I am a smart sensible person in some areas but I was very naive in my 20’s. Another thing about my ex was how nice he was until we got married and moved to Maine. He said he was homesick and didn’t like Connecticut. It wasn’t long after the marriage and he moved me away from my family and friends that the abuse started. I didn’t see any signs of him being a psycho at all in the beginning. After I moved I started seeing him change. He flipped out during the pregnancy as another woman said. It had to always be about him. I had to work and pay the bills and chop wood etc. I knew I had to divorce him but I had no idea how bad it would be for my daughter and myself. Since we were both young he didn’t have a past or an ex. I think psychos are just very good at what they do.
It took me a long time to figure it out, but this is true.
He was sane. We worked together for years, were great friends, sex buddies, etc. Everything was cool… until I got pregnant. I totally didn’t see it coming and he made my life hell for it.
And, just because someone is smart and sensible normally doesn’t preclude them from being drawn into someone’s web. I was abused as a child, so I naturally gravitated to that type of person. My high school boyfriend abused me. He lead me to believe that was the way men treated women; that’s always how I was treated. They’re amazingly persuasive.
I mean, Ted Bundy was a real charmer, from what I hear…
Women are often raised believing a couple of myths.
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The Beauty and the Beast myth - love him enough and he will change. Yeah, he may have treated his last girlfriend like shit, but she just didn’t treat him well enough. (This sets you up for all sorts of failure - because its your fault he is a jackass.)
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The “he’ll grow out of it” myth - girl’s mature faster than boys and are ready for responsibility faster. I wouldn’t have married my first husband had I not been raised with stories about how my father and my uncle (both great husbands and fathers) had been irresponsible jackasses when they first married. I believed that maturity was right around the corner. My mother even claimed my brother in law would grow up when his kids were born because “men do” - my brother in law was 45 when his first son was born - he wasn’t doing any more growing up. And you know what - for a lot of my male friends it really was delayed maturity - a few come to mind who would have been horrible partners in their early 20s, but by their early 30s were great spouses and fathers. But in a lot of other cases, they don’t and you shouldn’t bet on it.
We must also remember that just because people are posting on this board, doesn’t mean they are normal or the sound, logical person in the said relationship. A board with this large a population will in fact have it’s share of psychos and we are only hearing one side of the story.
I know that the conversation has taken a turn, but I was just reminded of another funny (now, not at the time) crazy thing that the EX did.
My husband had orders to transfer overseas. He had custody of the kids already, and she had visitation rights. So we had to let her know we were moving and work out visitation (it was already long distance visitation due to us being several states apart) which we did. We provided a plan for visitation (extending summers, offering more time at holidays in lieu of the one weekend a month she had previously had) and a cost-share plan for visitations since it had all been on her previously but the overseas move would add thousands of dollars to the costs. We came up with the very fair method of splitting the costs 50/50 and suspending child support during the summer months (when she had 2 months of visitation).
In response to the above she filed a lawsuit against me (not against my husband, just me) for “custodial interference” and “parental alienation of affection” and tried to file kidnapping charges (that’s her go-to charge) stating that I was the one forcing the overseas move (it was the military’s doing actually) and that I was abducting the children from both her and my husband and as soon as we were overseas she was sure that I would take the children to a third country where I guess we would live out our lives hiding from the parents.
The lawsuit was immediately dismissed (she had no grounds and no cause to file against me as I was not a party to the divorce/custody case) and of course no criminal charges were ever filed. I only found out about it because the would-be arresting officer called me to see if I was where I should be and not where she said I was.
Now whenever my husband and I cannot immediately locate one of the children (like when they are out with their friends) we joke with each other that we are calling the police and suing each other for custodial interference.
I honestly don’t think gender has anything to do with it. Everything you have written would apply to me and my ex, you just have to reverse the genders. Some people are just immature and irresponsible jerks. And some people are willing to put up with their shit. Their genders don’t have anything to do with it.
In my case I could see that things weren’t working out in the first year of our marriage. But I wasn’t going to be the first person in my family to get a divorce. If only I would just find the magic things to say and do she would turn into that perfect spouse I thought I had married. For years I got into the habit of expecting things to change when we reached milestones. Everything would be better as soon as I was out of school… or when I was in my first professional job… or if we moved so we could be close to her family… or if we had a child… or bought a house… or paid off our debt. After a decade of this I finally woke up and realized the only way to change things was to change my situation. I was never going to be able to change her.
Denial is a WONDERFUL coping mechanism. It’s amazing how powerful it is when you set your mind to it.
My ex started out mostly normal and then it deteriorated badly, but by that point I was “stuck.” I know now that in my personal situation I should have left, but was so hard to. I was so embarrassed that he did this stuff to me. I had nowhere to go, no money to leave. And it wasn’t all bad all the time. There is a definite pattern (power and control wheel, it’s called) where you have an incident, then a cooling off period where everything is actually really good, then tension starts to build, then something happens. I did know him well enough when we married, but like I said: denial. There is spite going on and I do think my ex does have a diagnosable mental illness. It’s really hard to understand why you stay until it happens to you.
I’m sorry to hear from the posters who lost their children.
I still have mine, but he has sued for full custody, unsuccessfully so far. He has lied and cheated and stole his way to shared custody, which on the one hand is great because it could be worse, but on the other gives him frequent access to me. And the only way he can hurt me is through my child and he’s using this poor, innocent child as a weapon.
I am wracking my brain trying to think of a lighthearted ex story, either mine or someone else’s, and I can’t think of anything that is amusing.
This whole post seems somehow…subtly sexist.
But on to the OP, I have had only one “crazy” ex. I don’t particularly want to get into specifics because those wounds are still sore, however she did often go berserk and most often directed it at my daughter. She was a true narcissist and a stereotypical ruthless Career Woman. She was consumed by greed and unstable to the point that I insisted on being a SAHD just so my daughter wouldn’t suffer under her mother’s thumb. We were together for four years total. She was a beautiful woman and as often is the case with psychopaths, she was the best partner you could ask for during one of her upswings but a total monster the rest of the time. Charm is infinitely powerful. Fortunately during the worst years of my life I received the one thing that made it worth it: my daughter.
My daughter visits me at least three times a week (over an hour away)and hasn’t seen her mother more than a handful of times in 6 years despite living three streets away. That’s how crazy.
Sure, but men are raised with a different set of myths that set them up for the same sorts of issues. The “she needs me to take care of her” myth. The belief that women are ‘supposed to be’ hormonal and illogical. Same results, different myth structure as the underpinning that allows you to make excuses for your partner’s bad behavior.
So neither you or your ex have custody of your daughter? And she “visits” you? I’m not sure that I belive that you were a SAHD and lost custody of your child. It sounds like you gave up custody to your ex’s parents. That sounds a bit crazy to me.
Unless the daughter is now an adult.
Good call.
That’s how I saw it. But that’s just an educated guess.
This is a very destructive attitude to have. You never want to go into a relationship thinking you have nothing to offer to the table, because it lets the other person take everything you have and affords them unlimited control over you. I think to avoid being abused, you have to both value your own self AND be assertive enough not to tolerate your partner abusing you in any way, shape or form.
My daughter is now not only grown, she has kids of her own. Fuck I’m old.
Let’s see…we met through mutual friends in November 95 and became inseparable. He had brought up marriage, met my family, etc. around January 96. Found out I was pregant in April 96. Married in July 96. Son born in November 96. I left New Year’s Eve 97.
Absolutely. At the time, however, I was 20 years old and stupid. 15 years later and I’m not the same person I was then, happily married for almost 10 years to someone that values me and I know my worth. 
Based on the experiences in this thread, that won’t happen until six months after you are married. Better dump him now and avoid the grief.
Or when you get pregnant.