Just Because He’s Under Pressure, My Husband Has No Right To Be Abusive Or Humiliating!

He knew that I was upset. He tried talking. I responded curtly. After reaching home, he tried kissing me and to behave as if it was all normal. But I was nowhere close to normal.

“So, what?” my mother in law asked me. “That doesn’t mean you should leave the house.”

I stayed quiet. I knew I could not say anything to her as she won’t understand.

My husband and I were going to meet one of his colleagues. I said something to him, and because he didn’t respond, repeated it. He lost his temper and shouted at me. I went numb and tears started trickling down my cheeks. I didn’t want him to know that I was crying for the fear that he would shout again, or that it could have gone worse than that.

This was not the first time he had shouted. Every time he shouted, I retaliated by telling him, this is not acceptable. He would nod and let that go.

This time, I was on the verge of breaking. So, I broke out with a single shout. When we reached the place where we were to meet the colleagues, I behaved as if everything was normal. It went well, and then we were on our way back home.

He knew that I was upset. He tried talking. I responded curtly. After reaching home, he tried kissing me and to behave as if it was all normal. But I was nowhere close to normal. I was broken completely. I didn’t react to his gesture. He called me for dinner with the family, but I didn’t go. I was busy crying in the toilet. Yeah, that was the only personal space I could claim for a while.

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This infuriated him and he stopped behaving nicely to me. He stopped talking. We slept with our faces in opposite directions, claiming the two different sides of the bed.

As I mentioned, this episode was not happening for the first time. And I was not in my senses to tolerate anything like that.

When I couldn’t sleep the whole night, the next early morning, I left the house. I drove and drove without any thoughts. I just wanted to find peace within. I wanted to discover my lost self-esteem.

Realizing that I couldn’t drive for the whole day and the whole night, I called up a friend and went to her place. My eyes were swollen. She gave me a place to crash in.

My husband and I then spoke over the phone. Instead of asking me, why I left. He asked me, “What should I tell my parents?”

“You answer them on your own, I won’t,” I replied, to which he countered with, “How would this appear to others?”

This was brutal to me. In the next call when he asked, “What do you want to achieve with this? Freedom? You go wherever you can find happiness. What is your next step?” It made me think, “what is my next step?”

There was no next step. My own parents won’t accept me, and the place I left behind was not a safe place for me anymore. The only next step for me to think of was to die.

It was his lunchtime, and he came to get me. I had no other thoughts than to go back with him. He had cooled down by then.

When I reached home, my mother in law was trying to ask me, why I left. Which is what I wrote at the beginning.

She snapped at me, and I came back to the present moment.

“I’ve also been humiliated multiple times. Look at me. Did I ever leave the house?” she continued. “Your father-in-law and his mother, my mother-in-law, both used to sit and humiliate me, but it doesn’t mean, I will leave the house. So many things happen in the private space of a house. You don’t show it to others. Look at your husband, he is always so much under pressure to keep this house running, to fulfil everyone’s dreams, your dreams and you’re adding on to his pressures. You know him, he doesn’t behave generally like this. Don’t you say you love him? …”

I was again lost in my thoughts.

Just because it happened to her, 25 years back, does that mean I have to suffer as well? Can’t she sensitize her son to not behave wrongly with his wife? Just because he is under pressure, he has the right to violate my rights? And if I love him, does that mean, I have given him the right to be abusive, humiliating, or violent with me? I am clear that I never gave him those rights. And I never would.

All I expected out of him, was a “Sorry!” for my own mental peace.

Image source: a still from short film Sloshed

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