stargazer lily

[stargazer lily]

Dear starryeyed,

After reading your post the first thing I want to say take a deep breath, you’re ok, and it’s great that you are at your mum’s place. You are safe now, and sadly it seems very clear to me that this man has been emotionally abusing you, for what sounds like a long time. He has also verbally confirmed that he would use violence if provoked and has assaulted someone in the past. It is no wonder you feel afraid and confused. I am so sorry you are going through this, that your confidence is so low and that you are grappling with these doubts on top of the grief of a breakup.

I know it’s hard, but if there was ever a time to be on your own team, it’s now. Be really kind to yourself, you are not stupid, and you are not overreacting to anything – you are reacting. Those reactions are yours: they are your feelings, your emotions, your fears and perceptions, and they are all totally valid and ok. It sounds like you are in a state of shock and confusion, which anyone would be after experiencing the things you describe here.

It can take such a long time to recognise emotional abuse, and the feeling is so uncomfortable when you start to step back and see what might have been happening within the safety and trust of a love relationship. In my own experience, I found the worst part of all was the inability to trust myself, which can be so disorientating. I deeply encourage you to trust yourself and your instincts here, because you have been treated vert badly by someone who does not understand boundaries and respect.

However, I also know it is so hard to do that in the face of this behaviour, and in the context of loving and caring for someone. It can therefore help to get some expert advice, with a counsellor (BACP It’s Good to Talk website shows you where accredited counsellors are in your local area) or read through some classifications to get clear about what’s going on and the steps you can take to stay safe. Coming here was definitely a great start. There is so much on this website alone, and so much more out there. Have you read this: http://dvipiowa.org/resources/am-i-being-abused/

No one can know the full extent of your situation as well as you, but just reading through what you have described I can see so many red flags that match up to the qualifiers listed here under “Emotional abuse”. And far more importantly, you have lived those red flags and experienced them. Again, try to trust yourself. Be really kind to yourself. Keep reading and talking to people you trust, those who support you and love you, and start to think about steps you can take to keep yourself safe, perhaps going “no contact” with your ex if you feel ready for that.

[stargazer lily]

Hi SunshineRain flower,

Thanks so much again for sharing your experience and insight, I had never come across the concepts of competitive communication and collaborative communication before. I’ve been reading about the two and it was really interesting to think about. I can definitely see a competitive communication style in my new partner (now ex), which I think has been developed through extremely hierarchical work places, including the current one, and a lack of opportunity to develop the collaborative communication – she always says her exes never asked her much, in her family people didn’t talk about their feelings, and as I said before, she had never had to communicate so much in a relationship before. I think I was aware of this, without these definitions of communications styles, and sympathetic for a long time. But having been on the receiving end of this competitive communication style while trying to be open and collaborative myself, I can see how it is not a healthy, safe or kind way to be with someone. It certainly leaves a feeling of such discomfort.

I’m grateful for your honesty about the struggle to listen to yourself too, I find it so hard. But your daily practice sounds great, and it so true what you say: it is 100 times better to appear rude or abrupt than be a victim of some crime. I suppose that is the body’s own protective alarm system, and if we listen to it we can remove ourselves from danger. But there are so many social niceties/norms that make it hard to do sometimes, especially if you hate confrontation or don’t like to “rock the boat”. I’m going to start making a practice of that too.

This story of indebtedness sounds so uncomfortable, and I think that although it must be really hard, it’s good that you can identify this in your ex’s behaviour. Identifying seems to be the hardest part sometimes, even looking back with time and space. I hope that trusting that spooky feeling, and oneself, takes more and more priority, starting with this daily practice.

[stargazer lily]

Hi SunshineRain flower,

Thanks so much for reading my post and sharing your experience, I really appreciate your perspective. So much of what you says rings true, and I agree that it is hard to have a healthy relationship with so much fear and unhealed pain still present. I’m sorry you also faced nightmares, anxiety and similar shutdowns about communication. In the final conversation I described above, my partner told me we communicate “spectacularly badly” with such anger that I felt really small in that moment, and my words so useless. It was then impossible to respond to her suggestion that I was bringing this specific abuse pattern from the past into our new relationship, which I knew was not my reality, even if it was her perception. I felt like I’d walked into a trap in which everything I said would be wrong and the only way out was to say as little as possible and leave. It felt very unsafe and hostile. Did you ever feel like that?

I thought I had learnt from staying in a violent relationship so long that our gut is so often telling us what we need to know, and I felt like that was a solid understanding I had found within myself. But now I feel like it must be more of a process. I have felt for a while, even from the start of this new relationship, that it might be too soon to be in a relationship again, with these unexpected returns of anxiety and nightmares. There was some resistance to that gut feeling because my new partner would listen and be understanding when I felt a trigger or fear, and would ask me regularly if I felt it was too soon, and that if so she could wait 6 months if I needed time, which seemed really considerate, and I felt safe within that understanding. At some point I doubted it a bit, as I felt it always came up in hard moments where we had to communicate about our fears and feelings, and 6 months always seemed like quite a specific time frame. But I also understand, not everyone wants to communicate all the time, especially as it might have been touching parts of her own trauma she did not wish to look at.

Can I ask how you started trusting your gut again?

[Author]

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