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Hi David
You did lie to her, use her and waste her life. You can only be truthful with others once you’re truthful with yourself. You’re not even honest with yourself about why you keep her around?
The only way you are going to change is to face what you did. You seem set against doing this.
You asked her to humiliate and degrade herself for your excitement, because you enjoyed watching her suffer. Can you imagine how painful it must be for someone to care about to ask those things of you? And even more painful to actually do them. And even more painful to understand that they like watching you suffer.
Then! You cheated on her despite being in an open relationship. You could have easily told her the truth. So why did you lie? To further add to your excitement by watching her suffer? And after all of this. You grew bored and tossed her aside, after everything she did for you. The amount of suffering you put this woman through is unbelievable.
Do you know what you did? Do you empathise with the horrific amount of pain she is in that you caused? Do you feel guilty about it? Do you feel ashamed? Do you hate yourself for what you did?
Do you think an apology is enough? Saying the words and not understanding the pain you caused is easy. Part of apologising is making amends. You have not made amends. You don’t even appear to understand the pain that you’ve caused. You don’t even appear to regret your behaviour. It appears that you can’t even connect to those emotions.
Btw despite your desire to change. The only reason that will actually cause change is a desire to stop passing your pain onto others. You are going to have to learn to care about others this is something your therapist can help you with.
Hi David
I appreciate that you want to change. Why do you want to change if you don’t mind me asking?
The thing about this type of change is that it is difficult and painful. It requires empathising with the people you hurt and acknowledging and apologising for the pain that you have caused.
It requires developing self-control so that when you have an impulse telling you that you want something, you choose to resist it because you value doing the right thing and caring about someone more than the pleasure that fulfilling the temptation would bring you in the short term.
It requires truly connecting with your self-hatred. And after you have done all the above, you have to figure out how to forgive yourself and find a way to live with the reality of the pain you caused (this is actually the hardest part).
Repeating your past abuse is easy. Saying that you want to change is easy and can make you feel like a better person (the thing is though if nothing actually changes, it’s just a lie). Actually committing to change is a difficult process that will mean putting yourself through suffering.
The way you phrase things puts distance between yourself and your responsibility in the situation.
“She calls me a liar.”
An open relationship means telling people when you plan on seeing someone else. You didn’t tell her when you were seeing someone on the side. You kept it a secret. This is a lie by omission.
The way I taught myself empathy when I was a child was to imagine how hurt I would feel if someone did the same thing to me. I feel like you have difficulty with this specific scenario.
So I would suggest imagining that someone you loved and trusted did something terrible that hurt you deeply. Something that made you feel betrayed, that you could no longer trust them, that made you feel worthless.
This is how a partner might feel when they learn that they’ve been cheated on.
Some people believe that what people don’t know doesn’t hurt them. But it does because you aren’t treating your partner with respect and are willing to risk damaging the relationship. Even if they don’t know about it, the truth exists and is often expressed in other ways.
Hi Shve
I’ve been following your thread. I found that trauma therapy was extremely helpful for moving past a similar experience. Would that be a possibility?
In India, the highest rate of sexual abuse is experienced by women between the age of 18 and 30. The second highest rate of sexual abuse is experienced by women between the age of 30 and 45.
You have learned the reality of the situation and it is terrifying. But it doesn’t mean that there aren’t good people out there. It’s horrible that he shattered your dreams and it’s understandable to grieve that loss, but in time you may have new dreams. Whilst this betrayal has hurt you deeply, and made you feel afraid. I have hope that you will learn to protect yourself from people such as him in the future because of this experience.
He blamed you for his actions saying that you should have stopped coming. But if you were with someone who was safe, you would never have been harmed. He is 100% responsible for the abuse.
I will however suggest that the reasons why you went are very important. The first time, you didn’t know what would happen. You trusted him, it wasn’t your fault. But and I say this with love and kindness, you were responsible for repeatedly putting yourself in danger. Once you understand the reasons why and overcome them, you will be able to protect yourself in the future. It is very important for you not to blame yourself, only understand the reasons why you repeatedly allowed yourself to be subjected to his abusive behaviour.
From my own experience, even people we trust can betray us. But not everyone will do that. The main thing we can do is look out for “warning signs” of bad behaviour. For example, when he chased you and you weren’t interested. That is a warning sign because he didn’t respect your lack of interest. Proposing when you weren’t ready, was manipulative and has the effect of suggesting that the relationship is closer than it is. His comments about other women and on your weight are also warning signs.
If someone displays warning signs, take great care not to be alone with them.
I would pay very close attention to what your parents say about partners in the future. They suggested that it wouldn’t be a good fit. Did they explain why? Did you ask? Loved ones are often afraid of pushing us away by being critical of partners.
Another thing that is important, is building strong boundaries and practicing assertiveness. People like your ex target victims based on how they respond to their boundaries being breached. You didn’t maintain your boundaries when you said that you weren’t interested in dating him. You didn’t maintain your boundaries when you said that you weren’t ready to marry him. To him he would have thought great, I can do whatever I want with this woman. She will say no at first, but then I’ll be able to convince her to do it.
Another danger, is that some people don’t like to be told no. Some may pretend to accept it initially, then retaliate in the future. It really is key to never be alone with people who aren’t worthy of trust.
The sad truth is even if you follow my advice, bad things can still happen. But it is my opinion that I can’t live in fear anymore. I would miss out on all the good things in life. All we can do is our best to move on and build a new life for ourselves, do our best to protect ourselves and pray that nothing of the sort happens again.
It is my opinion that the best revenge we can act on those who sought to hurt us, is to be happy and live a good life ourselves and ignore that they ever existed. Karma will take care of the rest.
Sorry for the delay, it’s been a stressful couple of days. My thoughts have been with you. Good luck with your surgery! Please take it easy and rest afterwards, I hope you feel better soon.
I love dogs too, they’re such beautiful souls that radiate joy. I feel like they’re more trustworthy than people.
It sounds like you’re a great mom. Congratulations on breaking the cycle.
I remember asking my therapist if the pain would every go away. She said it’s unlikely, but the pain gets smaller and easier to bear in time. Personally, I have found this to be true.
Thank you for sharing your feelings and requesting things that will aid our communication. I encourage you to tell me whenever something crops up that you would like me to change in the future and please clarify any assumptions or misunderstandings. It wasn’t my intention to elicit these feelings.
Would you mind clarifying why you feel uncomfortable with me saying “I’m very sorry for the way you were treat!”? Of course, I will no longer write anything of the sort in further communication.
Yes, I too feel angry sometimes when people make assumptions, because I feel like I’m being misunderstood. We are both different people, with different experiences.
You are correct Anita, that is my interpretation of love. I don’t mean to offend anyone, I’m just very rigid with boundaries. It can be very tempting to tolerate abuse for the belief that you are loved or there is the potential for it. So I choose to define abusive people as incapable of love.
Many people exhibit some type of abusive behaviour. If these behaviours are not severe, rather infrequent, overall the relationship is good, empathy is shown for others experiences and a willingness to change unhealthy behaviours when asked is displayed. I would suggest this is a loving (mostly) healthy relationship.
I encourage you to share your own definition of love if you would like to.
she was hitting me, with her hand across my face on and on, and she said to me, she praised me, saying the only thing I like about you is how you look down at the floor when I hit you. You don’t talk back to me, like other people’s children do.
In this quote your mother essentially stated that she didn’t like you. To me, this means that she didn’t love you either. It is a rather horrific thing to say to a child. It made me feel sad and angry for little Anita.
I can understand your feelings of guilt. I had feelings of guilt with my own mother. I occasionally unsuccessfully tried to fight against my mother’s abuse and fantasised about her death as a child.
These feelings of anger and a desire to hurt the person that abused you is understandable. Even if you had fought back, I wouldn’t believe that you were the guilty party. As you said, fight, flight and freeze are instinctual responses to danger and the purpose of this instinctual response is to protect yourself. I hope this clarifies why I used those words?
Do you honestly believe that she would have stopped being physically abusive if you had attempted to defend yourself as a small child? I have some doubts.Do you think your mother did or said anything to elicit those feelings of her being a hurt little girl that you should protect?
My own mother attempted to achieve a similar thing. As a small child she used me as a confidante. Telling me all of her fears and pain. Frequently, she explained away her abuse as she was “treating me the way her parents treat her” and saying that “she didn’t know better”.
It sounds like you had a lot of empathy for your mother, assumed responsibility for her care and potentially blamed yourself for her condition. Would you agree? If you don’t mind me asking what are your thoughts about this now as a mature adult?
I would say that I found sexual and physical abuse most painful and disregarded the impact of verbal abuse and neglect as a child.
It has been a pleasure communicating with you as always!
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine.