Inbox: To The Silent Sufferer

This message is not meant to exclude women who are silently suffering from abusive husbands.

It happens to be that the relationship described below is more common among women than men but not exclusive. So please read this as if it speaking to your situation if that is needed.

Dear silent sufferer

We know who we are. We are the confused, the battered the beaten down the beautiful soul who is living inside of our spouses tornado.

The shidduch seemed perfect everything we said she said amen, it seemed to us like we found the most perfect women and soulmate. Then, suddenly, everything changed. It was as if on the drop of a hat we went from being the greatest man the world has ever known to the worst scum of the earth. Our head is spinning because we can’t figure out what we did that could possibly warrant such an intense response. We’ve endured the emotional physical and mental abuse for a long time, absorbing it into our very being as if that was our job. We do our very best to come to shul and work with a smile while on the inside we are screaming, we are in tremendous pain but no one can know.

We don’t want to damn our children to a future of bad shidduchim, we don’t want to tarnish our own name, so we suffer silently, even our family doesn’t truly understand. The well-meaning institutions we have in place know little about the weather in our house, so they innocently urge us to be nicer and more emotional, to be more understanding. We try to explain that in an instant and based on nothing our world can become chaos, it can become violent, it can become INTENSE. They hear us with skepticism, they claim we must have done something, and we “search our actions” like a good chossid does, we look and we look and we look, but it’s not erev Pesach and there is no chametz to be found. Then we start to question our own sense of reality, am I who I think I am? Am I really a good person? Perhaps I am the evil scum of the earth she says I am?

At some point it dawns on we that this is not normal, and we are not really the problem. We scour google for a diagnosis until we land on one that sounds too real. Then we gleefully tell our spouse, I think I know what’s wrong! She shouts and protests and maybe even worse. The smear campaign will start against us, 911, police, child protective services. We are closing in on the “game” and that can’t happen. We try to convince our loved one to get help, but they gaslight, YOU are the problem not me! OUR misery tightens around us like a noose around our neck. We can’t breathe with all this drama, there is no safe space for us, when we walk into our own home we never know if it’s wonderland or Vietnam. It seems like there is no hope for us. We contemplate ugly and dark things because we have become a living corpse that is thrown around like a rag doll at someone else’s whims.

I am here to tell you a few things.

1. You are not alone! I cant stress that enough. There are other silent sufferers out there just like you and they are experiencing a degree of the same.

2.There is hope! I cant say for certain that our loved one will ever get better, but, WE can, we can individuate ourselves and leave the cyclops of her tornado. We can strengthen ourself to such a degree that she might want to catch up and better herself as well. When we take care of ourself, we can come home and be able to handle any situation that is thrown at us, but if we come home broken, it is much harder to be who we need to be when the time calls for it.

It is a long road, it’s a road that has many pitfalls and starts and stops and failures and successes. If you are tired and beaten down and want to get off this rollercoaster, please reach out to me, I would love to show you how, and be a support for you the silent sufferer, because I know where you are and I see your suffering.

With Love, from an advocate and fellow silent suffer who remains anonymous for obvious reasons

To reach out to share or to find out more information about how to rise above the tornado confidentially please consider sending an email to ISEEYOURTORNADO@gmail.com