Introduction

Well before Freud came up with psychoanalysis, he accessed his own unconscious by sitting down and writing for three days, a method ofself-examination based on an influential essay penned in 1823 by Ludwig Börne, “How to Become an Original Writer in Three Days.”

Freud’s principal clients were the bored, frivolousupper-class Viennese ladies known as “the Hysterics.” They spilled their secrets and dreams,free-associating on his green couch at Berggasse 19. As I type, it occurs to me that I could be theirtwenty-first-century counterpart. Nevertheless, I hope both you and my shrink will take me seriously.

Initially, this book was just for me—and writing it has taken far more than three days. I attacked the project in fits and starts but persisted in the vain hope that committingthirty-plus years of hell to paper would help me make sense of an adult life that started out with so much promise. My piecemeal efforts have gone some way toward helping me sort out, understand, grieve, forgive, and move on. But the scarring that I, awell-educated woman living a prosperous and comfortable life, received at the hands of a cruel, fickle, and abusive husband will never be totally healed.

As I delved into my own sordid story, I had to face the profound damage I had caused my children because of my determination to keep my marriage and family together. There are no words to express the sorrow and heartsickness I’ll carry to my grave for subjecting them to such crippling dysfunction. I cannot adequately express the remorse I feel for not sticking to my guns the time I grabbed my toddlers and sleeping baby and fled the house almost three decades ago. Or later, when the kids were older and I left several times on my own, for always caving in to myex-husband’s entreaties to return—entreaties accompanied by promises to change, promises to seek help.

As my story revealed itself over the course of months and years, I also recognized my duty to provide personal insight into spousal abuse for the abused, or potentially abused, of any socioeconomic circumstance, race, gender, or sexual orientation. It’s in this light that I confess a horrifying epiphany. It was only when I conducted this postmortem that I realized I’d gotten stuck in this quagmire partly because of my implicit and unexamined belief that spousal abuse didn’t happen to the likes of us. It was my delusion—no, let’s be honest, my prejudice—that intimate partner violence was the preserve of African Americans, Hispanics, and white trash, the final term itself a form of gross disrespect and abuse. No one is trash, and neither you nor I have the right to label another person with such demeaning language. Words can kill, and once you’ve fired them from your rocket launcher, there’s no taking them back.

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This is my story. It’s true, but to protect the guilty as well as the innocent, I’ve changed identifying details of certain characters and events. However, the essence of each anecdote I recount remains, and many incidents went down exactly as described. Where necessary, I’ve been intentionally vague about sources of information. I’ve also thrown in the occasional red herring to put you off the scent. You won’t figure out who I am; I promise, though, that you know a spouse or partner who’s inhabiting a silent prison much like the one I belatedly escaped.

Herein, I’ll regale you with incredible tales of mythirty-year relationship with myex-husband, Tom. I refrain from analysis to the extent pos