The true, brutal and naked story of how our marriage ended… silently, insidiously… and ever so painfully.
What happened I guess, was simply the culmination of a series of lies Ted had crafted to leave me with nothing, because he knew he could. Because he thought winning in divorce was a thing, because he thought he deserved it all anyway and because, as he’d bragged to me that spring, he thought he could do and undo anything!
I struggle now to make sense of our marriage, because I had thought we’d laughed together, talked together, worked together and had great, erotic sex — just together.
But I also knew right away, that for Ted nothing was ever enough. Ted always wanted more. And I remember thinking, that to make him happy, to be a good wife, I had to get it all for him.
Ted was a gem if he got what he wanted, so cool and generous and easy going… and such a dick when he didn’t.
So he rarely had to try to convince me, of anything.
If ever I wasn’t all in though, he’d prod and coerce and compare our lives laughingly until I’d submit to his desires. And then, if that failed, he could graduate to using anger, threats and worst of all, he’d employ an array of rejection and silence techniques to hit his choices home harder.
He minimized this bad behavior, justifying his silently looming outbursts as only occasional, so I never really thought of my constant acceptance as signs of his abuse. I even thought I should feel lucky — to have him.
When he was happy, it all seemed so worth it, somehow. He had the money and the power, and my job was just to get his show right. But then little by little, my job became more about not getting him mad.
Ted’s insistence for group sex progressively alienated our normal, vertical friends whom we no longer had the occasion to see. Orgies were what he wanted, so that’s what we did, with drugs as his carrot to get me to fuck one more time, on his never-ending carousel of self-scripted sexual scenarios, frightened to say yes, but too terrified to say no.
I didn’t know at that time, what domestic violence even meant. I just knew that I didn’t want group sex to resume my whole life and thought, erroneously, that our love for one another was stronger than Ted’s fetiches. This realization would cut right to the heart of his domination thing though, because Ted was used to choosing the game and making the rules, after all.
He’d told me from the beginning, that he had abandonment issues. I thought that meant he feared people leaving him, but I suppose he was really just afraid of abandoning his own command post. So to reign me in, in a quest to find out how I could possibly ever disobey him or question him, he began to spy.
He scoured my phone and our credit card bills, read my emails and texts, rummaged through my electronic agenda and my search history, raked around my social media, my anything. Then he installed the nanny-cams. The more time he spent hunting me down, the more things he thought he knew — always out of context, always only fragments, always unfair to interpret or judge.
In the beginning, I’d see him late at night or in the early mornings, next to me in bed with my phone. He suggested I change my codes a couple times, so he wouldn’t be inclined to look, but I didn’t, because I didn’t care. I had nothing to hide. He was welcome to my data.
Little by little though, as his behavior became more erratic, I’d change them, then always end up telling everyone, because someone always needed to use one of my devices for something. That’s what normal people do. I’d always thought the codes were for thieves, not family members, anyway.
The more he shook me down, the more he was able to pin together his own personal interpretation of abandon and the more justified he felt in his crusade.
Obliged to squirrel away his trove of information however, in order to continue without suspicion, the more paranoid and schizophrenic he began to act.
The crazier Ted became that year, the more hurt and confused and dizzy I became too. I had no idea at all what he was up to, but the more fearful I became of his moods and his silences, the more I talked to my friends and family about our incomprehension and the further I pulled away.
Abandon, Ted’s own self fulfilling prophesy, had whipped his righteousness up to a peak, justifying his virtual rape of me, my family, my children, my home, my things, my heart, my soul and my mind… The more piously and zealously he raped me, the more furious he just became.
I wonder if Ted really thinks that the end — my confusion, the upheaval and abandon of our marriage — justified his spying or if he now realizes that his spying and his control created our sordid end?
In Ted’s head, spying had started out as a good idea, a possible solution, a perfect opportunity. It soon appeared an evidence. It became almost a pleasure for him, spiraled into habit, rapidly turning into an addiction… and then into his own trap. Once he’d started, he could not stop. The spy in him had become all powerful. He really thought he could do and undo everything.
He was, in his own tiny insatiable brain, as he operated obscurely, both invisible and invincible. And I’d felt nothing… until it was too late.
I remember the day Ted disappeared with my computer, my credit card and my car keys. It was so outlandish and I was so disheveled, that when he told me there was no theft between spouses, when he reappeared with my things, I couldn’t have begun to even imagine his Machiavellian objectives.
Then came his blur of crazy letters, accusing me of bankrupting our family, even though I had just facilitated the sale of our house and found a property to renovate for half that price. It was insanity. Then he’d coerced me into giving notice on our rental apartment, so that he could legally move everything out behind my back. Emptying anything of value out of our principal residence, sorting through it all with a fine toothed comb, as a surprise for me when I would walk in alone on August 1st. He stopped the renovation works and changed the locks to each of our properties and declared in front of bailiff that he, alone, was the rightful owner of every — single — thing — in all — of our homes.
It was only then, that I’d got my first whiff, but Ted had been raping, gaslighting me and penetrating my inner sphere without my knowledge, his plan already fully en route, for at least a year by then.
In lieu of just telling me he didn’t love me anymore, that wanted a divorce if I could no longer provide him with group sex, Ted thought it more savvy to rip my life out from under me and from behind, then insinuate, as a divorce attorney, that it was all my fault.
People don’t do that! But that’s the kind of man Ted is and the kind of husband he was all along, I guess.
Virtual spying is insidious, silent and painless… And then you begin to realize, as a victim… but only very, very slowly… because spying on someone like that, is something you have never imagined doing yourself.
I began to remember with disgust and despair all the things I had said to others and the things he had blatantly and fearlessly repeated. I began to realize how unconscious I had been in accepting his unacceptable behavior all along. I began to make sense of his mood swings and his anger. I began to realize what he was capable of doing and just what I had been hiding from, skirting, silently acquiescing to… all those years.
I began to understand the mechanisms of domestic violence, how bullies use them and how psychopaths abuse them.
That day I felt his full penetration into my whole being. That day I began to feel fearful, sullied and unsafe with the realization that my own husband had been penetrating my very soul for so very long already sneakily, perversely and unfairly.
There were no invasive tactics to erase from my devices, because I’d given him and his geeky sons all my codes, time and time again unsuspectingly. He already had all the keys, so it was hard to believe that Ted could have been so callus in violating all of my spaces and my information for so little. It’s difficult to conceive of a husband conniving to steal homes and stuff instead of sharing. It is hard to admit that I was so naive or so unconscious… but then, nobody can fathom a father-son-trio-gang-bang. How could they?
So yes, domestic violence exists even in nice, white collar, middle class homes… where things are never as rosy as they seem.
Yes, virtual rape is a thing. Yes Ted is a rapist.
And no, he cannot undo any of that, because now everyone will know who he really is.
