Why am I Different?

[Anonymous]

I’ve read so much about abuse. I’ve immersed myself in it and it’s helped me so much. Somehow it’s helped me take some of the emotion out of the situation and has helped me to see things more scientifically. In all my reading I’ve never read about anyone like me and it’s got me wondering. I hope you can help.

My blinkers were removed because of something my abuser did to another woman not me. We had separated but we were ‘still friends’. This meant that I had huge periods of not seeing him and then was hoovered up and then it all started again till I managed to escape.

During one of those periods of separation he targeted, groomed and caught a tertiary victim. A vulnerable woman who trusted him and put him in the highest of positions morality wise. When she turned out to be too much trouble for him he dumped her and she killed herself. It was his lack of responsibility for her death, his rewriting of the story with him as the hero at the centre of it that finally got me to see the truth. The truth that I never once saw for myself in all our years of marriage. I have mixed feelings about this. Does it mean the to care so little for myself that I couldn’t see it or was it just that some awful thing had to happen and for me to see it from the outside looking in to see the truth of it?

The day he rewrote history and asked for my support was the day I broke contact and I have not seen him since. He tried every day to hook me back in and even now, with every avenue blocked, every single day brings a ‘poke’ from him via a third party.

But here’s the thing. Although the ‘pokes’ upset me, he does not upset me. Unlike all the other victims I have read about I do not feel one shred of love for him. I deleted thousands of photos of him without a shred of regret. I’ve given away gifts to strsngers, gifts that once meant the world to me with relief not regret. I’ve never cried for him or
missed him, I don’t long to see him or spend time with him I just feel a massive sense of relief that every day that passes takes me further away from him.

I don’t feel trauma bonded to him anymore. It feels as though they bond ended the very second I saw the truth.

Am I in denial? Is it all there bubbling away unseen under the surface waiting to come out? Even through all that has happened and is continuing to happen I haven’t cried. Not for me. I just feel this huge sense of relief they I saw the truth and I’m getting out. That’s what consumes
me. That’s what’s getting me through.

I’ve never read about anyone who feels like this. Am I kidding myself? Is it all still to come or have I really broken all cords with this demon? Could I really be that lucky?

[Tiffany]

I don’t know. It took me time to cut all the cords. I have chucked put almost everything from our time together now though. I have a couple of items that his family gave me which I am more conflicted about, because I liked his family, but they remind me of him, which is upsetting. I haven’t felt any love for him since about a week after leaving, by which time all my remaining feelings for him had turned to fear.

Your situation doesn’t seem to unlikely though. I read somewhere that abusers often chose people who are particularly empathetic as victims as it is easier to manipulate us into feeling sorry for them and we are then more accepting of their bad behaviour. I know this was true in my case. I overlooked years of abuse because I felt sorry for my abuser. He’d had a very hard life, which he blamed for the way he acted. And as someone really empathetic I was willing to accept that he was trying and things would eventually get better. Once I realised that he genuinely didn’t care about me it became much easier to disentangle myself and start over.

I can imagine that as someone who is naturally empathetic that you, BaggyTrousers, could see the harm that your abuser had cause to another more accutely than the harm he did you, which you had become numbed to. With that clarity of vision of the harm he was willing to do others you could disentangle yourself from him much more quickly than most of us manage – when all we have is the damage done to us it takes longer to see it clearly. I am sure that I have read of women fleeing immediately after years of abuse to themselves, the first time their abuser threatens their children. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s not unknown.

[Anonymous]

can imagine that as someone who is naturally empathetic that you, BaggyTrousers, could see the harm that your abuser had cause to another more accutely than the harm he did you, which you had become numbed to. With that clarity of vision of the harm he was willing to do others you could disentangle yourself from him much more quickly than most of us manage – when all we have is the damage done to us it takes longer to see it clearly

Tiffany, thank you so much for this. That makes perfect sense. We’re always told that we must do things for ourselves and not for others but what you say is so true. I am also dealing with a lot of guilt right now. Guilt that this woman had to die before I saw the truth. But, see the truth I did and no matter what the circumstances, I have to give thanks for that.

[Dragonfly]

I stopped caring after he physically attacked me for hours. It was an instant feeling of indifference. To think previously he had me under this mad world of control that I was actually helpless. He very nearly convinced me this was normal.

But!!! Ever since that horrific night I can honestly feel nothing for him. I get wound up when he was found not guilty at his trial, it winds me up when he decides to parade around in my area of town. But I don’t feel one ounce of love or sympathy or bind to him in any way. He has no empathy and I realised I was in love with a lie, definitely not a normal functioning person. I’d hate to be him.

[KIP.]

I moved on very quickly from my abuser. After decades. What I couldn’t move on from was the trauma he left me with so I suppose it’s all to do with how much trauma and damage he has left you with. I now feel nothing for him at all. Maybe pity but I’m still acutely aware that he poses a physical threat to me. Some women realise much quicker than others. He pulled the wool over my eyes for decades and definitely had me trauma bonded. Good riddance to bad rubbish x

[Anonymous]

I stopped caring after he physically attacked me for hours. It was an instant feeling of indifference. To think previously he had me under this mad world of control that I was actually helpless. He very nearly convinced me this was normal.

That’s exactly how I felt. Not that my husband ever physically attacked me, he sees physical abuse far beneath him, it was always the the inference that he might that brought me great stress.

Thank you for this.

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry, I seem to have replied to the wrong posts. I hope you can work it out.

[White Rose]

My ex irritates me by his existence in the same way I feel irritated about politicians, traffic jams and the enormity of plastic waste. I have no “personal” feelings for him any more. I certainly don’t miss him.
I feel anxious and stressed about the situation I am having to deal with him about, but apart from loathing the fact I have to have contact with him, I may as well be dealing with Amazon for losing my order or (detail removed by moderator) . He’s just a person who exists in the same town as me. I feel absolutely nothing for him.
I’ve never felt sorry for him and his plight – though I’ve said I was worried for his health to his daughters on one occasion when he was ill, but to be honest I couldn’t have cared less if he’d been more seriously ill or even if he’d died.
I stopped loving him well before I left. I stopped liking him too. I dislike the type of person he is, how he lies and how he bigs himself up to be something he isn’t and how he used to embarrass me by pretending to be more intelligent than he was, especially with my work colleagues and old university friends.
I have no idea what he does with his time now but I know he does nothing of the things he had planned at this stage in his life because he’s still living in this town.
Baggy there’s no way you could have known or prevented the dreadful outcome for the other woman. Maybe he was abusing her too which may explain why she became so desperate? Your strength to talk to police was you acting on her behalf when she couldn’t act for herself.
Maybe it will hit you at some point? Maybe not. I think I did my grieving for my lost love well before I left and slowly but insidiously fell out of love with him over several years, I learned to tolerate him but he went too far. Maybe that’s why I appear to be cold hard b***h with no feelings for a man I once loved, and who is the father of my child?

[Ayanna]

I never missed him either.
In that night, when the police took him away, I felt such a relief when I listened to the silence in our flat.
I never wanted to talk to him again.
All I did was fight him to get him out of my life.
I am numb towards him.
My only fear is that he looks for revenge and that’s why I am very careful.
But the trauma did not leave me.
The flashbacks and the injuries stayed with me.
Getting to safety was extremely difficult and I think the failure of the authorities to support me scarred me enormously.

[Anonymous]

White Rose,

You summed it up perfectly for me. That’s what he is. An irritant. Thank you.

I am now being accused of being the abuser but, as the authentic abused I want to get as far away from him as possible. This is normal. He, as the ‘abused’ follows me, parks next to me, walks past me, attempts to engage my friends in conversations about me. Hardly the actions of someone who is afraid of their abuser! Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Ayanna, thank you. What a sad story. I too feel only fear of what who’ll come next, and it will, by blocking him at every turn he is now absolutely raging. I’ve no idea where the next blow will come from. Unlike you however I have been well supported by outside agencies. I was found a safe house very quickly but he found it in days and I had to leave. I’m hoping they will find me another as right now I’m living in a very vulnerable situation. I hope you continue on your path to recovery.

Thanks to everyone who replied. Just about everything I’ve read talks about partners being stuck in strong trauma bonds and the agony of not being close to their abusers is almost more difficult than the abuse itself. I’m very grateful that I don’t feel that way.

[Tiffany]

I didn’t have the strong trauma bond you are describing either. I was terrified of him getting in contact with me and manipulating me into getting back together with him, because he was so very good at manipulating me. But I mostly didn’t miss him and the only things that were worse after I left were that I started having flashbacks to physical and sexual abuse that I had blocked out of my mind while I was with him.

[iwillbeok]

Hi BaggyTrousers,

Not so different from me! The scales fell from my eyes quite rapidly when my ex decided to up the abuse and rape me. It was only in hindsight that the puzzle pieces fell into place – I had been in an abusive relationship for decades!

Over a period of a number of years I had gone so numb and “inside myself” that I didn’t feel much of anything anymore – let alone any love or like for him anymore. My subconscious/intuition (call it what you will) I think had already figured out what was going on. I discovered once the F.O.G lifted that I had been saving bookmarks about Nar***sm and other relationship stuff trying to figure out what was going wrong (ie what I was doing wrong – ha!). I had saved poems and quotes on Pinterest that showed that I was under pressure and not happy.

After an initial “poor him” following his arrest, and long chats with very supportive people – I threw that, and any trauma bonding off quite quickly. Any contact now I see as an old habit in me of jumping to his needs, not a real fear of being sucked back in (but I still wont answer and take that risk!!).

White Rose couldn’t have put it any better for my circumstances!

I think I fell out of love (and even like) with him a long time before things came to a crisis. I just couldn’t/didn’t see a way out, or even that I needed to.

Iwillbeok x

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