Dear Anita,

Thank you for responding. I was thinking about your question about parents not teaching us when we are younger. I don’t know the answer to that honestly. I guess because it’s taboo, or they think their children would never be involved with a guy the way I did or may be they think we know about such things or that it can only happen to others. I’m not really sure, may be I need to think about it some more. I did think to myself during the aftermath of this, why did I not have anyone to tell me he was not good for me.

When I confronted him about what he did during the time he was abusing me, he just said I loved you at that time so I said that, now I don’t so I’m saying that. He also said I have anger issues so he could never be with someone like that. I infact did bring up this topic before I spoke to my parents about him and he said I can manage all that, he din’t have any problem with that. For a long time I did think that I had anger issues, because I was angry at everyone else for small things. But when things became clearer over the years, I realised my anger was not fully wrong. Most of the anger during the time with him was because of his behaviour in relation to other women when we were talking. He would tell directly to me that some colleague looked hot, or among our circle of friends a friend lost weight, he would tell her did you transfer your weight to her(me). He even said another girl was the most beautiful among our circle of friends. Hearing these things made me jealous, but I did not know how to handle that jealousy, I tried to hide it and suppress it to maintain peace. May be my anger was probably misplaced by it coming out at other times and this made him think I have anger issues. But I know I was not to blame fully for that anger.

He also did mention to me once that in our office the talk was that I was a girl that men could not ‘get hold of’. May be in his male brain this became a challenge and he finally felt proud he ‘achieved’ it. Realising this made me feel very ashamed and dirty. I don’t know how to move forward from this. I did think that time would heal it, but off late these thoughts trouble me very much and does not let me do anything else. How can I move forward knowing that someone is out there enjoying their life after destroying my dreams? I also dreamt during my teens that only the person I get married to would touch me and I had made this clear to him too, but he destroyed those dreams. And his only reply was ‘ why did you come’. I can still hear that ringing in my ears :(.