By Baila Sebrow
I’m divorced, and though it sounds weird, I want my husband back. My marriage was not good, but we were so in love. I would have stayed married to him, but he met someone else and wanted to divorce me. At the time, maybe I was also glad, because many times in the marriage I wanted to divorce him because of how he treated me. In fact, I left him a few times, but I came back home. So, in a way, I put the idea in his head in the first place.
Lately he started contacting me by text for stupid reasons, and I feel it’s a sign. My mother won’t let me go back to him. She reminds me about the abuse. The thing is that all the men I am meeting and dating are a bunch of narcissists and psychos. I’m a normal woman and I want a normal marriage and relationship. Is such a thing even possible?
Do you think my ex-husband can become good as a second husband to me? My mother thinks there is something wrong with me to want to go back to a man who was so horrible.
Response
This is so sad and tragic. Your letter makes me feel as though I need to ask mechilah from every divorced woman who has reached out to me asking for help to get her back with an ex-husband who treated her badly while they were married. My once-upon-a-time viewpoint was that the marriage could not have been so bad if the wife wants the man back after a divorce. That perception was a result of the way the rest of society feels about such cases. The man who may have abused his wife now feels empowered by the new state of affairs and successfully manages to convince everyone that his marriage ended in divorce because of someone’s interference and not because of what he did. As time went on, I learned the truth about how these relationships really evolve.
Still, there are highly educated and sophisticated people who believe that if the woman complains about abuse but then wants the man who abused her back in her life, or she refuses to leave him, it is a clear indication that there was never abuse. And in the case where the man wanted out (as sometimes the abuser gets tired of his victim), boy, oh boy, does that further rouse his power. And of course, there are shadchanimwho run to redt shidduchim for such a guy, who only further victimizes others. Baruch Hashem, we have qualified mental-health professionals specifically trained in domestic abuse who have case studies that can clearly debunk that myth.
As far as I am concerned, as time went on and I spent time speaking to divorced women who had been abused in their marriage as well as women in abusive dating relationships, I came to the realization that what these women all have in common are the characteristics of “trauma bonding.” And that is what I strongly believe is happening to you. You feel attached because you are trauma bonding with your ex-husband. He knows this, and that is why he is sending you messages. He is done with the supply of victims that he left you for, so he is now searching for his next victim—you. That’s what narcissists typically do. They go back to the ones they once discarded, either by letters of apology or, as you call it, texting you for “stupid reasons.”
Your ex-husband is now coming back to build you up in order to tear you down again. I’m so sorry you are going through this. I want you to know there is nothing wrong with you, as your mother assumes. This is what narcissists do. They destroy their victims, but first they torture them like a cat toys with a mouse before killing it.
What is trauma bonding? A trauma bond is the unhealthy attachment to someone with whom the victim is in an abusive relationship, whether emotional, verbal, physical, or financial abuse. It can be just one form of abuse or sometimes many forms of abuse. It is seen in romantic dating and marital relationships as well as in parent–child relationships, and also, employer–employee relationships. How many stories do we hear where an employee is abused or exploited in his or her workplace, yet fights to keep his job? It even exists amongst friends. The victim is psychologically unable to leave the abusive situation to the extent that he or she will make excuses for the abuser. To make matters even worse, it gets to the point that the victim self-blames and oftentimes takes full responsibility for the abuse.
Ignorant people will always blame the victim in a marital or dating relationship for not seeing the signs. The problem is that the victim is usually a vulnerable person who is love-bombed to the hilt by the narcissist. The vulnerability might stem from low self-esteem or come from a previous traumatic situation, and the person feels the need to be taken care of emotionally, financially, etc. So the victim ends up trusting the abuser to the extent that he or she finally feels a sense of security. When narcissists have their victim exactly where they want, they go to war—with heavy, critical putdowns and coercive control where the victim gives up all personal rights and boundaries. The victim at that point feels lost and totally dependent on the abuser, particularly because when the abuser devalues or physically hurts the victim, there is that reward period of compliments, gifts, and other demonstrations of love. It becomes a vicious cycle of a strong bond.
How do you know you are in a relationship with a narcissist? Unfortunately, narcissists are difficult to distinguish because they come across as very charming. They have a social circle of friends who think highly of them. They can hold high positions of employment. They are famous for psychologically abusing their victims, then gaslighting them so that the victim becomes confused and begins to question who the abuser really is. Narcissists manage to convince everyone that they are the victim, especially when the victim fights back in reaction to the abuse. Interestingly, in a great percentage of cases, the true abuser brilliantly convinces the world that his or her victim is really the bully and is crazy! These are the monsters that you hear about in the news who end up killing their victims, too, but by that time it is too late for anyone to do anything on behalf of the true victim.
You say that since your divorce you are only meeting narcissists and psychopaths? You left out sociopaths. The dating world is swarming with them. Lest anyone become offended that I am only referring to men, I am making it clear that everything I am writing about refers to women too.
Let’s understand all these terms. A psychopath and sociopath can be a narcissist. The psychopath can commit a violent crime or brutally hurt his victim without feeling any sense of remorse or guilt. Sociopaths may get hired at top firms, but they can’t stay at their job for too long. The same with relationships. They go from relationship to relationship, entering each one for the benefit it appears to serve them. Although sociopaths are also capable of committing violence, they typically do it impulsively, while the psychopath is more calculating in the planning stage of subjecting his or her victim to pain. Also, psychopaths are usually described as having coldness in their eyes. They can see their victim maimed and have no reaction. In fact, they will derive intense pleasure from it. There are many other symptoms that I have not mentioned, but the problem is that both sociopaths and psychopaths can have similar traits, and only a trained professional can accurately diagnose them. There are plenty of cases where it is difficult even for a trained person to precisely identify them.
People who are in dating relationships have no way of knowing any of this. It is not your job to figure that out. What you need to know is that if someone behaves in a way that is not the norm in your society, that’s a good-enough reason for you to go running away. There is plenty of information about red flags with regard to love-bombing, and when things go sour in the relationship, expecting it to get better or feeling a sense of hope because it looks like things are getting better is like expecting to win the lottery without buying a ticket. If you feel abused, you are being abused. If you feel criticized and putdown, that’s what you are experiencing. Name-calling will get worse. Any pain inflicted on you will only intensify. Every person deserves respect. Every person deserves protection of his or her boundaries.
Do not go back to your ex-husband. You say that he abused you. He will not get better. A man who lifts his hand to a woman is not a man. Anyone who hurts another human being, man or woman, is no different than an animal. Please go for therapy before you contemplate going on another date with anyone else.
