Hi Anita,

How are you? I hope you’re doing good. I have been doing a lot of thinking ever since we began talking and I feel as if finally I am reaching slowly to some kind of a closure and a future course of action for me. I just wanted to write it down and discuss it with you. I have begun a few sessions with a therapist in the last two weeks but due to Covid, they are mostly over calls and skype. Also, consciously I have tried talking more about my parents and childhood with her so as to not let my feelings about my romantic relationship take over the entire therapy, thus, I feel maybe I can talk it out here.

After one of your early posts about how I’d also been argumentative and abusive towards my ex which fuelled his abuse, I was very disturbed for a while. I began micro-analysing everything I ever did to instigate him. Sometimes I’d think all night. I concluded that I had problematic behaviour of my own, more than I’d let on to myself or you.
– I was lacking in self-love and self-esteem and thus, was clingy, needy and smothering. I didn’t give my partner space or rather I gave him space but was anxious and resentful whenever he wanted to be away from me.
– My emotions drove me, all the time. So when I was happy with him, I was over-the-top happy but when I was upset, I was a mess, thereby had no control over calling him incessantly and crying uncontrollably.
– I did not have healthy conflict resolution mechanisms. I had seen my mom cry, shout, blame, dig out older issues in arguments with my father and I did the same with my ex.
For the first time in the last many years with my ex, I saw the problems that I had. But simultaneously I also realised this which honestly I think I had never seen before- MY EX DID NOT MAKE ME DO ANY OF THIS. He didn’t make me clingy, he didn’t force me to shout, to cry to call him a 100 times. Yes, he definitely behaved in ways that were not particularly loving and were  inconsiderate and very rude towards me but the way I dealt with them were my own choice. My ex did not make me into a crying, begging woman. At max he triggered the tendencies that were already very much present inside my brain due to childhood/life experiences. So even if it weren’t for him, I would have dealt in the same way with other unpleasant things in life too.
And this realisation Anita, this freed me from the question I always asked me, was I at fault, will he be better with someone else, someone who won’t make him do all this?
I realised that just as my Ex didn’t make me argumentative, I didn’t make him verbally abusive, rude and conflict avoidant. Yes, I may have triggered those by arguing and wanting more affection from him, but I didn’t put those tendencies in him, like he always claimed. They were already  present and so even if instead of me there was some other girl who was not argumentative, those tendencies would have still come out when he’d go through unpleasant times.
So, I realised that my problems were of my own causing, and also my ex’s problems were of his own causing. So I am responsible for my arguing and crying but not for him abusing and ignoring. So I didn’t make him whatever he became at the end of the relationship. So as long as I work on myself and make sure I learn healthier conflict resolution ways and develop self-love, I am fine, in my own life, with or without a man. And likewise my wondering of will he be this, will he be that is redundant as if he realises his mistakes and corrects them, he will be a better man irrespective of who he is with and if he doesn’t, he’ll be the same man that he was with me, again irrespective of who he is with.

I honestly had this realisation after this one time that I answered his call a week or so ago. I had decided that I will be calmer than ever before, no matter what I will not let my previous behaviour take over. But as we talked, and I refused to let him in again, he abused me verbally and disconnected. That was when I realised that the abuse is his problem. Not mine. Weirdly, it also changed my feeling towards him. Seeing that more than a year has passed, I am also trying to realise my faults and change my behaviour, but he is the same person that abuses when things don’t go his way, specially when I had done nothing now to instigate him as he always claimed, made me lose respect for him.

I am now focussed on my growth Anita because I do have issues and so far I thought I am this way because of him and that a better guy will not be like this but there are behavioural patters that I have to change or they’ll come up even with the best of guys. Does this make sense?

Love,

Jenny.