Its not me.. Its you... (Pt.1)

WARNING: SOME LANGUAGE MAY BE TRIGGERING FOR VICTIMS OF ABUSE

Knowing when to end a relationships is tough. Knowing why is relief.

One of my flaws is loyalty. I know how that sounds. I'm not bragging about my loyalty, what I am saying is I don’t know when to let go. I will hang on with  everything that I've got to keep a relationship. I push aside hurt that I feel to keep that person in my life. Despite pain, despite abuse, despite manipulation, despite losing myself. I hang on.

In my first marriage, I had all the formerly listed traumas. But despite that, in my mind, being loved was so much more important to me. For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted that someone or community that I could rely on for unconditional love. I thought I would find that in my husband, but unfortunately he saw my vulnerability and used that for his own gain. He had a mental illness and as hard as I tried, I would never be what he wanted or needed me to be. 

It has taken me 10+ years to know the why of ending that relationship. Once I could put a name to it, I felt relief. For years I grieved for that loss. I beat myself up for being the loser that couldn’t keep her marriage together. Part of his mental illness is manipulation and trauma bonding.

What is trauma bonding? Have you ever watched The Bachelor? I hate to spoil this for you but the relationships are calculated. Think of this, when you share a traumatic experience with someone, how do you feel? Ever been in a car accident? Who is the person that you want to reach out too? Who's the person that you know will understand? I'll tell you. The person that you shared that trauma with. The person in the car with you during the accident can empathize and relate. Those are natural and healthy bonds.

With those that want to manipulate people, they use trauma bonding to get their way. My ex-husband did just that. We would experience really traumatic things that he had created to make that bond happen. If you're wondering how that looks let me explain.

We would have epic fights. And within those fights he would guilt me with things like “if you didn’t do ______ we wouldn’t be here.” “This is all your fault.” “You think your opinion matters?” "Why are you wearing that? You look horrible." And he would push and push and push!!!! Until I broke. I would say, ok fine. And just do whatever he wanted. I thought by saying yes I would end the fight. But what I was actually doing was showing him my hand. I showed him where to hit so it counts. He was learning how to get me to do exactly what he wanted.

When I was battered and broken, and emotionally beaten to a pulp, he would than turn around and be the first one to comfort me. He would come back to me and say I was his world. I was everything to him. He couldn’t do it without me. I complete him. He's so happy with our life. He would cover up his tracks with compliments, and gifts. He would say exactly what I wanted to hear except for an apology. He never apologized. He never could admit that he did something wrong. So as much as I wanted to hear it, he would skirt around the issue, and cover it up with more empty compliments.

Empty compliments meaning, he would give me compliments about himself. If that makes sense. They are filled with "I statements." "I am so happy." "I love my life." "You make me look good." "I need you." But that was only the beginning. The verbal abuse escalated much further to life threatening situations.

One time while driving, I found out he had been texting other girls and his porn use had escalated to an unhealthy level. I was obviously so scared and confused, and didn’t know how to handle it. I will say that I was really young and had no experience in having hard talks like this. So we both were very explosive, and it got to the level of threatening my life. That’s when it hit me.. He's serious. He will do exactly what he says he will do. I saw the look in his eyes. The lights were gone, and the person I was sitting next to was not my husband.

Once he made that first initial threat it only escalated from there. He knew that he could easily get whatever he wanted by threatening my life. And it worked, another 3 times. What finally snapped for me, was when he told me "I don’t care. I don’t care if you live or die. I don’t care what happens to you." Once he said that, I was convinced he could most definitely kill me.