Sugarhut, you are not a weak person for being stuck in an abusive relationship. This happens to strong, smart, self-posessed people. It’s like a trap you slowly get more and more entangled in, and it is hard as nails to get out.

You must try, though. You can’t stay with this guy, he is slowly destroying your personality. The good news is that once you do get out, you can start building yourself up again. I know it was hard to be without him at first, but with time it will become easier and you’ll come to see how much better off you are without him.

Can you reach out to your brother? Can you tell him what you told us here, and say: “You were right about him, and now I need your help because I can’t get out of this mind-trap on my own.” He may not know exactly what to do, but he’d want to help, I’m sure. Same with those friends that have drifted away. Contact them and level with them. Ask for help. You deserve better than this. Maybe there’s a helpline as well for women in your situation. Talk to them. You’re not weak. You are mistreated and your idea of yourself has suffered as a result.

You don’t have to wait until your partner stops being nice. He isn’t nice now. He is still controlling and bullying you, he’s just doing it by pretending to be nice so you’ll be on your toes to avoid “setting him off” again. But you need to understand it’s not you setting him off. It’s him. It always was him. He will treat you badly no matter what you do.

Do I understand correctly that the place where you live is yours, and he’s moved in? Try picturing yourself showing him the door and changing the locks. What are the things that get in the way of you being that person?

Hi sugarhut,

I would move and stay with your brother. If he hates your BF as much as you think, he will be THRILLED to play the hero!! It’s interesting that the BF would move in with you and not the other way around. Even though he has more $$$, YOU are in the power position here!

Move in with your brother, change the locks until you do, put BF’s stuff to the curb, get a new phone, deactivate any social media accounts.

You may need help doing this. Contact a women’s shelter. What he’s doing IS abuse, even though you have no physical bruises.

You don’t want your children to see someone treating their mom like crap and ignoring them. That’s abusive as well. Think about it.

Good Luck!

Inky

Dear sugarhut:

In your previous (first post) on this website, you wrote: “When he comes back I feel normal again like when I get rid of him I don’t feel normal in myself and can’t eat etc.”

This life with him, as miserable as it is, feels normal for you, comfortable. Life with him is somehow comforting to you.

Life without him, without the misery, feels abnormal, uncomfortable. Life without him, so far, has been distressing. The title of your thread is “Emotional abuse and why can’t I let go”- I suppose you haven’t been able to let go because living without him was so distressing that you don’t want to experience that distress again. Somehow the distress of living with him is less than the distress of living without him.

I am stuck at the moment in this predicament: how to end a distressing situation when ending it brings more distress? Can you help me out with this?

anita

Dear sugarhut:

I thought about my last post to you, on and off today. It occurred to me that feeling normal in a painful situation is very common. In prisons it is called being “institutionalized”: the prisoner becomes comfortable, sooner or later in prison and when out the released prisoner feels uncomfortable, sometimes committing a crime just so to go back to prison. The brain and the rest of the body becomes adjusted to any situation, be it prison or an abusive home, finds comfort in this and that within the prison life or the abusive relationship and even joy.

I think you got “institutionalized” and again, it is a very common adjustment to an undesirable situation. Just as prison becomes “normal” and freedom becomes abnormal and distressing, so is your relationship “normal” and freedom from it is abnormal and distressing.

It is similar to so many people feeling “normal” being passive and abnormal being assertive, so even though assertiveness will serve us all better, it is too distressing for many to be assertive. Has been like that for me.

What do you think?

anita

Dear sugarhut:

It feels good to you when he is charming and nice and you feel good looking at him because he is physically good looking. That feels good and this is what you miss, eventually when you leave him? That good feeling?

You already felt good and free when you left him, but the newness of that good feeling wore off, did it, and you remembered the good feelings you had when he was nice and charming?

If we put feelings aside for a moment, what about values:

How does the value of Freedom feels like? Freedom from abuse?

How about the value of Justice? Making things just, for example not paying for a car that was given to you as a gift? And how about not buying gifts to a man who is abusive to you? And how about LEAVING an abuser (that would be justice)?

Maybe you can focus on these values.

anita

Dear sugarhut:

I wrote my last post to you before I read your last additional posts. You wrote at one point that you observed, as a child, an abusive relationship between your mother and a step father. Is that correct?

And you decided you will not be in such a relationship but ended up in one, your current relationship.

What are your plans at this point, your motivation in regard to this relationship, is it one or any combination of the following:
1. Live with as is, endure the unpleasant and enjoy the pleasant?
2. Change it: make him change to a loving, respectful man to you?
3. Exit the relationship?

anita