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.

You seem convinced that there's something wrong with you. What if there isn't? How would you feel if you went through a huge amount of psychology tests and physiological tests and mental health tests, and got told that ultimately, there are no issues?

Somebody once told me that the only thing wrong with me was that I thought there was something wrong with me. I struggled with that, because it was a huge part of my identity, that I was faulty. If I let go of it, I would have no excuse for how rubbish I was! But once I got my ego out of the way, I realised that a) there's nothing wrong with me, and b) I'm not rubbish. And then my confidence grew. And then I got better at stuff. It self perpetuates, but you have to let go of the idea that you're faulty, first.

You don't sound faulty, from what you've said. You sound like you've had it hard, and not been taught some useful stuff that would have saved you from a ton of anguish. But that all makes sense, and it happens to lots of people. You can learn the stuff you weren't taught or given at any point in your life. 'Who you are' isn't the same as 'what you know' or 'what you learned', so not being taught stuff when you were a kid can't make you, as an individual, faulty, now.

@Rainbow03 I think when you've lived for years with external devaluation. When you've been gas lit to question what you have seen, heard, think and your feelings so much. When you've been projected on and treated constantly like you are a person you are not. When you've had to spend your life over explaining yourself but still been (intentionally) misunderstood. It changes you, it wears you down. It makes you question your reality, what you feel, who you are. Its insidious. You don't even realise it's happening. Your husband is the person you trust the most you can't imagine someone so close is capable of such emotional cruelty. Other people see a different him, which makes you question if what you are seeing/feeling is wrong. You live in denial because that makes life easier to cope with.

You aren't necessarily looking for validation, more like reassurance. After that much cognitive dissonance it is needed. You are looking for safety. Approval is safety.

@Watchkeys if nothing is wrong with me then why do I keep thinking that something is?

@MarmaladeOrangey yes that’s how it feels. Thank you.

Maybe because you've been told that there is something wrong with you and made to feel something is wrong with you for a long time by someone who had something wrong with them and for whom it was in their best interest to keep you looking at yourself as that meant you weren't looking at them.

@MarmaladeOrangey I don’t trust my feelings anymore. I don’t trust that I don’t like my in-laws and I’m looking for someone to tell me that how I feel is right, but I can’t get that so I go round and round and round. I see and hear things about my ex about our relationship from my daughter, it sets me on a spin not trusting my reality. It’s fucking with my head all the time. Sorry for the language.

Because that's what you've been taught. That's what happens. We get told and shown something, and we learn it. Because we're normal. And smart. And human.

You've said in your posts that nobody has ever presented an alternative view to you, so why would you believe anything else? If I'd been told all my life that I was green, by everyone who mattered to me, and they'd insisted on it even though I didn't look green to me, I'd struggle to believe that they were all wrong and I, alone, was right. But it's perfectly possible. Religion works like this. Communes, cults, even just simple societies and communities. It's just so human and normal.

Well then if I Listen to myself my in laws can sod off. They talk about people, gay, women, whoever they talk down about them. The brother is a chauvinist pig who talks about women like they are slaves. They don’t even offer me a drink when we go over. My partner will go help himself and no one asks me and I get so pissed off. Then I start with the what’s wrong with me that they treat me this way….when it appears I need to ask myself why I don’t speak up.

I would stop focusing on the in-laws and whether they are good/ bad and whether that makes you good/ bad. You have them in your life because of your DC. It will probably always be a challenging dynamic because of your ex and the fact that family dynamics are complicated at the best of times. There's probably no simple answer waiting to be discovered there. Look elsewhere to develop your identity and find joy, and just accept the in-law thing for what it is - a fairly uncomfortable but necessary part of your life that you have to endure rather than enjoy.

@Superlambaanana I was just using it as an example of how I view every situation. People treat me not the way I want and I always turn it around as something wrong about me. Instead of seeing it as it is and believing how I feel.

Ah I see. But you're questioning it here. Which suggests you're very normal and able to weigh up whether something is a perception or worth acting on.

The fact you are questioning whether your reactions are normal suggests to me you are very normal!

But I can only get to that realisation by talking to people on here. Left to my own devices I’ll be like a dog with a bone going round and round and self blaming then feeling rubbish and depressed. Then thinking I can maybe change the way I do this so they treat me better but then again back to I don’t really want to change around round again lol

I got out after 25 years. I was able to go fully no contact so none of the fear of seeing him/his name but I have a lot of anger and mistrust. It's made me lose my faith in people almost entirely. I'll never have another relationship and I won't ever forgive him. That said, I'm happy and living my best life and it's actually very gratifying how terrible his is now.

I think you just have to "fake it till you make it" OP. Just keep telling yourself that the only thing that counts is that you make sense to yourself.

To be honest, I'm in my 60s and have only met one or two people in my life who "treat me the way I want."

People generally not "getting" us seems to be part of the human condition, unless you're very lucky. Although it's probably easier if you're not too bright 😁

Well then if I Listen to myself my in laws can sod off

Yup. And that, right there, is the voice of your healthy boundaries. The reason you get to a comfortable place with who you are on here is because we're nice to you. We listen. We give a shit that you're ok. We want you to feel good. We're on your side. There's plenty of people like that in the world: people who will treat you as you want. But it's not most people, and you need a filter. Luckily you have one, and that's where the 'sod off' comes from.

The main person who you need to treat you as you want is you. So, the question is, how do you want to be treated? Firstly, do you want to be told that there's something wrong with you?

I get what you’re all saying. I think I need to work on myself. I’m definitely an all or nothing person and don’t have the time for sitting around in social situations pretending when we all know if we kind of like each other or not. I’m actually I think a nice person to like and be involved in. But when I’m in a situation I feel uncomfortable I turn into a very unsure person who goes to pander to make the feeling go away.

@Watchkeys no I really don’t want people telling me this. I have met a few really open people in RL and they often suffer like me feeling different.

I think there's a difference between 'working on yourself' and simply responding to your own boundaries. All the work you have to do is to start doing what you like, what you want, what feels good, to you. There's no fixing of faults or correcting glitches or mending the broken parts of yourself.

You want them to sod off, so make that happen. They don't have to physically sod off, and you don't have to tell them to, but you can activate your internal sod off whenever they open their daft cake-holes. It takes a while to filter people out, but you can start now, and as soon as you do start, it's like a snowball, right from day one.

Then, if you're going to be treated the way you want to be treated, the first person who needs to stop telling you that there's something wrong with you is you. Innit.

@Watchkeys what sets this thinking apart from an abuser. They think they are right and justified? What happens if I do what I think and it’s not something nice? Well I guess I know it’s not nice maybe and I’d feel awful maybe?

You seem to get very tangled up in moral judgement OP. Are you in a Church of some kind?

@Dibilnik no, not religious at all.

You don't have to live your life trying to work out if you're abusive or not.

You think you're nice. Find people you feel good around. People who treat you well. If they start telling you you're in some way awful, wonder about yourself then. But come from the original standpoint that you're already at: you're basically nice, and people who make you feel bad need to sod off.

@Watchkeys and all those 12 years of abuse is just a really shit lesson in what happens when you don’t leave someone who doesn’t make you feel good. Also a lesson in not leaping into something and not making sure I have anything to fall back on.

I think we both tried to get our needs met by the other person and got pissed off when we didn’t get what we wanted. He tried desperately and so did I to get the other person to love us. I took it out on myself and he took it out on me because he was a bully. He wasn’t worth liking. Terrible co-dependancy.

Because you're not doing it for your self serving ends. You aren't doing it to boost your ego, to make yourself superior to others, you aren't doing because you must have control, you aren't doing it because you are hateful. You are doing it to protect your self from people who are all/some of the above.
These people have NO consideration to how other people are feeling and how their actions impact others. That's the difference.
Their thinking comes from pathology and the need for total control.
Yours come from protection.