I Changed My Mind

A jealous man can be dangerous for a woman. It can present itself with back lashing, anger, physical and mental punishment and abuse. It can include disgusting and sexually graphic accusations meant to degrade, ridicule and insult. The more time we spent together, the more jealous he became. A completely innocent look in passing from another man would cause him to go into a rage, followed by extreme and perverse accusations. This is childish behavior to most people observing, but it didn’t stop my boyfriend from having fits of absurd anger. There was a time, shortly after our marriage when his jealousy struck at 2am in Alabama. We were driving back from Northwest Florida and pulled up to a red light next to a man in a jeep. As a driver, being aware of your surroundings is essential, so while driving in the wee hours of the morning there is comfort in knowing that others on the road are awake and also paying attention to their surroundings. In order to properly observe the other driver and his middle of the night condition I was forced to glance to my right, past my husband. The other driver acknowledged me I guess and my husband blew up at me. He felt this completely innocent glance was somehow inappropriate. “Why are you looking at him. You want him, don’t you?” He actually said something else that implied that I wanted to have sex with a total stranger. You get the idea. It was late and I was tired. I was not in the mood for asinine accusations. What was I going to do, run off in the middle of the night with some strange man? I tried explaining how stupid it was for him to think that I was going to do anything with a guy at the red light that I didn’t know, had never seen before, and would probably never see again in my entire life. He wouldn’t let up and commenced with the name calling. I’d had all I could stand of him for the past 4 hours. So I let him have it. I backhanded him hard, right in the mouth. I also loosened 4 of his teeth. He was still drunk but found a momentary sliver of sobriety. “Okay, so the woman hits. File that in the need to know folder.” Later, I got a tongue lashing from his mother who told me how much money had been invested in his teeth. I could care less about his teeth! My well being and state of mind after this ordeal of being accused of wanting to “get it on” with a guy in the next car in the middle of NOWHERE while being mentally abused and physically exhausted was more important. This, on top of his theatrical suicide threat days earlier and all his other ridiculous drama, kept me drained. His family may have been used to his shenanigans and knew how to handle him, but I wasn’t offered an instruction manual. How exactly do you handle being married to a nut?