Because I will be admitting that I stayed in a relationship with someone who destroyed parts of me.
And not only did I stay with him. I defended him. I accepted the fact that it was all my fault and that I deserved everything I got.
When we began dating, everything was wonderful. But after a few months, things started getting sour. We started to fight more and more. But I ignored it. I had never been in a serious relationship before, so I thought disagreements came with the territory.
I guess disagreements do... What happened with us.... shouldn't have.
I am a very stubborn person. But I hate yelling and swearing. When I was little my dad used to lose his temper a lot (now he is a big old softy, and I haven't heard him raise his voice in years) so I developed a fear of it.
When someone starts yelling at me, I shut down. I stop talking, looking at the person yelling, and I start apologizing profusely.
I don't know when it started, but I turned into my guy's punching bag.
If I said or did the wrong thing, he would yell and scream... swear... call me names. He had lists of things I was doing wrong. And no matter how I tried to change for him, I could never be good enough to make the anger stop.
He didn't like my family to be around when he lost his temper, so he would take me for long drives where he would rip me apart. I had to sit and listen because I had no where to go.
Just talking about this makes me cry.
What makes this so hard, is that he never thought he was doing anything wrong.
He would say things like, "I had a bad day at work, you should be understanding."
"You are pushing my buttons on purpose."
"You want to make me mad."
I never did anything to defend myself, which made him mad a lot of times. But after my childhood experiences, arguing back was extremely difficult for me. So I just sat and took it.
There were 3 times I did fight back, however.
He said something really rude about my mom. I slapped him. I could have cared less what he said about me, but how dare he say anything about her.
He started horrible things about me and a date I was planning to surprise him. It was after a long day of abuse and I was mentally tired. I was trying to do nice things for him, but I still wasn't good enough. I dumped a 32 oz drink on him. We were in my car and he freaked. He pulled over and I tried to run away because I knew what was coming. Luckily some people drove by and saw what was going on. They kept asking if I was ok and asking if I wanted them to call the cops. I should have said yes, but he kept telling them that I was mentally disabled and he was the only one who knew how to deal with me. Ouch. We almost broke up that night. Now I wish we did.
Last, after he called me stupid in front of my entire extended family on a vacation I had invited him to. I was hurt and ran into my room. Of course he followed me, yelling and screaming about how I made him look bad. I pushed him.
I feel terrible for these 3 things. It shows how immature I was (and can be). But sometimes it was hard to take everything in he was saying about me and believe it.
Now I can see the toll those 20 some odd months played on me.
I am not the same person I was when I met him. I am not the naive little girl who thought so highly of herself.
I feel ruined. I don't trust myself. I don't like myself. And even though I know it isn't true, I feel like all of this is my fault.
He used to say that he was the only person who would ever put up with me; that no one else would ever want to be in a relationship with me.
He told me regularly I was lucky because he wasn't like most men. He would put up with my issues.
As I write this, I worry that this was all in my head. But I know it isn't. He just had a way of making me think that everything was my fault. That he was perfect. And that I was the one with the problems.
It's really hard to write. It is really hard to not believe that is true.
I never thought I had issues until he came into my life. I didn't think I was such a bad person until I listened to him tell me that everyday... and it had to be true, right? Otherwise he wouldn't lose his temper with me on a daily basis.
It is really hard to post this because I feel like I have barely touched the surface on our relationship or the abuse. And I am scared of what you will think.
Because I know what I think about myself.
I just wish I could make sense of all of this and just forget it.
And I wish I didn't believe him.
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