Unrelenting Guilt

When I was still with my ex-husband, I always felt guilty. I didn’t always know what I was guilty of, but the feeling was always there. Sometimes, I didn’t clean well enough, I forgot something, I came home from work a few minutes late, or I didn’t make dinner correctly. One night, I was cooking dinner and my husband insisted that I sit down and watch TV with him. The chicken burned and he blamed me. I got a beating for ruining his dinner. Logically, I knew that it was not my fault, but I still felt guilty for it.

After the divorce, I still questioned everything I did. I was a perfectionist because I didn’t want to bear the guilt of not doing something correctly. No matter what I did well, I had been conditioned to look at where I failed. The guilt was like a black hole in the center of my being.

This condition had to stop. I was finally free from oppression, but it didn’t feel like freedom. I was now keeping myself prisoner in the shameful feelings I developed while married. I couldn’t blame him any more. I was doing it to myself, but I did not know how to stop. Forgiving him was easier than forgiving myself.

The key to my healing was knowledge. I learned about the cycle of abuse; particularly how it begins. So many people went through the same thing long before I did and their stories gave me comfort. I learned that I was not an idiot; I was just fooled. Understanding how it happened and how and why it progressed set me free from the guilt. I was not a bad wife in any respect. There was nothing I could have done better or differently to prevent the abuse. My ex-husband was going to abuse his wife no matter who she was or how good a wife she was. It wasn’t even my fault for getting involved with him in the first place because there were no signs. He gave no indication of a violent streak until after we were married, and we were engaged for two years. There was no way for me to know what was going to happen, so I did not do anything wrong.

This knowledge is what released me from guilt. It has never returned. It took several more years to heal regret and resentment, but those too are gone now. We can heal from abuse and getting rid of guilt is a big part of it. No one deserves abuse. No one earns it. No one “has it coming.”

You are not at fault. You are not to blame. You have nothing to feel guilty for.
With love,
Jstone