My Best Friend's Story

This is my best friend's story. At the time of this relationship I was friends with her but not close friends. She emailed me this with permission to post. I love her, and she is one of my heroes and like a sister.

Lavender Skye

I met him in between my freshman and sophomore year of college. He seemed to be everything I could possibly want in a guy. He was sweet and kind and attentive. We started out just talking for the first month of our relationship, trying to get to know one another better. By the end of the first month I was head over heels for him, and we were having regular make-out sessions. At the end of that first month he asked me out on our first date. We were supposed to go hiking up to these falls. Instead the car died, and a friend came and got us. She let us borrow her car so that we could still go on a date. He took me to Wal-Mart first, I know, very romantic. There he bought me a half a dozen orange roses because he saw me looking at them. Then we went to the movies, where we didn't really watch the movie, but made out the whole time. That was the first time he guilted me into doing something that I didn't want to do. He made me feel that I had to give him a blow job in order to prove that I had strong feelings for him. I felt that I had to, after all I loved him, and I didn't want to lose him.

School started back less than a month after our first date. He helped me move back into the dorms. My friend, Michael, came to help after moving himself in. After a very short time Michael informed me that I obviously didn't need his help and that he didn't feel welcome there. As soon as Michael left Mark told me that he didn't really like him, and that he got a bad feeling from him and he was glad that he left so that it could be just the two of us again. Mark also said that he didn't think that Michael was the sort of friend that I should have and maybe I could find friends that he actually liked. After Mark left, Michael informed me that he didn't like Mark, and that I could do better, but I just figured that it was jealousy on both of their parts because Michael was my friend first, and because Mark was my boyfriend and would take time away from Michael.

We talked every night, either on the phone or on messenger. If we didn't talk he would get upset and say that I must not really love him and want to be with him. I spent less and less time with my friends and more and more time locked up in my dorm room. I wasn't sleeping at night, and so I started not going to my classes so that I could get sleep. My grades started to suffer.

By my birthday in October he was my everything. My world revolved around him and our time together. On my birthday we finally made it for our hike to the falls, where he proposed to me. He explained that he couldn't afford a real engagement ring yet, and so we would have to use his class ring. I didn't care; I was just so thrilled to be able to say that I was going to be completely his for all time. That night we had sex because, as he put it, it didn't matter if I was saving myself for marriage, after all I was going to be marrying him, and in his heart we were already married, and didn't I feel the same way? Didn't I love him enough to trust that God knew our hearts and the vows that we made to each other? And who was more important, God or the government? So I caved on one of the issues that I had held most dear, and did with him what I had never done with another before.

By this time I was rarely going to church because it was one of the few days he had off, and wasn't he more important than going to some building to worship when I could just as easily worship on my own? After we got engaged I did not step foot in my church until after my son was born. I was so riddled with guilt and ashamed of myself for giving up what I believed was right, but once I had started having sex with him I found that I couldn't stop, even when I wanted to.

After we became engaged he became very critical of everything I did or said. He said that he was trying to help me become a better person by pointing out what needed to be worked on. He told me that the reason that I was doing poorly in school had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn't sleeping or couldn't concentrate or was unable to attend classes. The real reason that I was doing poorly was because I was stupid and couldn't understand the courses or the readings. He promised me he would never lie to me, so of course he must be right. I must not have understood anything to this point. I must actually be stupid, after all it made sense. Why else would I be failing every single class, including choir? And as for my friends, they were encouraging me to think more highly of myself than was possible. They didn't really know me, only he really knew me. We tried to hang out with my friends a few times, but it was always awkward, and afterward he would tell me which friends I should try to look like, and did I think they might be willing to do a three-way because they were much more sexy than me, and wouldn't I like that? There were two friends in particular that he had a thing for, Diane, who was one of my best friends up to that point, and Amber. He wanted me to look and act like Diane because in his mind she was the sexiest person ever, and he wanted me to dress like Amber, especially her shoes.

He also wanted to see how many places we could have sex on campus without being caught. I wasn't comfortable with this but didn't really see a way out of it. His favorite place to go was the music office. I later found out that the reason for this was because whenever I would go to the bathroom he would steal the money out of the money box. I didn't find out about it until months later and still feel guilty about it.

By the end of that semester I had completely failed out of college. I had struggled the previous year due to some choices that I had made but had brought my grades up my second semester, but there was no coming back after the last semester. By then I knew that what he was saying about me being stupid must be true; after all how do you possibly fail out of every single class, even choir?

I had tried to quit having sex with him several times at this point, but every time I would try he would just make me saying that he knew that I liked it, and why was I fighting it and him. Usually after a short time in my body would betray me, and he was right, I did like it. I felt more and more ashamed and less and less like being around the people who knew me before Mark came into my life. I had no friends, at least that is how it felt. I still had my family, kind of. I lived at home still, but on his days he stayed with me and we never left my bedroom. On the days he worked I was stuck at my house by myself, and at night I was expected to be home so that we could talk on the phone.

After failing out of college I got a job waitressing at night. On the nights that he didn't have to work the next day he would spend the whole night at my job, glaring at anyone who seemed too friendly, but he could be friendly and flirt with whoever he wanted to. Then he would take me back to my house and we would be locked away in my room unless he wanted to go to the movies or hiking or whatever he wanted to do. I was never out of his sight on the days that he had off. I just thought that that was proof of how much he loved me, after all he never wanted us to be parted. We coordinated our days off so that they could be spent together. On the nights that I had to work and he had to work the next day he would still expect me to be able to talk to him the majority of the night, or he would stop by my work if I didn't answer him like he thought he should to make sure I was there and that nothing funny was going on.

By mid-March I no longer had a job, and even though he said he was unhappy about it at first, he said that that just meant that we had more time to be together. It also meant that I no longer had any money of my own and was completely dependent on him for anything I might possibly want or need. If he decided that I didn't really need something I didn't get it. By this time I wasn't allowed to make any choices on my own, even when he would ask my opinion on something as simple as a movie he would tell me whatever I chose was the wrong choice and that I really wanted to watch something else. It got so that I didn't have the confidence to even attempt to make my own decisions. I was terrified of getting it wrong. I was terrified of life, and I was terrified of losing him, because without him, how was I supposed to know what was right or what to do?

Towards the end of May I got another job, this time as a cook at a pizza place. Within two weeks of starting there I was really sick. I couldn't hold any food down, and the smell of the pizza sauce would send me running to the nearest garbage can. I found out two days before Mark's 21^st birthday that I was pregnant. He was furious. The first words out of his mouth were “is it mine?” After me breaking down crying, he apologized and said that he knew it was his and that anyone getting a shock like that would ask the same question, after all I was on birth control. Then he started looking up statistics on how likely it was that it was a false positive.

After I found out I was pregnant I informed my employer, who decided I must have known before he hired me, and that I tricked him into hiring me by not telling him. He cut back my hours until I was only working eight hours a week and I put in my two weeks notice. So I was back to being completely dependent on Mark, except this time I was pregnant.

Mark informed me shortly after I found out that I was pregnant that he had never wanted children and that he had lied to me about us having any. The money that he told me he was saving up for my engagement ring was really to go over the border into Virginia and get a vasectomy because they didn't have all the rules over there about who can and cannot get one. He was then going to let me keep trying to get pregnant after we were married and let me think that there just must be something wrong and that we couldn't have children. He begged me on a daily basis to have an abortion. Once, after us fighting about it, he tried to jump out of the car that I was driving in order to kill himself because he said he'd rather be dead than have a child. My 17yr old brother was in the car and was able to restrain him, but he kept trying anyway. Once it was too late for an abortion he told me that I should give the baby up to his sister, that way I could still be in his life as an aunt, and it wouldn't ruin our relationship. I told him that I didn't want to be an aunt to our son-- that he was my baby and I already loved him. He attempted suicide again, but after that time promised he'd never try that again. He told me that after the baby was born, though, that he would take him up to the mountains sometime and then drive them both off a cliff in hopes that it would end both of their lives.

Once he realized that I was not going to get rid of our child no matter what things got worse. We would get into these horrible fights where he would tell me that I was making a huge mistake, and that I couldn't even take care of myself, how was I going to take care of a baby? He also said that I was so stupid that I would probably end up killing the baby anyway since I wouldn't know what to do.

When I was five months pregnant we flew to Orlando, FL. He prayed the whole time that we would crash so that the baby would die. While we were there he tried to get me to drink, in hopes that I would so that there might be something wrong with the baby and I'd give him away. He told everyone there that I was delusional and wasn't really pregnant and that if they saw me taking any pills they should stop me because I was on drugs. In that way I couldn't take my prenatal vitamins because no one believed that they were really prenatals.

I had such severe morning sickness until I was almost seven months pregnant that I couldn't even move without throwing up. It got so that I didn't go anywhere or do anything unless Mark made me. He was also mad about that. He believed that I was purposely getting sick to get out of doing whatever it was that he wanted to do. I lost thirty pounds, so obviously I must have been making myself sick. We had one fight where he grabbed my arm, shook me, and then when I started crying and telling him that he was hurting me he pushed me down. My brother witnessed the whole entire thing and said that he didn't want to get in the middle of it and didn't know what to do. He did yell at him though that he shouldn't treat me that way.

By this time Mark was staying out to all hours of the night and had started drinking, which he said that he would never do. We were looking for a place of our own so that we would have enough room for when the baby came. Whenever I would ask him where he had been he would either say that he had been out with the guys from work or that he was checking out apartments for us. I never really questioned him further because the fact that it didn't add up to me just proved how truly stupid I was; after all, he promised to never lie to me, and I trusted him, right? It didn't matter that my old roommate from college was dating one of his co-workers and that he said that they weren't all going out, after all, who was I going to believe, some guy, or my beloved fiance?

At six months pregnant I went to Jacksonville, FL for my uncle's surprise fortieth birthday party. Mark was mad that I was going. I told him that he was more than welcome to come too, after all he'd been invited to go. He refused to go saying that he was my family and why did I need to go, after all it was only my uncle. He wouldn't talk to me the whole time I was down there. When I got back from Florida he said that we needed to talk. By this time I was six and a half months pregnant. When he got to my house there was no one else there. My brother was at school, my sister was at work, and my mom was at the hospital with a friend who was in labor; she was her birthing coach. By this time we had been engaged a little over a year. He told me that he thought I should sit down, so I did. He then proceeded to tell me that I had chosen our child over him, and that he couldn't take it anymore. That I wasn't the same person he had started going out with because I was always too sick to do anything fun. That he didn't want to be a dad, and as long as I didn't tell anyone in his family that I was pregnant that he'd support us, but that if I told anyone he would make my life hell. He told me that pregnancy was of the devil, and that is why certain body parts changed color while pregnant, and so I must be a satanist, which he had told me before, but this time he was screaming it at me. He told me that there should be an exorcism performed on me because I was possessed, and that the baby was really a demon in disguise. He once again told me how much he did not want children and gave me one more chance to agree to give him up, but this was one issue that I wouldn't budge on. He then said that we were over and to never come near him again.

Three weeks later I went to his parent's house to give them their invitation to the baby shower. He had just told his parents the week before that we had broken up, and that I was a stalker, so they needed to be careful if I came around, and might even want to call the police because I was dangerous. He had never told them I was pregnant, and they didn't believe me until I showed them the ultrasound picture. His mom started crying and said that she didn't really believe him that I was dangerous, but he was so insistent. His dad offered to make him marry me. I told them that it was going to be okay and that I just wanted them to know that they were going to be grandparents, and to please let the rest of the family know, especially his sister. His mom, sister, and aunt all came to the baby shower, even though his sister lived more than five hours away.

When my son, Nicholas, was first born he tried to get back together. He asked me out on a date when my son was three days old. When I asked what I was to do about Nicholas he went into a jealous rage, grabbed my arm, and demanded to know who Nicholas was and how long I'd been seeing him. I started crying and reminded him that Nicholas was our son and told him there was no way I would go out with him, especially if he couldn't even remember that we had a child. He apologized and begged me to reconsider, but I had had enough.

Once we were broken up I thought it would finally stop, but it didn't. He tried to control me through my son once he was born. Anytime he would want something he would threaten me with taking me to court and getting custody. He actually tried to when my son was six months old but only got limited supervised visitation. He was getting him eight hours a week due to the fact that I was breastfeeding and the fact that he threatened to drive the both of them over a cliff. Once I was no longer breastfeeding and he had proven that he could be trusted with my son he started getting him more frequently, but then the abuse shifted.

Instead of saying things directly to me, he started using my son. My son had horrible night terrors where people were taking him away from me because his daddy told him that he was going to take him away and never let him see me again. Mark also would call me names in front of him, and Nicholas would come home bawling his eyes out telling me that I was a stupid bitch or that I was nothing but a whore. At the time of these my son was about 3yrs old. My son is now eight, and Mark still somewhat has a hold over me. I still generally give into what he wants because I'm terrified of him taking me to court and getting custody or even joint custody. He has money for a lawyer, and I most definitely do not. He has a “stable” two parent household; I'm a single mother. His wife and he have excellent jobs that they make a lot of money at; I'm a full time student. I know that these don't really make a big difference, but in my mind I'm still inferior. I still struggle with believing that I'm good enough and that the choices I make aren't constantly wrong. I still hear his voice in my head shouting “WRONG! God you're so stupid! How have you managed to live so long?!”

I'm stronger than I was, and I'm getting better every day, but I've still got a long way to go. For those who don't think that emotional abuse is abuse I'm here to tell you differently. It is just as damaging, if not more so. The effects are long reaching. I'm only just starting to not be terrified of life. Part of why I've come so far is because of my faith and my church family who love me and have encouraged me to be better than I've thought I am. Another part is having someone tell me on a nightly basis how truly wonderful I am and that I am worthy of love, and one of the smartest people they know. And the last, but not the least important, is my son. I want to be better for him. He doesn't see me like Mark saw me so I know I must not really be like that because he always sees the true person. I've recovered some of my friendships from college. However, most of them will never be the same as they were before, and I mourn the deaths of some of those friendships. I'm not the same girl I was. I don't hug men or generally allow men to hug me, even the guy I'm in a relationship with. I shy away from physical contact of any kind with males, whereas before I wouldn't hesitate to give any of my guy friends shoulder massages or touch their arm while talking. I'm also a lot more reserved and have a hard time trusting others. I hope my story can possibly help someone else out there going through something similar to this.

Emotional abuse is real. When you are in an emotionally abusive relationship it is hard to see that that is what is going on. It is only when you get out that you realize what has been happening. By then the damage has been done. If you have ever been in an abusive relationship you know what I'm writing to be true. Also you can't recover on your own. Seek out friends, talk to your family. Church can be a wonderful place to find supportive people who will love you regardless of what has happened and don't be ashamed to admit that you need help and to seek it out.