Hi Clara

I’m not going to judge you based on a mistake that you made in the past. I don’t think your recent relationship is necessarily abusive. You said that you have been working on yourself and I do believe that to be true. For the first year your current relationship started out in an unhealthy way. There are some elements that require continued work. But many people in relationships have their own issues. The goal in a healthy relationship is for people to accept each other’s issues and to work on them. The way society is verbal abuse is completely normalised, especially for people who grew up in that type of environment. You might not be aware of some of the issues. Everyone has bad behaviours, the question is, are they frequent, are they severe, are they apologetic and do they try to overcome it.

The blaming your partner is something to work on, on both sides of the relationship. People feel hurt when they are blamed for things. It seems to me that you are both blaming each other.

Often times, people who have been abused feel triggered by other people. It is not the other person’s fault when we become triggered. It is really hard but helpful to unpick that and disentangle that past hurt from the present day.

You already know about the overreacting and are doing your best to work on it.

Often in relationships with difficulties, difficulties occur on both sides. It takes two to tango. I know that your partner has said some harsh things to you and you have been hurting for months now. This is a fact. You are a tough one hanging in there. It seems to me, that you are doing so for a reason.

You are open to logic, you are open to understanding when you have made a mistake. You might not intuitively understand it. You have been kind even when hearing things that have been hard. I don’t have a negative opinion of you. You are honestly from what I can see trying your best to figure things out, day by day. These things are not easy. I wouldn’t wish for you to beat yourself up over it, when you are already struggling.

Personally, I think that whatever you decide to do is okay with an email or letter. To send or not to send. You don’t have to make a decision right now. I would as always wait until you are feeling calm to decide what you want to do. You talked it through with a therapist, that is enough for me. And as you pointed out, you recently got in touch and clarified that you are allowed to reach out if you feel that you need to.

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏