I met, let’s call him “Paul,” in the Kansas City Airport. I was on my way to my very first duty station in the Army. I was fresh out of job training and nervous as hell. I enlisted straight out of high school. I had never lived on my own before, and though I was going to be living in the barracks, amongst other people; I was on my own.
The airport gate I was waiting at was not busy. Only a dozen or so people were waiting for the flight. I saw Paul sitting a little ways down from me and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I thought he was so cute. I was shy and had no idea how to go talk to him. Instead I struck up a conversation with a fatherly-looking, middle aged gentleman sitting between Paul and I. It worked. Paul joined the conversation.
I loved the dark color of his eyes and the way they lit up when he smiled. I loved the sound of his laugh. I wanted to say something funny, just so I could hear it again. I impressed him with my extensive knowledge of fresh water fish (his words, not mine.) I thought for sure I was going to scare him off when I asked if I could practice IVs on him ( I was a medic, so it’s not that weird). The sparks were flying.
We chatted until the plane arrived, it was running very late, which I wasn’t complaining about. When I boarded the plane ahead of Paul, I noticed the plane had just a single line of seats on either side of the aisle. I saw two empty seats separated by only the aisle and went to sit, hoping Paul would join me. But he didn’t. Maybe I imagined the connection. But when he met up with me at the registration office on post, he gave me his phone number.
We became inseparable. We spent all of our time together. He was 4 years older than me and was transferring to Ft. Riley after a year in Germany and a year in Iraq. He was infantry and I thought, wow, opposites really do attract. He fought people and I tried to heal them. But there were many ways we were opposites. I was from snowy Minnesota and he was from Sunny California. He was recently out of a serious relationship and I had never dated anyone longer than a couple months. He had a small family, that wasn’t very close. I was from a very large family that spent as much time together as possible. It was like together we were the perfect balance. We complimented each other.
Head over heels
Paul made me feel like a queen. He wanted to know everything about me. He called me beautiful and funny and perfect. He never tried to change me or pressure me.
The first weekend at Ft. Riley we went to see a movie together. He put a quarter in a toy dispenser and a cheap light up ring was in the little plastic bubble he pulled from the machine. While we were cuddled up in the movie theater he slipped the ring on my left hand and I melted into my chair.
I was a virgin when we met and the first time I met all his army friends that transferred with him, I got drunk for the first time in my life. He stayed sober, so I wouldn’t do anything I would regret. He was protective and took care of me.
We would go on moonlit walks through the wooded areas on post. During the late spring, the fireflies would light up the woods, and it was like we were in a fairytale. I fell hard and fast.
We got married just a few months after we met, at a beautiful outdoor chapel overlooking a forest; I was so happy. We got an apartment off post and moved in together, once the apartment was available, almost a month after we were married.
Paul wanted to start trying for kids right away. I told him I wanted to wait until after we deployed. Our battalion was getting ready to deploy to Iraq the next year. I wanted to fulfill my 4 year contract, including a deployment. Paul wanted me to have a baby so that I wouldn’t have to deploy. He wanted me safe and in the states. He told me that even female medics die on deployments, no one is safe. He said he couldn’t bare to lose me, I was the love of his life.
Our first child was born just eleven months after we were married, four months before we were supposed to deploy. I was able to get out of the army for family planning and Paul followed just a couple months later. I was so excited that he was able to get out too. I was scared of him deploying, I didn’t want to lose him just as much as he didn’t want to lose me. We were starting our civilian lives together.
We moved all over the place over the next decade, going on adventures and experiencing life. We lived in Las Vegas, NV for a couples years, which is where our second child was born. We loved people watching and going out to eat. We would take trips to California and Arizona. We even went to Hawaii for a week. We lived in Fresno, CA for a few years and spent as much time as we could hiking and camping in the mountains, or going to the coast. Every weekend was a new experience. Eventually, Paul moved us back to Minnesota because I missed my family and friends.
Paul had his masters degree and I was finally starting school. Our kids were healthy, smart, and just amazing. From the outside looking in, our life looked amazing, everything I ever wanted.
Happily Never Ever
We were just a few months short of our 11th anniversary when I planted my self between Paul and the firearms he kept loaded in the bedroom.
We were just shy of 11 years when Paul turned to me and said, “I don’t know why you are doing this, I never hurt you,” and my whole body recoiled as if he had slapped me across the face.
We were almost to 11 years when I packed up our kids, our family pet and fled while the Sherriff served Paul with an Order for Protection.
Boiling a Frog
The path that brought me from my fairytale romance to fleeing for my life was a roller coaster ride. It’s almost impossible to describe the chaos, disorientation and hopelessness of an abusive relationship. It doesn’t start off as abusive. They don’t just flip a switch one day and become abusive. It’s very slow, meticulous, calculated and gradual.
Rachel Louise Snyder describes imagining how domestic violence is, “What we might conjure, if anything at all, is a punch. Someone we’re dating, one punch and we’d be gone. But that’s not how it happens. It evolves over time (Snyder, 2019, Pg 256).”
I first heard the metaphor of boiling a frog in the movie Dante’s Peak. In the movie Harry Dalton was using it to describe the dire situation they were in with the Volcano about to erupt. However, I find it to be an apt metaphor for domestic violence.
“My 9th grade science teacher always said that if you put a frog in boiling hot water, it would jump out. But put it in cold water, and heat it up gradually, it would slowly boil to death.” – Harry Dalton (Donaldson, 1997, 45:47)
Just like dropping a frog into boiling water, if an abuser starts off abusing, the victim would just leave. An abuser starts the relationship off with the perfect environment for their target victim. They shower the target with love and affection. In Mada Tsagia-Papadakou’s TED Talk she states that “it starts with romance and love (TED, 2018a, 4:22).” Norah Casey calls it “Golden Handcuffs (TED, 2018b, 4:24).” The target falls in love so hard and so fast, they tie themselves to the abuser before the abuse starts.
The abuser then begins to chip away at the victim. They will take away their support with isolation. They start to break down the victim’s self-esteem in small increments that don’t seem significant at the time, but add up to devastating sums. They slowly turn up the abuse, every time the victims gets used to the new level of crazy, they turn it up a bit more. All the while the victim clings to the memories of the good times.
I know, when Paul was cranking up the heat, for many years I thought it was my fault. I thought if I worked harder, did better, loved him more, that we would go back to the way things were in the beginning. I thought we could return to the fairytale, but like all fairytales it was just a made up story. It was all a lie. The man I had fallen in love with wasn’t real. He was a carefully curated imitation of my dream man. It was a facade to get me to fall in love with him, to get me hooked. And it worked.
Paul abused me for years, before I realized what was happening to me. I felt the heat rise and rise, over and over again and still, I stayed. I stayed until I just couldn’t take it any more. I stayed until I had to leave. I stayed until I found my very last straw.
References:
1. Donaldson, R. (Director). 1997. Dante’s Peak [Film]. Universal Pictures.
2. TED. (2018a, July 14). Why I stayed, Why I left | Mada Tsagia-Papadakou [Video]. Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5609_5FRjhY
3. TED. (2018b, February 6). The Courage to Leave | Norah Casey [Video]. YouTube. www.youtube.comwatch?v=i0hij-L5c-A
4. Snyder, R.L. (2019) No Visible Bruises. Bloomsbury Publishing.