I thought ending it would bring relief. Instead, I’m confused, I miss him, and I’m blaming myself. How do I believe myself?
One of the hardest parts is not how he treated me, but how I treated myself—I have so much shame for not being strong enough to walk away sooner and to say “no thank you” to all of this behavior.
I (36F) just ended a relationship (with 36M) and I am struggling to understand what happened. Friends and my therapist told me he was emotionally abusing me, but I keep blaming myself and thinking I was too sensitive and that he had just had a really hard year. I took some quizzes the other day to see if it was emotional abuse and I’m even more confused and doubting myself and questioning my own reality. The quizzes ask questions that are so black and white, and what I experienced was in the in-between. Is this even abuse?
For example:
- He didn’t keep me from seeing family and friends, but he made me feel miserable when I did: he would see I’m out with friends (on find my friends) and make passive aggressive comments about how late it was. Or he’d lash out at me about something else, about how bad he was doing, and say something like “but I see you’re too busy for me.” He’d also pick fights when we were with either of our families. At my sister’s wedding, I made chicken for dinner, and people complimented it — I’m pretty sure I actually gave credit to my brother, who had marinated it, but he was quiet during dinner and went back to our room; I could tell something was wrong. When I asked what was going on, he said he was annoyed that I accepted all praise for the chicken, I’m full of myself, and I should have given credit to my brother.
- He didn’t hit me, but he slammed doors, drove fast (knowing it scared me), squeezed my leg until I yelped, and muttered seething sarcastic comments under his breath when he was mad
- He didn’t control my finances, but he said hurtful things about how I’m powerful and controlling at work and I’m conceited. When I asked him if it would improve our relationship for me to quit, he said yes. During a work day, he would talk about suicidal ideation and when I asked him if he wanted to talk about it (or even to come over) he’d say “Anyway hope your meetings are productive…Good luck with whatever is more important.”
- He never called me a bitch or stupid or ugly, but he’d make subtle digs at me being controlling or conceited or too career-driven, and it’d end up spiraling into “I just think we want different things out of a relationship.” He also wrote a 4 page doc about me and how I live my life in fear and that he’s not going to entertain a relationship where I have one foot out the door. This spiraled into a 15+ minute voice note about how I live my life in fear and it’s the cause of every problem in my life. He created no-win situations: for example, I wasn’t supposed to text him when I was in meetings, but if I didn’t text him back quickly enough (because I was in meetings), he’d lash out at me.
- He didn’t force me to have sex with him but there was a time when he wanted to have sex and I said I was too tired/it was too late, and he jumped out of bed and started saying that when couples stop having sex, that’s the sign of the end of the relationship. He started frantically looking for different hotels (we were in a different country). The next morning, he had looked up flights home for me; when I asked if he wanted that, he said no but he assumed I’d want to go home.
- He didn’t cheat on me (that I know about), but he frequently told me about all of the girls who wanted to hook up with him and asked him to cheat on me with. He also assumed I had slept with a lot of people, including most of my friends.
- He wasn’t outright jealous but if I talked to men—even in his own family—he’d storm off to another room and “meditate.” He ended up saying he was just having a hard personal time and he wanted me by his side all night. One time I was friendly to some guys on a hike, and he said I wasn’t that nice to him, and he left me half way through the hike and just ran home. I hike the 6 remaining miles alone.
- He didn’t humiliate me directly, but he’d reference personal things about my health in a coded way in front of his friends and family — things that I knew what they meant, but his family and friends wouldn’t.
All of this made me incredibly scared and feeling like I was walking on eggshells. It culminated during a trip in another country where we had a fight about his passive aggressive comments. During that disagreement, we went to get dinner, and I opened the door and kicked it open for him—it ended up hitting a wall pretty loudly. He made a comment about how mad I must be (I wasn’t mad, I was genuinely trying to hold the door open for him) and I said I needed 30 minutes alone for dinner to collect myself. He said he didn’t want to date me anymore. When I came back to our room, he was gone, his things were gone, and he had unshared his location. For two hours, I had no idea where he was, if he was safe, if I'd ever see him again. He ended up texting me two hours later saying he had gotten another room in the hotel and would be on the 8am shuttle to the airport the next morning—he didn’t mention the breakup at all. He didn’t say anything to me in the morning (I didn’t either—my mistake, but I thought he’d say something since he initiated breaking up) - even as I sobbed in the car ride to the airport.
The apologies after all of these were great. They came with acknowledgments of his behavior, that he was working on himself, that it was just an incredibly hard year for him, that he loves me, that we’re a match made in heaven.
I feel so much shame for staying for so long. If it was so bad, why did I stay and why did it take me so long to leave? Some people say “at least he didn’t hit you.” I sometimes wish he did; at least there would be proof.
Questions:
How do I even start to heal, and believe that this was not something I could have prevented? How do I trust myself? How do I stop pathologizing myself (something must be wrong with me to have been abandoned in a foreign country and to be treated like this)? Any tangible things I can do -- books (already read Why Does He Do That), podcasts, journaling, daily tips?
Thanks everyone.