The most difficult challenge is learning to trust again. It’s heartbreaking enough to learn that the person you thought would be the very last person to embrace you, to hold your hand and say “I love you” before taking your last breath, would be the abomination of every moral and character value you believe in. All the while, your abuser is making you believe he is exactly what you believe in, and lying in wait for you to commit your love.
It was early on in my relationship, when my abuser, lying next to me in my bed professed his love. Rather confused by this admission, I asked how he knew he was in love. His response was “it’s just a feeling, I just feel it.” What was it he loved? I had very mixed feelings about “being in love,” and wasn’t ready to commit at that very moment, but of course, my abuser said he “would wait for me.”
It would only occur after I had fell in love that my abuser would reveal many “abnormal” and inappropriate behaviors from his past, and those behaviors are still present in his life today. My trust and belief in my abuser allowed him to be absolved from these “abnormally” and inappropriate behaviors, as I was manipulated by the excuses he made for being irresponsible and unaccountable. I learned how my abuser used me to project all his feelings of inadequacy and self loathing onto me, manipulating and coercing me to believe that there was something wrong with me. It feels like a roller coaster ride that never stops. It ends when the ride pauses at the very top and your abuser pushes you off. The fall continues, long after it ends, as you wonder when the pain of being so manipulated and devastated by the person you trusted with your life will ever end.
My abuser caused me to have such financial repercussions that impacted my livelihood and ability to resume my life as I had prior to the relationship. We had planned on buying a home together and were engaged to be married. In the process of preparing for our life together, I had refinanced my home, accessing a large sum of money to purchase our new home. The cost of getting that money was over $4,000. The payment on the home I resided in went up $600 a month. I trusted that it would be a short time that I would be paying that mortgage, because after all, we were going to move into a new home, and I would rent my home. When it became too difficult to manage the new house payment, I had to draw on the money I took out of my home, money that I was already paying interest on, in order to make my house payment. The first year of the refinance, I paid over $16,000 in interest, more than double the interest I was paying, prior to the refinance. That $16,000 was not even for the entire year. The second year of that loan, I paid over $20,000 of interest for the year. The money I had drawn on to purchase our new home began to dwindle further. Unable
to manage financially any longer, I had to refinance my home once again, costing another $9,000 in fees. This one instance alone cost me well over $50,000. However, my abuser continues to absolve himself from any accountability or responsibility for the financial repercussions of moving forward to purchase our new home, even with all the emails and signed document I possess, indicating his active involvement and engagement in the process. This has exemplified the degree of deluded thinking and antisocial characteristics my abuser possesses. This is another example of the degree of sickness embodied by my abuser, someone without conscience or remorse, a person that would violate the trust of someone they declared they loved.
Not only did my abuser accuse me of “bringing all my past into the relationship,” to somehow try to further exonerate himself of accountability or responsibility, he articulated some very disturbing information about the therapy he engaged in. As a therapist and trainer, it became very apparent that his distortions of the therapy process were extremely compromised, as he would articulate impressions of his experience that clearly were not ethical for any therapist. Yet, my abuser would continue to challenge my profession, by his attempt to degrade and devalue my knowledge and experience. I was to believe that a high school drop out would supersede any of my experience and the graduate degree I received from one of the top ten schools in the country. This was another huge red flag.
No doubt, he drew upon the therapeutic process by utilizing whatever psycho education he received to feed into his narcissism, but sadly his lack of insight would continue to manifest his pain into the hurtful behaviors that kept him from any attachments or long-term meaningful relationships. My abuser articulated an abundance of excuses for the intermittent relationships he experienced that ended abruptly, leaving him with no meaningful acquaintances or long-term friendships over his lifetime. It is certainly a red flag when there are no other relationships in one’s life than immediate family.
If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. –Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world. –Eleanor Roosevelt
