My ex tells this story that he was a straight-A student in high school (potentially, because he does pick up on things quickly) who got kicked out for having too many tardies, which is why he hated this one teacher (the one who gave him the tardies) and wasn't allowed to graduate and had to go get his GED.
He also throws in this crazy story about how he did commit assault one time in high school because some kid was rumored to have raped a female friend of my ex's, and my ex let the kid know that he was going to beat him to a pulp for the thing he supposedly did. The kid, in retaliation and in an effort to protect himself, was rumored to have brought a gun to school the next day. I never got a straight answer about whether or not the kid actually did bring a gun to school (and this was in the mid-90s). As a pre-emptive measure for the kid potentially having brought the kid to school, my ex said he did beat the kid to a bloody pulp, fractured his jaw, and sent him to the ER and later ICU, for a bit. My ex's dad apparently had to settle a lawsuit with the kid's parents for my ex having committed egregious assault, and paid the school district a settlement, too. Oh...and my ex also tossed in a detail here or there about having done some time in juvie. But he didn't talk about that except maybe once or twice in our 12 year relationship. After all, there was no public paper trail because he was a minor at the time and those records were sealed.
When I first heard these bits of these stories, I thought, "HOLY SHIT! HE'S GOT SOME ANGER ISSUES! And...aw...he was protecting and vindicating his female friend...that's so heroic...he was young. He had a tough life when his parents got divorced when he was 12 and his mom fled to the east coast with his brother and he chose to live with his dad and then his dad ignored him and had a parade of girlfriends through the house so he went to live with his mom on the east coast for 2 years and then decided he wanted to move back in with his dad, who was living with a woman by that point who used to bowl with his mom and dad and who his dad probably cheated on his mom with...that had to be hard..."
Drama, drama, drama, and excuses I lapped up for breakfast.
Of course I believed that he happened to commit assault "for a good reason," and then was allowed back at school, and that he got kicked out of high school for tardies.
It took me years to take those rose-colored glasses off and go, "DUH. HE WAS EXPELLED FOR ASSAULT. And was probably looking at not being allowed to graduate because of tardies anyway." I mean, when has anyone ever heard of a public high school kicking someone out of school for absences and/or tardies? Yeah...they usually keep you IN. Otherwise, the school isn't getting paid by the government. But for years, I didn't see that.
There were other stories I just shook off over the years, like the one about my ex kidnapping a guy and throwing him in the trunk of his own car and driving out to a spot in the desert where they threatened the guy with a gun because the guy had supposedly robbed my ex's house (when they were in their late teens now, maybe early 20s) because the guy had also ratted my ex and some friends out to the division of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms because the guy was a middleman in a massive pot operation my ex was involved with and my ex and his associates tried to cut out this middleman. Still a bunch of holes in that story, but the big details are nuts. Then there was another one about my ex and one of his best friends, also during their drug-dealing days, getting kidnapped, or something, and getting pistol-whipped themselves for not delivering something to some powerful, dangerous people. Straight out of a movie plot. And my ex was a meth-head for several years in his late teens/early 20s. Which is actually common knowledge for anyone who knows my ex. Because most of his friends are the same people he's hung out with since elementary school, except for those 2 years or so of going to school on the East Coast, and they used to use with him or were very aware that he did.
There was BAD SHIT, but I was so blinded, and convinced by his "reformed bad boy" persona that I just shrugged my goody-two-shoes shoulders and said, "Aw, look at him now! I'm so lucky." What the fuck was I thinking. Sure, he wasn't using or selling drugs by the time I met him, nor did he sell during our relationship to my knowledge. And sure, he didn't seem to get in fist fights as often, but I did witness him getting into drunken fights with his siblings, and he tried to punch his 4'11" sister when she ran her mouth one night, and he did the same to his brother, twice, during our relationship. Then when our marriage was falling apart, he got himself into two bar fights, and proudly texted me about them, then tried to play off later like they'd never happened. But because the baseline had been set for me -- guy who once beat up a classmate at age 17 and used to use bad drugs -- his behavior at the time we got together seemed mild in comparison to what he used to do, and I was enamored by that. I wanted to help him continue to be better. I wanted to continue to love him into being a good person. I had never gotten in trouble. I was an honors kid through high school who loves band and was on the swim team. I have an advanced degree from one of the best business schools in the country. But emotionally, I was so dumb, until I filed for divorce.
There were also stories about an old girlfriend stabbing him in the chest with a fork and biting him in the bicep "because she was mad and a crazy bitch." I mean...sounded plausible? He had the scars. But they didn't break up for a long time after that. He also had a crazy girlfriend (who he later married -- first wife -- because he got her pregnant for the second time and her dad sat him down and told him when the wedding was), who, apparently staged a display for the cops one night. This wasn't the last time she did this, apparently. They'd had a fight. I know her to be unstable anyway given my dealings with her. They were living together in a second story apartment pre-kids and marriage that had a drainage pipe running next to their balcony. She called the cops reporting him for assault (my guess is that he'd pushed her and threatened her, because that's what he used to do to me), and apparently when the cops pulled into the complex, she flung herself off of the balcony, onto the drainage pipe and climbed down to the first floor, screaming that her boyfriend was trying to kill her. Meanwhile, my ex had apparently been using a butter knife to make a sandwich during this fight, and when his then-girlfriend went wailing down the alleyway toward the ongoing police (who she had called), he went out onto the balcony holding the butter knife, looking very confused, and the cops at first started yelling at him to put his weapon down.
I mean...there were GIANT, WAVING, GLOWING red flags here. There are more stories. Time he spent as an adult in jail wearing pink boxers and pink flip-flops. Things I should have taken as signs and run from, post-haste. But, I wanted to help him. I was his savior, and he told me how happy he was to have met me and how lucky he was -- when he was in the hovering/love-bombing phases in between periods when he'd be debasing me and calling me horrible names while also accusing me of being entitled, lazy, and controlling. I came from a crazy family myself, but not like his. My parents never got divorced, I was never abused like he was, I got a great education, and I had resources and support. He didn't.
For a long time, I didn't understand the toxic relationship patterns we were in were toxic. I didn't put the pieces of his stories together to realize all of the horrible things he'd actually done, nor did I pay attention to the fact that he truly was only sorry he got caught. Truly. To this day.
The gaslighting was so strong. I permitted it. I went along with it. Until one day, I wised up and started asking questions. Until I started putting my foot down about all of the abusive name calling and the pushing and the grabbing, and everything else. That's when he started to view me as the problem. Eventually, I was done. But it took a long time to get there. A very long time. I'm glad I'm out. And I hope for the other people who are sticking around, despite knowing that something is wrong, that they'll wake up some day soon, too.
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