There Is No Right Response

Yesterday started at 3:30 in the afternoon and didn’t end until 10 that night.

It wasn’t one fight. It was a loop. A never ending circle of nonsense I was losing track.

Accusations that I’m cheating. With someone named “Robbie” (who the heck is Robbie). That I’m hiding something, being sneaky. That I caused the silence. That I don’t make space for him. That a picture i had on my desk of my mom is gone and its proof I am planning to “run” an dhow my clothes are missing from their ”normal “ place.

Then, almost like nothing happened, he would shift into something normal. He would be on a tangent then, “squirrel… normal” Just long enough for my body to settle. And then it would start again.

Over and over and over and over. At one point I said something, I wish I could remember what it was, but it stopped him dead in his tracks. he goes out to the garage, his man cave, comes back in about 15 minutes later and BOOM..it started right where it picked up but this was visceral, targeted and calculated. So here i am thinking, finally i said somethign he could understand. But he just needed time to regroup and process to he could annihilate me.

By the end of it, I lost it. Completely. And somehow, even that became part of the proof.

That’s the part I keep forgetting in the emotion of it all.

There is no right response.

He asks why..I tell him its the way he speaks to me. He doesn’t ask me a question, he interrogates me. Then hes says, “stop bringing old shit, here we go”. I said, “That was last week.” But hen he has no problem going back and trying use my divorce against me, as if it were my fault.

If I defend myself, I’m scrambling.
If I get upset, I’m guilty.
If I go quiet, I’m caught.

Every version of me gets used against me.

At one point I said, fine. Buy me out of the house and I’ll leave for good. I meant it. I wasn’t threatening. I was done.

His response was simple. “How much?”

Not confusion. Not emotion. Not even a pause.

Just a number.

That was the moment it clicked in a way I can’t unsee. This isn’t about me. It’s not about cheating. It’s not about answers.

It’s about control.

Because if this were about fixing something, there would be a path to resolution. There would be a version of this conversation that lands somewhere.

There isn’t.

It just keeps moving.

The accusations turned into something worse as the night went on. Sexual degrading. Name calling. The kind of things that don’t even sound real when you repeat them back. And every time I tried to name it, to say what was actually happening, he flipped it.

I’m the one belittling.
I’m the manipulator.
He’s just reacting to me.

Everything I said about why this hurt, why this wasn’t okay, why this keeps happening… it all got turned around and handed back to me like it was mine to carry.

That kind of reversal does something to your head.

You start trying to track it. Where it shifted. What you said. What you could have done differently.

But there’s nothing to track.

Because the rules change depending on what keeps you in it.

Even today, it didn’t stop. I stayed quiet, trying not to re-enter it, and that became proof I was “caught.” Then he sent me a video about how women who cheat become distant and mean.

Like evidence.

Like I’m supposed to watch it and recognize myself in something that isn’t even real.

That’s when it becomes clear.

This isn’t a conversation.
It’s a system.

One where the outcome is decided before you even speak.

And the longer you stay in it, the more you start to question yourself instead of what’s happening.

I used to think if I could just explain it better, stay calmer, choose the right words, it would land differently.

It doesn’t.

Because there is no version of me inside this that gets heard.

Only versions that get used.

He said he was leaving, he wouldn’t be here tonight or the weekend. I said “Bye, thanks for the heads up” I guess we will see.