I realized soon after we got married that my husband loves to argue, fight, yell, and scream, for no reason at all. He argued with me even if I agreed with him. I didn’t know what was happening. I’ve never been in situations when every conversation would turn from nice to horrible gradually. It was soon after we were married that I found myself, subconsciously, never opening conversations with him, answering as little as possible to questions he asks of me, and only talk freely when there are others in the room. That was my only assurance that he won’t blow his top off when I opened my mouth.

I realized early on that I was an annoyance to him no matter what I did. It felt that I had a personality that people likes and wanted to befriend except my husband. When one feels unloved by the person they love the most, life gets very dark.

I stayed in that relationship being hurt every day by the person I was supposed to spend the rest of my live with because I first didn’t want to believe it, then because I though I could change how he felt about me, didn’t want to admit it to the world that I married the wrong man, and mostly, I didn’t want to hurt the people around me especially my son.

My mind was always very simple; always nice and polite, honest and sincere, never planned an outcome of a conversation with anyone before I married him. Shortly after we were married, I was yelled at all the time, I lost every argument, I was trying very hard to please the man I loved but there was nothing that pleased him. He complained about everything, work, apartment cleanliness, money, where we lived, prices of everything, etc. etc. I took everything to heart and went out of my was to eliminate that complain to make him happy. The more I tried, the unhappier he was and I never stopped trying for many years.

I was so stupid that I did not realize early enough that his only moral compass was to oppose me. He did not care to be right or wrong, all he cared about is to be on the opposite side of me. As frustrating as that was, it was compounded after our son was born. The frustration buildups when the rights and wrongs of raising a child meant nothing at all, he always rushed to disagree with everything I said or did in front of our son. In order to make sure our son knows rights from wrongs, I started explaining to him why I was asking him to do certain things including homework, brushing his teeth, going to school, etc. I thought at the time, and it actually worked, that when my husband would disagree with me when if I asked our son to do his homework, our son would know the reason why he was asked to do his homework and actually do it.

I found myself planning which conversation to reply to or comment about when my husband was home. I stopped myself from talking when he is around which went against every grain in my body. After a while, I noticed myself talking a lot in silence rather than in my real voice.