He was psychologically abusive.
He was jealous, possessive and controlling. Early in the relationship, he went to Vegas with his friend for a week, and I'm sure whatever happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. When I asked him about what they did when they weren't having a meeting with someone, he told me he stayed in his hotel room - in Sin City.
Yeah, right.
I was offered an opportunity about a month or so later, to go to Jamaica and do a photo shoot for a swimsuit calendar. When I told him, he discouraged me of course. You would think that a guy would be proud of that - his girlfriend in a swimsuit calendar! Don't guys like to show off that kind of thing?
Well he told me that the guy who made me the offer just wanted to f#c% me. I told him that I wouldn't be going for that and that he could come if he wanted to; they were going to pay my way, so we could pay for his. But he held his position and didn't want me to do the shoot or go period. He was just my boyfriend and I had only been with him for about 4 months. I was a grown woman, and this was my life. I didn't have to listen to him. I could do whatever I wanted to right?
He isolated me. He didn't want me to go see any of the friends in my life that I had prior to knowing him. He didn't want me to communicate at all with a very close male friend of mine that I had known for about 6 years before I met him, because according to Jeff, my friend also wanted to f#c% me. He didn't want me to go do anything social that didn't involve him, while he kept doing everything he did prior to me. I often wouldn't even know he had gone to something until after he came back.
He went to a Christmas party at the studio that he was working with when we met. This party was wild and had a LIVE SEX show go on. He watched it. Those were the kinds of parties he went to, but I couldn't go to my corporate office Christmas parties or after work get togethers anymore. One year I arranged the Christmas party for a company I worked for, and we were supposed to be going as a couple. But he didn't want to go (probably because he felt insecure and inadequate being unemployed) and didn't want me to go either, so he started a fight. I ended up cut up and bloodied.
Needless to say, we stayed home.
He didn't even want me to go to any of my family's functions. On Thanksgiving for years, he didn't want to go anywhere and didn't want me to go either. One year he acted all pitiful and said that he just wanted to spend time with just me. Another year he said, he just didn't want to be around my family. I believe my son was with me that year, so I just left him and my son and I went.
The only Thanksgiving he ever seemed interested in celebrating was our first. He spent that one cooking and eating with his ex and their daughter in her apartment, while I spent it alone. Even once we had our own children, the holidays were always tense and sometimes he flat out ruined them by making them into a day of horror with arguing or fighting. Christmas of 2008 the kids and I spent with my sister and her daughters after he came back from his business trip and started a terrible fight just 3 days before Christmas. Prior to that, the month had actually been going nice and I thought we were finally going to have a rare, happy, wonderful holiday. What was I thinking? He could turn happy to horrible in a matter of seconds.
One year for Valentine's Day, I picked him up at the mall he was working in and saw that he didn't have a gift for me. So I jokingly said to him, "No gift for me?" He explained to me that he didn't have time to shop for a gift for me. (He worked at the freaking mall in a store that engraves gifts!) When I pointed that out to him, he got angry and began yelling and cursing and when we stopped at a red light on a street that was a semi highway, he jumped out the car screaming that he would, "go get me a #$%& gift," and began walking back in the direction of the mall.
It was snowing pretty hard and we were already about 1/2 a mile away from the mall. I couldn't believe he had just reacted that way. But instead of turning around to get him, I just drove on home. I was mad that he went psycho like that and was determined not to go back and get him.
When he showed up at home hours later with a gift from Victoria's Secret and gave it to me as if nothing had happened, I told him that he shouldn't have gotten it. The spirit in which a gift is supposed to be given was ruined by his reaction and that now it didn't feel the same. Well, what did I say that for? He immediately flew into another rage and began to scream, curse and tear the gift up and throw it at me.
He broke my things or things I had given him as gifts. He had come to live with me after losing his apartment about a year and a half into the relationship. When he'd go into his terroristic tirades, he'd often break the things in my apartment. He would throw them, leaving a hole in the wall and the object in pieces. He broke my house phone that cost me about $125. He broke the mouse to my PC. He broke my French blinds. He broke a watch that I had given him for Christmas.
He was clearly always in control of his actions and very aware and intentional about what he broke because he never threw or broke anything that he owned, paid for or meant anything to him.
During this time period of about 2 years, I was working and except for his 5 month stint at the mall and a month or two at a couple of supermarkets, Jeff was not. He was living with me, but not contributing and while I was at work, he'd be getting high all day and making beats. I remember being so afraid sometimes when I came home from work, that as I'd be putting my key in the lock of my own front door, I was trembling and my heart was racing. I didn't know what to expect that night.
Would I get through the night in peace or did I just unlock the door to Hell, again......?
