If you have successfully gone no contact how did you do it

[Difficuldecisions]

This is a personal story to me.
Abuse is complex,
My ex broke up with me two years ago, he is about 5-6 years older than me and I never saw him again which wasnt my choice but we have stayed in contact until recently. He was abusive towards me but not physically. He got it into my head that I deserved it. it’s been a confusing time for me, I can’t always admit to myself that he was an abuser.
People kept telling me that I shouldn’t be contacting him and were getting frustrated with me. I didn’t really want to but kept getting urges that I couldn’t control. But that has come under harassment. He has said he doesn’t want me to speak to him. He never reaches out it’s always me. I think I was also reactively abusing him a long time after abusive incidents. So say he degraded my body then a year later I will remember that and degrade his like a broken record. I only realised that was a thing recently and why I do it because I was in deep pain and needed to feel heard but I still don’t fully understand it. And obviously he used that to make out to everyone that I was abusing him. And yes I feel that I was and I wish I could’ve handled it better but I don’t think I’ve had the capacity.
It took a while to realise why I felt the need to speak to him. I have needed him to change his mind, love me and treat me better than he did. I needed him to apologise for abusing me. And I also now know about how this relates to my childhood. acknowledging that to even just myself, and reading about abuse and admitting to myself that it is him and that’s how he thinks, has made a huge difference, I have had a fictional , idealised version of him in my head that isn’t real. if I ignore how I feel the feelings get louder and that’s when I act out.
Now any urges to contact him are largely gone but I really want it to stay that way forever. But I don’t feel very confident in myself and feel like I can’t control myself and I don’t want to go down that path again.
I don’t know how to stop

You are a sentient being, you are perfectly capable of not calling someone.

You need a life that is too busy to worry about some loser from the past. Hobbies, volunteering, new relationship, second job...

Stop wasting time on someone who doesn't matter and doesn't give a toot about you. Build yourself a life around people who care.

I didnt realise my ex wife was abusive until a year after we split - too busy thinking it was all down to me as I was called that but many things since have shown that not to be the case. Have 2 teens, no contact for 3 months now, life is so much better.

Block on everything!

Can you give me some examples of her saying you were the abuser and not her

Abusive relationships like you say, are complex. They can be very intense and you can get locked into them.

Many survivors do exactly what you're doing and stay too long because they are trying to get him to change. They think if they just do this or this and act like this, he'll be nice.

A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog agrees if the scorpion doesn't harm him. Half way across the river, the scorpion stings him. "Why did you do that?" The frog says, "Now we're both going to die." And the scorpion says, "I'm a scorpion."

Your ex is who he is, he's never going to change and he's never going to love you. He doesn't want you to contact him and you are self harming by doing so.

You're right, you have a made up version of him in your head and you're clinging onto that.

You need to delete his number and block him on everything. Stop looking at his social media and move on.

To be fair, some of it I dont think of it as abuse, things like silent treatment was done by both but I still think it's a way some people deal with it. For me it was more that I find withdrawing reduced conflict.

But in terms of abuse, I was called narcissist, gas lit etc... I would be told she is not talking to me to punish me, she cheated and I did all the treading on eggshells as I was made to think it was the fact we werent getting along led her to cheat.

She would say things like "you never do this, or never say that" and I would respond that I did, last Sunday when we were in X. She only accused me of that after the split. Every thing she threw at me, I could think of examples that matched that, but she had done to me. Belittled me quite a bit, one comment will always stick in my mind, in bed and she said (about me) "who would want that on top of them".

None of it was awful stuff like physical, although some hurtful things were said. Maybe it was just her way of justifying it. For example, despite us doing 50/50 on everything (and she and her solicitor agreed to it) would then tell people how I had stitched her up.