u/Real_Context_6227

Hey there, I’m going to preface this with a please don’t judge me, my escape from my marriage was not a good one, but I’m trying to make sense of why I keep putting myself in positions to be hurt. I (35f) met my soon to be ex husband (33m) when I was 23 and he was 21. We both were getting out of some pretty cruddy relationships at the time. When we started dating my ex told me his last relationship was awful, she screamed at him, used him, cheated on him etc etc. He seemed very sweet and I, for some reason had a hero complex, and I tried to build him up from what he claimed to be an abusive relationship. He was/is a drinker and I never thought anything of it at the beginning because he was 21 and I was like that at 21, but I grew out of it. He’s also a chronic gambler. During the first few months of our relationship he would get blasted drunk and start yelling at me about things that didn’t even pertain to me, “I bought you your car, I paid your bills etc” I realized when he was drunk he seemed to be reverting to screaming matches with his ex, so I blew them off and excused them. Throughout the years, his screaming began to be directed at me. He would start arguments at 10 at night and scream at me until 3-5am. He wouldn’t be satisfied until I was sobbing. This continued after we had our son. I will never forgive myself for allowing my son to experience this during his first 7 years of his life. My ex would scream at me in front of him all of the time. Specific examples I remember are a trip I took to see my sister in New Jersey. We had to leave early due to his allergy to cats and my sister had a cat so I was a little disappointed and because I was disappointed he screamed at me the entire drive home with our son in the back. For 6 straight hours. Another time we went to bring my son to a Christmas event an hour from our home and he screamed at me the entire drive there while my son yelled at him in the backseat to stop yelling because “mommy is crying!” The only room in our house with a lock was my sons room, so on some nights I would have to lock myself in there with my child while he screamed at me from the other side of the door…I would be crying into his little chest saying, “It’s okay baby, it’s going to be okay.” He wouldn’t let me leave the house during an argument one day and slammed my finger in the door. As much as he says it was an accident it was still completely unacceptable…he had shaken my arms and left bruises before…. Though it was 99% emotional abuse it was 1% physical. He also kept control of all of our finances. I remember one time he blew $800 he won at the casino when the day before I was pulled over on the side of the road sobbing because we didn’t have money for formula and I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to feed our baby. He would scream at me and tell me I was worthless, I was useless to him, that other women were better than me, that I didn’t care about him. One time I had the stomach bug and I was throwing up in a bucket. My beautiful son was bringing me blankets and getting me water and my husband was at the casino. When he came home after in had been throwing up all day he screamed at me for not cleaning the house. Said I needed to get the f*** up and help him…. There were times I had to run out of the house barefoot in the winter to escape him… These things happened for 10 years…..10 years. I hid it from people, I made excuses for his behavior…until one day on the way back from the casino he screamed at me, told me I was fucking useless, told me if I ever tried to leave him he’d take our son from me and he’d make sure I was in court every day of my life. I snapped. I realized I didn’t love him anymore. I resented him with my entire being. I pulled into a parking lot, unbuckled myself, put my finger directly to his face and screamed the loudest I ever screamed in my life that I was done, I didn’t deserve this, I don’t know who he thought he was taking to but he can burn my whole world to the ground and push me into the ashes and I will rise like a f****** phoenix! He backed down and the next day tried to apologize for the 500th time since our relationship started and I was done with apologies. I told him it’s not okay and that I didn’t love him anymore. He panicked, had an anxiety attack…blah blah…but I was DONE.
Here is where it gets messy. His best friend was also in an abusive and neglectful marriage. Both of our marriages were falling apart at the same time and we would confide in each other about them. We would try and support each other as we were going through the same thing….we then realized through the years, we had always felt something for one another, but never said anything because…well obviously we had lives we built, we had a common friend group..we just threw those feelings in the back of our minds because of our friendship with one another and our spouses were the most important to us….but here we were, both abused, both neglected, both in undeniable pain, both hurting and vulnerable. We began secretly spending time together. I know it was a terrible thing to do, but when you’re abused…sometimes the way out isn’t always black and white….I don’t think either of us would have escaped if we didn’t have the support of one another. I was financially abused and had no money to leave, my car is under his name, all of my bills were connected to him and he watched my bank accounts. He was married to a narcissist who assaulted him when he was drunk a few days after he said he was thinking of divorce, got herself pregnant, constantly talked about wanting to abort the baby after that didn’t change the circumstance of him wanting the divorce and was using his family to manipulate against him…it was agonizing…our situations were so messed up and it’s still agonizing because I feel like a terrible person….but do I owe the man who abused me for 10 years my loyalty? Does he owe loyalty to someone who emotionally abused him and who used his body to manipulate? I struggle with that…we both struggle with that….
My ex found out me and his friend were together in secret because he followed me one day, he exploded at me and I left to go to my mothers. Both me and his friend (my current boyfriend) decided that, since we were both terrified to leave our situations ourselves… maybe it was best that a match was thrown on that bridge for us… it took some time but we left. We finally left and it was scary and it is painful. He moved in with me and we are both fighting for our children and trying to keep a stable home. My son adores him (he’s known him since he was an infant) and he is such a wonderful father figure to him. My ex was surprisingly civil after the separation and we have been working well together for our son. My boyfriend’s ex has been awful and has been weaponizing and keeping his children from him. He has had court date after court date and he finally has them every other weekend until we can afford a lawyer to fight for more. My boyfriend and I are together and we are trying to heal in private, we are working through each other’s traumas, we don’t argue, we support each other, we communicate, we finally have something healthy, someone who cares and loves and we are so happy.
Because my ex and I had been so civil, I had filled him in on the custody battle with my boyfriend and his ex. I was praising our coparenting and had told him some personal things about the situation. He seemed to support and understand and kept telling me to keep fighting for the kids because they deserve to see their dad and he’d hate to be in that position with our son…I thought after the years of abuse that he was finally healing and that I could trust him. We would chat like friends on the phone, update each other about our jobs, talk about our families, work together with the bills we still have intertwined. And I was happy that even after everything we could still be civil for our little boy. I felt like I needed to be overly kind and chatty to help me work through feeling bad about how I ended our marriage. How it eats away at me because I feel like I’m a bad person and I didn’t do things in a way I normally would….I keep feeling like 10 years of abuse doesn’t excuse my way out….I still feel like I’m the worst one…but why?!
Last night when my boyfriend called his children to say goodnight…. They were at my exes with his ex. I felt so betrayed. I have excused all of his garbage behavior for years. I had still defended him saying he was working with me, coparenting in a healthy way…and now I feel like I was used again. Every time my boyfriends ex and my ex are in contact me and my ex argue. When she was out of the picture, we were perfectly fine, no arguments, good communication, we were almost like friends….now I don’t know how to feel about this. I called him right after and was calm. I said, “I know who’s there and I don’t care as long as we can still keep a healthy coparenting relationship and you keep our things private.” He then proceeded to start arguing with me about how I have no say in his life and he never had a say in me moving in my boyfriend and how I need to stay out of his business.” I literally answered with, “every time she’s in the picture we argue…. she’s been there for an hour and we’re already arguing…. I never said who you can and cannot have in your house, I’m calling because I want to reassure that we will continue to keep things civil and coparent healthily for our son if she is in the picture.” He eventually stopped yelling and calmed down but now I just feel used. I feel like he was playing nice to use me for information ….I keep allowing him to hurt me…even after we are not together….how do I stop being so naive? How do I stop feeling terrible for how I escaped and excusing his feeling of betrayal when he has been nothing but horrible to me for years? I take responsibility for our marriage ending, I went against my morals, I hurt people, I feel terrible about it every day….but I will not take responsibility for why our marriage failed….I just don’t know how to stop trying to be kind and open out of guilt when I just continue to set myself up to constantly get hurt.

This is my first post ever, but I’m trying to make sense of my current relationship. This may be long.. I’m fairly convinced my boyfriend is my twin flame. Honestly, we’re both pretty convinced about it. We met years ago through my ex-husband…. very long story. When we met we both said we felt as though we knew each other…not physically but in a sort of spiritual way….there was this unbelievable pull towards one another. We never spoke of it for years, but every time we would see each other it lingered in the background…I thought it was only me…but I’ve found out now it was the both of us. Throughout the years (10 years..) we have always felt that pull but we were married, we had children, we had lives we had built… we were in the same friend group… we never could and never did anything about this feeling. We stayed absolutely platonic and even though we felt as though the other was our “best friend” we realized it just could never be… we just sort of accepted that it was a feeling that would never be resolved…it would sit in the background noise forever. However, then a shift happened.. I was in an abusive marriage and he was as well, but we both hid our lives from the outside world. It wasn’t until our marriages were truly failing.. like no turning back failing before the truth came out. I won’t go into details much, but the idea of us was brought to the surface as well as the reality of our connection. Although it was now out in the open staring us dead in the face, we still tried to make our marriages work. We did the marriage therapy, we swallowed our feelings, we sat in our pain. And of course, the marriages failed anyways…they were already too far gone. The anger the resentment the pain our spouses had caused through years of abuse and neglect…what is there to save? And my current boyfriend and I were in love…we always had been…we just never said it….there was a door…a door out of abuse…a door open to a best friend… So…anyways, I left my husband first. He became so erratic and abusive at the end I had to escape with my son. He then learned of mine and my current boyfriend’s feelings, and I took that as a sign from the universe there was no turning back. I’m not proud of how I escaped. In fact I struggle with it every day…. I didn’t follow my morals, I hurt people, but I was so vulnerable and so empty…numb to everything in the world….when the person you promised your life to, who promised to honor and protect you destroys you to the point where you’re thinking some very dark thoughts about your existence mattering anymore…when a beautiful door opens to safety…you have to take it…even if it’s not the most moral door. If you’ve ever been abused…you understand that sometimes the way out isn’t the way you would take in any other circumstance.. but it is one you will in desperation for escape. I accept my part in the pain I caused, I accept it. I own it. I struggle with it still, I’ve spoken to my therapist about it, she helps me work through it…through my shame, the abuse, the escape.. but I cannot say I in any way truly regret it. During this time my boyfriend was also in the movements of leaving. I remember us discussing being twin flames and I looked him in the eyes and told him he would be the runner. He looked shocked and responded, “What?! No I won’t.” And I just smirked at him…I knew for some reason in my heart, in my soul that he would be. It sounds so strange, but I FELT it… And sure enough he was. There was a time in his leaving that he stopped speaking to me. He called me sobbing, said he had some things he had to figure out, that we couldn’t speak anymore until he did. Separation from him felt like death. It was soul crushing. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I felt like a part of me was gone…truly gone, like cut directly from my spirit. I did so much research on twin flame separation and how it happens so each of you can work on yourselves, truly face all of your own flaws and your own issues and become better…that there may be union or there may be permanent separation but either way it is a time to look at yourself and heal and grow. I took that time to do that. I became more myself than I had been since I was a child. I truly began healing…He did too….and eventually we were finally united. This is where I am perplexed by our relationship. He is more me and I more him than I can explain. We literally read each other’s minds. I will be thinking of something that doesn’t even relate to the conversation we’re having and he will bring it up. We’ve started going, “Get out of my brain!” In a joking way. It’s not once in a while, it is ALL OF THE TIME. Most of our days we just know what is going on in the other one’s head. We say phrases at the same time, think of the same places for food, think of the same subjects at the same time, quote things at the same time…we write poems to one another and even if we haven’t done it in awhile, we will both come come, same day with one for the other. We are so in tune that it’s almost bizarre. Even the way we show frustration is exactly the same, the way we resolve any issue is the same. We work together through our traumas and past experiences together as a team.. It is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. When we ahem…unite….It is mind blowing…as if we just want to absorb into each other. Being together… It’s as though the universe took a deep breath, sighed, and said “Finally, this was the plan all along.” I have never experienced anything that has felt so…”meant to be” in my entirety of living. We look back on our separation and we both agree it was needed to grow and heal before we came together…it’s a deep understanding of the need to heal. I truly feel as though I am with my very best friend, the one I’ve known in lifetimes before this one, the one my soul has been looking for… Does this sound like twin flame or is this something else entirely? I’d be interested to know!