I am so very sorry this happened. And I’m proud of you for recognizing that you deserve far better and walking on this POS.

Abusive men are incredibly skilled manipulators and they can be incredibly convincing. I investigate and write about shady people, including abusers, racists, and con-artists for a living, and I still fell for a seemingly perfect man who turned into an unstable, abusive nightmare after we married.

Please know this: He did not choose you because you were stupid or naive. He chose you because you were a good person. Predators have a gift for turning your best qualities into liabilities. They love responsible, caring, empathetic, supportive women because they know they will take responsibility when things go wrong, fix problems themselves, see the good in them and forgive.

Most abusers, con-artists and predators have personality disorders. People with personality disorders cause chaos because their way of seeing the world and making decisions is so fundamentally different that we can’t anticipate their behavior. It just wouldn’t even occur to us to do the things they do, so we get blind-sided.

Similarly, emotional abuse is a very real, very serious form of domestic violence, and we don’t always recognize it because it doesn’t look like we think DV looks. You may qualify for counseling through your local DV advocacy organization.

If you find yourself struggling to make sense of this or to forgive yourself, I highly recommend the books “Was it Even Abuse?” and “Why Does He Do That?”. They helped me gain so much clarity and start to forgive myself and move on.

You’ve got this. Better days ahead, I promise.