[CLOSED FOR SUBMISSIONS] Stronger than You 2017

Part 24: That's Not Abuse

Written By: Anonymous

Lord, if you help me to survive this, I promise that I will do whatever you ask of me. I prayed in my head while my husband sat over me with his hands wrapped tightly around my neck. After hiding my cell phone and taking the house phone from me and throwing it against the wall, he pushed our bedroom T.V. on my back. As I laid on the floor, he sat on top of me and began to choke me. He told me all of the things that he hated about me. He told me that he "wished he had never married me." Of everything I had gone through with him, this, him attacking me all over our apartment, was what I finally considered abuse.

We had only been married for a year. It had been the most miserable year of my life. I was only nineteen, he was twenty. I had convinced myself that "this was how marriage worked" and "what I had signed up for." In my eyes, none of the things he did to me was real abuse so I had to suck it up. After all, our vows did say, "until death do us part."

One night, after returning to our apartment after leaving the gym. He threw me up against the wall the moment I walked through the door. While squeezing my face firmly in his hands, he told me that I was dressed "like a ho." He then told me that I wasn't allowed to go to the gym anymore because I had embarrassed him in front of his friends. I told myself. "That's not abuse." To me, my husband was trying to look out for me.

When he forgot my birthday, my friends took me out to celebrate. I had the time of my life! The moment I got home later that night, he was so angry he began to physically fight me. He pushed me, he shoved me, he tried to punch me, but missed and hit my closet door. Once again, he accused me of being dressed like a "slut." He also accused me of, "sleeping with somebody else" because I had been out so late. He pulled my ring off of my finger and threw it across our apartment, then he stomped on my left hand and told me that I didn't deserve to be married.

He told me that I wasn't allowed to hang out with my friends anymore. I still told myself. "That's not abuse." I had hurt him by going out and he was just expressing his disappointment.

While running errands with a friend once, we ran into him on an actual date with another woman. She was prettier than me and had no idea who I was. We had fights about other women before, but this was the first time I had ever been face-to-face with him and anybody else. To actually see the betrayal with my own eyes crushed me to my core. I went home with all intentions of leaving the marriage for good. He surprisingly rushed home to stop me. He even dropped to his knees and begged me to stay. He convinced me that the reason he was on a date with somebody else, was because I wasn't taking care of him as a wife. I wasn't as pretty as I was when we first got married and I also wasn't giving him enough sex. I convinced myself even then. "That's not abuse." If I had been a better wife, he wouldn't have to cheat one me.

In another incident, while his friends were hanging out at our apartment, he got mad at me for speaking to one of them. The friend came inside of the kitchen to ask me if he could have some of the chicken I was cooking. I told him yes and a few minutes later, I was being literally dragged to our master bedroom by my husband. asked me a question. The moment he slammed the door shut, he ran up on me and began to repeatedly hit my head against the wall. He told me that I needed to stop acting like a "ho" and start acting like a wife or he would leave me. He told me that I was an embarrassment to him and then he ordered me to stay in the room for the rest of the night, until his friend's left. I was starving because I didn't even get a chance to eat the dinner that I had cooked. Once they left, he came back into the room. He took off all of my clothes and had sex with me.

The entire time I cried because I thought about all of the awful things that he had said to me earlier. I felt stuck in a nightmare and hated my life. "That's not abuse." I told myself again. I was thankful that my husband was home and having sex with me! I had friends whose husbands didn't come home at all some nights.