Dear Sammie:

Responding to your first post: “Should I stay in the abuse environment I was in OR reclaim my sparkle. I did the latter, I chose me“- the right choice, of course!

“I told my friends the story the way I told it to you… I told my friends about this and they said ‘oh it’s just because he wanted to kiss you, just don’t wear lipstick anymore’.. My friends, they used to say to me ‘he’s a sensitive soul”“- the wrong kind of friends: siding with your abuser, minimizing and denying his abuse of you. There is a saying: With friends like that, who needs enemies?

“I was always on edge because he would always be finding things that were wrong. Silly things like I had cut the celery sticks too short or I didn’t hear him calling me when I was reading my book… I’m sorry to hear this about your mother. That must be very painful to deal with and process“- thank you. My mother criticized me similarly to how your boyfriend criticized you, about trivial matters, and I was indeed a child/ a teenager/ a person almost-always on edge when around her/ people in general, fearing the next and the next, and the next criticism.

“In terms of abusive words as a child, I never had them directed at me. I witnessed my dad being verbally abusive to my mum though. As I child I would defend my mum and protect my sister“- your empathy was with your mother, you felt her pain; so it was as if your father’s abusive words were directed at you.

“I’ve always been very strong and sure of myself which is why I feel very ashamed that I’ve been with two men who I’ve let treat me terribly“- you were very strong too early in your life, at an age when you needed someone strong to rely on, someone to defend and protect you. A child’s strength when it comes to defending a parent (role reversal) cannot be counted on as the kind of strength to serve you as an adult. It’s like building a house (strength) on ground that is not solid (mature) yet.

“I have had healthy relationships… I’m trying to focus on the positives. I feel very fortunate as I have amazing friends and family and I’m lucky enough to travel a lot. But there is a fine line between focusing on the positives and not processing things“- a fine line between focusing on the positives and not processing the negatives..

When you say (in the quote above) amazing friends, are you including the “friends” who repeatedly and from the beginning sided with your abuser (most recent ex)?

I am wondering if you are focusing on the positives and denying (not acknowledging and therefore, not processing) the negatives.

Responding to your second (most recent) post: you are welcome! “I can be playful and silly. There was an evening where he had bought some crisps that I really liked and I had a bowl in front of me. When he went to the bathroom, I hid them and pretended I had eaten them all. Obviously, it was a joke… Two days later, when he was picking at me he said ‘and you’re SO selfish. Look how you ate all the crisps the other day’. I had to remind him how that was a prank and I had hidden them, not eaten them and we both ate them. He didn’t apologise for calling me selfish, he didn’t even acknowledge that what I had said happened“- this is very meaningful. It means that his motivation is not to respond to what is truly happening around him (you being playful), but to what happened around him a long time ago, before he ever met you. Someone else was selfish around him (his mother, I am guessing, because you shared that he had problems with her), and he projected her into you.

“On one occasion he was coming over to my house to see me and I asked if there was anything he would like me to get from the store. He said ‘wow, that’s so kind. You’re really changing, you’ve never done anything like this before’“- it’s like he is talking to his mother, responding to the then-and-there, not in the here-and-now.

“When I tried to explain that I ALWAY do things like this, he then went onto say ‘well, what do you do for me other than cook?’“- if he wasn’t abusive, I would have felt very sad for him because he is carrying with him lots of anger at his mother because she (not you) was probably very selfish or self-centered and deprived him, as a boy, from the attention and consideration that he deserved.

“I had to listen to him tell me how bad my behaviour was and how I didn’t support him… He then started quizzing me about how much I knew him and started testing me… I was always in the wrong. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, nothing made a difference. I was always an awful selfish girl“- nothing you said or did made a difference because he was not hearing you, he was not seeing you and he was not responding to you.

“It continued with the same narrative – I am a liar. I am a manipulator… He told me I was dark inside“- this is someone he grew up with: his mother (and/ or his father, or another caretaker, I don’t know his childhood circumstances or history).

“What I am struggling with is how could someone be so cruel yet so unaware of what they were doing? How could he justify treating me like this?“- I think that he is stuck in his childhood, trying to resolve severe emotional conflicts he still has with people in his childhood..  in present circumstances, with new people (you).

“What I’ve told you is just the tip of the iceberg… I’ve not even really touched on how my body was his and his to have whenever he wanted“- I am guessing that he needed and wanted his mother’s (or another caretaker’s) attention and presence in his life, so badly, but didn’t get it. Fast forward, projecting the caretaker into you, angry, he took your attention/ your presence/ your body whenever he wanted.

“I want to have a peaceful and loving life. I want to love my new boyfriend. I trust him… My gut KNOWS he is a good person. I just feel stuck at the moment. Stuck wanting closure from the past“- closure from the past with your most recent ex, the one before him.. and closure from the past of your own childhood, which was not peaceful and loving?

anita