It does not feel like a "good deal". I can't speak for anyone else, and I would normally not go this much into my personal business, but to help others understand who may be in a similar situation...
Abusers know how to pick their victims. They pick people who are unlikely to fight back, probably already have fairly low self-esteem to begin with. For me, I had just come out of my first, failed marriage, and a whole slew of other crap that had me depressed and kind of really afraid of men. I was a mess, basically, and he seemed like he could "rescue" me. That was my own fault- believing in the fairy-tale lie that a knight in shining armor would ride up on his white horse and save me from myself.
He built me up...soothed my fears...treated me like a queen...and then would get angry with me. I thought I was doing something really wrong, I would apologize profusely, that's just how I've always been. There was never forgiveness, which I guess makes sense, because if the words "it's ok" or "I forgive you" are never spoken, then the subject, the mistake, can be brought up any time he wanted to throw it back in my face.
It turned into a cycle...a sneaky one that I barely noticed. Oh, I knew there were red-flags about the whole thing...his anger, the things he would say, how he blamed me whenever anything went wrong. But, like I said, I was fresh out of a worse situation. And when he was nice, he was amazing.
So I married him.
And I have stayed, though I've also left a handful of times but come back, because over the years, I've become isolated. He has encouraged fights between me and family members and friends. Any family or friends who had helped me to leave him in the past, he has started fights with or bad-mouthed so much that it wasn't worth it to me to try to keep them anymore. And, for a long time, we lived so far away from our families that I was completely alone. So where was I going to go? He controlled the money. I'd have had to steal from him...yes, STEAL from him, within a marriage, to have any money to try to leave with. The times I did leave was because I begged people to help me, family who I'd been cut off from.
I was allowed to work...in fact, it was often expected or demanded of me, before we had kids...but how I was supposed to get to and from a job without a car where we were was my own concern. He took the car for his job, and I was left, often for a week at a time, with no car, no money. And this seemed normal, mind you, because of how he'd torn me down before. He had me right where he wanted me; doing everything for him, not questioning what HE was doing, not asking too much of him, not complaining, but staying put in the cage I was in and waiting for him.
And even now, that's how it usually is. The hurtful words, the angry outbursts over tiny things that may or may not even be my fault, occasional throwing of objects to scare me, guilt trips, insults, comparing me to other women, serious over-reactions to the kids being kids, lots of irritated sighs or huffs if things aren't going exactly how he wants them to, saying things that make me believe that I'm crazy- telling me one thing, then I do that thing, and later he'll say that's not what he told me to do. And telling me I must be nuts, or hard of hearing, or stupid.
It gets to the point, when all of this is going on...that I feel like...what is the point of leaving? I've been beaten down so much that I'd be worthless to anyone else. It has nothing to do with me thinking he's better, or too good for me, or anything like that....it's entirely about me feeling like and often truly believing that I am all the things he has ever said I am- which amounts to "not good enough". Not pretty enough, or why would he compare me to and flirt with other women? Not smart enough, or why would I mess things up so often? Not interesting enough, or else he would talk to me like he does to everyone else.
Just not enough.
And because of that, I've stayed, and I've put ridiculous amounts of effort into this marriage to make him happy, because I had thought, until recently, that he was miserable because *I* was doing things wrong. So I have tried, in every way possible, to do everything right, do everything for him, change how I look to make him like me, change how I talk, how I think, what I like, how I am with the kids...and that...THAT..and it doesn't work, because the problem isn't ME at all- it's him.
But that's what abusers want- they want their victim to feel like I do, feel stuck, feel like they have to do whatever it takes to please them, to make their life easier...be a slave to them.
I don't know if that answers the question at all, but I hope that if there are people reading this who are in a verbally or emotionally abusive relationship, that they see the truth of what I said- the problem is not YOU, it's THEM. And you CAN leave. You can.
