I can't stop thinking about him

[SunshineRainflower]

Hi everyone,

I am finding myself thinking a lot about my ex again. Not in a ‘oh I love him, I wish we could get together way’ but more of a ‘oh god, I can’t believe he’s a (detail removed by Moderator), I can’t believe I dated a (detail removed by Moderator) and was in so much danger and didn’t realise right until the end’ kind of way.

It makes me want to sit and stare into space going through all the memories making sense of everything armed with all my new knowledge on (detail removed by Moderator) and domestic abuse. I keep going over tiny little memories, snippets of things that happened and things he said and seeing new meaning in everything now.

I recently watched a video on youtube about the signs of an abuser during the dating period and the video referred to a film.

I watched a few clips from the film afterwards of youtube. The main character is a (detail removed by Moderator) – he starts of boyish, sweet, charming, seemingly wonderful but gradually it becomes obvious he is dangerous and by the end he is terrifying. What is chilling is how similar he is to my ex although I ended things before he got very violent as I started to realise something was horribly wrong with him thanks to google and the helpline.

I read a quotation from a psychologist who said about (detail removed by Moderator) that they have a ‘Black leather toughness combined with boyish innocence.’ This gave me chills because I noticed early on that my ex had these two sides – one was innocent and sweet, the other was kind of tough/rough and I had two jokey nicknames for him because of it, not realising that I had accidentally stumbled across a clue about who he really was.

It’s all just so crazy and weird, like my life ended up being something out of a horror film. I still can’t believe this person who I thought was wonderful, who I told everything, who I shared my secrets and dreams and desires and fears, mind, body and soul with was (detail removed by Moderator). It’s just so chilling. Out of all the men I’ve dated he is honestly the last person I’d have expected to be dangerous – he just seemed so incredibly normal to the point of being boring, very sweet, caring, the complete opposite to what I expected an abuser to be. It scares me because I’m worried I’ll be fooled by one again, they are so nice initially and make you feel so good, how do you know if it’s a genuinely nice guy or a (detail removed by Moderator) pretending to be nice?

Does this shock eventually settle down? I guess it’s a sort of ptsd/brain processing symptom, hopefully anyway. I’m on a waiting list for counselling. I really feel like I need to talk about this stuff to someone or people who understand – if I tell my friends or aquaintances any of this stuff they just look at me blankly and like they don’t believe me, probably because it’s outside their realm of experience and sounds too incredulous to be true. No wonder (detail removed by Moderator) fly under the radar and cause undetected societal havoc, nobody believes they actually exist in mainstream society when experts say they make up 1-4% of the population and most are not in prison.

[FightForYourself]

I think that is normal that you are still thinking about him. He was a part of your life. And unfortunately you were connected emotionally but not in a healthy way. It is really hard to lrave an abuser, I am stil living with one and really want to move on and leave him. You are one step further and well done for your courage! I send you hugs and my support, you are not alone! x*x

[SunshineRainflower]

Thank you for your reply FightForYourself! I guess it’s all part of the trauma bonding and my brain trying to make sense of everything still, sometimes I just worry that I’ll never move on emotionally but I know deep down that I will.

I hope you can leave your abuser soon. I wasn’t living with my ex so it made it easier to escape him, although he harassed me afterwards and wouldn’t let me go so I had to get the police’s help. You can do it. It’s a long road to recovery but it’s the way towards inner peace and it’s not all hard, there are a lot of good things too, and we deserve better than to have these toxic men in our lives. xx

[Lightness]

Hi Sunshine
What you describe in terms of thinking about him and going over and over memories is completely normal. I could think of pretty much nothing else for a long time. I think we need to process so much stuff in our heads. We were in denial and then once we know the truth, everything falls into place and the memories flood in and we see everything differently, through the lens of truth rather than denial.
It is exactly like a horror film. It feels even more that way given the impact of the abuse on our brains – increasing our fear and hyper-vigilence.
My abuser was also very sweet. Sweet, boylike, vulnerable. But he was also incredibly cruel, insensitive and rough (ie. not gentle).
Yes, to shock does settle down. I don’t find it nearly as interesting or shocking now as I did in the start.
Have you read up on the red flags? That may help. The other thing is to do the work on ourselves in terms of seeing our co-dependent traits. By healing ourselves we should be able to attract better partners.
Friends don’t tend to understand – remember back to when we were naive to it all – we probably wouldn’t have understood back then either.
Counselling is excellent in terms of having someone who does understand.
We are get it on here.
Lx

[Confused123]

hi hun

the thoughts are processing what happened, when i started cousnelling it was like opening wounds i never even realised were there, but had to be opened. all part of the healing process, your brain is just acknowledging what happened and will make u stronger, dont fight it , it took me a good 2 years to recover

[Ayanna]

I still think of him sometimes. Although I never missed him ever. I think of the nice times we had together and how it was followed by hell each single time. These men are sick to the core.

[Author]

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