Do you ever fully recover from an abusive relationship?

[Rainbow03]

We were together 12 years and it’s been I think 5 years since leaving. I mean I’m happy, moved on and had a little girl, already had another dd. We are all great as a blended family, relationships is healthy etc etc….But!

If I think about it I’m so bloody annoyed I wasted so long with him. He destroyed my self esteem, I suffered depression, anxiety and ptsd that’s practically gone now having done a lot of work and soul searching. If I think too hard about it I feel angry, will him and myself for putting up with it and for loosing so many years. I put myself in a not great financial situation in those years, it’s sorted but I could be better having not met him. My physical health is not great as I suffer an auto immune condition now which leaves me very fatigued. I have regret because it’s made me unwell probably for the rest of my live.

Oh man. So he is still abusing you via your daughter? Even if you are or want completely no contact, you can't really stop that. What a hateful, pathetic man.

The reliving element of CBT has helped me to accept and give compassion to the woman and mother who was trapped and unable to make decisions. I know the less contact I have with ex the better but I still have to have some due to my youngest son. When he is horrible it can be difficult, when he is nice it can be difficult and when I have seen love notes lying around for him from his new partner (I have to enter his home, it's complicated and outing to explain and no I should not have looked) it's really disorientating and angering. He doesn't deserve to be worshipped this way. I always knew this would happen because he is so charismatic and good at sweeping people off their feet. It doesn't hurt me anymore,it did but I am past that. It does leak into my brain and I wonder...did I imagine his abuse? Did I cause it? Was it me that made him bad and her that makes him good? Rationally I know that isn't true and these thoughts don't last as long due to the CBT. Ask your GP to refer you. It took me a year to get it but I have had it now and it's made a huge difference.

@Watchkeys I suppose nobody has and nobody really does care for that younger person. Nobody wants to hear about it, everyone judges, dismisses and invalidates. If I think too much about it it just gets me down. How can you make a past version of yourself feel better with the current version. I find it an incredibly lonely existence even though I have people I love. I’m alone in my memories and in my past pain.

I don't even know you, and I care about that younger you... perhaps because I have been in similar situations myself. It is hard not to care about a story like yours, and the abuse victim involved.

It's sort of interesting that you are judging whether or not the feelings of that 'younger you' can be validated on whether anybody has validated them or not. Just as an analogy, if you found, say, an abandoned kitten in the woods, would you think its feelings didn't matter because nobody else had ever cared about it? Or would your feelings on their own be enough to feed it and love it and care for it, and make it feel good?

Yes, it is lonely @Rainbow03 Nobody has experienced what you have. The misery, the isolation, the pain. But to say nobody wants to hear about it isn't true. MN is here to listen, read and there are many who have experienced similar, suffered the fallout and its effects.

In RL, no, I think it's very hard for people to hear the misery. They don't really want to and they are blessed if they haven't experienced it.

May I ask if you have a professional therapist to talk to? Have you ever had therapy?

@Watchkeys I think there is a part of my self that’s missing. I’ve never been validated, never been consoled, I don’t like being too close to people. I don’t know what that feels like, I certainly don’t know how to give it to myself or what to do with it if I did. I’ve never asked for or never been forgiven. None of these things compute at all. It’s almost like I’m not real if that makes sense. I am and have always been invisible on the inside. Nobody hugged me when my dad died, nobody has to this day or after the abuse or the court or anything. I’ve no external validation for anything. You are supposed to be given that as a child and internalise it, it’s not in me.

This is a good question, OP.

A professional therapist would work with you safely, setting clear boundaries in a contract that ensured they behaved ethically towards you. A trauma history needs to be respected, and worked carefully with, to ensure your psychological safety, and risks like retraumatisation and invalidation are avoided.

Who knows the motivations of randoms on the internet, but anyone adopting a quasi-therapeutic tone and inviting you to share hurt parts in public, in the absence of the conditions of safety described above, is not acting in your best interests. Please only give as much of yourself as you can afford to here and wear responses you receive lightly.

This is different from other traumatised women sharing their experiences here, in solidarity with you.

I'm assuming that the reason you're posting here and choosing to answer questions you're being asked is because you want to, @Rainbow03 , and assuming that you feel safe to do so. Who knows the motivation of 'randoms on the internet' who try to vet others' posts, right? We are all here of our own free will. We are all adults. If anybody has a problem with my posts, they need to report me, rather than make passive aggressive digs.

That said, I wondered what your current partner knows/what you think they would say if they did know, how you feel? I'm not suggesting that you say anything, more wondering on what their perspective is/what you would expect it to be.

I really hope you won't answer any questions unless it helps you to talk about it. I'm not a therapist, nor pretending to be one. I do have experience of trauma though, in my childhood and adulthood, and I have resolved many issues that sound similar in some ways to yours. My motivation is to help others do the same.

I have been open about my concerns.

I’m open to trying new things. I’m ok with what I went through, no longer think I’m at fault or bad etc. I’ve tried googling my heart out and it doesn’t make me feel better. I guess I get triggered into thinking it’s be and start down a spiral every time I see him and he looks absolutely ok and living a perfect life and it’s gets me starting on why me over again and perhaps I was just a bit weak for him. He is at fault for being nasty but perhaps I didn’t need to be so effected by them.

My daughter has come back a few times and said his gf now of a few years is stronger and knows how to handle his passion. I know it’s utter bollocks. He is completely justified in treating me like that because I was less of a person and undeserving of better. I can’t help but still feel like a bit of that is true that’s probably why I let him treat me so badly. If he can move on and find someone who he doesn’t treat like he treated me then doesn’t that make me the problem.

I suppose it’s hard to validate events that happened in the past. Did I remember it correctly etc etc. My memories are like those of of another and he is behaving differently now so I can’t get a firm grip on them.

You don't know what their relationship is really like. His gf could be in hell. Maybe she's abusive too? You just don't know.

You don't know how he treats your dd when she's with him either.

It's not that you are the problem. He was a huge problem. Him. Not you. He still is. People don't change.

How can you be the problem when you were involved with an abusive man?

You've probably already read this sort of thing, but just in case you haven't, this might help

Why Its So Important to Validate Yourself and How to Start (psychcentral.com)

When I had counselling, I called it my 'reparenting', and I learned that not having been validated so far in life (I was 43) didn't mean that I couldn't now validate myself. It was life changing. I realised all at once that 'Looking after myself' didn't just mean eating well and getting enough exercise; it meant having full responsibility for an adult, in the same way as being responsible for a child. Just bigger and more dangerous! So, all the things we do for our kids, we have to do for ourselves... stay away from the bullies, spend time doing things we love doing, encourage ourselves to follow our dreams, be with people who inspire us, who we smile with, don't do stuff that makes us feel crap, have agency, make decisions for ourselves etc etc. I realised I'd been hanging around with bullies and trying to work out what was wrong with me, that made me not like them.

I've said this many times on here: when we turn 18, we don't legally stop needing parents. It's just that we're deemed old enough to parent ourselves. Most of parent ourselves in the way that our mother parented us, and that's what we think is 'right' and 'normal', but often it's not. Our mothers may have been distracted (like yours and mine, for different reasons), and despite loving us, may not have been as focussed on us as we needed. And then that's how we treat ourselves, and it sounds like that's what's happening for you: your feelings come way down the priority list, and often, you just look (back) at them and think they're silly.

Think about how a child would react if they were upset and you told them their upset feelings were just silly. Just stupid. Wrong, pathetic etc. You're doing that to yourself.

Does any of this ring true, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

I wonder do men ever feel the same level of ongoing trauma from broken relationships as women do? I doubt it, because women just don't inflict the same level of misery that men do. Why do we out up with it?!

I was in a 10 year relationship which started out great (overly intense from his side now that I look back, but at the time he made me feel wonderful as though I was the most important person in his world - didn't realise this is a massive warning sign) and went downhill when I experienced some life problems (family illness and death). Suddenly I wasn't perfect anymore and he wanted no part in my 'problems'. Couldn't accept that it wasn't all high days and holidays anymore. He went off me and instead of ending it, decided I was the problem and turned nasty. Not violent, but shouty, nasty comments, dismissive, silent treatment, angry if I was out for too long or doing something that was only for me and not related to his needs.

It has scarred me greatly.

I'm still grappling with why I stayed for so long. We broke up several times and I kept crawling back again over and over. Nothing was ever resolved- because he was incapable of anything other than selfish behaviour- and yet I still persevered. Told myself it was me. I needed to be happier, set aside my grief. I needed to try harder to please him. I needed to be thinner, spend more time focussing on his sexual needs. I needed to change. I was to blame for making him nasty to me.

It's so obvious in hindsight, but when you're in it, it's impossible to get perspective. Especially when it's low-level abuse like that. I think this is why we end up being traumatised by these bastards for so long - because society is completely against us in recognising that men's behaviour is almost universally awful.

@Watchkeys rings very true for me! Thanks for a great post.

@Watchkeys if I think that I was right in my actions then that makes it all to real and tbh I’m still terrified of my memories so I keep them locked away. If I was to blame then for some reason it doesn’t make them feel so scary. That and I visually don’t see him doing it to another. In a way I want him to do it but then I don’t want him to hurt another so I feel bad thinking like that. I think when something isn’t validated at the time it just doesn’t fit right.

I doubt it, because women just don't inflict the same level of misery that men do

Gosh, they do.

The freedom programme OP...£12 well spent..youll understand then it wasnt you at all

Do we really? Women definitely have capacity to inflict realtime misery on their partners in relationships. But do they cause men to be emotionally scared as much as men scar women? I don't think so. Men are inherently selfish. Women proactively take on burdens and try to improve things so they can do more - and more and more - for others.

Yep.
Everyone can inflict misery. But, with the 'right' men are conditioned that they have, the entitlement, they have always inflicted more pain.

@Superlambaanana

Sorry, I see what you mean. You're saying that men don't get as hurt, rather than women are not as damaging. I was commenting on the latter; not sure about the former.

@Rainbow03

You make a lot of references to good and bad, right and wrong... this is all external validation stuff. Unless someone is breaking a law, there's nobody to tell us what is right or wrong. Morals, sure, and ethics, but these are strongly debated; we each have our own, and so what's 'right' and 'wrong', 'good' and 'bad' is decided by the individual, about their own actions/feelings/thoughts.

What was 'right' for you at the time doesn't have to be right by any other metric, other than the law. And even with the law, there is some bendiness (for example, the self defence stance can make something otherwise illegal, legal)

There's got to be a way of you letting yourself off the hook for not being able to do a job that you'd never been given the tools for.

Is it helpful to be talking about it? Sometimes just being heard can make a big difference.

I think this whole issue of external validation is interesting, because my own recovery from abusive relationships went like this:

Childhood - hmmm...
Marriage - nearly 20 years of verbal abuse
Next few relationships also abusive, perhaps even more so, in different yet crucially similar ways!

EVENTUAL PENNY DROP MOMENT:
Fuck this, I need to look after myself better...

Then many years alone, increasingly happy because I was learning to look after myself properly... and a very important element of that was not allowing anyone else to spoil things for me, ever again.

I'd love to say I've done all my the necessary healing myself, alone. But essentially my recovery strategy has always been damage limitation. I restrict my interactions with others.

It's only since meeting DH#2 that I've really managed to get the hang of being someone whose feelings and thoughts actually matter. Him constantly demonstrating that they do has been like a gentle learning curve for me over the past decade. I'd like to think I'd have grasped all that without this external validation, but I'm not sure I would. I knew it theoretically of course, but really "getting it" required more than that, for me.

My personal barriers have improved as a result and I am less tolerant of shit that I'd once have accepted as normal, even expected.

The main work we have to do for ourselves is, as @Watchkeys says, to learn to re-parent ourselves: being kind and understanding towards ourselves. No point feeling sorry that no one else "cares" enough... WE must care enough for ourselves, starting now. Once we learn to do that, everything else falls into place.

I strongly disagree. She is trying to help empower someone who feels helpless.