So, I am up at 4am in my time zone because I am afraid and I am not sure if I should be calming down or running.
I have been dating a guy for a year. We were introduced by friends and I very early on knew he had a backstory - abusive home, rebel teen, joined the Chinese mafia but got out in his early 20s due to his mafia boss stealing his gf. He then became a Christian.
The relationship has been pretty great. Mostly drama free, fun, he makes me very happy. We don't really fight. We have been able to resolve conflict before it's a big deal. The primary challenge until this week has been his business as an entrepreneur and his working himself into exhaustion frequently so we don't get as much time together as I would like.
All along I have been trying to get a sense of how much his past still impacts him. He is into self help, and his church has done some prayer-based treatment for him over the years. To my knowledge, however, he has never seen a psychotherapist.
Over the course of our relationship he has shared with me two incidents of his getting physical when losing his temper. One was a Kung Fu student, another was a young adult employee. Both times have been controlled after a point - He has felt guilty and asked me to pray for the other person each time
Each time I have asked questions around it to assess my own risk of his getting violent with me, but the things that he said triggered him are things I never do. And he told me even if I did, he would never hurt me.
So, recently my cat died and he has stepped up sacrificially to be there for me. He is also an animal lover so he gets it. On Saturday he surprised me with an extra date and when I expressed suprise said that he knew I was going through a hard time and wanted to be there for me.
So during the date he opened up in an unprecedented way and told me some time ago he had to stop watching horror films because he found he got a rush out of watching bad guys hurting people. He said when watching action films he always identified with the villain. And that he had a and had been watching some interviews and documentaries. Basically he has recognised a dark part of himself from his reactions to childhood abuse.
Tonight he called me before bed when we usually pray together and his primary prayer request was about how in the past few days he had watched too many of these documentaries and he felt it was impacting his subconscious mind. He said part of him feels he will end up as a And when I asked him how scared I should be, he said I didn't need to be afraid and he hoped he hadn't scared me too much. That was 3 hours ago and I have been compulsively reading on the topic.
And I guess what I am wondering is, how normal is his response for a childhood physical/emotional abuse survivor? I have no frame of reference to be able to process this information to know how serious it is.
But he has long ago (nearly 20 years) left the gang, reconciled with his family and worked hard on his relationships. He has a dog who he is very kind to. His work is focused on helping kids like he was find job opportunities so as to not end up where he did.
He is not emotionally expressive but has shown empathy with me. He is socially a bit awkward, but has solid friends and has connected with mine as well.
Could this be an echo of an angry past, where part of him is reacting to former powerlessness? Or is it a sign of something far more serious?