Feeling devastated that I might be in another abusive relationship.

[Hereforclarity]

I can’t believe I’m back here again. I’m so devastated at the idea I’ve invested a hope for a future with someone abusive again… and I want to be told I’m wrong.

I can’t really describe what’s going on and I feel like I’ve somehow been picking partners who have very similar characteristics… My current partner is very suffocating about what he believes is right and wrong and incredibly sensitive to feeling insulted.

We’ve essentially been getting into negative cycles of communication where I feel I’ve been just as unhelpful int he dynamic as he has. We even started speaking about our attachment styles recently… I’ve been identifying with being on the avoidant spectrum… I bought a book to try understand this more and have been working on hearing his feelings with more compassion and trying to look past the criticism. At the same time – it seems like he lands somewhere on the Anxious side of things – however he doesn’t seem to take his behaviour and the impacts of it very seriously… lately he’s been threatening to break up with me in almost every argument – tells me I’m disrespectful and rude if I say something about my feelings e.g. “I don’t trust you” or when I asked him not to grab me when he tried to pull me in for a hug.

I definitely could have been less blunt in those moments – and I can really empathise with how it can feel rejecting for him… but something seems to switch in him when he’s feeling “shut down” or not fully listened to. His biggest trigger is being dismissed in some way – I, granted have been defensive in moments when he’s been more critical and it starts a spiral… The thing is – this all sounds like normal (unhealthy) relationship dynamics. Then he tends to escalate  he then tends to get cruel, has been shouting at me, calling me names at times and monolguing these very intense and cruel speeches at me about what I did to hurt his feelings (in ways I don’t understand), he’s been swearing at me in times and when I say I can’t tolerate the shouting/intense anger – he kind of brushes it off as if to bring attention back to why he was so angry…

Recently there’s been numerous occasions while I’ve felt almost completely shut down when he intensifies (I was in a very emotionally abusive relationship for (timeframe removed by Moderator) years before this) and I tend to feel shaky, I start crying when he gets to that place where I can’t seem to access him anymore. He never responds to me crying, I’ve been almost besides myself whilst he’s been shouting at me or monologuing about his own feelings and then asks me to leave or leaves himself. It’s almost as if he thinks I’m trying to manipulate him or that my feelings aren’t real to him. I can’t fathom any other way someone would respond to someone so visibly upset in the way he does.

I’m feeling like I’ve got to leave and I’m devastated, He’s the only person I’ve ever started imagining the future with, the only person I’ve spoken with about having kids. I’m also now in my (age removed by Moderator) and feel like the idea of family is becoming more and more distant. I know it’s going to be a struggle to leave financially and the thought of it all overwhelms me to a point I’m not sure how I’d cope with it.

I don’t really know why I’m here. I almost want someone to tell me I’m being silly and it sounds like it can work out with some therapy or maybe I am the one creating the issues – so maybe I can work on it somehow. I just feel so alone and I don’t know what to do next.

[Twisted Sister]

Hi Hereforclarity

I’m hoping very much that in writing as you have, you will have found some way of confronting the challenges that your experience is making you live through. In many ways it often feels so much easier to have someone say that you are just being silly and it’s nothing really, but what you’ve written does hit really hard about how difficult and emotionally awful it is for you, and the sense of how impossible it is for you to cope with and keep living through.

Confronting it is hard, and you need to take your time, do it at your own pace. It’s a lot to process, and sometimes just writng it can give you clarity and release, sometimes the writing is the start of a steady process that you will need to keep revisiting, so whichever way it happens for you is what’s right for you.

You need, we all need, to be with someone who can hear when we say such things as I can’t trust you, and so on, and try to be the other person to work with you to make positive changes to build trust, or whatever the issue is.  It’s never that straightforward and definitely emotional, but not attacking and going backwards!  Should feel like steps to move forward, even if small to start with, and a sense of knowing that your partner is working at it with you to their best.  It doesn’t sound like this for you though.

I am wondering if this realisation has hit you earlier on in this relationship than it did in your previous, and that you have come a long way in fact from your last relationship in terms of seeing what’s happening, and wanting better for yourself, knowing this isn’t right and what your next step is, even if it means facing the disappointment and other consequences of the ending of this relationship.

We can never know what’s round the next corner, but at least you would be in a position to welcome it if it was a new healthy relationship?

I hope you can feel less alone now you have reached out on here, and that you have somewhere to come with these feelings, a place to write and express so you can process it all and move forward with it.  You are certainly not alone, and you won’t be the only one he treats this way, so in that sense, it’s not personal.  It’s not you, it’s him!

warmest wishes

ts

 

[Author]

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