Controlling contact with friends & family

When I lived with my batterer it was nearly impossible for me to have relationships with my friends or family. I live very far, in another state, so I couldn't visit them and they could not visit me. I tried to remain in contact through phone conversations but that became very dificult. He never said that I couldn't talk on the phone, his actions just prevented it.

Whenever someone would call he would sit or stand very close to me to listen to me side of the conversation. He would even make comments or get upset if I said something he did not like. Sometimes he would give me hugs and kisses so he could get really close to the receiver so he could hear the person voice on the other end. This never made sense to me because he always checked the caller id so he knew who I was speaking to. One day he told me that he thought I ask my friends and family to call with my "male friend" on the three way. That is why he needed to hear the other person's voice on the other end.

He would google the numbers off the caller id and out of my new and old cell phones. He would go through all my address books. When we first met I still had male friends, not boyfriends, but friends. He went through my phone book and scratch any male name out of it. Not a simple scratch but deep scribbles in ink so that there was no way I could retrieve the information.

When I was on the phone he would ask me fifty million questions, so that I couldn't talk on the phone. He would want to know what we were going to eat for dinner, why I didn't want to eat this or that, do I know where the brush is, can I get the crying baby, etc, etc. He would disturb me to the point that the person on the other line would always get annoyed and say that I seemed too busy and they would call me later. My friends and sisters stared calling me less and less and less.

Sometimes he would go as far as snatching the telephone from me to listen to what the other person was saying and than hand it back to me, or he would take it and have a very bizzare conversation with them and than hand the phone back to me. Either way his outburst, questions, body language just made it easier on me not to talk on the phone. After each phone he wanted to verify who I was speaking to, why they were calling, what did they say about him and what I meant when he heard me say this or that. This would always lead to arguments because I absolutely hated to be questioned. It made me feel like a child. He took my lack of response to his questions as me being sneaky a secretive.

Than there was the problem I had no control over; wrong calls and telemarketers. With wrong calls it didn't matter if the caller was a man or female. He would jump on the computer to start his research. He would keep the information written down for future reference. He would get really angry and tell me that I wasn't as smart as I thought and he was going to catch me. It was the same issue with telemarketers, he thought I knew the caller. It got to the point where I did not want us to have a telephone in the house. He could have his cell phone and I didn't need or want any communication with anyone outside the house. I just became too stressed and tired of all the questioning and anger from him. I could not prove to him that I was not lieing or hiding anything from him.

The jealous guy

One of the biggest problems that he had with me is that he thought I was cheating on him. I have no male friends. Even today, I have no male friends. That did not matter to him because there were still males in my family, my sisters had boyfriend, my friends had boyfriends, some of my co-workers were male, there were males at the grocery store, the bus driver was a man - I just couldn't escape that we live in a society that have males.

Every man was a man I either cheated with or might cheat with in the future. He would become very angry with me if a man looked in my direction; as if I could control where they looked. I never gave him a reason to feel insecure because I don't have a wandering eye and I am the furtherest thing from a flirt. In his mind, I was a whore and would always be a whore. He said that all women cheat and all women are sneaky sluts. I had to pay for the wrongs of the women who wronged him in the past. I tried to prove to him that I was different and that women who sneak around and cheat are not women at all; they were still little girls in my mind. A women to me is someone with integrity and he had no need to worry.

His jealously was so bad that he would screen my calls, he followed me to watch who I would speak to when I walked down the street, he read my emails and etc. He never found anything but chalked it up to that I was really smart and one day he would catch me. He said when he finally did get the proof he needed it would be over for me.

It's scary when someone refuses to believe you, especially when you are not doing anything wrong. He was so convinced that I was a cheater and liar that he made me afraid to be in my own skin. In the beginning I thought his being jealous just proved how much he cared about me; now I know how wrong I was. His jealously had nothing to do with me at all - it is a sickness he has where he pictures these crazy scenarios and convinces himself that they are true. The more I tried to convince him otherwise the more guilty to him I became.