You're too sensitive!, You're misunderstanding the situatioin!, You're reading too much into it!

You're too sensitive!
You're misunderstanding the situation!
You're reading too much into it!

I lived by these words for so many years....

Confusion is one of the tactics abusers use. The more confused you are the more they are in control. Many times I felt as though I was living in the twilight zone!!

I can't tell you how many times every word I said was twisted, or every opinion I had was wrong. Well, that's not true because every time I spoke I was wrong. This is such a silly story, truly, yet it was another turning point in my realization that I needed to get out of my marriage...

We had a half bath in our last house and my ex-husband insisted on keeping a bar of soap to wash his hands with in there. The surface of the counter was tile, so as you can imagine, if you set a wet bar of soap on the counter it would be ONE HOT MESS TO CLEAN UP! I had politely asked for months if we could use something else in there since this was the guest bathroom and the counters were looking pretty rough. His reply was for me to clean them more. So, one day was watching an episode of Dr. Oz and on this particular episode Dr. Oz said that the best way to clean your hands was with foaming hand soap. I explained this to my ex-husband and he finally gave me the ok (which is ridiculous that I had to get the ok!!!) to buy a bottle of the foaming hand soap to put on the counter. End of story right??? WRONG!!!

Fast forward a week or so later; I was at a craft store called JoAnn's. I was right in the middle of the store two isles back from the front door when my phone rang...

My ex says "I am so glad you finally got the foaming hand soap for the bathroom. I don't know why you have been using the bar soap, foaming hand soap cleans your hands much better. Everyone knows that!" I was literally standing in the isle thinking to myself "He is crazy! I just told him that a week ago, yet he has to pretend like it was his idea! WOW!" So I say to him "I just told you this last week" and his reply - "No you didn't you are misunderstanding the situation".

There were fall decorations on the shelf that day. I can see it as if I were standing there now. The topic was of no concern what so ever. The problem is - It was my idea, not his! Nothing I ever said was right. Nothing I ever did was right. Every single day he made it his to goal to prove how I was a complete failure at every single decision, every single thought, and every single action.

I heard these phrases every single day for years and years...

• You are too sensitive.
• You are misunderstanding the situation.
• You are reading too much into it.

There are thousands of other stories just like this that happened every single day. Some of them have no meaning at all, except that he needed to be in control of absolutely everything. Other times what happened was just devastating. As you can imagine, if something this trivial was made into an issue, how much worse would a real issue be?!

Confusion was the game and he won for 24 years.
He isn't winning anymore!!

Please "Like" me on my Facebook page @ Life Full of Secrets

or email me @ lifefullofsecrets2013@gmail.com