My Life Became Unmanageable

I am powerless over the fact that I saw MANY red flags in the beginning and I ignored my instincts.

How has it affected your life?

The fact that I stayed in an abusive relationship for so long has caused a deep rift between myself and the person who should be my biggest advocate and friend-- myself! I wanted the good parts of the relationship: the laughter, the fun, the adventure, at the expense of my safety. A part of me hate myself because I knew all the facts and I still pressed forward. Before we were even officially together, while we were only roommates, I took a 24 question test about whether or not I was in an abusive relationship and if the way he was treating me could qualify if we ever did end up getting together. Our relationship-- even just as roommates-- screened very high. I still decided to get involved with him anyway. Even after our couples therapist told me pointblank in a private session that he was too angry to have a relationship with anyone at that point, I still didn't want to leave.

I now doubt every move I make and that leaves me feeling helpless and paralyzed. I am a damn social worker for heaven's sake and I would have warned any client of mine to stay away, but I still pressed forward. In the beginning of the relationship, I was kind of wishy-washy on being together, I liked the attention but I didn't know if I was in love with him. It was convenient and comfortable, but I wondered why I didn't feel like I was in love right away. By staying with him longer, it gave me time to push my intuition aside and fall in love and give myself to him in a way I've never given myself to anyone before. Even though we were so tumultuous, there was a part of us that felt like we were soulmates. I soon was in love without realizing that was a bad place to be, like the frog getting boiled alive in the water that got hotter and hotter. It was a nice jacuzzi that would eventually fry me alive.

I always told myself that no matter what happened I would NEVER be with an alcoholic, because I didn't want to live in a marriage like my parents did. I wasn't going to be one of those girls who dated their parent because they still had childhood issues-- and I thought I wasn't because he wasn't an alcoholic. But he was definitely a rageaholic, which caused the problem to come at me sideways in disguise.

I wasted two years of my life walking on eggshells, afraid all the time because I knew the signs of when his behavior would get worse and I looked for them daily. I lost myself in those two years. I forgot how to think about anything but the big mystery of how to keep him happy. I felt like I was wearing a body that didn't belong to me and my skin didn't fit.

I used to think of myself as the stupid person who buys an exotic lion and then keeps their 'pet' in their house, even though they tell everyone it's so majestic and beautiful and they are so lucky to have this lion, there's still a part of the lion that wants to rip the person's head off and probably will in the future. You can only keep a killer pet lion for so long.

It was probably worse for me than someone who could live in deeper denial, because I knew what I was doing to myself the whole time and I deep down knew it was an abusive relationship. I knew all these facts and still I didn't care. And that makes me accept it a little bit more when the victim blaming occurred because I did it all to myself. I gave him exactly what he wanted until he was done with me. And even now, something will trigger a memory for me and I'll miss him for a moment until I hate myself all over again. I wonder if this contributes to my self-care problems-- it may be a major reason why I'm not gentle with myself anymore.

The past is the past now though and there is absolutely nothing I can do besides wishful thinking and fantasy delusions (both of which I've entertained quite a bit) to change anything. This is a fact that I accept in small pieces, a little at a time, but I always seem to return to the self-blame and problem-solving thinking.

How have you contributed to it?

I shut my brain down a lot of the time and split myself off from the angry or the loving sides. I compartmentalized. I would be angry for a brief time, but then cool off and automatically start apologizing even if it was his fault and try to clean up and make the house nice or make him something to eat so he would be nice to me again. I tried to buy his love and affection with shows of grandiose love, anything to make him treat me better. He once told me I was training his bad side to be bad by doing this and a part of me wonders if I made him worse. I enabled his behavior to such a degree, I wonder if I turned him into the person he eventually became.

I learned to anticipate his moods, which caused my hyper-arousal and hyper-vigilance from childhood to deepen into a near post traumatic stress disorder degree. Once I moved out of the house we shared, it took me a long time to realize that I didn't have to rush around trying to appease my roommates and I was shocked at how much time I had to myself when I wasn't worried about the other shoe dropping.

I used to spend so much time trying to fix the problem-- trying to fix him. I also tried to fix the environment around us. I remember when he was visiting me in the hospital, the nurse bumped into my bed in the middle of the night and she said she was sorry she was so loud. My thoughts immediately went to worrying about him, because I knew he hated getting woken up in the middle of the night and I didn't want him to throw a fit in the hospital. This all happened the night right after my surgery. It was all about him and making him happy. I was never allowed the time to be happy, or the means.

I cut myself off from support when people told me I should leave him. I stuffed my feelings until I didn't feel like myself. I tried to save him instead of just leaving. Even now, after everything he's done to me, I still wonder if there was anything more I could have done to make him happy all to the detriment of myself, my sanity and the relationship I had with my intution and Higher Power. I wanted to save him but I didn't want to save myself. I wasn't worth anything if he wasn't happy-- and he never let me forget this fact.

Two To Tango

I've found a new sponsor who is taking me through the steps. I've been in Alanon for ten years now, but having a sponsor has been eye-opening. I can't believe I've waited this long for something so beneficial! We're tackling a particular problem through the steps because there is SOOOOO much in my life I need to change, but I am trying to learn to keep it simple and easy does it. The issue I'm working the steps on is the abusive relationship I just got out of with my ex-fiance of two years. This was the exercise she had me do this week:

I am powerless over what my ex, my ex's friends and my ex's family think of me.

How has it affected my life?
In the beginning of our friendship, even before we were dating, he told me that if I didn't do what he wanted (and I'm sure he was suggesting sexual things with his tone of words in that conversation), he would turn all our friends against me. I stayed in the relationship for far too long, not just because I was afraid of losing him but because I didn't want to be completely alone. I didn't want to get abandoned by our friends. I was scared I would have no one after my family died. I wanted everyone to just like me so I didn't rock the boat.

They all hate me now anyway, because their opinions are theirs and theirs alone. I feel kind of paranoid, but I think everyone in our social circle back on Long Island believes I was the wrong one because I stood up and said I couldn't take it anymore. The hate has spiraled me into a very deep depression where I feel like everyone is either a liar or an outright asshole. Not having people to turn to when going through something like that was one of the most heart-wrenching things about the situation. I did lose a lot of friends through his lies and the rumors that spread about me. Some of these people I had known for over a decade, so it really hurt to have them turn against me.

I've heard people call me “crazy” or say “you must have done something to cause him to be this angry” or tell me that the bruises on my body were not that bad and I was over-exaggerating and other misogynistic things. It dragged me back to the 1950s. It made me feel helpless, like even if they knew they still didn't care. And then I wondered how much I should care about myself then if so many people seemed to think it was okay for me to be abused. It made my self-esteem plummet.

The one girl who did stand by me very fiercely, because she had been in a similar situation and knew enough about victim blaming to see what was going on and had seen how he acted, was brought down right along side of me. She lost a couple of friends because she stood by my side and even if these people were jerks and she says she doesn't mind losing them, I still feel terribly guilty for having them cast her out alongside me.



What did I contribute to it?
I've turned the victim blaming internal, rehashing old memories to see if it was really all my fault and if I deserved to get abused-- not just by my ex, but by every single person who has ever hurt me-- giving their words power to hurt me even now.

I've fought against the tide of everyone else's opinion by throwing verbal temper tantrums, trying to get other people to see the truth and do something about it, writing message after emotional hangover message to try to get them to change their mind about him, me and us.

I make it affect me-- if I hear he's happy and he's hanging out with his friends more now, I take that as a testament to my own happiness. I don't believe we can both be happy at the same time. Someone has to be wrong, someone has to be right and there is black and white sides to choose from. I've made some of our mutual friends choose between us because I didn't feel safe around them because I thought they believed him.

When everyone was telling me I was over-exaggerating, it brought me back to so many other people who had disbelieved me too-- friends that I lost because of rumors and the gossip mill in years past. Shaina, one of my best friends, tried to explain to me that I have a very low charisma score and I don't always say things in the right way even when I'm correct, so that was probably why I didn't get along with so many people. I lose it sometimes and once people cross over my threshold for idiocy, I tell them straight to their faces exactly what I think of them-- which was another problem in the social group at the time. Once my ex got them to disbelieve me and I knew they weren't going to listen to me anyway, I was a raving bitch to them which did not prove my point that I was sane.

After one fight with my ex, when I finally said I might call the police, I was so strung out by his physical abuse (this was the time he pointed an “unloaded” gun at me), that I lost it. I cut myself in front of him, and he called the police and had me sent to the psych ward. I was released within the hour when I talked to the doctors there and they realized I was a cutter and not suicidal-- but I did this to myself. After he told everyone what had happened, which is why I think he called the police in the first place since it made him look like the good guy, no one wanted to believe me about anything. We were both pretty crazy at the time, but I was openly crazy. He kept his crazy behind closed doors. I did overly dramatic things to cause people to look at me. I'm a bit of a drama queen. That hasn't changed all that much. I recently deleted everyone off my Facebook and sent everyone goodbye notes just because I wanted to test them to see if they were 'mutual friends' or just 'his friends'.

There were other times when I forced myself to pretend to be overly sane and happy, just so people would think I was well-adjusted. I was going to make everyone think I was a good person if I plastered a fake smile on my face and drove myself crazy doing it. If I could get everyone to think I was the sane one, obviously then he would be the crazy one. It was all or nothing thinking, black and white-- we were both pretty nuts in different ways. He was abusive, but I was depressive and drama queen-esque.

I shouldn't let what other people think or say about me affect me as much as it does. It only gives them more power. It allowed him to hurt me more once he knew my friends and social group were so important to me. It allows him to hurt me now even when he's not in my life because I take things in and ruminate on them for several hours, or even days, at a time. I can never be free if I let people control me-- if I give them too much time out of my day, then I'm handing them over the power to ruin my day.