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I am not sure why I am writing – I just want to get it off my chest. It is the manipulation of the ‘desire to be good’ that gets me the most.
It took me years to realise although at the same time I always ‘knew’ it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t kosher but every time I fought against it … I was somehow argued out of it and always using the ‘language of love’.
“What sort of person doesn’t share openly?” “How is that a real relationship?” On an on about if I was a ‘proper’ girlfriend, if I really loved him then I wouldn’t be thinking twice about giving all I had and the fact that he took all my money to go drinking (but without me always! – unless he had somehow run out and needed someone to come and pay the bill at the bar, not just for him but for his stupid-arse friends that he was being SO generous with — with all my hard-earned cash).
Isn’t that what they all say – what’s yours is mine and so on — isn’t that true love?
It sounds SO stupid in retrospect and it wasn’t that I was afraid of him – as I know some are – he didn’t need to scare my physically because he had such a way of twisting the whole thing all the time, that I constantly ended up believing that I was wrong. I was somehow being ungenerous, mean-hearted, unloving (even while giving him everything) but if I ever said “No” (very rarely) or questioned simply because I didn’t have the funds or I knew a bill was coming in soon — a HUGE flipping row would ensue about how awful I was. How mean. How stingy. How none of his other girlfriends had ever questioned such a thing. How normal people gave to those they loved. How when the boot was on the other foot, he would give without thinking when he had a job (ha ha!), how I was not being understanding of how difficult it was having to be on the dole and he didn’t need more negativity, how I was emasculating him with querying it.
And how he talked about me to his friends – or even people he/we didn’t know – such complete lies, totally utterly manufactured out of thin air that was the hardest thing. If there had even been a slight resemblance to reality perhaps I could have defended myself but it was so far removed from who I was or any actions I had done or anything at all, I was just stymied at the complete randomness of it.
I remember a situation in a taxi, when he was completely drunk, and he just started on with all these lies about me to the taxi driver – so completely far from reality I didn’t even know what to do or say. So I just said nothing — but I remember so clearly the look of utter hatred the taxi driver gave me when I went to pay him.
I look back and I am out of it now. And I just think – why did no-one say. Some did, of course. My close friends and family said ‘he is no good for you, he is not nice, he is not a nice person’ and I suppose much of the mind-twisting especially with just taking the money all the time I just didn’t tell people what was going on. But I had a flatmate at the time – who did know and she just thought it was funny …. I look back on that and think, wow. But it was nothing to do with her really so it is not that I lay anything on her at all — it was all me.
I ‘KNEW’ it was wrong, I knew deep down that I was being taken for a mug. I knew what he was saying was unfair and untrue and not right – but somehow I couldn’t hold on to that knowing and stand up for myself. I was so malleable. Such an obvious target for abuse I suppose. A self-questioner, a people-pleaser, someone who always, always, always sees it from the other person’s point of view. So how easy is it to manipulate someone like me. All you need to do is to indicate that I am not being pleasing, that I am not being loving and present your own twisted point of view and I fall for it!! Just like that.
What a fool.
I hate – as I said above – that what he did was to twist all that was good and decent in me to provide for himself. Twisted, I guess that is what it is. Twisted, cruel, dishonest, selfish, wrong but so clever at putting it all on me …. making me doubt myself, doubt reality, doubt what is right and what is wrong.
People do really need to be educated – properly – at schools as to what is abuse, what is bullying, give concrete examples – show the techniques that n*********s and abusers use. It is far more important than some river in the middle of the Congo. That is a life skill.
He was such an arse. But I was such an idiot.
Why is it SO DIFFICULT for some people to stand up for themselves. To call out bullying. To confront abusive behaviour. Why?
I had all the proof there – nothing was hidden, he wasn’t stealing on the sly — he was demanding directly from me and I gave and gave and gave again and again and again and again – simply because he demanded it and I accepted his entitled viewpoint as the ‘normal’ one — even though I knew it wasn’t.
I am so glad to be out of it – and I am so glad to be financially free of him. I take some comfort in that even amazing, clever and beautiful people like Nigella Lawson and many, many others are subject to abuse and don’t seem to be able to come out from under it in a quick time – eventually yes, but not quickly.
Well, it is not exactly comforting but it means – it is a ‘thing’ and not always an easy thing to get right in your consciousness. F*()ers! Really users, self-entitled, twisted little princes who have from birth always thought that the world is there only to their bidding. I don’t want to be angry but I am with him and even more so with myself. I am relieved but angry. It is not even the money, it is the twisting — the taking advantage, the manipulating, the lack of respect for the truth, the lack of decency, the lack of morals, the turning everything on its head. Aaaarrrrgh.
Rant over. I think this has helped. I am angry though – now finally. I think I was just lost before so may be this is some progress.
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you have every right to be angry – this is all part of the healing process its overwhelming sometimes this stage. the thoughts we have. ranting and letting it out is the best way. you understand why hes like this and you know this isnt your fault adn you couldnt have changed him. your out the best revenge is to heal completely which im now believing (and i didnt before) getting the best out of life and not lettimg him in to your head xx its doable but there lots of emotional twists and turns first it takes a lot of time and getting tose feelings out certainly help xx i never resorted to screaming in woods but i did want to! lol much love diymum x*x
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I think in an ideal partnership both parties would want to share openly and freely with each other what they have, be it finances, love, trust, food, you name it. Where the line gets crossed is when it becomes abuse and turned into an obligation such as you experienced. It’s one thing to help out your partner in need now and again – and hopefully this will go both ways – but to pay the bill when not even invited is abuse, especially in such manners as you describe. The thing is… when we are met with such fundamental truths that a relationship should be about sharing, it’s hard to argue against and because we don’t want to be seen as something negative, someone selfish, someone uncaring. So we go along with it – in the spirit of sharing. Except it has nothing to do with sharing because you are never on the receiving end of this and it’s just used against you.
I remember my ex and one of our discussion of marriage. See, marriage was something I always wanted to experience, the whole thing. So I’ve always been open and upfront about what I want in life, marriage being one of them, very early on in relationships. My ex said his plans were the exact same as mine! How lucky can a girl be… Fast forward some time and I was told I would be a gold digger if I wouldn’t stay in the relationship without getting a ring on my finger and if one ever went there it sure as h*** wouldn’t cost a lot. Well, who wants to be a gold digger? The conversation started out as me trying to break up with him because it had become clear that we no longer wanted the same in life, no longer had the same plans – it wasn’t even because he was hitting me 1-3 times a month that lead me to wanting to break up with him, it was marriage. And yet, somehow I saw it from his point of view and I certainly didn’t want to be a gold digger. It took some more years before that relationship ended.
I think this touches on how some of us are broken down by the abusers into only being about seeing someone else’s point of view, we become only about problem-solving for them and forget ourselves. I don’t know if that stems from childhood traumas or if we are just more inclined towards empathy, but I do know now that placing boundaries and standing by your own opinion does not make you a bad person. It just takes a lot of practice and time. I’ve read anger is a very good emotion after abuse as it can be used as fuel for you. I’m not quite at the anger stage yet, I sometimes feel it looming but it quickly subsides, but you have every right to be angry for all the wrongs he did to you. Keep posting and let us know how you are.
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Thank you so much AlwaysSorry (great username btw – someone steps on my foot and my first reaction is ‘sorry sorry sorry’ – it was MY foot THEY stood on!).
Yes you nailed what is a very difficult thing to pin down — that turning something against you that isn’t true in the first place and is something that is, in fact, the polar opposite of what you are. ie. you a gold-digger me ungenerous.
It is somehow because it is the opposite of both who one is and what one is doing – that makes it so hard, in some ways I think. So you would be ‘a gold-digger’ if you wouldn’t stay in a relationship where you had so clearly said at the outset how important marriage was to you. Aaaarrrrgggghhh! So twisty. They are just so unfairly twisty!
I think half of the reason my ex was interested in me was because he saw I was a natural giver (I don’t know why – perhaps low self-esteem or something but I was always the first to offer to pay even with friends or grab the bill or pay for the party food or get the tickets and say no, no, don’t worry about paying back it was a great night! And not just financially – I would be the first to WANT TO offer a lift to the airport, drive someone back at night, go out of my way to help with time, effort or money) so it was a double-whammy when my ‘good point’ was thrown back in my face as a bad point.
Ugh – it is so hard to explain. But there we go.
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I would add that I am now, very recently, in a relationship with another ‘giver’ and it has REVOLUTIONISED my life! Really.
Just having someone who will equally get up in the morning to feed the dog (ie there is no expectation it HAS TO BE ME every time) and says ‘No I will do it, you stay there’ and after that bring up a cup of tea to bed ….. Ha! Who would ever have thunk it was possible.
Someone who, when I am stuck with something does their level best to help … EVEN IF it means going out of their way.
Someone who will pick me up at the airport, who doesn’t think everything has to be prioritised only one way where the thought of doing something for someone else with no obvious gain for him is not incomprehensible/outside the bounds of possibility, who will share (and as you rightly said above – he says whatever is his is mine but he can trust that I would NEVER take advantage and vice versa). Who knew it could be like this??
We should have been educated. I came from a family of all girls and went to an all girls’ school (not that I think that necessarily has any bearing) and my father was a very gentle, decent man — so I had no understanding, no experience of n********m and did not recognise it at all, initially thinking perhaps that it was being ‘male’, I think and I wasn’t sufficiently sophisticated to handle it therefore the fault lay with me (of course). Now I think I can spot it a mile off. I see it and I think ‘I know your type’.
There should be videos shown at school so that a person can clearly recognise what is going on. Remember seeing it in their classroom and when it happens five years later, know ‘that is a classic abusive technique’ let me think here then – perhaps I am NOT the wrong one – and this is one of those classic red flags we were taught about ….
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