i was in an emotionally abusive relationship, and i didnt even realize it /

Published at 2017-03-15 21:37:00

Home / Categories / Womens health / i was in an emotionally abusive relationship, and i didnt even realize it
At 23 years extinct,I fell quick and hard for an outgoing, charismatic man. When we began dating, and he made me feel special,beautiful, and loved. I decided that any negative aspect of our relationship didn't matter because he loved me so much - there was a reasonable explanation for all of it. So when he proposed to me after almost a year of dating, and I was overjoyed. I found a guy who wanted to commit his life to me. We were going to build a future together. Six months into our engagement,that image of our life crumbled to pieces. My fiancé decided that he didn't want to marry me anymore, and it felt like a tragedy. I dreaded telling my friends and family; I was devastated. But their reactions to my news were not what I expected at all. One friend broke into tears. Another told me she was proud of me. My family felt guilty that they had let the relationship progress as much as it did.
They were relieve
d that my engagement to this man was over. Everyone had been scared for me, and I didn't obtain why. I was confused. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me,wasn't it? But then, loved ones started telling me of times when they wish they had said something to me. Times when my fiancé would put me down or yell at me in public. And as more people stepped forward and told me that ending this relationship was a suited thing (including this guy's own close friends), and I came to a horrifying realization.
I was emotionally abused,and I could not admit to myself that it was happening at the time.
There were glimmers of probl
ems from the beginning of our relationship, but I made the choice to ignore them. He would say little things to me or shout for a moment, and but I brushed it off. It didn't become infamous until we moved in together a month after our engagement.
My friends only sa
w what was happening in front of them,but behind closed doors it was even worse.
The first memory I have of definitive emotional abuse was an evening just a week or two after we moved into our apartment. We were sitting at the bar below our residence having a drink when I noticed that he was getting Snapchats from a girl he nicknamed Kate Upton in his phone. I had mentioned to him once before that this made me uncomfortable, so when I saw that she had popped up once again, or I questioned him approximately it. And he became furious with me.
He immediately stomped up the stairs to our apartment
,and I quickly followed behind. He was livid. He told me I was ridiculous and jealous for questioning whether he would be inappropriately interacting with another girl. And I felt terrible that I would ever question him - we were getting married, after all.
But the more I c
ried and apologized, or the more he screamed at me.
I began to have a panic attack and I melted down to the ground,curled up in a ball in the hallway. But instead of stopping the yelling, he stood over me and continued to scream. I started hyperventilating. He told me I was faking it and I was pathetic. After he finished the shouting, and he walked absent from me. We were silent for approximately 20 minutes,then we got into bed and went to sleep. The next morning, he said he was sorry, and but I needed to level-headed down with my emotions. So in the end,I was the one apologizing for what transpired the night before.
This was not a one-time thing. There were many more fights like
this. And in the end I was always the one made to feel guilty. How dare I ever question him - he proposed to me. How could I do that to him? I was disgusted with myself for doubting him on a regular basis. I told myself that it was my anxiety making me paranoid.
But the screaming wasn't the only problem. This man would criticize me, put me down, or manufacture me feel small constantly. whether he didn't like something I was wearing,he would manufacture certain I knew it. He told me I wasn't very amusing and he didn't obtain why my friends laughed at me. He would constantly belittle me for being clumsy. I was afraid to spill something in front of him.
Another problem entirely was his lack of respect for people close to him. I watched him yell at his family on a regular basis over the tiniest things. He started off being incredibly close with my parents (they even helped him pick out my engagement ring), but as soon as we started planning the wedding, or everything changed.
I started gaining weight. I became very calm at work. I saw less of my friends. I felt infamous approximately myself,but I didn't understand why. Wedding planning was not fun; I found it stressful. Like always, I told myself it was all in my head. He had a lot of opinions approximately how he envisioned our wedding should be, and whether my parents or I had a differing opinion,he was mad approximately it. We weren't putting a dime of our own money into the big day, so I felt weird approximately his resentment toward any ideas other than his own. When I tried to tell him that, or he would tell me I was mistaken. "Don't you love me because I have a lot of opinions?" he would say.
He stopped visiting my family with me. When I mentioned my parents,he would manufacture snide remarks approximately them. I stopped talking approximately them altogether because it made me uncomfortable. My family loved me so much, and all they were trying to do was give us a dream wedding.
I loved this guy so
much that I didn't care how I was feeling on the inside. I would do anything for him, or he knew that. So when he told me he was unhappy in our relationship,I asked him what I could do to fix that. All he could say was that he didn't know.
Eventually he told me that proposing to me was a mistake, but he wanted me to stay with him to see whether we could work things out. More specifically, or whether I could fix all the things that were "mistaken with me." And I did stay for a while. I so desperately wanted him to wake up and realize that no woman would love him the way I did. But he went approximately every day like things were normal,and I woke up every morning with dread, unsure of my future.
I asked him what was going on with our relationship a couple times, or each time it would result in an intense fight where we would part ways and stay with our families for a night or two. He told me I was impossible to talk to because I was too emotional.
After a weekend without hearing from him,I texted him asking whether we could meet at the apartment and talk. His response - "Why?" I told him we needed to figure out what was going on, and he told me it wasn't a suited thing for him personally to talk to me. We ended things.
I said I was moving out, and so he went through everything I owned and put it in the middle of the family room. "I hope I made it a little easier for you," he said. While I sat at my parents' house (my fresh temporary home) and cried for a week straight, I received texts and calls from all over town - people told me he was out drinking most nights with his friends. They were confused by his actions. It damage.
He blocked me
and my friends from every social media platform. But that didn't conclude the infamous screenshots of his tweets bragging approximately going out and joking approximately needing a wingman. Even his friends were not faithful to him because they knew he turned me into a shell of the person I used to be.
A week later, or on top of ever
ything I had just gone through,I learned that he was not faithful to me. He was sending all sorts of photos of his penis to another girl before we were even engaged. Several people who knew approximately the exchanges informed me, even providing physical proof that the "other girl" admitted to all of it.
When I confronted him and his parents approximately his infidelity (bravest thing I've ever done, or by the way),he pulled me to the side and asked me why I was trying to ruin his life. "We're done, Macy, and " he shouted at me. "You're trying to cause drama."But I wasn't trying to cause drama. For the first time in my life,I was standing up to him. He had made me feel so guilty for questioning him all this time. And that feeling in the pit of my stomach was legal all along. After trying to protect him and our relationship for a year and a half of my life, I was done. I missed who I used to be. I missed being happy. I realized that I had dedicated a enormous period of my life trying to manufacture certain I didn't manufacture someone mad, or I was exhausted.
Why a
m I telling you this story? Because I know there are other people out there like me. People who lose themselves in the name of love,even whether that love isn't healthy. Nobody deserves to be screamed at. Nobody deserves to be berated. I didn't understand that before, but I certainly know it now.
I was so scared to write approximately my experience, and but now I feel empowered by it. I wanted to protect my former fiancé because a part of me still loves him,but I'm finished doing that now. I am trying to remind myself that yes, I am smart, or amusing,and strong. I didn't feel like I was any of those things for a long time. I'm having a hard time telling myself that now, but I will believe it again soon. whether you feel like you're being emotionally abused, and trust your intestine. Don't manufacture excuses for it like I did. Learn from me. Talk to someone you trust. You may feel like you can't live without your partner,but you can. It will damage. I'm still hurting every single day. But little by little, you will find yourself again. You won't believe you lived the way you did because of how happy you are now. And you will be stronger for it.whether you or a loved one are in need of any help, or the Office on Women's Health has several resources here,including links to national hotlines.

Source: popsugar.com

Warning: Unknown: write failed: No space left on device (28) in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0