Two and a half years ago I broke up with my boyfriend who mentally abused me.
He was my first boyfriend and the beginning of our relationship was amazing. He was so good to me and I told everyone who was willing to listen how no one had ever treated me as well as he did. He was a few years older than me and he felt so different than all the boys I had dated before who had gone AWOL after a few dates. Little did I know that he would also be the one who would treat me worse than anyone else.
I never really found out what went wrong. It all changed in just a few days’ time. It seemed that once I was hooked on spending my time with him, there was no reason for him to try to impress by treating me well anymore, as I would be his anyway.
Suddenly I couldn’t do anything right. Every time we fought, it was always my fault. He said I didn’t let him be himself when I asked him to do things with me after spending the whole day on his computer. When I told him about my dreams of living abroad, he accused me of not being invested in our relationship. He barely even touched me anymore, and whenever I tried to make the first move, he’d look at me like I was the ugliest creature he’d ever seen. One day he’d beg me to move in with him, the next he told me to go away because he “couldn’t breathe” when I was around. If I had spent hours cooking dinner for him, he wanted to eat out. When we hadn’t seen each other for a week, he would cancel our date because he “had to do the dishes”.
I was so confused. All I wanted was to make him happy but I never seemed to quite figure out how. Every time I tried to address our problems, I was told that I was too demanding and that we wouldn’t even have any problems to begin with if I would just shut up.
Before I met him, I was an ambitious, confident and happy young girl who wanted to live life to the fullest. But after a while of him constantly putting me down, I turned into a shadow of my old self. I lost weight and my friends were worried because I was always tired. My self-esteem hit rock-bottom, I got depressed and started to believe that there was something seriously wrong with me. Why else would he need to treat me so bad? I forgot all the dreams I used to have and began to adjust to my future as his wife and the meaning of my existence was all about making him happy.
Even though he never hurt me physically, it took me two years of therapy to get over the scars that his words left on me. I doubt that I will ever forget the way he forbid me to cry because it would just “make him angrier”.
The worst part was that even when I finally collected what little pieces of courage I had left and broke up with him, he didn’t let me go. I will never forget how horrified I felt when two days after picking up my belongings from his place, he texted me saying that he would ”take a little break” from our relationship as it was getting too much for him. As if he just couldn’t face the fact that I had made the decision to end the relationship and not him.
For the next 18 months he would regularly send me messages saying how much he missed me and accusing me of “not wanting to remember” the good things we had. After the initial “Leave me alone, it’s over!” replies I never answered his messages again, but it didn’t help. Banning his Facebook profile just made him create another one. There was a point when I was scared of going home as I was sure that he would turn up there next. At times it crossed my mind that I might never get rid of him, That someday I would just give up and go back to him.
Starting a new relationship after him was a nightmare, but it turned out to be the thing that saved me. At first I was so insecure and certain that I would ruin this relationship, too. After all, wasn’t I the one to blame for everything? The first time I confronted my new boyfriend about something he’d said that had hurt my feelings, I was absolutely terrified, bracing myself for a fight and having to go to the bathroom to cry silently. But instead of yelling at me, he hugged me, apologized and thanked me for bringing up the issue so that we could talk it through. Still, even after that, it took me over a year to actually believe that he really wanted to be with me and would continue to treat me right.
Today it has been almost a year since I last heard from my first boyfriend and I hope that he’s moved on too. But the truth is, I don’t really care anymore. I know I won’t be going back and that I’d never allow him to hurt me like that again. I owe it to myself to live my life as I did before I met him and not to let him have any impact on me.
If anything, he had made me stronger. Picking up the pieces he left and building my life again was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But with the help of therapy, a loving relationship, and extensive discussions with my friends and family about who I really am, I did it. It took me a long time, but I’ve finally realized that putting someone constantly down, making them feel inferior and bad about themselves and always finding fault in your significant other is not normal behavior in a relationship. It is mental abuse. And mental abuse is just as wrong and hurtful as physical abuse.
No matter how hard he tried to break me, he failed. I still have days when I feel like everything he said was true and that I really am totally worthless. But most days I can see the strong and happy girl I used to be. I’ve started to dream again. And most importantly, I can now show my emotions without being scared.
According to Human Rights Centre, 53% of Finnish women have been mentally abused in a relationship.