn't let me out. When you're in this situation, all it takes is for him to stand threateningly in the door and forbid you to go out. You sink into powerlessness and fear," says the woman who was subjected to mental, physical, sexual and financial abuse while living with the man.

"Although I draw on my experience from my work assisting victims of domestic violence, I fell into this trap myself," says a woman who has worked in the welfare system over the years, often talking to victims of domestic violence and helping women get into the Women's Shelter. Yet she married a man who was severely abusive to her.

The woman is a university graduate. She met a man when she was middle-aged, but she had both life and work experience that some might think should have protected her from getting involved with an abusive man. She chooses to remain anonymous for fear of the man's revenge and out of consideration for his family.

Had a fractured identity

"I had been in a relationship before and I think, when I think back, I came out of that relationship with a broken identity. With all this experience, education and knowledge from my job, I still fall into this pit and I would have laughed at anyone who would have said this could happen to me too."

We got married very quickly, but I had already seen certain signs that should have set off alarm bells in me. It started with emotional abuse. For example, he would quickly throw some humiliating sentences at you, but then immediately start talking about something else. You would sit there and think, “What’s going on?” At the same moment that he broke me down, something positive followed, so that I sat there and didn’t know whether I was in this world or the next, but what remained was humiliation and pain. He knew exactly how to do it. It took me a while to realize that it was completely staged and that he had full control over it because it never happened when we were around other people.”

"He locked me in"

Have you decided to get married yet?

"Yes, but he still told me a week before the wedding that he wasn't sure if he wanted to marry me. At that point, I should have stopped and not gone any further, but I didn't because, among other things, I felt like I was failing at something in life if I did and believed that things would improve after the wedding."

Did anything change for the better after the wedding?

"No, it didn't. After the wedding, financial abuse started to happen. We had separate finances. If I was having a hard time, he said he wouldn't pay for anything for me. He might have given me clothes, but at the same time I couldn't afford the medication I needed and he refused to help me with it."

How did you try to deal with this mental abuse?

Had abused multiple women

How did he lock you in?

"He stood in the bedroom door and wouldn't let me out. When you're in this situation, all it takes is for him to stand threateningly in the door and forbid you to go out. You sink into powerlessness and fear."

Don't you ever wonder if you were the only one he had abused?

"Yes, not long after we got married I found out that he had been emotionally abusive and physically abusive to other women. I told him about it because I was trying to get him to get help. He then said I was 'disgusting and disgusting' because I was digging up something in his past. After we talked about it, he also acted like it was all untrue, even though I had confirmed it all."

How did you feel when you realized what the man was like and that you had made a mistake by marrying him?

"I found this very humiliating. I felt like I was messing things up. In my work, I had worked with victims of violence and had the image of them as young women who had perhaps experienced violence in their childhood, as drug addicts or women who had fallen behind in life. I was prejudiced and felt that this shouldn't happen to someone like me. So I convinced myself that it wasn't as bad as it was.

In addition to the emotional abuse, he had also begun to physically and sexually abuse me. His needs came first and I was supposed to submit to them.

Began to isolate himself

"At this time, I was starting to neglect my responsibilities to my children. It had actually started while I was still in my previous relationship. I wouldn't show up for birthdays or other events. I would come and maybe stop for five minutes because I was afraid of doing something he wouldn't be happy with."

Were you isolating yourself to please him?

"Yes, he made the decision about who I could talk to. We made friends, but then all of a sudden they had become 'scumbags and idiots' in his mind and I wasn't allowed to talk to them anymore. I couldn't explain to people why I had stopped contacting them. That's why I stopped making an effort to meet other people. My family wasn't allowed to visit me either, except to a very limited extent."

"After he started physically abusing me, I ran away once on the sock puppets. He chased me all over town. I went to my friend's house and stayed there for a week. This happened a few times."

I was afraid to see the obituary in the papers.

Have you ever tried to seek help?

"Yes, I eventually sought out psychologist Andrés Ragnarsson. He is credited with helping me out of this. He started by advising me to tell someone about it. I told my friend and continued to come to Andrés for interviews. He encouraged me every time not to go to the man again. He said he feared every day to see my death notice in the newspapers, but I never believed the man was this dangerous, except right at the moments when he was physically abusing me.

However, I always went back home. Then I started telling my family about it little by little. So it became more and more urgent and difficult for me to go back to him, because there were always more and more people who knew what was going on.

We worked together for a while and everything I did there was impossible and the situation and humiliation became many times worse. He didn't want me to work anywhere else because he couldn't supervise me there. One time my grown child decided to sit with me at work for a whole day. I had no idea what he was doing there. When we went home the child said to me: "The man is exploding, I thought he was going to kill you, but he definitely won't while I'm with you."

"What characterizes this man is that he cannot empathize with other people. That partly explains why he never finds any fault in himself."

"Given up all my possessions"

Did you ultimately decide to divorce him?

"Yes, I eventually managed to get out of it by giving up all our assets and taking on debt. Then he was persuaded to sign the divorce papers."

Were you finally free from him?

"No, after we broke up, I kept going back because I felt so sorry for him. I was always helping him and saving him because he was and is in a constant state of self-pity."

Why was it so difficult for you to break away from him?

"I was, of course, in a state of complicity. I had no self-esteem anymore. I literally didn't know if I was coming or going, what my name was, what I was capable of or what I knew."

When he was okay, he could be very charming and had many advantages. I also felt that I would lose out to the environment if I left him.

Then we must not forget that it can be more dangerous to leave than to stay. The times I left him, I was showered with all kinds of threats and harassment. I felt that it was a better option at this time to go home and try to keep the peace.

"However, I got out of it because of the help I received from Andrés and because my family and friends stood by me."

"I wouldn't have listened to warnings"

What do you think about the fact that here is a man who goes from one relationship to another and abuses all women?

"It's terrible. If I hear he's in a new relationship, I'll try to warn the person about him."

"I will say, though, that if someone had warned me about him before I got married, I wouldn't have listened. I was in love with this man and I wasn't ready to believe anything bad about him."

Did you never go to the police?

"No, I didn't. Looking back, I don't understand why I didn't go to the Women's Shelter. Maybe the shame was just too great."

What would you like to say to women who are in abusive relationships today?

"I encourage them to seek out a psychologist, a women's shelter, or someone else who is helping people in abusive relationships. My goal in coming forward is to tell women not to be ashamed, this social evil is found in all walks of life."

Nutshell

▪ Psychological abuse is like brainwashing, because it systematically erodes the victim's self-confidence, self-esteem, belief that their own perceptions are correct, and self-image. 

▪ Psychological abuse is not used to destroy the victim, but primarily to control them. The victim feels worthless and that no one wants to love or own them. 

▪ Many of those who perpetrate and are victims of emotional abuse do not realize how deeply the abuse has affected their lives and may not realize it until they are made aware of the consequences, most often when the person in question seeks help.

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