Listening to the Dear Sugar podcast episode about emotional abuse, a year after I finally left him.
When I was with him, I have a clear memory of reading an Alice Munro short story called Runaway and feeling deeply sad, knowing that I related too much to it. Listening to Dear Sugar episode on emotional abuse years later, the episode was a word for word depiction of my relationship. They even read passages from Runaway as a textbook example of emotional abuse. I had twisted and doubted my memories of the relationship when I was with him and after, but that moment made it so brilliantly clear that I had been mistreated and was right to leave him.
I realized I had been in a relationship where I had been gaslighted almost daily. I finally knew I wasn’t crazy and the emotional pain I was always feeling was justified. Didn’t know any of this until after I shed my final tear over him.
Unfortunately, yes. It really hit me when I saw the same exact behaviors in other couples and I thought how abusive it was. It took having him completely out of my life to realize that being “petty” when he didn’t get his way or throwing my phone (and breaking it) when I ignored him wasn’t normal. Looking back, I can’t believe I was in a relationship with someone so toxic for so long.
Second the therapy comment. I went to therapy after a ~bad~ breakup. I knew the relationship itself had been bad for a long time, but none of the behaviors were so blatantly abusive that I ever thought to classify them that way.
The therapist I started seeing post-breakup asked me to start journaling about the biggest fights my boyfriend and I had gotten into, how I felt during/after those fights, and what stopped me from leaving after every one of them.
I honestly like to think of myself as pretty emotionally self-aware (I also have a masters in social work), but when I say it literally did not click until I did this activity, I mean it. I started noticing some flags when I was writing, but when I talked to my therapist about one of the bigger fights we’d gotten into she asked me something along the lines of “are you familiar with what compensatory behavior is?” and I was just like “OH, FUCK. I DO KNOW AND THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE NOW.”
It completely changed the way I processed the relationship and it’s end, and helped me understand so much more about myself and others in romantic partnerships.
PTSD. Something really traumatic happened while we were still together. It wasn’t exactly his fault, but I have a very strong association between that event and my ex. Broke up about a year later. About another year after that, which was just recently, I started to process my PTSD. It just hit me like a ton of bricks.
I realized that what he was doing wasn’t just being an asshole. He wasn’t just being cheap. It was constant gaslighting and selfishness and never changing his behavior. It was financial abuse. He put me thousands of dollars in debt and never cared. He felt entitled to my property, my money, and my credit. He would guilt me if I tried to put my foot down about money. “Well how am I supposed to get to work? I dont have gas.” As if it were my responsibility.. I never even got a thank you.
I’m doing EMDR therapy which is helping realize that I repressed my real feelings for the 4 years we were together. Actually saying it all out loud to a therapist made me realize how bad it was. I just felt so strongly about him and it hurt too much to accept how awful he was to me. So I blocked it out. I disassociated a lot. I got drunk or high a lot. Anything to not have to face the fact that it was abusive. I would have sworn it wasn’t, at the time.
It all just hit me at once during a therapy session. I literally froze mid-sentence and said “oh my god.. This is abuse isn’t it? That was an abusive relationship..” My therapist was like YUP.