I am abusive

The day after I was removed from the house so my 8 year old could come home I was told he expressed additional concerns - specifically mentioning me.  I've yet to see or be read those concerns so I can't share them exactly.  But, it amounts to he is not always comfortable around me.  He is sometimes or maybe often scared of me.

Over the years, my wife has been telling me I am abusive.  I don't hit her.  I have never laid my hands on her.  Not once.  So, I never understood why she would call me abusive.

Being kicked out of the house and the learning my 8 year old was scared or afraid of me was obviously a wake up call for me.  It's been over two weeks now.  I have done a lot of soul searching. I have realized I have a lot of weaknesses I refused to realize before.  I have been reading a lot of self-help books.  Among the things I need to learn are basic communication skills, anger management skills, stress coping skills, how to recognize and communicate my emotions, how to validate the emotions of others, etc.  But it wasn't until yesterday that I had the big breakthrough.

My wife had texted me wanting my address to serve me papers.  From what I could tell from online research, I was convinced the only thing I would be served is one of the differing types of a protective order.  I struggled with this because I haven't hurt anyone.  I am not an abuser.  Then I remembered all the times my wife told me, in anger or frustration over the years, to stop being abusive.

When one of her friends reached out to me I asked her about this.  She said of course she knew I had never laid a finger on my wife.  She said I was too controlling.  I didn't give her enough financial leeway.  I am too emotionally tied to her.  That is a sign of an emotionally abusive husband she said.

I didn't understand, but I have noticed in these two weeks I have been completely unable to leave my wife alone.  Even though I know she is angry and hurt, she is all I can think of.  My every thought is of her.  I just want to make everything better right now.  I don't try to control her on purpose.  When she talks to me about something, I assume she is looking for solutions.  So I try to solve her problems - instead of listening, letting her know I understand, that I know she is of worth, that I have felt what she is feeling, asking what she has tried already, asking what she can think of trying, and giving her motivation to go forward.  My desire to help becomes controlling behavior.

Anyway, in a desire to learn, I bought a book for the Kindle app called "Violent No More: Helping Men End Domestic Abuse".  I ate it up last night and this morning.  I was appalled at the stories of abuse I read.  There were some amazing success stories of forgiveness and recovery.  But, I learned about emotional abuse.  I learned about what causes people to be abusive.  I learned about what happens to people who have been abused.  I learned about the process to recovery.

Now I know I need to find a book that focuses on emotional abuse instead of violent or physical abuse. Also, I know my physical offenses have been with my children.  I don't know if what I have done would be called physical abuse, but certainly all the yelling is emotional abuse.

It is hard to know that I have been abusive.  I have spent a lot of time crying.  I have spent of time on my knees praying.  I even spent an hour on the phone with my mother-in-law in the middle of the night last night apologizing.  I cannot take back what I have done.  All I can do is learn the skills I need to not repeat these offenses and hope that my family will forgive me, give me the chance to be part of the family again someday, and that my children will not repeat these offenses.

Since my goals are to 1. learn to effectively manage and deal with stress and anger, 2. set a an example to my children that their mother is a queen who should be treated with love and respect, 3. regain the trust of my family, and 4. get the family back together, I am now reading some books on these topics while I wait for an anger management group to start and go to counseling.  So, my next post(s) will be about anger management.

Forced out of the house

Nearly three weeks ago our sweet little 8 year old son had a melt down at school.  Soon he found himself surrounded by teachers and administrators who cared and were trying to help him calm down. He threatened to do himself bodily harm.  My poor wife was called to the scene.  She called me before going to the school.  My 11 year old son had made suicidal comments and was institutionalized for 3 days earlier this year.

Being ignorant, I suggested she just take my son home and see if he calmed down first.  Talk to him, see what was wrong.  Thankfully, my wife's instincts told her that wasn't enough.  She called a friend with a degree in the mental health field who let her know if she didn't take him for an evaluation the school would have to report us to child protective services.  

While I felt helpless stuck at work over 60 miles away, imagine the emotion my wife must have felt as she spent the day with my 8 year old.  She took him to the local hospital where, after hours of waiting, he had not "calmed down".  He told the mental health professional that he sometimes felt this way - it wasn't just today.  He ended up being admitted to the same facility my 11 year old had been at earlier in the year.  He and my wife had to be transported there in an ambulance - over 60 miles - late at night.  My son's in home counselor went with them.  She helped with the check-in process and gave my wife a ride home.

I think my wife was beginning to sense that we had a problem at that point, but either she wasn't saying anything to me or I wasn't listening.  She and I went to see my son the next day.  We met with his doctor.  He indicated that we should probably be able to come and pick my son up the next day.  

But that isn't what happened.  The next day when my wife called they said they had changed their mind and were going recommending my son be put into foster care.  When she pushed for an explanation, they said he had high anxiety levels due to the stress of social or the family relationship at home - specifically the interactions between my wife and I.

Not wanting to have her son in foster care, she asked if one of us was not in the home if he could return and they said that would be ok.  She then quickly organized an intervention to remove me from the home.  I returned home from work that night knowing nothing of what was going on, went to visit with my church leader because I thought my wife needed to see him, and then found myself being led to a hotel with a backpack - on the 1 year anniversary of my father's death. 

It was a hard pill to swallow.  It was a dark night.  I was battered about in a sea of emotions like a small fishing boat in the perfect storm.  For a brief moment I imagined myself with a noose around my neck and laying in my father's coffin.