Is it normal to have these feelings?

[teabag]

Is it normal to miss your abuser sometimes? Is it normal to feel like you might still love them sometimes. Is this all part of the detoxing process?
I’m NC for months now but I’ve heard he’s having a great time and I think to myself- here I am piecing my life beck together and still suffering the consequences of his actions and he doesn’t have a care in the world and yet occasionally I miss him and what could have been.

Is this normal? It feels weird to me, he did so much to hurt me yet I’m the one suffering. Now that’s so unfair.

[fizzylem]

Hey TB, yes this all sounds very normal to me and I’ve read words just like yours a hundred times or more on this forum. Seemed to take me a long time to get to a point where I no longer wanted him, he repulses me now though, the thought of him turns my stomach.

Letting go of the hopes and dreams is part of it, and the what could have been, guess because you know you loved, had he been loving and respectful back things could have been very different hey; but sadly they were not. You need to create some new hopes and dreams now, only perhaps you don’t feel quite ready, but this time will come – use this time now to look after you and learn about yourself, then as you start to feel better you will then begin to think about how would I like it to be now and next.

I used to get quite annoyed at myself for letting him into my head, this was a long time after I knew I would never take him back, and yet I still felt that somewhere underneath it all maybe I loved him and after everything he’d done – grrr.

So I used to write lists, all the things he did to me; the reasons I am angry with him; letters to him – what I’d really like to say but knew I’d never send – you know, written just for me to get it out and for no other reason. Lots of journal writing and reading really.

Eventually I was able to see who he really is, once I’d removed the love filter, it was hard to confront and accept that he never really loved me – because I wanted to believe so much that he did, but I know now he is not capabale of love and this truth set me free. It enabled me to see he is not who he pretended to be, the man I fell for in the early days was an act, this was a cover to lure me into working for him. He is actually cold, callous, manipulative, controlling, with zero emotional intelligence, reactive, I could go on, no endearing qualities at all really, his charisma was only skin deep and behind that was a self obsessed man only concerned with his own survival and needs. It was like trying to attach to a ghost really because he was never truly present – eventually a switch did go on – why did I ever waste my time on him, he really is a dreaful human being.

The way forward is to always be truthful and honest with yourself and others, however hard this feels sometimes x

[teabag]

Fizzylem
Beautifully written and I can relate to your every word. It’s like, one day I will write all of that to someone else.

I new my ex from years back and we dated when we were young adults. So you can imagine when we met again it felt like fate. I now realise he mirrored me and told me I was different from all the other women. He played on my childhood too which was a huge draw for me. Then slowly the devaluing started, the harder I tried, the more he said nobody understood, I tried harder. He threw a coat into my face during one of this temper tantrums and I remember him say” it’s only a coatbits not like I hit you”. That where the physical abuse started though most of the time it was emotional. My ex portrays this wonderful image of himself, he is concerned how he is seen. It’s hard for me in the early days when he was on sonically media tellings others to have some respect and morals. I guess the fog is still lifting and the impact he’s had on me and my life is almost unbearable.
I’ve done the writing, the reading, the gratitude lists, the therapy but my journey in recovery feels like it’s only beginning. Because not only do I have to come to terms with his assult, I lost a lot more so it’s like a double whammy.
I hope to get to where you are. I don’t think I’ll be open about his abuse only 3 people know because people do not understand.

[Tiffany]

I think it’s always a double whammy. We’d never get together with our abusers if they showed their true colours at first. They don’t even show them all the time when they start being abusive. In my case I had to come to terms with the fact that my fiancé, who my family loved, was slowly destroying me emotionally and was hitting me. I had to call off a wedding as well as deal with the emotional fall out from leaving my abuser. It had got bad enough that I was glad to leave, but I was still scared he might persuade me back to him. In the end it was probably a godsend that I had to cancel the wedding. It meant I had to tell people. I just told them he was controlling mostly. Only my close friends got the true story. But people seem to understand controlling, and I got so much support from those around me. I think that helped.

It’s harder coming to grips with what you have lost than it is coming to grips with who you’ve lost – and you have to work out how to separate them. I did all the things you’ve talked about – journalling, writing things down, doing therapy. And I was glad to have left my abuser. But I was still mourning the loss of the “happily ever after” with the wedding and the house and the kids, which I had been working on for years, and I was scared would never happen because I had walked away from this relationship. It helped to keep reminding myself that that life would have been hell if I had had it with my abuser. But mostly it just took time to grieve.

[teabag]

Tiffany.
It’s true what you say- people understand controlling than assault/ DA.

He kept me hanging on for our happy ever after. A wedding, a home that he new I had always wanted. I kept thinking his abuse will stop, things will get better he keeps telling me.
So there the loss also. I gave up so much on a promise that he never even meant.yet he’s the one who seems to have had the better outcome- so far. It wasn’t supposed to be like this but I know one day I will be 100% accepting and so glad I left when I did. But I still think about the what ifs, what if he was able to change, what if what if. We can’t live on what ifs.

[Anonymous]

I feel for you TB. I’m breaking my heart here and my ex is just out looking for his next victim. But I just loved the man I thought he was. Haven’t managed to get my heart to catch up with my brain yet 🙁

[Fudgecake]

I’m glad it’s not just me missing my ex. I’m not sure exactly what it is I miss.
Probably like you say, the guy we first met and fell in love with. Not the person they really are.
I too was kept hanging on for the idyllic happy ever after. Only I truly believe now he had no intentions of setting up home and being committed to me fully.
I think sadly I was his cash cow.😦

[Anonymous]

Fudgecake, like you, I feel I was just a cash cow. All the time I loved him so much and was dreaming of my happy ever after, he just saw someone with a house who could fund the life he felt he deserved to be living. That hurts me more than I can say.

[teabag]

That’s interesting ladies. My ex was asking me to pay off some of his loans. I ended up taking out a loan and gave him some money in addition to paying for things. He would ask me for money for something and then ask his parents for the same things. When I asked him why he did that he said, my parents owe me, I don’t care.
He informed me one day he had booked a holiday for us. I was really excited and then I realised he was expecting me to pay for it so I told him to cancel it.
Even towards the end he was still looking
G for money but this time I said NO.

[teabag]

Landy. It’s not fair they fooled us into believing they loved us only to move on when reality sunk in.
To pretend to love someone is cruel. To allow someone to fall in love with you when you don’t love them but pretend to is also cruel.
I feel used and worthless but I’m trying to see it’s him and not me. Remember ladies we were empaths, we showed empathy.

[fizzylem]

Loved reading this post and all the replies – feels like a real coming to terms vibe going on for everyone! x*x

[teabag]

It’s good to know that this is all normal. Anyone who hasn’t experienced our trauma doesn’t understand why when they had treated us so bad, we miss them. It’s not about not respecting ourselves but more to do with being enmeshed in their abuse.
We are detoxing, that’s how I see it. Much love to you ladies x

[Anonymous]

Spot on there. My friends and family tell me it’s good riddance to bad rubbish as if I should be jumping for joy right now. They just don’t get it, but neither would I have done until it happened to me.

[teabag]

True landy. They see it as a lucky ecscspe sndxwe should be celebrating. But we are broken and hurt and afraid and this is what we need acknowledged because this is what we are working on rebuilding ourselves and trying to make sense of the long nightmare.

[Serenity]

Yes, it’s normal.

Those demanding so-and-so’s made sure that they eclipsed everything and were the most important thing in your life: there’s an abuser-shaped hole in your life.

By the end of the relationship, you’ve forgotten how to just ‘be’ and how to be you. You were trained by them to be on ted alert, tending to their needs and pandering to their moods, every second of every day.

It takes months, sometimes a good few years, to fully realise that they aren’t going to come bursting through that door at the end of the day, creating pain.

By the time they’ve finished with you, you’ve started to believe that doing things for yourself is self-indulgent and selfish, because they made you believe that. This is why you miss them: because they made you think that they were the pounding of your existence.

Add to that the crazy chemicals and adrenaline that were created in your body by their constant push/ pull, punish/ reward pattern of behaviour, which your body mistook for love chemicals. Suddenly, you feel flat. At least when they were there, you were hoping half the time ( though you were in agony the rest of the time).

It takes time for your body to settle down. It takes time for your brain to sift through the different elements of your experience and make sense of it all. It takes time to restore equilibrium and calm, to reach a level of radical acceptance about what happened to you and to find that new strength by which you will begin to rebuild and recreate.

But you will find those resources at some point, and you will feel the buzz and excitement of being in charge of your own life again ; and you will look back and see it for the prison it was.

[teabag]

Well said serenity and beautifully expressed x

[Author]

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