Kerplunk - It's Over!!, A.W., H.R. and Our Girlfriends [best biographies to read txt] 📗

If you have been fed those lines, then you have been verbally abused. If you have been “corrected” for everything you say and do, you have been verbally abused. If your partner refuses to communicate with you, or selectively establishes what may or may not be discussed, you have been verbally abused. If you have ever been told what you are thinking and feeling is not important, you have been verbally abused. Verbal abuse is often covert, hidden aggression and it hits the mark by throwing you off guard and leaves wondering, “What in the hell just happened?”
Often abuse is disguised as “just kidding” and it involves name-calling, judging, criticizing, blaming, accusing and threatening. Is this happening to you? Have you convinced yourself that you are just way too emotional and that is how old married folks act towards each other when the newness wears off the marital bliss? Sister, wake up and smell the Starbucks! Your marriage sucks and you need to address these issues PRONTO!
Do you feel like you’ve just had that pretty Pottery Barn jute rug pulled out from under you or maybe you feel like you were thrown in the Kitchen-Aid mixer?
Okay now…take a very deep breath and repeat after me…IT IS NOT ME! (Repeat 1,000 times and then repeat again). You are not provoking his actions. You are not making him treat you badly.
He is an adult. He has made this choice to treat you this way. You are an adult. You can now make a choice – put up with it OR stand up for yourself and make it stop! If you choose to put up with it, we are truly sorry for you. Life is so short and we all deserve to love and be loved and to respect and be respected. So you think you should stay for the sake of the kids? Well, they’ll probably end up in therapy or a pick a similar spouse and end up in a dysfunctional marriage just like yours! Relationship patterns, both good and bad, repeat themselves. History tends to repeats itself!
So you say you've tried everything possible to make the abuse stop. You have tried to make him happy and to simultaneously keep your sanity. Some things you’ve even tried twice, thrice, and then some, and it still seems as though D-Day is the only next step. We’ve been there. We’ve tried everything that our families, friends, relatives, counselors and therapist have suggested and the marriage still feels awful. Or maybe the decision was made for you – maybe he ran away. One girlfriend’s husband took a vacation to the Caribbean on her birthday…without her. Maybe he was taken out of the home in handcuffs. One girlfriend said her husband wrecked the house and then moved on to her face. Another girlfriend said her husband was so angry with her; he retaliated by punching their daughter in the face! Maybe he made the decision to just leave. The abuse may stop but the lingering emotional damage can be staggering. One husband picked smoking pot over living with his alleged "nagging" wife.
Ground yourself HERE! Ground yourself knowing that you have tried to keep the marriage intact. Make peace with yourself. There is no more …”What if…” “…Maybe he’ll change…” “I hope he…” “It’s just a phase…” “. Maybe this is just how marriages turn out”, “ this isn’t great but at least it isn’t as bad a Sally’s marriage…” “He’s just stressed”, “I’m just stressed”, “…happiness is overrated”, “...he said he’ll never do it again…” sigh…on and on… STOP IT! You will find these oh-so-often-heard quotables in hundreds of books. This is not good, not healthy and not normal. It won’t get you anywhere except drained, exhausted and disempowered! Patterns repeat themselves and history repeats itself. STOP IT RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!
Call it whatever you want…but it is still ABUSE!
Granted, your day-to-day life might not resemble an episode of “COPS” or a Lifetime® Channel movie but if it FEELS BAD and it KEEPS HAPPENING, it is abuse. “Well, he is not beating me up in a single-wide trailer so it must not be abuse.” “Is it abuse if you don’t see the bruises?” “Is it abuse if he tells me he's sorry and wants to have sex afterwards?” Girls! Wise up! Emotional verbal, psychological, physical…Yep – it all counts! Recognize it now and stop making excuses for him! We are back to the excuses. “He’s tired.” “I’m tired.” “He’s under stress.” “He’s working so hard.” “He is trying to provide for the family.” “He just fixed the leaky faucet.” “I probably am just not making him happy anymore.” You get the idea! He is an adult. He is a man. Well, real men do not act like this! Dr. Laura Schlessinger has the best quote to define a real man. “A real man will swim through shark infested waters to serve his woman lemonade!" Read any Dr. Laura book or listen to her daily radio show for more definitions of real (good) men and stop making excuses for your guys' (boy-husband's) bad behavior!
What do you do when those icky feelings you get when you go home are NOT going away? Maybe you have started taking all of the steps and you are doing everything that the therapist told you to do but something is not right. What is it - why are the gray clouds still parked in front of your sunny sky? Well, sweetie, breaking away from an abusive relationship is so damn hard! You are breaking a lifelong pattern and in some cases you are breaking a multi-generational pattern. Many women just can’t do it! But we know you CAN! It sucks, we know, but you can do it! We like to say, "If you're going through hell, keep on going! You might get out before the Devil even knows you're there." We know this is NOT the life you wanted. You have you found the man of your dreams, planned “till death do we part” and: poof: that dream is gone. We understand. It's not fair. It’s worse; it’s heart breaking. Only you know what you can and cannot live with, but listen to us right now…you deserve to live a happy, anxiety free life. We are going to help you get there.

Protect yourself with the Shield and Fight with the Sword
Come on girlfriend! It is time for the abuse to end and for you to take the next step. Enough is enough! Now you need to find a lawyer. The number one way we, and 91% of our girlfriends, chose an attorney was through a referral from a friend. Do your homework. It will save you money and time. The more you understand, the less the lawyer will have to explain and that will save time and for lawyers, time = money! Several of our girlfriends said that they used their divorce lawyer as a friend, as a therapist, counselor and criminal attorney. I’m sure your attorney cares and was sympathetic about the abuse and is glad that you see the light. Needless to say, our girlfriends spent too much $$$ money because they re-hashed all of the sordid details to their lawyer.

Before you meet with the attorney, rehearse what you want to discuss.
Go over it in your head or better yet write it down so you don’t waste time
(and money) being emotional and scattered during your meeting.


Welcome to Dysfunction Junction: An Alarming Marriage Pattern – Is This You?
Let’s look at a common marriage pattern that our girlfriends have been through – maybe it is you, too. It typically starts with a swift sense of elation! It is a “marriage made in heaven." “It is meant to be." "Everyone says he is so great; isn’t he just the best?” These women are usually very successful and they see their man as being “charming, bright and funny.” Then there are some hints that something is not right – he starts with a little verbal abuse and tries to exert a little extra control over her life. Then our girlfriends, confused by this, start to question this personality shift. He retaliates by swearing at her and calling her names. How dare she question him? He knows what's best for her. Then his rage begins to surface concerning insignificant incidents like forgetting to send his mother a birthday card. Or not laughing at his jokes when they were out with another couple. He exerts more force and more control. She begins to make excuses and finds ways to just keep the peace.

"My Ex exerted control over me by bending all my credit cards, tearing up any business cards with men’s names on them, and would read through all my text messages and caller-id’s daily. I wasn't allowed to password protect my company laptop because if it was, that obviously meant I was cheating and hiding evidence of an affair. His laptop and phone were both blocked and I had no access 'because it was company policy." – Lydia, 30

"I convinced myself that he loved me so much that he didn't want any other men in my life to tempt me. I thought it was sweet and caring. I didn't understand that it was control." – Cheri, 52

"I was puzzled by how quickly he changed after we were married. I thought, 'Oh well; he is challenging and has some problems, but I can fix it and make him better.’” – Parker, 38


"An abuser makes you hurt on the inside, in your soul,
not just on the bruised parts – that is how you know it is abuse."


Then the physical abuse starts. Some girlfriends were physically restrained and threatened. Some had their hair yanked and ripped out. Some had their throats choked. Some were smothered with pillows. Some were thrown into walls or down stairs. Some were punched. Some were pushed onto concrete floors. Some were grabbed and shaken violently, and heard their mate utter through clenched teeth, “I will kill you if you tell your family, my family, and friends or call the police”. Sometimes there were bruises, gashes and blood. Sometimes they needed stitches. Sometimes they just wore long sleeved blouses in July to cover the physical damage. They picked themselves up off the kitchen floor and continued to make the kids' lunches and sign the homework papers. He's just stressed.
Our girlfriends learned to quickly dismiss the bad episodes as soon as he said, “I’m so sorry, Babe. I mean it! It will never happen again. (He reaches out to smooth her hair that is hanging over her downcast eyes). You know I love you. You know I would never hurt you. I just...went crazy for a minute.” Ah. It's over. He's really sorry. And she smiles. Blissfully peaceful times enveloped their marriage and he is the perfect man again.
But what happened next caught our girlfriends off guard. The "episode" would happen again. And again. The entire destructive cycle and pattern of behavior would