Chapter 2: The Name for What He Was Doing
Part 2 ⬇️
Mark sat down at my kitchen table like he needed a moment to think.
"Does Eric ever make you feel like you can't do things on your own?" he asked.
I started to say no.
Then I stopped.
Because the answer wasn't no.
It was just that I'd never said it out loud before.
Mark looked at me carefully.
"The jars aren't about food staying fresh.
This is about making you need him.
Every single time you can't open something, you have to wait for him.
You have to ask him.
You become just a little more dependent.
A little less capable.
And he gets to be the one who fixes it."
I stood there staring at him.
"There's a name for this," Mark said quietly.
"It's a form of c0ntrol.
It's called learned helplessness.
You start believing you can't manage without him — not because it's true, but because he's engineered your life so that it feels true."
My hands were shaking.
Because suddenly I wasn't just thinking about jars.
I was thinking about the car he insisted only he should handle.
The finances he said were "too complicated" for me to bother with.
The friends he'd slowly made me feel guilty for seeing.
Then my phone buzzed.
It was Eric.
Calling from his "work conference."
And Mark looked at the screen, then looked at me, and said: "Before you answer that — when did he say that conference started?"
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What Mark found out next made my blood run c0ld.
The full story is in the link below — and the truth is worse than the jars ever were.
