#1 Ten things I wish I had done differently before I married in blind faith.

Ten things I wish I had done differently rather than get married in blind faith.

I am 18 months along the journey of my new life. I have never been happier.

To get straight to the point; I am out of my marriage to a Narcissist / psychopath. When I was in the marriage, I didn't know the terms psychopath, sociopath or narcissist. I discovered and came to understand those terms a couple of months ago. I have now fathomed out what was so wrong in the marriage. I have also learnt what I went through immediately after leaving the marriage; I had classic PTSD symptoms, but I didn't know it.

My marriage was doomed from the start. I didn't know that the things that weren't 'quite right' were actually large red flags they were significant and should not have been ignored.

Purpose

I hope that this blog is a place for people to arrive at as they lay awake at night with their electronic tablets, or sitting at the kitchen table with their computers in the early hours of the morning, desperately searching for answers to questions they don't yet know how to ask. It is for people who know something is fundamentally wrong in their relationship, but can't say exactly what. It is for those people who find themselves vowing to try harder. Those who beat themselves up for their bad or negative attitude in the relationship. Those, who live a daily nightmare from the first opening of the eyes and spark of consciousness to the last lonely tearful moments at night, utterly alone, trapped inside their marriage. Those who are compelled to ask God every night for forgiveness for the hatred of the day, only to wake up into the same hatred the next day, and every day after that.

I used to search the net looking for something to read that resonated with what I was experiencing. I needed to have it validated somehow so that it could come out of my head and be a real 'thing'. I didn't know what to search for though. I didn't know about terms such as emotional abuse, psychopath, sociopath, narcissist and I didn't know I was being sexually assaulted either. I hope that if you've arrived here, you'll discover that what you are going through is an actual thing and not in your head.

This blog is written about my experience. Religion was a large part of the situation. I want to reach out to other people in the misery of life with a psychopath, trapped there by poor religious teaching, interpretations and misrepresentations of beliefs. Much of what I write will be against this background. My experiences were all in the light (or darkness) of my beliefs at the time and how religion contributed to a very unhealthy situation. I quickly came to think, based in his actions, that he had pretended to be religious and into the interests and sports I was in. My mental health was poor and my physical health became too poor to ignore. I cannot write about my experiences and leave the religious aspect out, it is all tied in together.

Biggest hurdles

I had three main hurdles affecting my thinking and obscuring what was happening to me.

Firstly, I was raised very religiously as a Christian. I was taught and believed the following (parts of the bible where the teachings come from are included in brackets)...

God hates divorce (Malachi 2 v16).

A wife does not have authority over her own body (1 Corinthians 7 v 4).

Death or spouses adultery are the only legitimate reasons for divorce (Matthew 19 3 v12).

Don't take communion in an unworthy manner e.g. if you have hatred in your heart (1 Corinthians 11 v 26-29).

Don't judge, or else you'll be judged by God (Matthew 7 v 2).

Forgive one another so that you will be forgiven (Matthew 6 v 14).

These verses are not exhaustive. They do form the basis of the teaching that I was trapped in though.

My second hurdle was that I believed that Hollywood romance and marriage was just that, Hollywood. It wasn't real. I understood that I was not to expect love and romance because that was just fiction and such high expectations of a partner and relationship can be damaging. They also put too much pressure on your partner and this is ultimately unfair to him.

Lastly, I had the hurdle of my learned thinking patterns, self-worth, confidence and the belief that I was the cause of all that was wrong.

These hurdles were paralysing and robbed me of 17 years of life.

So, what I wish I had done differently.

1. Taken very seriously his unwillingness to buy me an engagement ring or even discuss it.

2. Asked him directly why his former fiancé left him when most of their wedding was booked and planned ...and persisted until I had a satisfactory answer.

3. Asked his friends if they knew why she left.

4. Asked him...
        Why he was sectioned and spent months in a Mental Hospital. 
        Why he received electric shock treatment and what his diagnosis was. 
        Waited for a satisfactory answer.

5. Asked his friends the same question and waited for a suitable answer too.

6. Listened to my internal disquiet when he tried to have sex with me the night we got engaged when I knew Christians weren't supposed to before marriage. We did not have sex while we were dating.

7. With reference to the previous point - I wish I had said 'no' earlier when I knew I wasn't ready and didn't want to.

8. Asked him why it was odd and awkward when he took me to see his parents on our first weekend together as a couple. Nobody spoke to each other. His parents stood against the cooker and looked at their feet. We weren't invited to sit and chat. No cup of tea. I was too shy to speak in that situation and he and his parents seemed not to know or even like each other.

9. I wish I had not had the blind faith that I had made the right decision to marry him; believing that God would 'make it right'. I was berating myself for having so little faith, even though I had such blind faith.

10. I wish that I had been able to step back from the blind faith situation and see that the very necessity for blind faith was in itself a red flag.

Finally

Please listen to your intuition and instinct. Don't ignore things that don't seem right. They may be red flags. Have the confidence to name what is wrong and be direct in raising it with your partner.

I am in a new relationship just now and I have been for 18 months. I have a new awareness of what is and isn't right within a relationship, and so does my partner. We call out and name anything that needs talking about. Naming something and putting it on the table is very powerful and kind in the longer term. Holding it, worrying about it, wondering about it and then resenting it is harmful. If you can not put it on the table because your partner won't talk about things or it is not physically or emotionally safe to do so, then this in itself might  be a red flag to address. My ex husband would not talk about anything. He would stand and watch me cry, turn silently on his heel and walk away. Those things causing concern or those little niggles will likely never go away. They will come again in the same form or different - stemming from the same fundamental problem. Please don't get married hoping that it'll all work out in the end or marry in the belief that God will sort it out or that it'll be OK once you've sorted yourself and your shortcomings out.