Why can’t I feel anger?

I have been through a lot these past few years and despite everything that has happened, I am unable to feel anger towards my abusive ex-husband.

The crack in our marriage began when my ex took my daughter, who was nine at the time, to China on a business trip. After promising me several times that he would hire a babysitter when he went out for the day to a Seafood show, he changed his mind and left her alone for six hours. Alone in a hotel room while he took the train over a half an hour away. My daughter is very petite with blond hair and blue eyes and english is our only language. She had left the hotel room to go to the lobby to buy food and also let in housekeeping before I found out that she was alone. He told her not to tell me that they weren’t together. Imagine your fear if you were 9000 kilometres away from your child and there was nothing you could do about her being alone, in a country you have never been in. I had to hold it together while my 6 year old son was awake and I fell apart while he was sleeping. To this day, I have never been as upset as that night in November 2015.

This was the final straw for me in my marriage. I went through the motions for over two years, with three different marriage counsellors. I kept hoping that someone could get through to him and make him realize that how he treated me and our children was not ok. He needed to change but he refused to change for the better. Instead he escalated his abusive behaviour. I kept putting up with it until the fateful day in February 2018, when he decided to sit the three of us down and say that he and I would no longer be together.

In a strange way, I felt relief. Finally, all of his threats to leave and all of his verbal and emotional abuse would be over. The children and I could move on and I could end this cycle that was started generations before myself. But, he didn’t move out. Instead, he slept on the couch and became more abusive than before. He would glare at me, interrupt my conversations with the children, help himself to the food I prepared for them and constantly berate me. I spent hours upon hours hanging out on the back deck, only coming inside to feed the children and to put them to bed. This didn’t always deter him, as there were a few occasions where he yelled at me and put me down in front of neighbours who would ask me if I was ok after he went back inside.

I kept swallowing my feelings in the hope that he would move out, so he decided to up the ante. He closed bank accounts, took my credit card out of my wallet, cancelled my cell phone, hid our money from me and called the police when I took some cash that was rightfully mine. I had to hide my car for months because he kept threatening to get rid of it and leave the children and myself without transportation. He didn’t renew the insurance for three weeks so the children and myself got creative to get around. All the while, I was told to shut up, eff off, called stupid, a liar, a horrible person, anything to get me upset in front of the children. He would make himself as big as possible in order to intimidate me. I hid upstairs in the bedroom once the children went to sleep until the next morning when it would begin again.

I kept denying my feelings which led me to overeating as I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t call what I was going through as abuse, until the Woman’s Legal Clinic lawyer I first consulted had his supervisor come in to talk to me about a safety plan. She frightened me so much that I packed a bag with some emergency clothing and toiletries. I even rented an apartment for a month in case the children and I had to flee on a moment’s notice. This ended up being my headquarters for accumulating as much paperwork as I could on our business and financial details.

I found a lawyer that was willing to take my case, knowing that she wouldn’t get paid for a while due to my lack of funds. We couldn’t get him out as he hadn’t touched me and I was told that we would have to wait until the legal channels could get me exclusive use of the home. I was doing everything in my power to hold it together and keep the children’s routine as normal as possible. I didn’t have the financial means to move out permanently as I was a stay at home mom for the last 12 years.

After six and a half months, he decided to take his behaviour up a notch that forced the children and myself to flee and for me to call the police. Fortunately, after being out of the house for two days, a judge thought his threatening behaviour was enough for me to get a protection order and for him to have to leave the house immediately.

I wish that was enough for him to stop but it wasn’t. He decided to represent himself despite having enough money to hire a lawyer. He feels that he is above the law so he does not follow court orders. He continues his verbal abuse by texting and emailing me tirades that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. Occasionally he mistakenly texts his abuse to my daughter and then immediately texts : sorry wrong person, as they were meant for me. He has cost me such an incredible amount in legal fees that I may have to sell my home and move far away as I won’t be able to afford rent in our city. He is paying more on his rent than our mortgage is.

While I was going through all of this, I managed to put myself through school so I could start working. I used all of my available credit, got a student loan and borrowed from my mother. I had my children with me the entire time, he doesn’t have a big interest in spending much time with them. The children were in counselling but he pulled permission. I am still waiting to get them back into seeing a therapist.

But still, I can’t feel anger. My therapist says that this is a survival strategy. That until our legal situation is settled I can’t afford to be angry because I need to look after my children. She also states that my dysfunctional childhood groomed me to be married to someone like him. That it would have been a miracle to not end up married to an abuser.

My fear is that I am so entrenched in self blame and guilt that I may never be angry, I will continue to take the last 19 years out on myself. I feel like I am not fully living as I feel numb most of the time and full of shame the rest. I only have this one life and I want to live it. Here’s hoping one day I can.