Jilly, Reading your reply is so very helpful. It is often the most wonderful thing to truly be able to relate to another person, to empathise and feel understood, to share in this way – it gives so much strength. I can so relate to the drip, drip, drip and how you just find that this is your life now and it does feel kind of crazy, but that you have also developed a kind of numbness to it and that if it weren’t for all the drama you might even miss that…the highs and lows…in some crazy strange kind of way…but mostly it is just accepting that this is how your life has become, not really understanding how you got there and why you don’t act in your own best interests instead..sometimes it’s like just only being able to come up for air briefly now and then and the rest of the time you are below water fighting with the currents.
It is strange for me too to use the words “abusive” and “abuse”, but it seems to also help me to realise how much I was knocked around hard being in the relationship and how much the other person, knowingly and perhaps unknowingly, manipulated and took advantage of me. It is hard for me to describe exactly how though if someone were to ask me: “In what ways were you abused?” Financial abuse, yes, for sure. Extremely so. Which is no small thing. Emotional, definitely…much harder to explain how that all really was. But living in a world of deceit for another person’s gain. Not being shown appreciation, respect and the other person taking and taking. And when I didn’t deliver as he wanted and he was trying to get me to pay or just wanted to do what he wanted with no one to say no, then the anger and disappearances for days and nights. “They” say he was living with a 17 year-old for much of the past year, while pretending to live with me too, and then taking money from me for her. He smashed the windows of our car, then took it and sold it for much less than its value and then disappeared for 2 weeks and spent it all…a lot likely gambled, but also it seems he was in a hotel for 2 weeks, drinking a lot…women, most likely..and I thought I would leave him and didn’t…much longer story. He took all the money that was from exchanging our car when I didn’t know he had already made the transaction and disappeared for 4 days and they say he took another 17 year-old to the beach. He spent more time away from the house than there, more nights not coming home at all and then when he appeared it was drunk. He was often unrepentant. But then sometimes he was meek, tearful, like a frightened child, but this never lasted very long and never was enough to change his behaviour. Most of all he lied and lied to me and I still can’t separate the lies from the truth. I got sucked into his vortex of hurt, need and deceit and it was nearly always about him…then he would turn on the charm for a while and tell me how much he loved me and needed me and be so affectionate and it felt so “real” that the other things he did felt like they were from some dream world, that it couldn’t really be him (apart from the gambling). He took and took money, always found ways, and lied and lied to cover up what he had done with it. I believed he was another person altogether for a long time and then as more and more he did terrible things and dominated me I just lost my strength. But…I got out. And it is such a crazy thing, this love, this losing ourselves in feelings for another person and feeling it is the most important thing we have in our lives, latching on to the parts of it that do make us feel good…although they might be very few and rare…and enduring all the rest, over and over. And, yes, it is so important not to feel guilty and blame oneself…but to move forward and learn how to live how we truly want to be living and by loving oneself we show others how we want them to treat us.