Memories

[Anonymous]

I know I’m doing well. Its been x years since I got out, and while I still love him, I wouldn’t go back.

But today I got hit by memories again. Locking myself in the bathroom or sleeping on the sofa to he wouldn’t rape me, or would stop raping me.

The hardest part of moving forwards is the people who told me it didn’t happen or I wanted it.

I’m -God willing- going to start trauma therapy this year. I don’t really want anything from this post. Just to let it out somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I’m so sorry to hear you have gone through this. Well done for having the courage to talk about it.

I feel trauma therapy sounds a very good idea. Up until quite recently I also was still under the belief I still loved him. I thought I was always going to feel this way. Like you, i’m quite a fair way along the recovery path but loving him was still a hurdle I had yet to get over.

If you read my post about rape, which is actually the first post I ever wrote on this forum you’ll see that I only had the realisation I had been raped very recently. For me personally, it was the revelation of being raped which stopped all my loving feelings towards and about him. For me, it’s not possible to love a man who knowingly and willingly sexually abused and exploited me for his own gains.

I think the thing about abuse is that whilst we recognise we were treated badly and less than, our feelings at the time of the relationship were genuine. It’s that their feelings towards us, were not. Perhaps we could call it unrequited love. I don’t believe these men are capable of real love and that is because they do not see us as individual human beings in our own right. We are possessions attached to them, almost extensions of themselves. To really love someone, one must be able to recognise in the first instance that the person we turn our affection towards is a person in their own right, which is something these men are unable to grasp at its very basic level.

I don’t have all the answers as to why they choose not to view and respect their intimate partners as individual beings but I accept that this is what they do all the same.

x

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