The darker side of romance

 For some reason I felt compelled to write about a corner of my past that hasn't been part of my blog before. a heads up to anyone who might be upset by this topic I will be delving into emotional abuse so feel free to stop reading now if you don't feel able to carry on.

When I was in my late 20's I met a guy on a night out. He was a few years younger than me and honestly looking back threw up a couple of red flags early but I didn't trust my own intuition plus I was only a few months away from finishing college and planned to move to Edinburgh in a few months so it wasn't like it was going to be anything more than a brief fling.

However as time went on I became more infatuated with him, there was an intensity there and he seemed sweet but damaged. Like a perfect modern fairytale I thought I would be the one to fix him. somehow plans changed and he was going to follow me over to Edinburgh, get a job there and we were going to live happily ever after. at this point I was fully convinced I couldn't be happy without him.

I was going to be there with a friend of mine for a few weeks before he moved over and once I was there the cracks began to show. at this point I think we had been together maybe 6 months and he'd been very sweet. I guess not all my recollections are crystal clear because this is going back over 10 years but I think at this stage the only disagreement we had was around some photos I had up on social media (from before we were together) that he wasn't particularly happy about. I think we had managed to resolve it and I had somehow ignored this giant warning for what it was, the promise of worse to come. I was in the new apartment maybe a few weeks when I received an irate call from him in the middle of the night because he'd found a social media account with some photos he didn't like and he was fully convinced I was lying to him. The rational part of my brain knew this was something I should not have to justify but in the moment I was mostly upset that he was upset with me. I was sure I loved him so sure that I didn't tell anyone about the argument. Even then I knew that admitting it had happened would involve justifying what I was doing with him and already the web was woven deep.

He moved to Edinburgh but could not secure a job. He was 20 and had no real work experience so this should not have been shocking to either of us and he ended up moving home. Somehow instead of breaking up I was persuaded to move back to Ireland shortly after. I felt I could not live without him and he had somehow sold me on the idea that when we lived together that it would be idyllic. Denial, it would appear is not just a river in Egypt because I bought into this fantasy and quit my job and new life to move back to Ireland in a recession.

So we moved in together and unsurprisingly it was not the dream I had been sold. I had no job and no prospect of getting one. We were living in a grim little townhouse in the city centre and he was working hard to both isolate me and reduce my self esteem. I think it might have been John Green (YA author) who said we accept the love we think we deserve and I think there is an element of truth to this. If I had more self worth at that moment in time I would have told him where to go but instead he was singlehandedly confirming some of the worst thoughts I had about myself. On some level I remember thinking that if a man who loves me says these things then surely they must be true.

He was very threatened by the fact I was more experienced than him and often used this to shame me. I think the worst example of this was when I told him about an assault I had experienced years earlier and he would throw this back in my face as an example of my wantonness as though I had somehow brought it upon myself. Also early on in the relationship when everything seemed peachy I was candid in my answers about previous partners or relationships. I know this was naivety on my part but this later came to be used against me.

A lot of the controlling stuff was framed as concerns for my safety or well being and never called what it was, jealousy. I knew there was no way I could speak openly with anyone about what was going on in the relationship and justify my staying so I stayed silent or I told lies that framed how he behaved in a different light and inside I felt a deep sense of shame that I was allowing myself to be treated like this.

There were huge arguments about how I dressed and while I was never explicitly  told I couldn't dress the way I wanted I knew that anything that could be interpreted as revealing would result in a huge argument and potentially days of being frozen out by him so I changed this to keep the peace.

I got offered work experience in a local youth centre and this could have led to me using my social care degree in an official capacity much sooner but he decided it was unsafe and that the teenage boys might assault me and I knew in my heart that there would be a guaranteed argument for every shift I did there and instead turned it down and pretended to my family that nothing had come of it. 

I started doing kettlebell workouts with my sister a few months before the end of the relationship and he was deeply unhappy about this insisting I was making an idiot of both myself and him ( not sure how you work that one out) but I persisted.

I think this is around when things started to turn for me. I had internalized a lot of stuff he told me like how much smarter he was than me ( there was zero evidence to back up this claim) and how he would tell me regularly that my hips were abnormally large but in my head I was it was full of all the things I wanted to say to him but couldn't. I have never been good with conflict which is something he capitalised on.

I remember in those last few months loving him but also hating him. I would fantasise in great detail about leaving him but didn't dare making any moves in case doing so upset him and what if he was so angry he wouldn't take me back. I appreciate this line of thinking isn't exactly logical but I am sharing it to illustrate the complexities within a relationship like this.

When we had been living together maybe six or seven months I eventually got a job. It was in a start up, a call centre. Not exactly ideal but I had experience in this area and work was work. He didn't like this, all these hours a day where I was outside of his control and he became very paranoid about who I was spending my time with. I would come home from work to a myriad of questions about who I had talked throughout the day and how I had spent my breaks. It was important to get the answers right because I would surely be asked again later to see if it matched up.

A few months later things ended. I knew I couldn't continue like this and we had a huge fight where I think I was supposed to cry and beg for his forgiveness but instead he told me it was over and I just said ok. Now don't get me wrong I did cry, a lot. I couldn't move out straightaway because I had just gotten a job and I didn't drive so moving home wasn't viable. I moved into the spare room until I could find somewhere else and I can still remember how awful it was especially because he had family in Waterford and easily could have moved home for a few weeks to allow the break up to happen but I don't think he wanted to relinquish the control he had over me. In the time between the break up and the move out I ended being prescribed sleeping tablets just so I could get some rest sleeping in the room next to him.

I would love to say that was the end of the story and wrap this up with a lovely conclusion but this tale does not end there. we broke up and he continued to behave as though we were together. Phoning me demanding to know where I was when I was trying to view houses, reluctant to lose the foothold he had spent so long working to get.

I moved out and he continued to harass me. I had a lot going on, my diet was the worst it had ever been, the relationship and the end had been incredibly stressful and I was working in a job I hated and only added to my mounting stress. I started to develop stomach problems, everyone was telling me I was fine. I was in a lot of pain and had trouble walking, awful stomach pain and each time I went to the Dr I was dismissed until eventually the symptoms worsened, someone finally took me seriously and I was admitted to hospital with a bowel infection. My ex continued to harass me, livid that I was getting a colonoscopy ( I believe the concern was a man/ medical professional would be looking at my bum). I remember getting so upset during one call that a nurse on the ward took the phone and hung up for me.

So I am out of hospital and on stress leave from work and too anxious to do anything and I eventually find a counsellor and we start to work through things. I tell her as much about the relationship as I am comfortable sharing and I let her know he has not stopped trying to control me. I tell her he calls me all the time and she gave me some very obvious but life changing advice. Just don't answer and I had been so controlled by him and so eager to avoid upsetting him that even months later it hadn't occurred to me that, that was an option. I stopped answering and eventually he stopped calling. He would occasionally show up at my place of work just to see my reaction but eventually that too lost its novelty.

He moved on with his life and I started to rebuild mine.

I think when I look back on things now, I can sometimes be objective and look at his behaviour from a purely psychological point of view as though I was not the casualty here. I know some of this stems from being autistic as I am both highly empathetic and have a keen interest in psychology. I would like to clarify before I elaborate here that by no means do I feel this in any way justifies how he treated me. That is and will always be abhorent. I just like to know what makes people behave the way they do. In his case you didn't have to look too deeply. He had a troubled upbringing and a complicated relationship with his mother and clearly he was mirroring relationships he had seen growing up as well as projecting all of his complicated feelings about her and by extension women, onto me.

This doesn't really change the facts of the story or lessen the scars he left in his wake but it does help me process some of it if I stand back and dispassionately examine the facts over remembering I was a victim to his abuse.

I think overall this experience has thought me to trust my gut, to value myself more so and maybe not be so quick to judge those who should leave but haven't yet. It's more complicated than you think.