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When I was growing up, the emotional abuse I experienced was nothing short of horrific, and I feared seaking help because my parents had lauched such an effective smear campaign within my extended family.
Until recently, I have had a dangerous habit of being drawn to narcisstic people who treat me badly, but I will usually recognize these traits and maintain a degree of distance. It feels safer like that, and I beleived I could do no better. Most recently, I fell full head-over-heals in love with (hello massive love bombing!) with somebody I believed to be different, matching tatoos and all. One day, he unexpectly dumped me by showing up at my appartment while I eagerly waited to prepare a romantic dinner together, screamed with red-face and tears rolling down his eyes that “You are nothing compared to my ex. If she were here, I’d f— her in front of you”. This came seemingly out the blue (however, looking back, he had been devaluing me for months before). He then left without further explanation, causing me to finally break down and crumble in a wave of desperate texts, which i’m sure allowed him to justify my craziness to his friends and the person he’d already been cheating on me with for months (and has since moved in with).
In the aftermath I was left realing, especially as the pieces of the all-too-familiar puzzle started coming together and I have slowly come to terms with the cheating and the lying. Surpressed memories of bullying and a lifetime of tolerating horrible treatment have all come rushing back in. I thought things had been different this time. And they had, but not how I imagined. Rather than a run-of-the-mill narcissist (my usual type), I had fallen in with a full sociopath.
Covid isolation has given me a unique opportunity to heal, not just from a recent traumatic relationship, but from an entire life of absurd emotional/pyschological manipulation that has been anything but normal. I used to punish myself for experiencing rollercoaster emotions that seemed at odds with my otherwise highly-logical personality, and beleiving I felt the urge to cry so frequently justified my parent’s assertion that I was unusually selfish or that there was something wrong with me. Only now do I realize that those tears are helping me to wash away and heal years of pain. And finally, I’m getting in touch with my very justified anger (which I never used to feel was safe to feel). Rather than pushing it down until it explodes I’m using it to build better boundaries (which I never felt were safe to establish) and move toward my goals.
But even now, I still have my bad days where I hope the same person who most recently smashed my damaged heart will show up on my doorstep, apologize, and all will be well and good. Or I will creep on FB to try to see if he has dumped my replacement yet, leaving me feeling vindicated. I have tried a few dates, but I ended up freezing in fear if anybody tried to so as much as to kiss me. And haven’t attempted dating since. It’s been a year and a half now, and my friends lightheartedly joke that I’m a hermit, not really grasping just how good it feels to not have my emotions manipulated or be recovering from emotional manipulation. Now I am not afraid to be alone or end up alone, and for the first time in my life, I am savoring the joy of feeling safe. But I do wonder when these waves of pain will subside, and if I can really reach a point of emotional peace that is something I have never known.
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jb789 – Welcome to Lovefraud. I am so sorry for all you have experienced, but glad that you are coming to terms with the truth of what you have experienced, and you are beginning to heal.
You have made tremendous progress. You are correct – the tears wash away the pain. The pain of what you have endured since childhood goes very deep, so if you are still crying – so be it. There is more to release.
Go ahead and continue the release, but at the same time, be good to yourself. What does this look like? You allow yourself to cry for a while. Then you stop, and you do something that brings you joy. Anything you truly like – music, pets, gardening, a walk in the woods, time with friends (real ones), movies, a warm bath – whatever.
The idea is to release the negative energy of the past and replace it with positive energy in the present. The more you can do this, the more your internal balance will shift to positive. And that enables true change.
I promise you, you can recover. The key is to decide that you want to recover and then do the healing work.
You can do it!
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Hi JB –
Thank you for sharing so truthfully what you have gone through both from your childhood and your current ex. The reason I say this is because so often when a survivor ( that’s us ), endures abuse, the tendency is to feel shame about it. Somehow we take both the blame and the shame – until the truth finally breaks through. I really do believe that a lot of what they do is specifically to destroy their target’s sense of self worth and self love. And with all the love Bombing and then the psychological manipulations and abuse, initially they get their “ win “ by having someone who is beautiful inwardly, start to self destruct – and down in that black hole is shame waiting to take the person way way down. So I congratulate you for not staying in the shadows but to tell what happened truthfully openly and honestly. And what you achieve by that is to know and to get feedback and support that you were never the problem in the first place. They are the ones who demonstrated such ugliness and then they tried to pawn it off on someone else ( you ). There are two easy ways to do that and both are by preying upon someone who is vulnerable and therefore cannot defend themselves. The first is preying upon a child, which no explanation is necessary and it is just deplorable that anyone would do that. The other is by getting someone to “ fall in love “, with all those hormones going and all the trust and having an open heart due to their duplicity from Love Bombing. So it is a great thing that you have been able to stand strong in the face of having gone through both. That doesn’t mean that you won’t still cry and that you won’t still need to process a lot of emotions. But all you are going through is actually a part of healing. Many people who haven’t gone through what you are going through just don’t ‘ get it ‘ at all. They may truly be good friends, but if they have not experienced this kind of relationship, they just have no way of understanding it at all. That is one of the reasons that it is so good that you have come to the Love Fraud forum – because you will feel that there are others who have gone through what you have and just knowing that brings tremendous relief. And in actuality, going through this makes you a real hero – to your own deepest self. It is like being a knight who is facing the dragon. That dragon ( your ex ) has slinked away and that is great. Somewhere he must have felt your inner strength – most likely that you developed from your younger years, and which you weren’t even aware of yourself. Otherwise, he would have just kept you strung along and would have kept on abusing. So now take the time to heal those wounds, but know that they are wounds that deserve tremendous respect. They will heal all the faster if you keep them from getting reinfected by checking up on what that person is up to because all you will even find out about him is that he’s up to no good. Keep up with all the great strides that you are making.
Blessings -
Polestar – what a lovely, encouraging message. You are so right. Thank you so much.
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