Life after emotional abuse?

ChrisJJ

melloecastro wrote: »

Keep the faith that there are amazing people out there. My ex was controlling, emotionally cold but it took me a long while to see it. I found out I was pregnant, he responded by saying some very hurtful things but that day something snapped in me and I didn't beg him to come back as I did before. Sadly I miscarried, it was a sad time but I would not want to have brought a child into that situation. He tried again to control me after we split and it was hard to not be fearful but I overcame it and met someone amazing. When I say how amazing he is he reminds me that this is normal behaviour. You deserve more than that and it is not your fault. Value each day moving forward as you are on the road to freedom! Sending positive thoughts and a hug!

Well done, melloecastro, for making that break. What you say about not begging him to come back rings true with me: I've spent so much time begging him, only to have him walk out on me, twist what I say, refuse to engage - never again. I'm so glad you've found someone you're happy with and reminds you what 'normal' is - that's one of the things I wanted to be reassured about, I guess, that it IS possible.

If you don't mind my asking, was your new partner understanding of your fearfulness, if you ever exhibited it around him?

That's something I'm concerned about as have had so little understanding from the man who caused it, it's hard to see how any other man would understand!

ChrisJJ

sarahj1986 wrote: »

OP,

I'm approaching a year since I split with my abusive ex and it's the best thing I ever did. I got together with her at 17 (she was 19) and I was besotted but slowly over time she began to control me and ridicule me constantly. Just before I ended it I contemplated suicide, I didn't want to be with her anymore but she made me feel so worthless and useless that I wouldn't be able to cope without her. One Saturday morning something inside me just flipped, I was 27 and I was acting like my life was over, I'd resigned myself to this fate. I decided that no I wasn't going to stand for it and I left. I no live with my most beautiful kind and caring boyfriend who was there to help me through things. We had a mortgage and flat together and finally after nearly 9 months from the split the sale completed and I haven't seen her since. It's left with me with a joint debt of £22k that I don't expect her ever to pay, nor will I contact her about it because I'd rather pay it and be free and never speak to her again than have her pay her share and still be in contact.

OP, you are so brave in facing up to the relationship being abusive. It took me nearly 10 years to realise it and as mentioned above it brought me down to the depths if despair and depression but you will get through it

Sarahj1986, so glad to hear of someone else who's found happiness with a partner after an abusive relationship. And I can't blame you one jot for not contacting your ex re the debt: so much healthier to move forward without her in your life. I wish you luck

marisco_2

ChrisJJ wrote: »

I've been shaking all day and almost had a heart attack today when a plastic bag glided up to me on the breeze! :rotfl: It's because my senses are so heightened. I can smile about it now, but really, when I realised it was just a plastic bag I nearly started crying!!

Ah bless you, it is very natural to feel really on edge and jumpy at first. Your honesty gave me goose bumps. I remember in the early days after leaving my marriage, a car horn going off by me which made me dissolve into floods of tears and shake. My nerves had been shattered.

Even now nearly 9 years on I cant be around anyone who appears to be volatile. Raised voices or people losing control scare the life out of me because I don't trust how far things may escalate. Logic tells me that few if any people would lose it as my ex was capable of doing. Still I have to move away and distance myself.

melloecastro

He has been a saint! He was there for me throughout it all. Post-the miscarriage/when the calls continued from the ex. I have learnt to just be very honest with him and was honest from the day we met about what had happened. We rarely argue but if he does raise his voice I just remind him that I react badly and how it makes me feel. You never know what's round the corner but he has restored my faith in myself as well as in men! Sad thing is that if I hadn't had that pregnancy I probably would never have had the courage to leave my ex. What I have learnt is that the right person allows you to be you, accepts you as you are and allows you to be free. I finally felt freedom and regardless of what happens in the future I will never let that happen to me again (I hope). I refuse to be bitter any more or think did I waste time which is easy to do. It was a big life lesson and it changed me but I like to think for the better. Not going to say it was easy and yes sometimes I have been annoyed with myself for letting it happen to me but I have realised from seeing what has happened to my friends is that it does happen a lot and it was not my fault as it was not yours.

melloecastro

Anything you need to ask just ask away. It does get easier and it does help to talk about it with people who know what it is like. I have been very honest with all my friends family and work colleagues about what happened to me as I want to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else I know. I refused and still do refuse to feel ashamed about what happened as he was not normal and I did nothing wrong. I empathise with everyone else as it seems to innocuous at the time- criticises your driving, cooking, weight, clothes. the moody silences. You start to think is it me? But it really isn't. Trust me! I lost 1.5 stones in weight too!

ChrisJJ

Thanks, melloecastro, yes, it does help to talk to people who've been through the same situations.

I guess I'm still struggling when I hear what other people have been through as he never criticised anything about me in the usual ways, apart from me always "going on and on" about things. Me going "on and on" was in fact my attempting to resolve a nasty situation. Trying futilely to engage in constructive dialogue. It was ALWAYS my fault when things dragged on. Nothing to do with him being unable to calm down and stop shouting at me or saying ridiculously unhelpful things. Of course.

Yes, I should've walked away....hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was always so convinced that communication was the key to everything that I persisted long after I should have given up. It led to a breakdown and I still have recovery from that to work on as well as the loss of someone I loved.

But when I start to question whether it was abuse....I will recall the snapping at me, the moods that spoilt pleasant situations, the glaring, the belittling of me when I begged him to comfort me, not leave, don't shout at me, please listen, and the hard stares (and not the lovely Paddington ones, either) with arms folded, the finger tapping, the foot tapping, the intterupting me after I was barely two words into a sentence (if he didn't like the words I'd used) and the lack of compassion.

Whew. Gosh, where did that come from?? Must be cathartic, eh??

Thanks all

Blackpool_Saver

ChrisJJ wrote: »

Thanks, melloecastro, yes, it does help to talk to people who've been through the same situations.

I guess I'm still struggling when I hear what other people have been through as he never criticised anything about me in the usual ways, apart from me always "going on and on" about things. Me going "on and on" was in fact my attempting to resolve a nasty situation. Trying futilely to engage in constructive dialogue. It was ALWAYS my fault when things dragged on. Nothing to do with him being unable to calm down and stop shouting at me or saying ridiculously unhelpful things. Of course.

Yes, I should've walked away....hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was always so convinced that communication was the key to everything that I persisted long after I should have given up. It led to a breakdown and I still have recovery from that to work on as well as the loss of someone I loved.

But when I start to question whether it was abuse....I will recall the snapping at me, the moods that spoilt pleasant situations, the glaring, the belittling of me when I begged him to comfort me, not leave, don't shout at me, please listen, and the hard stares (and not the lovely Paddington ones, either) with arms folded, the finger tapping, the foot tapping, the intterupting me after I was barely two words into a sentence (if he didn't like the words I'd used) and the lack of compassion.

Whew. Gosh, where did that come from?? Must be cathartic, eh??

Thanks all

It's all so clear now isn't it........... let it out, all of it, when I read that last paragraph I found myself gasping for breath again like I used to when I was trying to make my ex see sense, fighting desperately to make the !!!!!!! listen, he was never going to, he knew exactly what he was doing, it's all deliberate and it does send you crazy. it really does.

newnameforthis

May I give a view from another side?

I know a girl who is in the periphery of my friends and we were on nodding terms as she seems to push people away. Recently got talking to her and things between us sort of just clicked - not in a bf/gf sense- but in making a strong connection with another person.

Now for some reason we agreed to tell each other only the absolute truth, maybe it started as a game or fun idea, but I think we sort of felt safe talking to each other, however the talk got more serious than we anticipated. It turns out her ex-bf was such a controller, both physically and mentally abusing her.
Over an evening she told me of what had happened in her life, and me having lived a fairly normal life, it was pretty shocking.
I imagine a lot of guys would run away as fast as they could as she refers to herself as being damaged, competely effed up, hurting everyone she touches. Her self-esteem was pretty low and she cant see why anyone would think she is anything other than a sl@g because thats what she has been told so many times by her ex-bf.

It turns out she's on quite a few meds to control depression and help her sleep. She doesn't handle crowds well. She has major mood swings and apparently cries in her sleep a lot. Her ex-bf basically almost broke her.

I'm not a psychiatrist or anything like that - she's seen her fill of those and hates them - but what she wanted more than anything else was for someone to listen without judging her while she poured her heart out. She had been bottling things up for about a year, with friends not wanting to hear it or telling her that it's just the way it is for girls like them.

Talking with her, listening to her, she's a really moral, caring, generous person. Yet she has had her personality broken down over the years, and even physical "marking" so she always remembers.

Talking with her isn't easy, it's raw human emotion, and it hurts. More than a few times we both end up just crying, but for some reason I don't mind.
I only tell her the truth as I see it, no games, and she trusts me enough to just say how she feels. it's something she needs to work through slowly as it hurts her talking about it, but also clears her head and she gets positive reinforcement that it wasn't her at fault. I try to help her see that she has really good qualities about her and that she is a really decent, pretty, honest, kind girl. I see something inside her, her spirit or soul or whatever, and just try to nurture this battered thing and coax it out from behind its protective barriers.

The other day she was staying at her mums, and her mum said it was nice to hear her giggling in her sleep instead of crying.
That lasted a few days before she dropped into another depression.

As friends all we can do is listen and support, catch you when you fall, support you when you try. But it's hard.
I don't know why i didn't run, like I say we got a connection for some reason, and she has my full permission to emotionally bombard me.
I don't know how many of you trust another person to tell them everything that happened and how you feel, or how much trust is needed, but you do need to have someone to stand by you who knows.

It really is baby steps for her. You can't just turn off years of abuse.
When we talk i sometimes say something that, in hindsight, is insensitive. But she likes that I don't try censoring what i say, but just say what I feel.
We don't say sorry to each other either now, that stopped fairly quickly as you end up apologising after every other sentence.

Knowing her history, could i fall in love with a girl like her?
Easily. Her history doesn't seem to matter to me for some reason.
She is who she is, not what she's been through.

74jax

ChrisJJ wrote: »

If you don't mind my asking, was your new partner understanding of your fearfulness, if you ever exhibited it around him?

That's something I'm concerned about as have had so little understanding from the man who caused it, it's hard to see how any other man would understand!

Like I said I met my next partner quite by chance so shortly after and I was a pain in the [EMAIL="a@se"]a@se[/EMAIL] to him.. I didn't know what a normal relationship was, without 'drama' and arguments all the time. I used to play games with him - testing him - as it was all I knew for 2 years previously (even though i'd had normal relationships before that one....).

Several year's later we happened to be talking and he left room, he grabed the door to tight and slammed it shut. The feeling was horrendous, just a slamming door - and this was several years later - it prompted a thread on here from me along the lines of do you ever forget. That feeling of the door being slammed stayed with me for a good 3 weeks, I couldn't sleep properly again, all from him slamming a door. We talked, i showed him the thread on here and what others said etc and we just agreed if we ever argued he wouldn't slam the door as although he would be mad at me (about silly things 'normal' relationships have) slamming the door to me is obviously very different to him.

You have to find someone who will have the time to understand what you've been through. I was VERY lucky. At the time we first started going out, I still had panic buttons and alarms in my house, the house was on police red alert and I was going through a nasty court case with my ex. Someone who can put up with that is worth keeping - but at the time I couldn't see it.

ChrisJJ

[QUOTE=newnameforthis;67851847
It really is baby steps for her. You can't just turn off years of abuse.
When we talk i sometimes say something that, in hindsight, is insensitive. But she likes that I don't try censoring what i say, but just say what I feel.
We don't say sorry to each other either now, that stopped fairly quickly as you end up apologising after every other sentence.

Knowing her history, could i fall in love with a girl like her?
Easily. Her history doesn't seem to matter to me for some reason.
She is who she is, not what she's been through.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, newname, I appreciate your input. It's great that your friend has you to be there to support her. Hopefully in time she can build herself back up, regain her self esteem and realise that she's a wonderful person (as you can already see) who deserves more.

Thank you.