Hi Lauren,

First off, please, please don’t beat yourself up about being naive and allowing this to continue for so long, you deserve much better for yourself!

The truth is, you can’t know what you don’t know.

When you’re young, as you were when you met your boyfriend, you just don’t have the life experience or the emotional intelligence to realize when someone is being emotionally abusive. Emotional abuse is really insidious and even people who have been on the Path for years and years can fall prey to it. In your case, you did realize something was funny about the situation in the beginning but it seems that you just didn’t have the tools yet to formulate a proper response to it. So try not to get caught in that self blame spiral, it will only keep you down.

Now you are waking up and gaining some new emotional tools that will help you rise up out of this bad situation. And I do believe that your relationship is bad for you and for him as well. I concur with everyone when they say you should really cut ties with this man. He has a lot of work to do on himself and so do you, because you both deserve to be happy.

You’ve done so much and grown so much already. You have a really brilliant future ahead of you I’m sure of it, you just have to learn now that you are good enough (you are and you always have been) to reach that future. Change is hard and scary, but remember its worth it and we are all here for you so post anytime!

Good luck!

-M

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Maria Mango.