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In 2016 my father suddenly passed away. It was a shock as I felt no one could fully understand what I was going through. No one except this one new friend. In a few months, he showed himself as supportive, kind and faithful. He was also so smart and also a feminist. Little I knew the whole thing has been staged by him. We started dating and moved in together in a few months.

One year later it felt like a nightmare. I, a woman with high self-awareness and a great capacity of recognizing manipulative behaviors, or at least that’s what I always thought, found myself trapped in psychological abuse, health issues, depression, and suicidal thoughts. My days revolved around the abuser and his controlling demands, like a rollercoaster. Even small things like having dinner together had rituals I had to respect or he would get angry. He read my diary, controlled my Facebook messages and made a big deal over everything that wasn’t in line with his thoughts and directives. Every time it was my fault, according to him. I was overly emotional, pathetic, unworthy, even insane, he told me.

First I tried to justify his behavior by him being traumatized by his alcoholic parents but soon I realized his constant pressure and devaluation did me more harm than I could realize and handle. On the morning of my thirtieth birthday, I read an article that advised to leave a relationship if most of your sadness derived from it. Luckily I had healthy relationships before this one and I knew I was not supposed to feel sad, overwhelmed or walking on the eggshells most of the time.

I knew I was capable of long term healthy and happy relationships and my partner wasn’t. This knowledge, my friends and feminism saved my life.

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That’s what I learned:

1. It can happen to anyone

Some of my friends were in abusive relationships before so I knew it didn’t only happen to fragile, weak women as the society usually tells us. My friends were resourceful, bright and strong. But for some reason I was sure I would never find myself in an abusive relationship, I thought I knew better. Well, I didn’t.

The red flags were there, they always are.

But when you are in a difficult situation like mourning, a relationship crisis or trauma, you are vulnerable to all sorts of manipulators and charlatans you might never have given credit to before. Watch “Dirty John” on Netflix if you want visual confirmation of how it usually goes. As research shows, abusive people are attracted by strong, resourceful partners. First, they admire you and put you on a pedestal, that’s why the love-bombing phase looks so natural to you.

They know that can’t keep their show for too long, so they try to trap you into living together or marriage as soon as possible. Covert narcissists will also play the victim. If you meet someone who hates their family and has no friends even if they’ve been living in this city forever, be careful. You might be the next horrible person on their quite long list.

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2. It could indicate your areas of growth

The only person responsible for the abuse is the abuser. I lost a couple of friends because I wasn’t willing to compromise on victim-blaming. But after it was all over and I became concerned about how could I prevent this nightmare from happening again, I realized there were some areas of growth this relationship showed me. Some things inside me lead me to this situation and kept me in it. How is this different from victim-blaming? These were the coping mechanisms I learned in my family, at that time I didn’t have the resources or capability to act differently.

The abusive relationship is never a victim’s fault.

I wasn’t really in contact with my emotions for my whole life. I pursued positive ones and I denied the ones I thought were negative, like sadness, anger, fear or guilt, trying to live a real-life Holywood movie. After my father’s funeral, I didn’t let myself mourn, but these powerful emotions needed an exit and the new relationship energy seemed like a perfect way of releasing them. Except I couldn’t see anyone during that first year, neither myself nor others. Engaging in a new relationship in this state wasn’t a good idea.

When I first met my abuser years before I felt instinctively repulsed, he was unpleasant, unhappy and my gut feeling was to stay away from him. Many victims report the same situation that changes when the abuser starts the love bombing. I wish I listened to that first feeling.

It is a good idea to remember that after a traumatic event life-changing decisions like moving in together, getting married or moving to another country might not be the best ones to take. Wait until you will be yourself again. You might not feel the stress and think you are perfectly fine but this is not always true, you just can’t realize this until later.

After I ended my abusive relationship I went to some twelve-step groups and therapy. I made authentic connections with people, coming to them as my true self. Now I have many more resources than before. Remember that the victim of abuse can change and become her glowing and happier self, it’s a hard path but you can do it and you surely will find amazing people along with it, people who’ve been through the same as you and can understand you and give you many beautiful insights.

Abusers rarely use any opportunity to improve their behavior, they usually find new people to blame for their anger, suspicion and control issues.

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3. You don’t have to be strong all the time

It didn’t hit me until months later, during a dinner with a friend from a support group. If I didn’t feel obliged to always act like a strong woman, I would have left earlier. You should be strong when you face a close relative’s disease, when your child struggles at school or when you face hard times financially.

But you don’t have to be strong and comprehensive when your partner abuses you and justifies himself by his childhood traumas.

Many of us didn’t have a perfect, loving childhood where we were accepted as we are and loved unconditionally. Many of us grew up in an alcoholic, emotionally shut down, extremely severe or even abusive families. Nevertheless, we try not to perpetuate the abuse, we do our best not to treat people the way we were treated. Sometimes we become codependent or people pleasers because these are the unhealthy coping strategies we learned at a level we don’t act them consciously but we do our best to be good people. We apologize when we realize we hurt someone, sometimes even when we know it is not our fault.

The female gender socialization erroneously taught us we are better than men at emotional regulation, so we feel like we are responsible for more than half of the relationship. This is one of the mindsets that doesn’t let you leave an abusive relationship. We are taught to tolerate a lot and to shut down our inner voice that knows we shouldn’t handle injustice and other people’s rage. The boiling frog effect does the rest.

If you can do your best to be a decent human being, so does the abuser. They choose to be aggressive, prevaricating and pushy.

In so many support groups I saw women asking the same question “Help me understand whether my partner has a narcissistic personality disorder or not”, so they would leave only if he does, because otherwise there is still hope. Well, there isn’t.

Someone who sees you crying on the kitchen floor regularly because of what they said or did doesn’t love you and is not healthy for you. And you don’t have to be strong or understanding of their traumas. They don’t care about you or they would behave differently. Only you can save yourself. Once you will realize you deserve better, the resources will arrive. Friends, support groups online and offline, associations that help victims of abuse, someone will be there for you. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in your situation.

Asking for help is a sign of strength. Saving yourself is a sign of courage.

The world needs your giving capacity and resources, in your local community, in a volunteer organization or your yoga class. Don’t use your best skills for the person who is trying to destroy you.

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4. Psychological abuse impacts your health

The continuous stress, tension, and drama don’t pass unnoticed by your body. The emotional abuse has many short and long-term effects. Anxiety, sleep disorders, chronic pain, even amenorrhea and allergies can derive from it. The emotional rollercoaster also doesn’t leave you with much time for your routine medical visits and the economic abuse might prevent you from seeing a counselor or a therapist when you need one.

The initial love bombing when you told all your friends how marvelous your partner, might be a problem at a later stage when they won’t believe that such a great person can be so cruel. You might experience extreme loneliness and social withdrawal, orchestrated by the abuser, that is not good for your mental health either.

Their constant low self-esteem projected incessantly into you might make you believe you are worthless.

Stick to reality, not to what the abuser says. You know better. You deserve to be loved and treated fairly. You have to take care of your physical and mental health first.

by Rex Pickar (Unsplash)

5. It doesn’t have to last

I knew I wanted to leave this relationship after nine months. But the timing never seemed right, so I stayed for another six. First, he was unemployed and since he didn’t have any friends or family in the city we lived in I thought I should wait until he gets a job to break up with him. Then there was my birthday and I didn’t want to spend the night explaining to everyone my recent breakup. Of course, before my party, we argued and he threatened he wouldn’t come.

Later I learned abusers always find their way to ruin your special occasions, birthdays, holidays, promotions, and blame others for it.

When I finally dared to tell him I was done, I remembered I had a friend’s wedding in a few months. I realized I would be the only one of my friends without a partner. I froze for a second but the idea of spending another day with this man for whatever reason was overwhelming.

I had so much fun at that wedding. I saw my old friends who came from different parts of the world, I enjoyed my single hotel room and the absence of my +1 was not a problem at all.

If you wait for the right time to leave the abusive relationship, you might wait forever.

There will always be some common plans that will make you doubt. New Years’ Eve party, that Ikea furniture, the debt you have because of them, the kids. Please don’t stay for the kids, they will be much happier without witnessing or supporting abuse.

Just take the decision that you deserve better, write down in a journal all the terrible things the abuser put you through, possibly keep it in a place they don’t have access to. You might need it later when your mind will keep pushing you all the good memories you have together.

There’s just one last thing I want to mention. I ofter hear women who survived abuse saying they became stronger thanks to it. It always breaks my heart.

We don’t have to be thankful to our abusers, we have to be grateful to our resilience.

Only our inner strength and beauty help us overcome the adversities and become our authentic selves who act rather than react, who establish boundaries and keep them no matter what, who glow from their inner confidence and love. If you survived abuse, you have to be thankful to yourself and those who helped you in this path. And if you are still in an abusive relationship, you have already survived the worst that could happen to you. Ask for help and find the best way to get out. I know you can.

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