“You’re so ______”

Now, an emotionally healthy person would probably start to hear alarm bells at this point, and get their antennae up, but it’s not emotionally healthy people who generally get into abusive relationships for the long haul. It’s either people who are at a point in their lives when, for whatever reason, they’re particularly vulnerable and unsure of themselves, or it’s people who have a disordered way of thinking about how they should be treated in the first place. Some people just grow up to think they are naturally the scum of the earth, and that they have no right to set boundaries for themselves, no right to say, “No,” to anything, ever, no right to say, “Please stop, that hurts me,” no right to stand up for themselves, and no right to question anyone else.

A healthy person would hear, “You’re so ______, but I love you so much,” and quickly take a survey of their nearest and dearest to find out if this is true. Chances are, they’ll be told it’s the biggest load in the history of loads.

An unhealthy person would hear, “You’re so ______, but I love you so much,” and assume it must be true, even if it doesn’t sound right to them. Because what the hell do they know about themselves, right?

And right there, a little bit of your identity has just slipped away.

Abusers will spend ten percent of their time being sweet, and ninety percent of the time telling you what a monster you are, and how you provoke the worst in them, and they were never like this until they met you, and you will bloody well believe it too. You always knew you were a bottom-feeder, subconsciously, and this person who loves you so much is just the only person in the world who is honest enough to tell you how awful you really are. That’s what they tell you, anyway. You’re so ashamed to think of how you’ve spent so many years ignorantly torturing your friends and family with your presence, and how they must all secretly despise you, but they remain in your life either out of pity, or because they’re scared of your terrifying and unreasonable temper, or because they’re just too darn nice to tell you to go and jump in a lake, like you so obviously should.

There will always be another part of you that will try to defend yourself, just out of reflex. This will be the part that will make you scream, “No, no, no! That’s not true!” as you sob incoherently during the most recent emotional throwdown from your beloved. This will be after you already apologized for whatever it was you didn’t do, but before you grey-out, and your head fills with the perpetual wailing of a mind coming gradually unhinged. You’ll need several hours to remember how to speak again, but just be ready to lie back on the bed as soon as he’s stopped shrieking long enough, because to deny him sex for a whole ten seconds after he just spent six hours calling you a soul-killing sociopathic monster would be just cruel. What the hell is wrong with you?

You will spend all your time proving to your abuser how much you love them, because the goal posts will keep moving. You say you love me, but you won’t spend the whole weekend at my house, I don’t care about the fact that you hardly see your family or your dog during the week, it’s you who chose to have a job. Well, you’ll spend the whole weekend with me, but you won’t move in with me. You’ve moved in with me, but you still spend time with your family and your dog sometimes at the weekends. You don’t see your family on the weekends anymore, but you still go out with your friends once every few weeks. You don’t love me at all! You’re so ______, but I love you so much!

How could you love someone like this? The truth is, you probably don’t, but abusive people generally have very binary emotions, and they’ll force-fit you to that thinking, whether you like it or not. You either “love” them, or despise them with every fibre of your being, and remember, you are most likely someone who believes themselves to be generally unworthy of love, nor do you have a healthy idea of how the word translates into action, so it’s easy for you to love, or at least be told you love, someone who isn’t worthy of anything better than a shovel to the back of the head, and the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Also, remember that how everyone else treats you is always your fault, because you are unreasonable and impossible, so you’re not allowed to dare to hate anyone.

The relationship I’m describing here is one that doesn’t involve being hit. That’s one experience I, thank the god I don’t believe in, cannot speak to, but a friend asked me recently if I would have woken up and left if my ex had ever hit me. The answer is no, probably not. Actually, it’s just no. He would have told me that I left him no other choice, and I would have believed it, like I had everything else.

Getting out will likely be thanks to that little defensive reflex of yours letting out a final, desperate cry. Either you’ll suddenly say, “No!” where before you’ve usually said, “Yes!” and that will be it, or the start of it. Or you’ll be crying at a friend’s house after you’ve been kicked out on the street for the fifth time this month, and when you’d normally reach for the phone to call and beg to be able to go back, you just don’t.

That’s not to say it will end there. Expect the letters, the phone calls, the pleas for friendship, and the pleas for friendship with benefits. “But you’re my best friend!” (most likely, you’re his only friend, which you must realize is not quite the same thing), “You broke my heart, and now you’re not even going to be my friend either?! You’re so ______, but I still want you as a friend!”. Then there will be the tears, then the threats. If you’re able to stay strong through all of this, and not go back, then you’ll finally start to heal, if you don’t break down and start giving in again, or give in to the urge of your own to just end it all, and put yourself somewhere where he can never reach you again. By the time you wake up enough to change your phone number and block his e-mail address, you’ll still be healing.

That wailing in your head? It won’t go away for a long time. But it goes away eventually, and eventually is what you’re left working toward. Get a good therapist if you can, and start thinking about the kind of person you would like to become. You do get a unique chance out of this. Your entire personality has been dismantled, your mind pulled apart. You get to consider from a theoretical standpoint what sort of personality traits you would like the new you to have, and you can start developing them.

Myself? I’m ten times the bitch I was three years ago, which, if I am to believe my ex, puts me somewhere beyond Satan, and just shy of Ann Coulter. I’m skeptical, distrusting, more judgmental, less spiritual, more brutally honest, and far slower to form friendships, and I’m about a thousand times happier than I’ve ever been. Being unconditionally trusting and loving to everyone I could see brought me nothing but trouble. My ex was the apex of that. It’s lovely and charming to think that unconditional love is the way to go for everybody, but that’s just not the case. There are lots of reasons to love people, there are lots of reasons to feel compassionate towards others, and you should never forget those, but you should never forget that there are reasons for people to not be worthy of your love as well.

And your ex? Most likely, there will be nothing you can do about him. Police interference may or may not be helpful, depending on when you call them, what you’re after, and which officer answers the phone that day. It’s a crapshoot. No, your ex will go on his merry way, and you’ll see at one point that he’s gotten together with someone new, and you’ll feel overwhelmed with guilt, and worry about the new girlfriend, and what she will eventually go through. You’ll kick yourself for not doing something about him, you’ll think over all the things you could do.

You could post your story on the Internet, whether it be a straightforward narrative with no names mentioned, with the vague hope that some of your wider social network will know who you’re talking about, and take heed of your warning, or by posting his name with a few of the psychotic e-mails he sent you before you hit the blocking-his-address point, or you can post audio recordings of calls with him, post-break-up, that show him clearly being the black-hearted maniac he really is.

But a lot of people will just say you’re bitter, spiteful, an extortionist, and just trying to damage his reputation.

And besides, you could have just walked away.