TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING: Intimate partner violence (physical and emotional), gaslighting, discussion of self-harming behaviours.
I remember when we first broke up. I accused him of cheating and he accused me of snooping. We were both right in our accusations, but I was more sorry. I was always more sorry. I left that night and went home. Home to the comfort of my mum and my bed and my dogs and my life. But it wasn’t comfortable anymore. He had made sure of that, he was smarter than I realised. I didn’t know how to relax anymore, how to breath, how to sleep, how to eat, how to live. I had become so accustomed to abiding by the laws that he had set in our ‘relationship’ that I had lost my sense of agency. I felt I might crumble to a million pieces without his authoritative voice commanding my everyday life. I searched for comfort in the only place left that felt familiar. Men. I went out with acquaintances who barely knew me. Acquaintances I could fool into believing I was happy to be doing what I was doing, I fooled them as easily as I fooled myself. The first weekend apart I had already kissed three men. By the end of the first month I had slept with five. I didn’t enjoy any of it, except maybe the feeling of being wanted, of being desired. But mostly I would end up back in my bed alone, hating myself and thinking about him and assuming he was the only person who could fill the giant hole that had formed inside me. At that stage I still hadn’t realised that he was abusing me, it took many more years before I came to that sobering, nauseating, heartbreaking realisation. I am still reeling from it today. How could I have been so naïve?
In the weeks after I left him, he had been coming to my house to leave flowers, calling my boss at work to find out where I was, sending me endless messages declaring his undying love. His deep sorrow at how he had treated me, his regret. I had to come back to him. He would die if I didn’t, is that what I wanted? For him to die?
When I finally succumbed and called him he came over instantly. It had infuriated him to no end that I had controlled the communication we had for the time we were apart. He did the controlling, not me. After a brief apology, the first thing that he wanted to know was whether I had slept with anyone else while we were apart. I told him the truth. I told him how hurt I had been, and how lonely, and how much it had made me hate myself, and that I felt I would never be loved or desired again. I told him about the men I slept with. His face darkened, and he screamed. He called me a slut. He told me to just wait until he told his friends about what I had done. He threw a bottle at me. He ran into the house and held a knife to his abdomen, threatening to stab himself until I got onto my hands and knees and cried and begged for forgiveness. Eventually he put the knife away and then he left. I was laying on my kitchen floor, confused, scared and alone. I felt guilty and awful. I sent him messages apologising and asking forgiveness until eventually he responded. He said I could come over. He always preferred it when we were on his turf.
For the rest of our ‘relationship’, until I found the strength to leave, I was not allowed to mention the insecurity I felt because he had cheated on me. To do so was to hurt him, to mistrust him… did I not love him? But every opportunity he got, in the presence of his friends or just the two of us, he would make reference to the slut his girlfriend was, and how good a man he was for forgiving her.
Even now, almost ten years later I sometimes feel responsible. Like I should have known better, I should have left, I should have made different decisions, I shouldn’t have been such a slut (just to clarify I do not believe in the negative connotations of this word – I believe it was invented and is primarily used by people who are afraid of sexually empowered women). I now know these things to be untrue. I know there is only one person responsible for my suffering, and he is not my ex-boyfriend.
He is my ex-abuser. I am not responsible.
Bad Feminist 