abuse

I have a scary confession to make; I've spent the last five years in an abusive relationship, and in the last two months I've finally chosen myself and left. Wow.. it feels empowering to say that.

Abuse can take many forms and it's only in the time since I left that I see in hindsight just how insidious it can be. I've only spoken to a limited number of people in my immediate circle about this and it feels scary to talk about it publicly but my hope is that in some small way it may help others open their eyes to their own situations and hopefully help them see that there is hope beyond the darkness.

Her and I met at a weird time in both of our lives; we were both unhappily married and I see now that we each thought the other person was the answer to all of our problems, an unhealthy perspective on which to build a relationship. When we met I was in the midst of moving overseas for a work assignment and it set up a perfect situation for me to fall for someone I never should have been with; the loneliness and isolation of being alone overseas paired with the distance made it easy to project onto her who I wanted her to be instead of allowing me to clearly see who she was.

The long distance and emotionally turbulent circumstances of ending our previous marriages created a perfect storm; I was incredibly lonely and looking for comfort and the craziness of the situation made it easy for me to write off a lot of her behavior as a result of the situation. As red flag after red flag arose I continued to convince myself that it was purely a result of the crazy situation we found ourselves in, and not in fact an issue that would continue on even after the dust settled. There were extreme instances of jealousy, hysterical freak outs, screaming matches, constant accusations of unfaithfulness, emotional manipulation, accusations of things not remotely grounded in reality, and physical violence.

At the time I kept convincing myself that her behavior was a result of what we were going through; surely once I moved back to the states things would get better. Surely once my divorce was finalized her insecurities would dissipate. Surely once I proposed she would feel secure in my love for her, or once we were married, or bought a house together. I see now that I kept moving the goalposts on when she would finally be happy and secure instead of recognizing that she was simply incredibly insecure and had an unhealthy attachment style that included gaslighting, manipulation, making me chase her ceaselessly, and emotional unavailability.

I see now that I had given up so much to be with her that it made me that much more determined to make things work; in my mind I couldn't end the relationship because I would be proving all the people who had thought I was crazy accurate. I've also learned over the last year through therapy and reflection that I have a savior complex, and the more damaged I realized she was, the more determined I was to fix her and us, through sheer force of will and love. I was determined to make things better, to save the day, to save us. But people cannot be saved by other people, I've learned that the very hard way. People have to save themselves.. from themselves. No one else can do that work for them. I know.. I spent five years trying.

As our relationship progressed there was a troubling pattern that emerged; she would often become hysterical about anything that threatened her, and due to her deep insecurities this included almost everything. In order to avoid dealing with the emotional explosions, I coped by not bringing up the touchy topics, and over time I whittled myself down to a ghost of my former self. Eventually, everything was off limits to bring up for fear of a fight. I stopped reaching out to friends to catch up after she repeatedly told me that I 'talked on the phone more than any man she ever knew'. I left my successful career to freelance because any time I had a female on my team she would flip out about any interaction I had with them and tell me that I was in love with them. I cut off my own mother and sister because she felt threatened by them and was convinced they would convince me to leave. My own mother and sister. I didn't meet my three nieces and nephews until two months ago because she wouldn't allow it. Even my relationship with my daughters was suffering; she was deeply jealous of me being close with them so I pulled back and had basically no relationship with them for the last five years. I can recall laying in bed wondering how long I could let that go on, knowing that I couldn't allow it to continue throughout their childhood. I couldn't be a terrible father and let them grow up with the same issues she did due to her unavailable father.

As time passed my mental health began to suffer greatly. The years of abuse and gaslighting led me to believe that I was genuinely losing my mind, though I knew it was due to the FunHouse that I was living in. My feelings were disregarded daily, nothing I felt was ever validated, and any conversation I wanted to have about things like parenting or finances were met with cold, callous responses, or emotional unavailability. One of her favorite moves was to simply leave the room and walk away if I brought up something that she wasn't comfortable discussing, and this included basically everything. Towards the end of our relationship she developed a scary fixation with astrology and other new age beliefs; her new favorite way of avoiding conversation was to tell me that our 'energy wasn't on the same level' and she couldn't allow herself to be around someone with a lower vibrational frequency so we couldn't talk about whatever I was trying to communicate with her about; it was gaslighting of the most incredible kind.

Thankfully, I've been talking to a therapist for the last year and through that journey I came to terms with just how unhealthy the relationship and her behavior was, as well as the fact that it wasn't likely to change any time soon. After a particularly bizarre episode on Halloween something inside of me clicked; I was completely at peace with leaving and with acknowledging that I had done everything humanly possible to make it work. I could leave and still look myself in the mirror proud of how hard I tried to make it work. The truth is, relationships should be net positives in our life. They should be uplifting, edifying. The people we choose to have in our lives should encourage us to be better versions of ourselves and rejoice in our growth and successes, not try to keep us locked into a cage.

I have a tremendous amount of damage to undo in myself and I know it will take years of work and honest reflection to get back into a truly healthy place, but I couldn't be more excited about doing the work and continuing to remember the amazing person I am. I've lost sight of that for five years, and that's five years too long.