Emotional Abuse: My Experience

Relationships are a great thing. You get to be with someone who you get on with really well, fall in love with them, talk about the future you're going to have together, and then hopefully get to live out that future together. This sounds great and all but this is the fairytale side to relationships. The one that we all grew up with. We were all so fazed by this fairytale that we genuinely believed that this is how our lives were going to turn out; that we would find our prince and live happily ever after. However the reality is far from this, and it's all well and good saying that you just have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince, but is this really the case? Is there actually a prince out there or is that another fairytale idea that we have been led to believe? Because if that is real then how come many of us have to deal with the reality of physical and emotional abuse on a day-to-day basis? I was emotionally abused by my last partner and today I want to tell my story...

I'm not going to reveal his name on here for the sake of his privacy and the fact that this blog is fairly anonymous, so for the sake of those factors he's going to be known as Sam.

When I first met Sam he did seem like a genuinely nice guy. He wasn't a player or a fuckboy like the guys who I had previously involved myself with, he was the complete opposite to that. I guess this was one of the reasons why I grew to like him so much (and eventually love him) because I thought that he wouldn't mess around with my emotions like the others had done and that he would actually treat me the way that I was meant to be treated, but how wrong I was.

It started out really well at first. He was attentive to me and when he first admitted to liking me I was completely shocked as I hadn't seen it coming, and they do say that the love that you never see coming is the greatest love of all. We did start talking to one another, having previously just been friends, but we never told anyone what was going on because it was a bit difficult as we were in the same friendship group. Even though I did really like him, when Sam did ask me out I was a bit hesitant at first because we were such good friends and I didn't want anything to change this, so I guess in this respect I probably shouldn't have agreed to being his girlfriend as I didn't want to lose someone who I was once able to call one of my best friends, but I let my heart take over from the morals of my head and suddenly I was his girlfriend.

It was great at first. We kept it a secret from everyone for the first few days until we felt ready to tell them and I was genuinely happy with him. I started feeling like I could tell him anything and could trust him not to tell anyone, and he felt the same way about me. He was someone to talk to all day every day about anything and everything. At first he would even bother to tell me if he wouldn't be able to talk to me that much that day if he was busy with work or out somewhere and that he would try to talk to me as much as possible. But that didn't last very long. In fact I think that the first three and a half months of our relationship was the only good time that we had and after that it was just a downward spiral of things that eventually escalated so quickly that I had to end it.

I guess that throughout the relationship he did treat me well and I was the happiest that I have ever been with him. However, there were a lot of downs as well as ups throughout our time together, one of which being the emotional abuse that I endured. Thinking back on it, this abuse had started from practically the start of our relationship but was done in a way that I never noticed at first. He would be constantly pointing out all of the things that I already knew were wrong with me (physical and mental) and even pointed out things that I had never really considered before he mentioned them, which eventually led to me becoming so self-conscious (which I still am) that I hated being around people because I knew that they would be looking at me and judging me for the same things that Sam had already pointed out. He also never apologised for anything that he did or said and I was the one who apologised because I was always made to feel like it was my fault. He would tell people either my secrets or tell people things that were meant to be just between us even though I had told him that I didn't want anyone to know our business, but apparently my opinion didn't matter and he had to tell people these things because it was the right thing to do. Another thing that he did was to look through my texts and who I had been messaging. I remember on one occasion he literally took my phone from my hands and started going through my texts and any other apps that I used to talk to people on to see who I had been messaging and what I had been saying to them. But this wasn't the only time any of this happened, it all happened on multiple occasions throughout the 'relationship'.

What I have described might not seem like emotional abuse to a lot of people and it might seem over-exaggerated but I was made to feel so small and at times that I didn't even exist, as well as at times being told that I couldn't go out or that I couldn't do something on some days because it would apparently interfere with something that I was meant to be doing with Sam the day after, even though it wouldn't. He made me feel like I was an inconvenience for a lot of things, even down to where I lived which wasn't my fault because at the time I was only 16/17 so had no say over where I had lived for the majority of my life. He made me feel so insecure and that I wasn't worth anyone's time or energy to the point where I thought that I would never be good for anyone else and that because we'd talked about marriage and kids and our future together that he would be the only person that I would be with. Even though he made me feel so worthless, I felt that I couldn't break up with him because if I did then I was losing the future that we had planned and that if I did break up with him then that future would be gone and would be something that I would never have with anyone and that I'd end up growing old with no one around me and would die lonely.

When things did finally hit me about how none of this was okay and the fact that he had also pointed out that there were things that were wrong with our relationship (claiming a lot of them were down to me) I knew that the best way forward and to try and escape how I was feeling was to break up with Sam. He'd even made me feel bad about wanting to go to university because apparently we'd just grow apart and would never be able to see one another, even though the uni I want to go to is less than an hour away from where the two of us live, he can drive and we would both be able to get a train to see one another, even if it was a matter of meeting in the middle. I didn't see why I should be with someone who made me feel that I had to stay at home and not pursue what I really wanted to do just so that I could still be with them.

Breaking up with Sam was probably one of the best things that I could have possibly done as it meant that I was no longer in this toxic relationship that was making me feel the worst I have ever felt. Of course I loved Sam and it actually broke my heart when we broke up because he was my first boyfriend and hence the first person that I had ever been in love with. The only regret at the time was that I not only lost a boyfriend, but a bestfriend, and that our friendship had suffered greatly and never recovered after that break up. However due to how I've seen him act around people in the past few months and particularly over the past couple of weeks, I have grown to be quite grateful that we no longer have any sort of relationship with one another as he acts like this really nice and decent person in front of people but in reality he is a really horrible person and I am glad that quite a lot of people have now realised this so that they are no longer involved with him.

So how can you spot the signs of if your partner is being emotionally abusive towards you?

There is a UK based website called relate which gives you all kinds of relationship help and guidance, as well as offering free online counselling to give you someone to talk to. Their emotional abuse page breaks down the different varieties of emotional abuse, gives advice on understanding if you are being abused or not and has listed a few helplines that you could call if you feel that that is the necessary and right thing to do. Their online counsellor chat is free, instant, anonymous, and private and confidential, as well as providing you with a trained counsellor that can offer you any kind of help that you might need.

Thank you for reading my story and I hope that it has helped to alert you to the fact that relationships aren't necessarily just physically abusive as they can also be emotionally abusive. If you have been affected by my story or know someone who is currently in an emotionally abusive relationship but is too scared to do anything about it then please don't hesitate to try and find help. I know that my experience was definitely not as abusive as what others may go through which is why it is important for people to recognise the signs as being in an emotionally abusive relationship can really affect you and the relationships you later get into. My relationship ended towards the end of last year and I am still unable to trust anyone else and don't feel good enough or confident in myself to be able to go out and meet new people, or to even start dating someone because I'm afraid that the same thing is going to happen again. Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me either. I'm always available to talk to any one of you about anything and everything and want to help you in any way that I can. All of my contact details are in the contacts tab at the top of this page.

Thanks for reading, and remember that you are never alone in all of this.

Love Beth xx