Abuse patterns or fear with a new partner?

[stargazer lily]

I feel very confused and have found it very difficult to write this post. It’s my first time to write on this forum which I have found very useful to read sometimes.

I experienced a period of just under (detail removed by Moderator) of domestic abuse with my previous partner, which has been hard to process. It has been (detail removed by Moderator) since she ended our (detail removed by Moderator) year relationship and we have limited contact now. I have started regular therapy. Part of my process was having horrible nightmares in which I am the abuser, and repeating aggressive speech and violence towards my ex, and more recently towards my current partner. These nightmares make me feel very uncomfortable, and I often wake up hating myself and blaming myself for the abuse. My therapist explains that it is a projection of my deepest fears, and waking up to a new consciousness of the darkness that can exist within others and the potential that it exists within ourselves. This initially brought some understanding and peace.

Since (detail removed by Moderator) I have started dating someone new. I have told her all about the abuse, and she has been very supportive, and accepted many things – finding it hard to trust, having fears about triggers from the past. She works in the same organisation as my ex, and has to travel for work sometimes. With my ex, our mutual need to travel for work, often to emotionally challenging places, caused so much stress and was one of the main triggers for my ex’s increasingly erratic and violent behaviour towards me.

When a new job came up for my current partner, she mentioned it might have more travel, and at first all I wanted was to be supportive. I explained what the difficulties were for me and my ex, and we moved on to feeling excited about this great opportunity for her. That night I had a series of nightmares and felt very disorientated. It took a few days of feeling very destablized to realise I was panicking about what this meant. I felt like I was going back into the same situation, I was angry at myself for struggling with this roadblock, and I felt hurt that my current partner had brought this trigger into our relationship. It was irrational and heavy and I felt post traumatic stress.

I tried to explain to my partner in a message that I was finding it hard, and she wanted to see me. But while I could not see a way forward, and had my doubts, and this stress, I did not feel I could see her or talk about this. I tried to explain this, and encouraged her to take time for her and to make the best application she could for the job. She was also returning home after the holidays so I knew this was not a great “homecoming”, to present her with my stress from trauma that had nothing to do with her.

She interpreted this as a “break up” message. She responded that she had reached the same conclusion, that it was the end of our relationship, which shocked and confused me. I went to her house to see if she was ok and to ask her why she wanted to break up, and explained several times that I was not breaking up with her. She told me it was a misunderstanding several times, did not want to break up, and she wanted to keep talking, but that she felt she could not reassure me to be in a relationship that could cause me pain. I felt very confused and she seemed confused so we agreed to take some space and talk in a week.

In the week I felt detached and clear in my mind that this sudden decision of hers was quite worrying, so I decided I would try to find out what was really going on. We spoke again after a week and she seemed so sad, explaining that she was sorry for mistaking my message, and she was scared we would hurt each other with this travel. She also said she could not always see beyond herself and she found it hard to let people all the way in. She is herself recovering from traumas from (detail removed by Moderator) ago, the loss of her mother and a abusive relationship which led to anorexia. She wanted to know if I could be with someone like that. She also asked for a week more space so she could work out what she could offer the relationship. I felt so sorry for her, and sad for her, and made us both dinner.

But one week later, after this second week apart, she invited me to her house and she was very different, quite cold and hard, and told me she had felt very disorientated and lost her sense of self and trust in her perceptions when she misread my original message. She said she was sure it had been a break up message. I explained again that it had not been, and that those were my fears. But I also told her that I recognized that feeling of feeling disorientated from the year before, and she asked me for details, so I told her about the “gas lighting” I had experienced in my relationship with my ex. After a while she asked me, in a very hard way, “does that not really scare you?”. My immediate response was total shock, and she asked me if I saw patterns of abuse from my past relationship in ours, and I did not. I saw a misunderstanding and me trying to stop fears from the past jeaopardize this new relationship or an accidental breakup. I told her that this idea of repeating abuse does terrify me though, as my nightmares and therapy process have shown me, and as I have told her in the past. I felt so misunderstood and could not understood how she could invite me into her home if she felt I was capable of deliberately or unknowingly trying to distort her perceptions. She said “am I not allowed to ask?” in a very hard way, which I found awful. As if someone’s deepest fears can be thrown at them in this accusing way. I left quickly after she said she did not trust me. I felt so disappointed that this was the end of our relationship, and shocked that this was happening.

This idea of repeating abuse does terrify me. I felt accused of “gaslighting” and it has made me question myself quite deeply. I want to be responsible and address her concerns, and at the same time I feel so shocked by the suggestion. I have since talked to my friends and family, who are all so shocked. They say it was an unfounded and careless point to drop into a breakup conversation, and I know in myself there was no deception, no manipulation or bad will on my side, only hurt that she was ready to end the relationship without proper discussion. There was no space to listen or understand, only an accusing look on her face and a coldness I found so destabilising. She told me too that she had never had to communicate so much in a relationship, which hurt me too, because I felt we had not communicated enough about many things. And I am under the impression that you can never communicate enough to understand and care for someone you love, which she said she did.

I am so confused and would welcome any insight if anyone has experienced something similar.

[Lisa]

Hi stargazer lily,

Welcome to the Forum and thank you for sharing with us. I hope you find the Forum a supportive place with others who understand what you have been through and how you are feeling.

It is great to hear you have started therapy and I hope it continues to help you. Have you contacted your local support group as well? They can often offer ongoing emotional and practical support which you might find helpful. You can find your local group here.

It can be an emotional rollercoaster after a relationship and it is natural to question things. Lean on all of the support around you, be kind to yourself and take time to recover.

Keep posting to us when you can, it can really help to offload here.

Best wishes,

Lisa

[SunshineRainflower]

Hi Stargazer lily,

It sounds like this new partner is maybe not the right one for you, as you keep having communication problems and misunderstandings. I was a little confused about some of the story but what I got from it is that you did not at all like the way she spoke to you, that she misunderstood you, misinterpreted you and was cold and unsupportive. It may also be that she is not capable of a relationship at the moment due to her own issues and traumas. I agree that it is not a good sign if she is saying things like ‘she’s never had to communicate so much before.’ My ex said he’d ‘never had to talk about exes’ as much as he did with me and I am pretty sure it was because he was super defensive and hiding what had happened with exes and exes he was probably still involved with. The trouble with a partner saying something like this is that it shuts down the conversation and you no longer feel you can communicate openly with them, which is a definite red flag.

I think the nightmares and your feelings are a sign of where you are at. I had nightmares and terrible anxiety with my ex that at the time made no sense but later realised he was lying to me, gaslighting me and cheating on me which I think my gut was picking up on. I’m not saying that is happening to you, but it suggests you are unhappy and unsettled, so listen to that.

Obviously only you can decide this but I think it might be best to have a period of being single while you are in therapy, because it sounds like you haven’t healed the traumas from the previous relationship and it is spilling over into this new one, which doesn’t sound like it is going well either. Even if you found the most wonderful partner in the world, it would be hard to have a healthy relationship when you are carrying a lot of fear and unhealed pain.

Keep posting for support, it is so hard healing from abuse but everyone here understands what it is like.

[stargazer lily]

Hi SunshineRain flower,

Thanks so much for reading my post and sharing your experience, I really appreciate your perspective. So much of what you says rings true, and I agree that it is hard to have a healthy relationship with so much fear and unhealed pain still present. I’m sorry you also faced nightmares, anxiety and similar shutdowns about communication. In the final conversation I described above, my partner told me we communicate “spectacularly badly” with such anger that I felt really small in that moment, and my words so useless. It was then impossible to respond to her suggestion that I was bringing this specific abuse pattern from the past into our new relationship, which I knew was not my reality, even if it was her perception. I felt like I’d walked into a trap in which everything I said would be wrong and the only way out was to say as little as possible and leave. It felt very unsafe and hostile. Did you ever feel like that?

I thought I had learnt from staying in a violent relationship so long that our gut is so often telling us what we need to know, and I felt like that was a solid understanding I had found within myself. But now I feel like it must be more of a process. I have felt for a while, even from the start of this new relationship, that it might be too soon to be in a relationship again, with these unexpected returns of anxiety and nightmares. There was some resistance to that gut feeling because my new partner would listen and be understanding when I felt a trigger or fear, and would ask me regularly if I felt it was too soon, and that if so she could wait 6 months if I needed time, which seemed really considerate, and I felt safe within that understanding. At some point I doubted it a bit, as I felt it always came up in hard moments where we had to communicate about our fears and feelings, and 6 months always seemed like quite a specific time frame. But I also understand, not everyone wants to communicate all the time, especially as it might have been touching parts of her own trauma she did not wish to look at.

Can I ask how you started trusting your gut again?

[SunshineRainflower]

Hi Stargazer,

I am still learning to listen to my gut again, as I am still grieving for my ex (the person I thought he was) and not yet ready to date again. But I practice it everyday in non-relationship situations, for example if I meet someone or go somewhere and get an unexplained bad vibe, I trust that rather than try to second guess myself. I think the gut speaks to us clearly most of the time, but usually we don’t feel comfortable with what it has to say and ignore it, and only later realise it was right. It’s actually very hard to always go with your gut because it can cause a lot of embarassment, such as abruptly leaving a location or ending a conversation – we feel rude and awkward, but I am practicing listening to it daily and remind myself that it is 100 times better to feel rude than end up a victim of some crime.

I know what you mean about walking into a trap, my ex did that a few times and think he would have continued to do it much more had I stayed. I think he built up things he could use against me in future arguments, like ammunition. For example, very early on in the relationship, he took a day off work to be with me. At the time I had said that it would be nice to spend the day with him, but that it was completely his decision, and I had no idea what his work or boss was like so it was in no way my choice to make. If it had been the other way round, I would have either taken the day off or not, but I would have accepted responsibility for it. At the time he said it was his choice and that he wanted to stay with me and didn’t blame me at all, and all seemed well.

However months later, as if on cue, he brought it up again. He said that he was ‘an adult and could make his own decisions’ but something like ‘but I took the day off for you and I hadn’t taken a day off in years’ whilst angrily glaring at me. It was weird and eerie, I couldn’t believe he would bring it up, turn it around and use it against me. I am now pretty sure he took the day off to store up as ammunition against me in case he ‘needed it to win arguments’ (in his mind). These types of people love it when others are ‘indebted’ to them as it gives them an enormous amount of power to manipulate, guilt trip, blame and blackmail.

I would give this new partner a wide berth if they are doing things like this, making you feel uncomfortable, tricked etc. It is not healthy and shows a competitive communication style rather than a collaborative one.

[stargazer lily]

Hi SunshineRain flower,

Thanks so much again for sharing your experience and insight, I had never come across the concepts of competitive communication and collaborative communication before. I’ve been reading about the two and it was really interesting to think about. I can definitely see a competitive communication style in my new partner (now ex), which I think has been developed through extremely hierarchical work places, including the current one, and a lack of opportunity to develop the collaborative communication – she always says her exes never asked her much, in her family people didn’t talk about their feelings, and as I said before, she had never had to communicate so much in a relationship before. I think I was aware of this, without these definitions of communications styles, and sympathetic for a long time. But having been on the receiving end of this competitive communication style while trying to be open and collaborative myself, I can see how it is not a healthy, safe or kind way to be with someone. It certainly leaves a feeling of such discomfort.

I’m grateful for your honesty about the struggle to listen to yourself too, I find it so hard. But your daily practice sounds great, and it so true what you say: it is 100 times better to appear rude or abrupt than be a victim of some crime. I suppose that is the body’s own protective alarm system, and if we listen to it we can remove ourselves from danger. But there are so many social niceties/norms that make it hard to do sometimes, especially if you hate confrontation or don’t like to “rock the boat”. I’m going to start making a practice of that too.

This story of indebtedness sounds so uncomfortable, and I think that although it must be really hard, it’s good that you can identify this in your ex’s behaviour. Identifying seems to be the hardest part sometimes, even looking back with time and space. I hope that trusting that spooky feeling, and oneself, takes more and more priority, starting with this daily practice.

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