I was 21 when I met my soon to be husband. I thought he would make a great father, because he was good with his nephews and nieces! How wrong I was!  It happened so gradually, leaving my friends behind, being just the two of us.  My parents lived in England and I was in Australia so they were not a threat to him.  I was about to fall prey to a sociopath. He was charming, and I fell like the proverbial ton of bricks.  He would buy me little presents, spoil me. What woman doesn’t like to be spoilt?

The one thing he insisted we do was become Jehovah’s Witnesses.  I didn’t realize until much later that this was his method of control.  His two sisters were JWs, and I had studied briefly as a teenager (but then I found boys!).  So we studied with an elder and his wife. Boy, did I ask questions! But the elder always answered them well, and at the time it seemed to be logical and make sense.

We got married and I became pregnant very quickly after that.  I had complications and had to have an emergency C-section.  There was a question of having blood, but like a good witness, I refused.  I was very ill for a time after my first son was born and my husband couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive.

It was when I got pregnant with my second son that the noose began to tighten.  He would accuse me of sleeping with just about anybody, which as a good Jdub, was very distressing to me. He starting swearing and smoking and not attending meetings.  After my second son was born he seemed to settle back down sometimes, but sometimes it was like walking on eggs when he was due home from work, because I never knew what mood he would come home in.

He would alternate between being a super Jdub and getting disfellowshipped for threatening the elders.  Of course, they never considered mine or my children’s welfare in all of this.  I was expected to pray, and go out in field service, the usual cure for everything.  Speaking of field service, I was alternately ignored or courted in the hope that I would give out juicy details of my life.

Through all this I was serving Jehovah.  I was the disciplinarian; he would either ignore the children or indulge them.  Looking back, I realize that it was all about his feelings, never mine or the children’s. He wasn’t physically abusive, except for one occasion, but it was the mental and emotional cruelty that was very wearing. As the children were growing up, they would hear him ranting and accusing me of the most disgusting things in the car on the way to the meetings, then watch him get out of the car and become Mr. Christian.  It was sickening.

Why didn’t I leave, and take the kids with me? Why do women stay in bad relationships – because he would apologize, and then you think that this time he means it. I stayed because he would threaten to take the boys out bush and I would never see them again, and I believed he was capable of doing it. He would alternate letting me take the boys to the meetings, and keeping them home.  He even sent a message into the Kingdom Hall once, saying that if I didn’t come out of there at once, he was leaving for the bush and I would never see the boys again! Did I leave, yes, I did!

I was naïve, and I believed every word he said.  That is how I realized that the Witnesses were a load of rubbish.  We were told from the platform  experiences of husbands that were abusive to their JW wives, and through the wife’s perseverance the husband would see the error of his ways and become a Jehovah’s Witness.  Here was my husband, who was supposed to be a Witness, and he was abusive. Did Jehovah’s spirit operate on him? I don’t think so.

So then I would pray that he would die! It is a terrible thing to say, but it is true. I knew that I would never be free of him. I stopped going to the meetings, and he would pressure me to go, depending on whether he was on his religious kick or not.  I listened one day to what he said to some acquaintances (he could never keep friends). He said, “Well, if she a JW, at least I know that she’s not sleeping around”.  This was the reason that he wanted me to be a JW!

I realized that praying for somebody to die was a contradiction. I was living with a hypocrite, and I didn’t want to become one, so I never went again. That was about 1988.

We needed money, because he spent it on rubbish. With a job, I became the person I wanted to be.  I ended up earning more money than him, which he disparaged.  But with employment, my confidence came back.  I also had a severe health problem, to which he would reply, it’s a shame that tumour didn’t kill you.  I considered my marriage over.

I think he realized that he could not control me anymore.  When my eldest was 16, and my youngest 13, he left. I could not believe it! He would come back to the house when I was at work and take things, but he was gone! I was left holding all the bills, but I didn’t mind.

What I did mind was my eldest went to live with him, after about a week. I was devastated. I couldn’t mention his name without crying.  My youngest stayed with me for about a year, then he was enticed away by talk of a motorbike.

He had done what he intended, taken my sons away.  I saw them off and on over the years, they would even come back and live with me for a while.  But I don’t see them at all anymore.  My eldest turned into another version of his father, abusive and disparaging of women.  I do get to see his children, because my daughter in law is like a daughter of my own.  My youngest, after a broken engagement, returned to the Witnesses and has become very devout.  He, of course, won’t speak to me; I don’t even know where he lives.  I did hear that he got married.

Me? Well, now I have a degree, I earn a lot of money, I have a loving partner, and I live in the most beautiful part of the world.  My life is almost complete.

What scares me most is the endless cycle. Eventually, my youngest son will get sick of the hypocrisy and brainwashing and leave the Witnesses. He’ll have kids by then, and they won’t talk to him. The cycle will be complete!  When does this ever end?

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