Tuesday, September 09, 2014

The Thing About an Abusive Relationship

Note: I've turned off comments for all posts, as I have no desire to open myself up for attack from the legions of assholes.

Sometimes it takes a while to learn that you are in one. Especially if he doesn't hit you.

In March 2007, I wrote a brief entry about a bad relationship. It was written in a light-hearted tone, the kind I would take when swapping dating and breakup horror stories among a group. When you tell those kind of stories, you downplay the really horrible parts and focus on that one aspect of the relationship that screams "bad match!" You don't want to bring the rest of the group down.

Since I wrote that post I've done some reading. Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear. Rosalind B. Penfold's Dragonslippers: This is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like. Kate Brennan's In His Sights. I recently finished Lundy Banecroft's Why Does he Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. In between there have been blog posts, articles and essays. There have been multiple hundreds-of-comments long threads at Metafilter and an especially excellent entry on Sick Systems at Live Journal.

All that reading to confirm what I always suspected, that he was abusive and I was lucky.

So I downplay the really horrible parts.

I talk about the arguments we would have whenever we went out in public together. But I don't talk about how those arguments lasted hours, until I was exhausted, demoralized and ready to agree with anything he said just to end the "discussion".

I don't talk about how those argument were primarily him accusing me of wanting to fuck other men and hours of him haranguing me for denying it.

I talk about him sulking when he felt like he was not getting his way about something. But I don't talk about how he would freeze me out and refuse to speak to me for days.

I don't talk about how he never allowed me to stay over at his apartment and flat out refused to spend more than ten minutes in mine.

I don't talk about the comments he would make about my body. About how he would dump me if I gained weight but expected me to stay with him no matter how he changed.

I don't talk about the time he deliberately tried to get me pregnant. Because to say it out loud meant admitting that he was escalating from verbal abuse into something much more dangerous.

When I tell the breakup story, I don't tell the part where he called me at 2:00 AM wanting to discuss things.

I don't talk about how I would go out of my way to avoid him for the rest of the time I was in school. How I would look for him where ever I went, mentally planning escape routes in case he our paths crossed.

I don't talk about how I took J to a mutual classmate's wedding after our second breakup, as I knew that was the only way to keep him from approaching me.

After the first breakup I went back to him because I genuinely believed I was the problem. I left the second time because I figured out that I was not.

But I'm not any smarter, more self-aware or more confident then other women. I figured it out sooner then most, soon enough to prevent any real permanent damage.

He was abusive. I was lucky.