Surviving an abusive relationship as a teenager

[smoglife]

Hi, I’m a bit scared to do this because, well I’ve never really talked about it in-depth before. And I always feel like because I was a teenager (age removed by moderator)) it isn’t “real abuse”. But it’s been (detail removed by moderator) years since we broke up and I’m only just coming to terms with what happened and am seeing how that relationship, my first serious one, has shaped my relationships with people later on in life (especially with men) and massively affected my self-esteem. To cut a long story short, I was in a relationship with a guy for just over a year when I was (young teenager- age removed by moderator) during which he was emotionally, psychologically and sometimes physically abusive. Since that relationship, I can’t remember a time where I haven’t been depressed. In fact I can hardly remember anything from my childhood, and I feel like I’ve accumulated so much trauma over the years and have been manipulated by other men because of the psychological impacts of that abuse that I barely know who I am. I told my GP about it recently and he just looked at me in shock because I told him I was abused with such a straight face, but I’ve been living this life for so long now that I’ve become numb to it. I just spend all of my time thinking about the person I could have been even though I know that person doesn’t exist. I’m barely into my 20’s and I’m struggling to see a way forward, particularly while services are so underfunded.

[lover of no contact]

Hi and welcome to the Forum,

Its great that you are still very young and so aware and reaching out for support. I was your age and wasn’t even aware that my first boyfriend had been an abuser and then I went on to marry a hard-core abuser in my late twenties and was in a cycle of abuse with him for 2 decades during which I reared 4 children within that cycle of abuse. The pain we all went through at the hand of this abuser was awful yet on a level I wasn’t even aware (I just kept subconsciously changing my behaviour to pacify him) until he escalated his abuse and then I started to become aware. So you are doing very well to have reached awareness at so young an age. Awareness is always very painful. But we have to face ‘the demons’ so to speak, in which we were in a relationship. Knowledge is Power. You will gain that power by sharing on here and reading the posts.

I too know that if I hadn’t been reared by an abusive mother and hadn’t had an abusive first boyfriend and an abuser for a husband that I would be much different as a person. My self-esteem, self-confidence and self-belief has taken such a hit. It has made me underachieve, minimum wage jobs when I was an ‘A’ student in school and my studies. So many ways it has affected my life but now with time and spending time engaging with this Forum I am accepting the person I became and the different awarenesses I have from being in relationship with several abusers. I wouldn’t have asked for me to have gone through this in life, it hurt like hell at the time and nearly killed me but as the saying goes ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ and I now have different qualities and strengths than if I hadn’t been in intimate relationships with abusers.

Just a few of my thoughts, so please keep posting your thoughts on here. It helps other ladies on here and its good for you to get it all out of your head and get different perspectives on it.

[smoglife]

Thank you for the reply lover of no contact. I have definitely found that knowledge is something that’s helped me over the years, I think one of my main coping mechanisms has been to really deeply learn about everything to do with what’s happened to me and how my body’s responded to it so I can remind myself that it’s not just this abstract thing in my head. I also had a bad childhood, both of my parents were addicts (though they’re clean now) and they both suffer from depression and have their own trauma that they took out on me growing up. They were also very violent to each other, so it took me a long time before I realised that my idea of what a relationship should look like was very wrong in the first place.

Though I do struggle to think positively about myself in any way, I think my insights into abuse have been extremely useful when it comes to helping other friends realising toxic behaviours in their relationships with men. I was always “The Feminist” when I was in school which is something I’m very proud of now

[Author]

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