My Story
Everyone has had their share of good, and bad, relationships. Not everyone has gone from an extremely unhealthy and abusive relationship, to a healthy and almost perfect relationship.
I have. When I think of myself ten years ago, I see a projection of me. I recognize her, but I also know that she is someone else. Someone who got lost along the way. The three and a half years spent in that relationship are a gap in my life. A filled gap, yes, and it certainly served its purpose.
When someone is living this kind of experience, he/she has a few decisions to make.
1-You decide to accept it and stay in what we call a pattern
2-You decide to leave the person you are with, but end up in a similar relationship, and again stay in the pattern
3-You decide to end it and never allow yourself to fall on with someone like that.
Here are the positives and negatives of having been in an abusive relationship. I wrote having been because this text is about me who decided to end my relationship and never go through something like that again.
Negatives:
-You lose yourself (sense of who you are, self confidence, independence, …);
-You lose people you love;
-You can end up alone, except for that abusive person you are with (live in isolation);
-You become physically and mentally unhealthy/sick (loss of weight, depression, …);
-Can be difficult to trust and fall in love again.
Positives:
-You get to reinvent yourself;
-You DO come out of it stronger, once you have healed;
-You have a new and profound appreciation of life
-You can smell manipulators a mile ahead!!
Now, here is my story.
PART 1
I was twenty one years old, working full time as a receptionist/hr consultant at an employment agency and attending University at night.
Then one day a very good looking, bad boy type man walks in for an interview. He’s twenty three and just came out of jail for break and entering. Now you would think that this is enough for me to stay away right? Well, no. Naïve, ignorant and wild me says yes to go on a date with him.
I am not going to elaborate on every single detail of my relationship with him because I swear it would end up being bigger than an encyclopedia. So, in a few sentences, here’s what it was like.
He never hit me, but very few were the days when he would not say mean and/or condescending words to me. Example: There’s this one time when I refused to do something with him because I had a lot of studying to do he just laughed and said ‘You’re wasting your time, you’ll never be able to get a degree’. Or, your skirt’s too short, we can almost see your big butt.
When I got a raise at my work, instead of congratulating me, he went on a violent rampage throwing stuff everywhere.
When we got into an argument in the car, he would just kick me out of the car no matter where we were.
He obsessively stared at every other woman, and repeatedly cheated on me.
He would never hold my hand because he said it was cheesy and for old people.
These are just a few examples. Mix them with the use of drugs, alcohol, clubbing, etc it’s no wonder I was on a skid row. I was losing my friends. My family was intensely disappointed. I dropped out of university.
Why did I stick around? It’s hard to tell. I guess he was good at getting his grip on me, and I had a wild side that needing to come out and was being fed. Who knows, the reasons are never logical, really.
PART 2
One morning I woke up, stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and said to myself ‘ENOUGH!!! I am done with this! I know what I want out of life and this is definitely not it!’
Only, getting rid of my then boyfriend was not that easy. I say ‘getting rid’, because, in the end that’s what it came down to. He did not accept me leaving him.
He started harassing me. He would constantly call me or send emails, going from I love you and I can’t be without you, to you’re a bitch and I’ll set your house on fire and so on. I blocked him in my email accounts and changed my cell number. He started coming to my work and waiting for me in the parking lot. Staying parked in front of my house or just a little further down the street.
He broke into my home in the middle of the night and physically fought with my dad, who was sleeping over because I had received the call earlier that day that he was out of prison and it was better not to stay alone for a while. It ended with a hole in my wall, an unhinged closet door, the flat screen in my driveway (he tried to throw in on my car) and the police.
All this lasted for a while with me having to go to court many times, him being thrown in and out of jail, having the police repeatedly coming to my house and work.
I had indefinite support and help from my brother and parents, for sure, but oddly enough an unlikely story started to unfold between my boss (who is now my husband) and I. A deep friendship between him and I was born out of my experience with my ex. Martin and I had been working together for two years and had and ordinary boss-employee relationship,until