My abusive ex told management I was the aggressor.
My ex and I work at the same workplace. When all of this happened, he had been there for several years and I had only been there for about a year. I’m naturally pretty introverted and didn’t have the same history or relationships there that he did.
Behind closed doors, our relationship had become verbally and psychologically abusive. During that period, he was drinking every day, and a lot of the worst behavior happened when he was drunk. Afterward, he would tell me he didn’t remember saying or doing those things.
I had directly told him that my mental health was deteriorating because of how he was treating me. By the time everything spilled into work, I honestly felt like a shell of myself.
Eventually, I knew management probably needed to know something because our situation was affecting me at work and I thought some separation might be necessary.
I didn’t want him to feel like I was secretly going to management behind his back, so I told him he could speak to management first. My intention was for him to explain at a high level that we had been involved and there was now an interpersonal situation affecting work.
I did not tell him to disclose intimate details of our relationship or specific physical incidents.
Instead, he went to management and disclosed much more than I expected, including describing a physical incident in a way that portrayed me as the aggressor/abuser.
When I questioned why he had told them those details, he fell back on, essentially, “You told me to talk to management.”
I did try to tell my manager that there was more to the story. I approached her somewhat in confidence, woman-to-woman, because I felt like someone needed to understand that what management had heard wasn’t the full picture.
Before I could really explain, she stopped me and told me that what I was suggesting was a very serious allegation to make about someone.
I shut down.
I was already emotionally exhausted, he had considerably more history at the workplace than I did, and management had heard his version first. I felt like trying to tell the full story could make things worse for me.
So I basically said nothing. I cried and went back to work.
We eventually broke up. At another point, he acknowledged to me that there had been abuse in our relationship.
Recently, he came back into my life saying he wants to reconcile and potentially work toward getting back together.
During a long conversation about our relationship, I brought up the abuse. He repeatedly responded with things like, “Did I hit you?”
I told him that physically hitting someone isn’t the only form of abuse.
Then the workplace situation came up.
He told me that after everything happened, he told management that they should keep me employed and that he was okay with me continuing to work there.
He also told me that his manager had told him that when management spoke to me, I hadn’t said anything about him and had basically just cried.
The way he said all of this really bothered me. Obviously I can’t know his intention, but his tone almost felt bragging to me.
It was like he wanted me to know: They heard my version. I knew you didn’t tell them yours. And I was the person who told them it was okay to keep you.
Initially, I interpreted him telling me that he advocated for me to keep my job as some form of accountability.
Now I’m looking at it completely differently.
I gave him the opportunity to speak to management first specifically because I was trying not to blindside him or go behind his back. Instead, he got his version of events in first. When I tried to indicate there was more happening behind closed doors, I felt discouraged from saying anything further, so I stayed silent.
And now, while talking about reconciliation, he’s emphasizing both that management knew I said nothing and that he supposedly advocated for me to keep my job.
I even asked him whether part of the reason he wants to keep me close now is because he’s worried that I might eventually tell people what actually happened during our relationship. I don’t know if that’s his motivation, and I don’t want to pretend I can read his mind.
I’m mainly trying to understand the behavior because I was so emotionally overwhelmed when this originally happened that I’m only now looking at parts of it differently.
How would you interpret someone going to management first and portraying themselves as the victim, later learning that you didn’t defend yourself and only cried, and then emphasizing to you that you remained employed because they told management it was okay?
And if someone previously acknowledged abusing you but now responds with “Did I hit you?” when you discuss verbal and psychological abuse, does that sound like genuine accountability?