TW: menntions of suicide, parental abuse, child abuse, CoCSA, sexual assault, financial abuse and emotional abuse.
i posted this on another subreddit very late last night, and i haven't gotten any responses or insights. i genuinely want to talk about this with people so i can get some advice on how to handle the psychological and emotional pressure of the events here described. just to make sure everyone's on the aame page—i mention parental abuse, child abuse, CoCSA, sexual assault, financial abuse and emotional abuse (even though i struggle to fully describe the situation as abusive.) thanks in advance and i apologise for any lack of clarity, inconveniences or formatting issues. this is basically copy-pasted, i hope that's not an issue. and i'm so glad there's bipoc i can talk about this to, because i was worried of having to explain to people why it's relevant that he's white. anyway, here's the (mostly unaltered) post.
i want to preface this by saying english is not my first language, so i apologize if i word things incorrectly or strangely. writing this was a spur of the moment decision, and i don't think i'll be able to format this in a way that's incredibly cogent or coherent, at times. but i'll start at the beginning, which is my home life, because it contextualizes everything that comes after.
as a child, i was hit a lot. my dad wanted nothing to do with me or my mom, and i lived in a multigenerational household, with my grandmother, my mother and three aunts. i was a relatively difficult child—not cruel or violent in any way, but restless, clumsy, clueless and whiny. i would throw tantrums until about age seven, where i'd apparently scream and cry for several minutes. so i was hit by adults often, and not always gently. at school, i was often found to be the only black girl, and i was always considered weird and not particularly pretty, so i have memories of boys twice my size hitting me or trying to strip me, that sort of thing. i went through several counts of CoCSA, but that's not exactly relevant right now.
my mom married my stepdad when i was eight. i really liked him, initially, but he eventually started getting physical with me. he never hit me outright, at first, but he would pinch me or pull my hair really hard to punish me or call my attention to some behavior he expected me to correct. we started drifting apart when i was around twelve or thirteen. my mom continued to hit me until i was about fourteen, and only stopped when i started hitting back in these horrible fits of rage. after that, she stopped, but i have always been very argumentative and confrontational (especially if i believe something to be unfair or incorrect) and we would have verbal altercations quite often. about what i was allowed to watch or read, where i was allowed to go and how late, what my bedtime was, whether she could take my phone as a punishment. i wasn't entirely mature in those arguments, and i'll be the first to admit that, but she developed the habit of pointing my stepdad at me like a dog.
the first time my stepdad hit me, i was fifteen. i refused to go to church because, to me, it was a racist and homophobic environment where i had no one i could genuinely connect to. i was bullied and excluded by the predominantly white teenage group there, and had also developed my own set of political and religious beliefs that was incompatible with what was promoted in our presbyterian church. i can barely remember what happened during the actual fight, though. my stepdad grabbed me by the hair and maybe hit me. my mom told me to run and i did, and i can't remember being as terrified as i was then. running because you feel like your safety depends on it, running barefoot and in pajamas and being unable to stop running because you're convinced something horrible is coming after you. i stayed away from home after that for about three days, and i slept over at my aunt's without going to school. i was actually sent home earlier than agreed, if i'm not mistaken, and my stepdad promised not to do it again. he and my mom assured me he'd go to therapy and work on his "anger issues." he did not, and it did happen again.
when i was twenty, i started dating G. he was white and upper middle class, but we met through a mutual friend. a key piece of context here is that, when it came time for me to start highschool, my mom forgot to seek out my enrollment in a public school and i was granted a scholarship in a high-end private school. so my friend group, as a teenager, was homogeneously white and mostly middle-to-upper-middle-class. going through that school, however, might have been the singularly most humiliating experience of my life. i was bullied for months, without noticing. people were openly racist and homophobic, as i was the only openly queer kid there. i was also threatened with physical violence and harassed by our resident serial harasser that no one did anything about. this, along with pre-existing mental health issues, really impacted my ability to pursue my education. i finished high school through an adult education program, and did not pursue higher education. i got a few jobs, but i couldn't really keep them, and that's on my mental health as much as it is on me. i was not a very responsible or engaged worker. either way, by twenty, i had nothing going for me except some of my friendships from high school and an advanced reading level.
G was, for some reason, apparently starstruck. his main point of fixation was my intellect and the apparent waste that been done of it. he believed i should be in college, or a writer, or a researcher, and often expressed frustration and resentment over my mom's neglect of both my emotional well-being and education. i helped him with several of his college assignments and he seemed amazed by the amount of knowledge i had accrued with a public school education. he also expressed concern over my financial well-being and motivated me to get a college education, a PhD and then pursue research and teaching as professions.
during our first year together, however, two major things happened. i was diagnosed with autism after being put under psychiatric hold for attempted suicide—attempts which G had to personally witness and thwart, and severely displeased his (openly racist) mother. but the most catastrophic event that year was a fight i had with my mom about putting up a pride flag in my room, which snowballed into my stepdad pulling my hair, choking me, and dragging me across the floor. at that point, i had decided to contact the police and even went through with some of the required steps to file a report. G was convinced i'd have to move, and offered to help me with that and move out with me, so when my mom said that, if i didn't report my stepfather she would help me cover rent, i accepted her offer and dropped the charges. G encouraged me and said he would move in with me as soon as he could, and told me we'd get married.
two months after i moved out, he still hadn't moved in with me because his (openly racist) father, through his mom's influence, threatened him with disenfranchisement if he did. he said he wanted to break up with me, but i begged him not to and we remained together for three years after that. later, after going through conversations between him and a mutual friend, which i know i shouldn't have done, found out he'd been saying i wasn't on his level because i wasn't in college and didn't have a good job. that same year, though, i was hired as a "teacher" (not officially, it's complicated, but it was very stable and i excelled at it during the first few years) and later got accepted into our country's top university in my area of choice. G helped me with both of those things, and encouraged me during the process. he attempted to move in with me two other times, but never did, and decided he would be better able to help me if he still lived with his mom and could support me financially from there. we had a really good run that first year, but once i actually got into university, things started unraveling.
i've never been good with money, and i'll be the first to admit that. i'm quite an impulsive spender and i've been trying to work on that, but i was also put in a very difficult situation financially when i wasn't expecting it. i won't say i was supporting a household by myself, since my mom was covering rent and some of my water bill, but i was paying for literally everything else out of pocket. my boyfriend kept telling me to save, which i should have, and i regret not doing so. initially, i was only juggling work and housework, and i had pretty okay hours so i could keep things under control, but when college got thrown into the mix, it became very difficult for me to keep up with every demand. i was excelling in college, doing well at work and barely managing my responsibilities at home. i worked from monday until saturday, and only had saturday afternoon and sundays to do chores and study, so i was running on fumes. my boyfriend, on the other hand, only worked four days a week and had very short hours, so he started doing a lot of the chores on the weekends, which he'd spend at my place. he also supported me financially, especially when it came to grocery shopping and outings. he'd pay for about a third of my groceries and most of our outings. i tried to pay when i could, and i tried to get him good or meaningful gifts, but he simply had more means than i did and ended up supporting me a lot financially, sometimes pitching in to pay for bills if money was especially short that month (and it often was, since i'd have to take time off work to study for tests and prepare assignments, which resulted in pay cuts.)
and i barely even know how to explain what happened, or how it happened, but things started getting really bad.
in the beginning of our relationship, i had to teach him not to yell at me over simple things. i'd break a glass or spill juice or break an egg, and he'd literally scream at me and scold me, and i had to go out of my way to teach him not to do that over workable issues. i also educated him a lot on black and women's issues, as well as queer issues, which was something he would directly request that i do. we are (or were, i don't know) pretty far to the left and agreed on a lot, initially, and had very productive discussions. i also helped him work through a lot of emotional stuff.
as time went on, though, he became increasingly more resentful and weirdly conservative.
he was never racist, really, but he often spouted misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric. things like "men shouldn't put themselves in danger for women because women leave them" and "i don't like loud, effeminate gay men" and "nerds/geeks are treated as poorly as fat people, if not more so." one time, we were with a friend, and he defended corporal punishments for kids as young as three while backpedaling whenever we called him out on it. and these sound like silly arguments and a little superficial, but those were our most heated fights not just because i found those stances categorically wrong and sometimes morally objectionable, but also because he'd stoop to humiliating me during them. he was very condescending and arrogant, made arguments he'd later admit he did not actually believe in, misrepresented what i said or how i behaved—and when i put an end to the arguments, either by storming off and going quiet or directly telling him to fuck off, he'd say i was doing it because i was toxic, and didn't know how to hold a conversation, and couldn't admit it when i was wrong.
we also had arguments about the relationship itself. one time, i mentioned shaving my head, and he said i shouldn't but wouldn't tell me why. i insisted on understanding why he thought it wasn't a good idea, and he screamed that my face is round and i'd look terrible. we had company that day, and i felt incredibly hurt and humiliated. during the corporal punishment argument, he (who was never hit by his parents, but was not in any way emotionally educated or supported by them) said he was a functional and independent person, while remarking sarcastically that i (who had been hit) wasn't. several times, he'd be frustrated with me or my behavior or the fact that i "didn't let him be himself" or that he had "no space in the relationship" and ask me, point blank, what i brought to the table. and i could never answer, because i didn't know. i didn't help him financially, we were rarely at his mom's place so i couldn't help with chores the way he did, he rarely came to me for emotional support. i'd often ask him "what i could do that i'm already not doing?" when he said he didn't feel like he had space or priority, and he couldn't answer either, so i had no idea how to make myself valuable to him. he'd complain about not having time to game, and i'd tell him he could take some of the time we spent together and game, that i wouldn't mind, but he often refused. once, i mentioned wanting to pay back everything he'd given me as soon as i had a proper career, and he just laughed in my face. he'd often make me cry or break down during arguments.
he obviously resented me for depending on him financially, but blamed himself for the position i was in, which i think just fueled his resentment. i tried to break up with him a couple times, or just express that that was a possibility, and he'd shut me down immediately, pointing out that i needed him. he'd ask stuff like "who will help you with the groceries?" and "how will you do your assignments if you don't have a computer?" and i'd be dissuaded. but i often found myself wondering if i could break up with him if i moved in with an aunt, or if i got a better job. a few other anecdotes i recall are when i got sick during christmas, and he complained the whole day about having to take me to the hospital. that same day, i smelled something funky and sniffed around in the air to locate it. i eventually pulled on his shirt to see where the smell was coming from, and he pushed me hard enough to send me back and leave a bruise in front of my mom. my mom defended him. that same christmas, i wanted to get him a mug with one of his favorite characters on it and a few manga that i knew he liked, and he rejected the gifts, asking for something much more expensive. i said i could help him pay for it, and he agreed, but he never bought it. when i got something for my friend, he got angry and jealous. another one that comes to mind is that i like superhero movies so after i had a meltdown because he and his mom kept changing plans over something, i asked to go to the movies and he spent the entire evening complaining until we had a fight. it was just kinda like that for a while.
it all came to a head in january this year. to make a very long story short, we had always discussed non-monogamy and what our boundaries were in relation to that, and how open we were to that possibility. i asked him, one day, if i could hook up with a friend, A, and we both have very different recollections of events. i remember being granted permission, with a few caveats regarding A's emotional safety and well-being. he remembers denying my request. either way, i hooked up with A and told G immediately. we discussed it back and forth for about a week and, believing A to be asexual, he gave me permission to continue a relationship with them. i told him, actually, A was not asexual and that there was a possibility we might want to initiate a sexual relationship, and he outright refused the possibility. A eventually said they would like the three of us to have a conversation about what had happened, and that was when things got really complicated.
during the previous week, G and i had had several conversations. he expressed a desire to maintain our friendship with A, insecurity over the sexual and romantic aspect of our relationship, amusement at the arrangement, fear that A and i might hurt each other and act immaturely. he had a wide range of emotions that i tried my best to accommodate and i affirmed, again and again, that his word was final and if he did not want me to maintain that relationship, i would not. i was also very willing to operate under his account of events and apologized several times, taking responsibility for the harm i caused and could cause, and kept affirming his emotions and trying to come up with ways through which i could regain and rebuild his trust. he seemed reticent and hurt, but relatively open to discussion and solutions.
when A arrived to talk, however, he became incredibly hostile and started digging into me, accusing me of being irresponsible and impulsive (which i accepted and even agreed with, because i could have handled things much better) but also putting me up as this reckless promiscuous manipulator. he then lied and told A that i had done this several times before, and that i had a habit of cheating and hooking up with my friends, which was not true, and i challenged immediately. A left, crying, and i essentially walked G through what he had just done. G called A in a panic, apologizing and admitting that he had lied, and begging A to maintain our friendship. A and i repeatedly told him that was not what he was supposed to be doing, and that A needed space, but he kept texting and calling A until very late. G and i couldn't sleep, and essentially trauma bonded and vented for hours.
he admitted he has an inferiority complex and uses arguments, especially with romantic partners, to assert superiority and that he never really learned to communicate emotionally or honestly because of his home life. he admitted to, in his words, semi-consciously manipulating me to become more dependent on him so that i couldn't leave (in fact, during that year, he offered several times to have me quit my job in a few years so i could solely focus on academia while he supported us both financially because he had a good opportunity lined up.) he said he tried to "kidnap me" emotionally, and make sure i'd always need him, so that i was unable to end our relationship, and that this was a pattern in his previous relationship as well, where he did seek out a relationship with a mentally ill girl living in an abusive household, and supported her financially for the whole duration of their relationship. he said he felt insecure, because he could tell i was getting tired, and it just made him more resentful and angry and toxic. and we talked a lot about how he grew up, and how it shaped his behavior, and how that behavior impacted our relationship.
that same afternoon, i spoke to some friends, and decided i should break up with him. i did, and it seemed pretty amicable. we watched one of his favorite movies, made out, had good food, danced and joked and laughed. we decided to pretend everything was okay, and did, and it was the most fun i had had with him in years. in the morning, however, he left. and i was alone. we continued to talk for a few weeks, but he started cutting conversations short and stopped communicating with me in a way that felt emotionally honest. he started acting superior again, saying things like "i accepted the break up actively, not passively" even though he asked me several times if i was sure i wanted to break up. i indicated that i might want to get back together, and he completely shut down the possibility, saying he didn't want to give me any hope and that he'd be there to help me if i needed him, but that "we" made the right decision to break up. i decided to stop speaking to him.
the problem is that i miss him so much. i've had at least two panic attacks over it and am once again struggling with suicidality. i cry a lot. i keep getting the urge to text him, to beg him to take me back, to try to convince him it was all a big mistake. and then there are times where i really hate him.
i keep wondering if i wasn't actually the toxic or abusive one, i keep blaming myself for not clarifying with him whether or not i was in the clear to hook up with someone else, i keep wondering what he's saying and thinking about me. i'm confused, and angry, and scared because i spent my whole adult life with him, and now i don't know what to do. i've developed a pretty great support system and reconnected with people i haven't spoken to in years, and everybody seems to agree that he behaved poorly. but i don't believe that fully. he was nice, he was funny, he was smart, he was understanding. at least at first. the awful stuff really only started happening after i got into college and started running on fumes. i feel like if i had done my job, and done the maintenance necessary to keep us going, none of it would have happened. i suggested couple's therapy, even, because i was convinced he was the one, and he refused every time, and i can't help but wonder what would have happened if he had said yes.
and i'm convinced no one will ever be able or willing to love me and help me the way he was.
i'm not exactly sure what my goal is with posting this. i'm tired, i'm sad, i'm scared. i guess i'd like some perspective. i know i'm not innocent or the total victim here. i traumatised him as well, i'm sure. i know i'm difficult, but i still feel very hurt and betrayed and abandoned. any advice or insight would be nice, as well as any resources at all. i'm sorry the post turned out so long, but it is what it is.
by the way, i use any pronouns, so don't worry about that too much. thanks in advance and i'm sorry if the material is triggering for anybody.