The first time I fell in love I was 16 years old. I was a junior in high school and thought that I would be with this boy for the rest of my life. I was so infatuated with him that, in my eyes, he could do no wrong. Time and time again he proved me incorrect, but it didn’t matter. It never did. No matter what he did, what he said, or how he made me feel, I never hated him more than I loved him and that was enough for me to stay with him. My story is about my emotionally abusive relationship (NOTE: I’m not going to get into the vulgar things he would say to me or the terrible way he would make me feel because I have chosen to not even give him the satisfaction of letting his words enter my mind, but this is my journey through his abuse). Emotional abuse takes many forms but, for me, it was this sick repeating cycle. One of us would get mad at the other (usually me mad at him), we would fight for hours, he would cry and apologize, he would tell me loved me and would never hurt me again, and I would believe him. But then it would happen again.
My first sign that there was a problem with our relationship happened a month into dating. He got mad at me because he didn’t like one of my male-friends from work and didn’t want me to talk to him. I knew this was a problem, but I agreed and stopped talking to that friend. Soon he was mad that I had any male friends at all and always accused me a cheating on him. Shortly after I stopped talking to all my male friends. Then he started getting mad when I would hang out with my female friends because they were “a bad influence and were going to encourage me to break up with him or cheat on him.” Because of that I stopped hanging out with my female friends (unless they were in committed relationships as well, then they were acceptable). Of course this caused an argument, but he justified his behaviors by saying that “he loved me so much and just didn’t want me to leave him.” He always apologized and told me he loved me and I foolishly followed his orders because I believed him. I believed he would never hurt me, and I believed that I was going to marry him one day. On top of controlling whom I saw in person, he also made my online presence very scarce. He hacked my Facebook and blocked all of my male friends, downloaded Twitter just to follow my account (and only my account) to make sure I wasn’t talking to anyone on there, and he would always go through my text messages. It wasn’t healthy, but what was I going to do? I couldn’t leave him; I loved him.
Aside from being controlling he was also unfaithful, which made everything worse in more ways than one. Like I said, he always accused me of cheating on him even though he was constantly unfaithful. For some reason, people who cheat think everyone is cheating on them too and this just added to his mental instability, making my life and our relationship even worse. Even though I knew (since about 6 months into our 2.5 year relationship) that he was a cheater, I still could leave him. I didn’t leave him, but I didn’t trust him and this made me stressed and anxious and downright depressed. During the worst part of our relationship I stopped eating and sleeping and I lost a lot of weight because of that. I knew he was doing this to me, I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I was so hopeful that one day he would change that I couldn’t give up just yet. Like I said, there were a lot of signs that should have told me to leave him, but because I loved him, I just couldn’t do it.
There’s really one key difference between emotional and physical abuse; visible scars. Physically abusive relationships leave physical scar, but emotionally abusive relationships leave mental scars and sometimes those are worse. Our minds take longer to heal than our physical bodies and once our minds are damaged, they are never the same.
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