Saying Abuse Out Loud
Emotional manipulation, gaslighting, and other buzz words that are true.
Please prepare for this one to be especially drafty my friends. I don’t intend to spend a lot of time cleaning or editing this one. I don’t want to marinate with it. And I don’t want to change my mind about giving it to you.
Yesterday a woman popped into my inbox to tell me we had been dating the same man for four years.
The relationship she was referring to has been over for years despite on and off lingering until about six months ago when we finally cut off contact (again), I already know he cheated on me, and I have done a significant amount of healing. I’ve moved on!
And still this email hit me like a truck. I was at work and cried while I wrote her a response. Was I upset because I hadn’t know about her specifically? Was it because she was someone I had suspected and still been told no about? Was it because I knew she was younger and I could hear her pain in her words and they ripped at me and made me angry again? Was it just because it was all coming back up? Was it the fact that she made it clear that it wasn’t just him cheating on me, his partner; it was him having multiple partners who were just like me?
Or was it the fact that she used the word abuse in her email. A word I have never used to describe what happened during those years.
I felt seen by her email. Seen for something I thought I didn’t know was hiding.
And, of course, that brought me here to this place on the Internet where I hope to make things that help other people feel seen too.
I was in entangled with a man I won’t name here from mid 2018 until the end of 2023. (Please don’t Baby Reindeer this shit and go sleuthing. This isn’t for him and it’s not for revenge. This is for the women. This is for me.) For three of those years we were in a “committed and monogamous” relationship. After the monogamous part of our relationship ended, I found out he had been in other relationships at the same time, both serious and monogamous, and casual in nature. He eventually admitted that this was true throughout our years together.
After I found out, I told some close friends and family, but no one else. And I didn't even tell the people I was closest to most of the details. I didn’t want to be the whiny little girl who blasts a man for something that is not that big of a deal. I didn’t want people to judge me for it happening to me or for talking about it. I didn’t want to hurt him. I was embarrassed I let this happen to me. I felt naive and stupid. I was embarrassed that for a long time I still wished we were together and like it was just a toxic phase. I was sure it was a comment on my worthiness that he could do this to me at all and everyone would know I wasn’t worth it if I said it outloud. I was worried I was being dramatic. I would scour texts looking for the signs that it wasn’t my fault, but I would also see all of the nice things he had said, how clever he was, how hurt he had been in his past too. I would blame myself for driving him to do it. Even as I write this, I am having to fight a part of me saying “you’re being dramatic, why is this even bothering you, why haven’t you moved on yet?”
I called it a bad relationship. I called it toxic. I called it a personal failure. I called a lot of it misunderstandings and “walls we had up”. I called myself unworthy. I called it something I need to just move on from like any other normal thing.
Calling it abuse feels searingly painful, it feels confusing, it feels embarrassing and like I need to tip toe and send this to all of my friends before I publish it, and it also like freedom. Because it feels true. And some part of me feels like she can finally let go.
Last night after I got home from work, with this email conversation still heavy on my heart, I cried, “if things happen for a reason, WHY did this shit happen to me?” The answer was laced with self blame and questions of self worth.
But what if it’s because I can write this piece. I can’t think of any other reason I went through this (am still going through this) than that. I can say the words here in this place that you all make safe and hope the people who need to hear them, do. So I am.
This is abuse.
Sometimes, often, he showered me with the most loving and admiring words. He could write poetry. He did write love letters. He cried his open heart to me and then he went to another open heart and told her he loved her too. Over and over. And lied about it.
That's abuse.
He told me he preferred a non-monogamous relationship style, but would do monogamy for me. He made me feel guilty about constraining him in this unnatural way constantly.
He calmly, patronizingly, like I was a child, would tell me I was doing things wrong and how I was misunderstanding him. He would directly tell me what I should have said to him instead of what I did say.
Throughout our relationship, he would talk about his ideal relationship as a power couple and describe a partner who was not quite me. He did not ever use “you” in his descriptions of his ideal partner, but instead made the descriptions aspirational.. what we could be, what I could be.
He talked shit on women he was close to or that I was suspicious of as a way of proving to me that he would never be with them and there was so reason to be jealous. He would call women vapid and vain, immature, clingy, stupid, and obsessed with him. I now can’t imagine what he said about me to them.
I later found out he told some of the other women he was seeing (the ones he couldn’t hide me completely from, I guess) that I was his best friend and part of a larger group of friends he went out with sometimes.
That's abuse.
He criticized my friends and family to me constantly. He told me my friends were boring and vapid. He lived with my family for six months during COVID and spent several Christmases with us. He told me my family was uninteresting, unwelcoming, and other things I don’t need to repeat. He told me he didn’t know if he could be with me because of them. I started to absorb his judgements and spend less time with my friends and my family.
He would go quiet when he was out of town for work and tell me I was being needy and guilting him when I said I missed him. He would say he was going to great lengths to prioritize me when he found time to call me. I felt grateful.
That's abuse.
He wouldn’t post me on his social media and made me feel small and vapid for wanting to be there. He said his account was for his professional endeavors only. He untagged himself immediately when my sister tagged him in a Christmas photo. He told me he had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him about it.
A woman we both met online during COVID highlighted him in her instagram story for sending her a ton of cupcakes when she was sick. When I asked him about it, he called me jealous and said he was just being nice. I didn’t even know they talked to each other.
He told me he couldn’t introduce me to women in his life because I hated women and would just get jealous of them. He didn’t want to risk his friendships with these women over my insane jealousy.
That's abuse.
He told me I was a liability for his professional relationships because of my jealousy and insecurity. Or he said he didn’t tell most of the people he worked with about me because he liked to keep his private life private.
He told me I was criticizing him whenever I showed insecurity because I was saying he wasn’t a good enough partner and making him feel bad.
I went to therapy to deal with my insecurity. I told my therapist that I was projecting past relationship trauma onto him and that wasn’t fair. I wanted to get past it. I blamed myself for everything. He listened to me talk about these sessions and encouraged me to keep going.
That's abuse.
He would lie about where he was and what he was doing. I became an internet sleuth and hated myself for it. I made a fake instagram account so I could watch the stories of other people he was working with to find the lies and because he wouldn't talk to me when he was with certain women. I constantly feared I’d see him across the platform with someone else when a train pulled away. I checked in on who he followed on instagram - he followed every woman from a job after the job was over and interacted with their content constantly. I called myself crazy for this behavior.
He had a female coworker (and boss) who he spent a lot of time with in and out of work. He told me she had feelings for him, but he didn’t reciprocate them and she respected our relationship. I later found out she did not know we were in a relationship at all.
He literally yanked me out of a party she was also at because he said I was talking about her behind her back too loudly (I had said nothing about her the whole night). He told me I ruined the night.
Months later, he wanted to go on an international trip with her. I told him I was uncomfortable with it, but maybe we could work through it because I didn't want to hold him back (I was talking to my therapist about how I wanted to be able to let him do this and not let my past stand in the way.) We went back and forth on it and in a burst of frustration he dramatically cancelled the trip without telling me he was going to. He blamed me for ruining his friendship and working relationship with her.
That's abuse.
He constantly brought up past things in arguments (like this India trip) in order to not deal with the actual issue at hand.
Everything was my fault. All of the time. I was too sensitive.
I thought he would change or grow and that I was meant to help him. He painted a beautiful future for us.
He constantly sent me real estate listings for houses and we even went to showings together, but he said our relationship was too rocky for us to actually buy one together so he’d be buying it by himself and I could live there.
He would never let me use or see his phone. It was always turned away from me. If I did look over his shoulder, he would turn it away and accuse me of being nosey and insecure.
He would pull away from me and be questioning our relationship and then get drunk and confess how overwhelmed he was by his deep feelings for me. I had a constant desire for the version of him that was loving that caused me to accept the version that was unsure.
That's abuse.
He was effusive about how much he loved me, especially compared to his ex who he said he loved deeply and thought he was going to marry. He was charming. He bought sweet gifts and wrote love letters. He was brilliantly creative.
I lived in a state of hyper vigilance. I didn’t feel secure. I blamed that on my own insecurities.
He no call no show stood me up on a dinner with my friends and then invited me out for a drink with his friend “after I was done” and was mad at me for making the time with his friend awkward because I was upset.
He always thought things between us shouldn't be discussed with friends or family and got upset when I did.
I made excuses and defended him.
He would diminish my self esteem with just a look or a sound. He was dismissive.
He rolled over and went to sleep while I openly cried in bed next to him about something he had said.
He told me about his relationship with his female friend he liked to visit in another state and how he felt more able to be vulnerable there and didn’t understand why I didn’t make that possible.
He got mad at me when a friend of his (one of the few I met) asked when we started dating and I told her. He told me she was probably trying to figure out if I had overlapped with his ex who she was also friends with.
Partway through this relationship, during an annual PAP, I found out I have HPV. He blamed me. He told me I gave it to him. He said there was no way he could have given it to me because he is tested so often and we had been monogamous for years. I told him HPV can sit dormant for years and men can’t be tested for it so there’s no way to really know where it came from. I now know he was sleeping with many people during our years of monogamous sex that was even at times unprotected. He got himself checked for penile cancer, but he didn’t tell (at least one of) the other women he was sleeping with that he had HPV. Her and I spoke about the fear of the cancer and the scraping of the colposcopies yesterday.
He blamed me for being cold and not sleeping with him towards the end of our relationship.
I got offered a job in San Francisco - we could leave the city! - he was excited and planned to move with me. He started expressing doubts and backed out the day I moved. I didn’t go into the office on my first day of my new job and did all my meetings virtual because I was “jetlagged” but I was actually bawling between them. He later said he never promised to move.
He spent a year trying to reconcile our relationship after we broke up. I could not move on. I held out hope. When I told him I wanted space, he quietly watched my instagram story every fucking day. I found myself curating it for him and not posting things he would think were lame. I eventually blocked him from being able to view it.
When I tried to reenter the relationship at the beginning of 2023 (something I’m beyond embarrassed to admit), he all of a sudden showed resistance and said words like “you’re the one that got away” but wouldn’t commit to a time or place to meet up.
He told me I misremembered things that I didn’t constantly.
He was clever, charming, and talented.
He was effusive about my creative endeavors and called me brilliant.
He was also highly critical of my work and choices. I never knew which I’d get.
I didn't tell my friends or family about most of the things that were happening because I was embarrassed and because I didn't want them to tell me to leave him. I isolated myself.
That's abuse.
I still think about it. His criticism still pops up in moments I don't expect. I still try to avert my eyes from people's screens so they won't think I'm nosey or jealous. I still find moments where I sink into unworthiness.
I don’t know why I stayed. Please don’t ask me. I don’t know. I ask myself all of the time. I blame myself all of the time. I try not to regret, but I regret those four years with every fiber of my being. I regret the time after we broke up even more. I regret that I still held out hope (for what I don’t know), I regret that I hoped if he went to therapy, he would realize that we were supposed to be together. I regret. I regret. I regret.
I know he is a person and probably not a villain, but I also know his own trauma doesn't make mine less true. We are still responsible for our actions.
And still I'm seconds away from running my cursor up this page and hitting delete in one fell swoop. Unsure if I'm just wrong about everything, worried it'll hurt him, unsure if any of it matters, worried I'm pathetic.
I'm frustrated that he's taken another day, another second, of my time but hopeful that this time it'll be for something good.
Because maybe a lot of us are hiding the parts of us that were abused and need to be able to say so. And maybe this will help. I hope this finds the eyes that need to see it. The hearts that need to be seen. I see you.
That was abuse.You didn’t and don't deserve it. You didn’t ask for it by staying. It’s not a normal relationship dynamic. It’s not your fault. It’s okay that it still stings when it comes up. It makes sense that new information hurts. You’re okay. You’re not naive and stupid; you’re a human. A good one.
They won't apologize, but I will. I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve it. I love you and you deserve that.
This is badass.
I don’t know that I can say anything better than what has already been said. You are beautiful and loved and did not deserve this. For the record, my first husband was controlling and emotionally abusive and I stayed with him for seven years believing I could somehow make it better, help him heal from whatever childhood trauma made him behave in the way that he did. When we split, most all of my friends reacted with something like “it’s about damn time”and I could not understand why they never spoke up during the relationship to tell me I was not being treated with respect.