Skeeter, my teeth are chattering....brrrrrrrr
You found that online, eh? OMG I think that's chillingly like what I was just this evening telling my STBXSAWH (how's that for a new acronym?) About how his anger against his mother and his own childhood abuse is STILL TO THIS DAY laying deep inside his mind somewhere, coiled up like a serpent. How it lays low, has never slithered off and left him, even after he, I and a dedicated MC got it all out in the open for over a YEAR in intense 2 hour sessions every week. Plenty of time to make those neural connections, if he wanted to heal "us" as he tearfully claimed at the time. But how it comes right back out and hisses at me and strikes like a rattlesnake once I finally "Trust" him enough to get a tiny bit closer, to just START to trust him again, to come closer....Soon as that starts going on in MY MIND, there is always some event that Bombs me back into the Stone Age, as we used to say. Maybe it's my Guardian Angel saying "Don't GO there, NOT safe!" but this yo-yo of me discovering his secrets, has shown up too many times in this relationship. He's never once confessed anything I didn't already suspect. Never.
Then, it takes me forever to get past his deviousness and willingness to cheat, but he does have his good qualities, so I bargain and bargain with myself almost DAILY to try and see that good stuff. We go along in a grim Limbo for years on end...When I finally start to have a smidgen of faith that by some stroke of fate, we're finally putting his ugly behavior BEHIND us, that's when the same old crap he's been hiding gets exposed suddenly, with NO warning, and I'm back where I was.
Thing is with this man, he knows after he displays his "dominance" and "gotcha back, bitch" urges by acting out against Almighty HER, (Mummy) that he'd better dang well tuck in and hide that side of his personality until the Coast is clear and I start to be hopeful, happier, more healed, give him more of my energy...and in our case, this cycle takes YEARS...But then, he always has to STRIKE again.
The length of time between offenses that he can seem like a new man, also never really "fit" the usual SA description of compulsive acting out. But when life throws him enough stress and disappointment, out comes that Primal Rage again. Must all be MY fault, just like it was all Mummy's.
This is no different, is it, than a man who chooses to beat up on his wife to blow off steam, then cries tears of regret. They call that the Cycle of Abuse. And the victims always fall for the Honeymoon Phase, and accept his abject apologies, until their life is put in danger.
You should see his Mug shot. The Inner Monster really was on display, for all the world to see! Seeing his mug shot, I almost DIDN'T recognize who he was - because I never SAW that ugliness on his face in all the prior years - the real SPIRIT driving his behavior. The other 6 men arrested all had just embarrassed or guilty looks, as you would expect. Not him - he was PISSED!
Once, the night before D-Day 1, the last time we ever had sex (and it was a 10, after I'd been grilling him for a month on suspicious credit card bill item and getting LIED TO. Doing that old Hysterical Bonding, I guess), I woke up a couple hours later in "our" bed - the last night we ever spent in "our" bed together, 18 years ago, now, and honestly, turning over and looking at his back through the low moonlight, I actually felt in mortal danger...that I was in fact laying next to some kind of primeval Serpent/Alligator monster! It really made my skin crawl; Next month will be 18 years and I can still remember that night like it was last week. There was this silent but DEADLY THING, RIGHT THERE, and my gut suddenly screamed at me: DANGER! Whooo. Less than 24 hours later, my marriage was dynamited to smithereens.
So. Scary.
I also like what you say about breakthroughs being suspect if they're only "intellectual exercises." Smart people like to believe they can WILL things to change (I'm guilty of THAT one!) But as life is teaching me lately, it's really what we get our butts out of bed to DO every day we are given, that CHANGES THINGS! :)
Thanks, Captain S!
Ladies, you're all so amazing!
[This message edited by Superesse at 11:11 PM, September 4th (Friday)]