How bad is too bad

[Tiffany]

I broke off my engagement to a man I had been with for years. I have a chronic illness which affects my memory and I came to realise that he was filling the blanks with false information.

I don’t know for sure that he was doing it on purpose. He has a lot of issues of his own going on. But I know that he lied about money and I don’t really think you can do that consistently by accident.

He also lashed out verbally whenever he was angry – mostly finding faults in whatever I had done or not done. Then calling me racist for not doing what he wanted me to have done.

Since leaving I have also realised that he had been breaking down my self esteem for years – telling me I hadn’t got good friends, that I can’t make friends because I don’t come across well when people meet me.

Thing is, I got out. I got my stuff out. I separated our finances. I’m still responsible for his lease, joint tenancy, but there is an end date in sight for that. And he doesn’t know where I live. But I feel awful. I can’t sleep. I can’t stop crying. All the stuff he said is running through my head. I change my outfits multiple times before leaving the house because I can’t get his opinions out of my head. And I feel so stupid because it wasn’t that bad. He never raped me. He never hit me. I’m reading all the stuff on the forums and I am in a good place. It could be so much worse.

So I can’t decide if I am overreacting or not. Was it bad enough to feel this bad? I don’t want to be with him, but am I vilifying him in my memory to justify that? Or is my reaction normal. I feel like I can’t trust my own mind.

[Tiffany]

He told me that I was abusive because I would cry whenever we argued, that all our problems were caused by my illness and that I misremember our time together because I was ill and can’t remember the good bits.

[Serenity]

They say that mental and emotional abuse maybe cause the deepest wounds.

Abusers who think they are clever try to operate below the radar. Extreme physical violence would be too obvious: they could get arrested and you would likely clearly see them for what they are. The drip, drip of covert and disguised abuse is far more effective in terms of getting what they want: to cause pain and to weaken you, because you question yourself, your own reality and you question whether they were really abusive. Victims question the severity of the abuse, whether they were to blame, and so forth.

Don’t question it. He treated you highly abusively. A good man would have taken care of you with your health issues, but he chose to take advantage of your vulnerabilities and play games with them, as abusers do.

I think we properly begin healing when we can squarely face reality: we were abused, it wasn’t our fault, we made a bad choice of partner, almost certainly because of having the wool pulled over our eyes.

I watched a really good YouTube video once where the man speaking was saying that the reality is so awful- that we were in an intimate relationship with a truly bad person- that we try to avoid looking squarely at the truth, trying to avoid looking it or by minimising their abuse or self-blame. It’s our our ego trying to protect us: it takes great courage to face things for the reality they were.

How you feel is so normal for one coming out of abuse. There is trauma-bonding. PTSD, and so forth. Keep on talking and get all the support you can.

Mental abusers are the lowest of the low. They are so cowardly, they even try to disguise what they are doing.

[Suntree]

Tiffany

Well done for getting out. I think that we are predisposed to think it wasn’t that bad, it could have been worse.
I also believe we hope that when we are out things will be just fine and the hurt will go like a magic wand.

The reality is our brains and emotions and self belief have been so badly messed with and abused it takes time and work to heal and find out what is real and what is fantasy and abuse.

It’s okay to cry.
I looked at my emotions like a toy cupboard fulled with toys that where shut away and now they all come out together. It is overwhelming and an awful lot to go through. It takes time but it is worth it.

[Tiffany]

Thank you Serenity for telling me that how I feel is normal. That means a lot right now.

And thank you Suntree especially for describing the hope of a magic wand to make everything better. That is actually how I felt the whole time I was sorting out practicalities. And then when I stopped to think about how I felt I realised how bad things had been.

I’m trying to find some counselling, although that is proving hard what with cuts to mental health budgets and to support for abused women. I am thinking about just paying for it, but realistically it would require me to make significant cuts to my lifestyle, which isn’t exactly lavish to begin with. And I think probably eating healthily and spending time with friends are more important than counselling right now. Depressing, but there you go.

[Relieved]

Hi Tiffany, well done for getting out. I went through similar abuse for decades. I had amazing help from my local domestic abuse service. Just talking on the phone to start with, then I met up with an Outreach worker who was like an angel to me. Have you contacted your local service, you might find they have a drop in centre? Talking to others will help you come to terms with what has happened to you. Are you on a waiting list for counselling? Counselling helped but I also did a course called the Recovery Toolkit which really helped me to understand what had happened. The Freedom programme is very helpful too. http://www.freedomprogramme.co.uk/ There are 2 books you could read too – Living With The Dominator by Pat Craven and Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft.

[Author]

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