You’ll leave when you’re ready to leave, Meg. I too am hoping that it’s sooner rather than later, but you’ll go when you’ve had enough and not a second before.
My sincere best wishes for you.
Of course it doesn’t feel good to have tried so hard at something and to have failed. That’s a good sign!
But, it doesn’t define you. It defines one episode in your life.
Looking at your OP, you said that you 'don’t really don’t want to tap out…" Listen: that has saved many a professional athlete’s life. Tapping out is good, when it is time to tap out! Now is the time.
God bless you in your coming days, and we’re all pulling for you,
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Jeez, Meg, my heart goes out to you. I was in your position when I first came to Tucson 15 years ago and met Travis. I looooved Travis with all my heart, but Travis had drinking and anger problems and regularly chased me down Oracle Road, where we lived together in a little apartment. After 3 months, I saw that he wasn’t going to change, that my love wasn’t going to reform him, and that I had to look out for myself, and I got out. Please, please don’t waste any more time on this loser. I’d offer you my own couch if I hadn’t just this past weekend moved into a roommate situation with someone else. But if you need someone to talk to face to face, PM me and I will be happy to get together with you.
I truly believe that in this world, there are two kinds of people that DO NOT CHANGE, and those are domestic abusers and child molesters. He won’t get better, IT won’t get better. Hear it, believe it, and accept it, and move on. Keep in mind that leaving puts you at a great danger for escalation of abuse, and keep yourself safe. Please leave him, even if you have to go to a shelter for abused women- there are like 3 in Tucson, and as sad and horrible as it sounds to have to go to one, it is safe and that’s what you need. Please let me know if you need anything that I can help you with.
Meg, try to step out of the situation a bit. Read your OP (and the birthday thread OP) as if it was a letter from a sister, or a dear friend.
What would your response to her be?
Sometimes we’re too close to a situation to see it clearly.
Do you acknowledge that he is emotionally abusive? You cannot change that. Is this how you’re going to spend what life you have, catering to an abusive jerk?
Everything you have written here sounds like you have no intention of leaving; you keep giving excuses and justifications and then describe methods by which you allow yourself to hold it together and stay with him. You are in deep denial. Please read these responses over again.
Out of curiosity, based on the above and on the info in the OP, did you start emotionally connecting with and talking daily to this new person several months before you broke off your engagement?
It sounds emo because it is. You’re so busy going, ‘Woe is me, I have failed, what rubbish I am,’ that you’re using it as an excuse to not take any affirmative action.
Do you judge a woman who escapes an abusive or deadend relationship as a failure? Seriously?
Please read through this thread about what healthy relationships looks like.
Meggroll, several of the signs you explain point out clearly, and you have already identified as, depression. And I don’t think Spring will cure it. You need to get the heck out of Tucson - maybe not in the literal sense, but definitely in the figurative one. You’re in a hole, and unless you can figure out what’s causing it and turn things into a different direction, it will go on growing until it’s over your head.
I realized several mild depressions ago that when I don’t write and don’t doodle, there is something Seriously Wrong, and I need (not “want to”, not “may”, but “need”) to identify it and get rid of it. It’s just… not living, when I’m like that, but merely lasting.
What everyone else said.
So many people have posted such excellent comments that there is not much to add.
I am an ‘IDVA’. In England, every area has at least one IDVA, and our job is to work with people in high risk domestic violence situations. The first thing we do with our clients is a risk assessment of twenty-four questions, each one representing part of an identified pattern which takes place in the majority of domestic murders. Generally these are things which build up gradually over time so that the non-abusive partner barely realises it is happening. She (usually it’s a she) blames herself, makes excuses, and blocks out the pleas of those who care about her - not because she is stupid but because of the complex psychology in an abusive relationship. Before she knows it, she’s in a lot of danger.
Just from the little I have read in this thread and the birthday one, you already hit six risk factors. Think about that. That’s without me sitting down with you and asking all the detailed intimate questions.
It will get worse. It may never get to physical violence in your case, but the emotional abuse can be just as damaging and take longer to heal. You need to get out.
What you describe is absolute textbook, IDVA-training-day-one, abusive behaviour. I could write down right now what your life will be like in a year’s time if you stay with him, and seal it, and I bet it would be 90% accurate in twelve months when you opened it, because what you describe is such a classic case.
I’m not saying this to frighten you, and deep down inside, you know what these people are saying is right. Actually, never mind. I DO want to frighten you. But I also want to tell you that you are worth more than this. You do deserve to be happy and respected. You will find other men who love you and who show it through their actions. You will find another job and another home wherever you chose to go. But the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to break free.
Thank you for posting. You said it better than any of us.
I see this kind of thing a lot on message boards, this is the first time I think I’ve ever posted in a thread like this. The reason is after having a very close female relative and 3 friends go through similar (varying levels of physical and/or emotional abuse) situations I pretty much resolved myself to the fact that these situations are ones in which the victim needs to hit absolute bottom before they are willing to get out.
I liken it somewhat to substance abuse (something I have a bit more experience with), in which a lot of people are never really serious about their recovery until they’ve hit bottom (and of course for most even that isn’t enough.) Based on my personal experience I expect you to not leave this person, to continue to make excuses, and to suffer immensely because of that decision.
I hope you’re like Alice the Goon and instead end up being one of those people who break these things off early and get out, and come away with it a better, smarter person. I hope you’re not like any of the four women I’ve known who have been in such relationships, who suffered years of emotional and physical abuse that came to define much of their adult lives.
Going down a good path in life isn’t about stubbornly sticking to a set path once you’ve committed to it, that is the kind of decision making that ruins lives and it’s easy to find many such examples. Messing up and realizing it and taking steps to extricate yourself from the mess up is admirable. Messing up and refusing to admit it, or trying to redefine the situation so that you can view it as as success, is not admirable.
Whatever decision you end up making you need to know that you have made a bad, terrible decision. No big deal, people make bad decisions and people fail. In business, there is a saying that you don’t “throw good money after bad.” What that means is, if you’ve fucked up it’s a lot better to just accept it and move on than it is to try and “fix it.” You’ve committed yourself somewhere you should not have, you’ve fucked up, working at it, trying to make it better, will make it worse. You also need to recognize you only get to make decisions for one person in the whole world, so you can’t base those decisions on what you hope someone else will do, instead you need to base those decisions on the reality of the situation and not the situation as you wish it could be.
Meg, are you still with us? I hope we haven’t offended you…most of us have just posted because we’ve been there and want to help.
Come back and let us know if you’re okay, okay?
Martin Hyde, you have said what I’ve been trying to put together for a couple of days now. Exactly.
Yeah, considering that this is the kind of situation that could potentially become dangerous, I hope Meg keeps us updated to let us know that she’s still okay.
How are you doing, Meg?
I don’t twitter or plan to start, but perhaps someone could contact her that way? Just to see if she’s okay.
My guess is that she isn’t posting here because she’s still with the boyfriend and doesn’t want to get a lot of grief about it.
That’s the first thing I noticed as well, perhaps because I’ve been cheated on like that in the past. I hope that it’s not the case.
She’s still currently active, just not on this thread.
any update?