The aftermath of 20+ years of emotional abuse (after emotional neglect)

I was in relationship with a man (I'm a man too) for 21 years and I would describe him as a narcissist (not in the, I hate my ex so I call them a narcissist sort of way, but more in a having no empathy for another human type of way).

Anyway, I managed to get myself out of the relationship and I'm now in what feels to me like a normal relationship. The abuse disturbs me more now than it did while I was in the relationship.

Here's how it played out:

• I told him when we met in 2000, that I wasn't physically attracted to him and went as far as telling him that I told my friends that he was too fat for me (I was 17!!!) - in hindsight, I'm sure this must have stayed with him for a very, very long time
• In the beginning, we used to go out drinking and clubbing and he also introduced me to ecstasy - (he was 21, I was 17).
• We decided to move in together in 2001 and after 3 weeks, I had seen enough - this was not the person for me and I broke up with him
• A few months later, we bumped into each other in a club and he started messaging me, telling me how he couldn't continue living without me and that I needed to give him another chance and he will show me a good life. I fell for it, I felt like the only way I could stop this guy from committing suicide would be to get back together and he would eventually see how incompatible we were. He made me promise to join him to go to the UK (it was a major point of disagreement before we broke up - I told him that I didn't want to go, but I did, just not with him).
• A few days after we got back together, I found out he had seriously been seeing someone else (so much so that his aging grandmother kept calling me by his new boyfriend's name). It broke me, I'd made these promises to this guy to be in a relationship I didn't want to be in and if he had been honest with me, I would have seen another way out. He could have been someone else's problem and now he was mine. It broke me in pieces.
• I was in a mall toilet and a guy started flashing me. Something in my head snapped and I decided from that moment that since he got what he wanted, I was going to make sure that I got what I wanted. It was the first of many thousands of times I cheated behind his back. The first time was the only time I really felt bad. (more on this later).
• I hated affection (or anything physical) from this guy, it was a major sticking point in our relationship. He always used to say it's because he was too fat and I would always deny it. He wasn't my type at all and his personality repulsed me even more.
• In the first few years, he had a financial hold on me, since he paid for the trip to the UK that he wanted and he finished college when I had just started working. My debt to him kept increasing because he wanted to always live to the highest standard (this continued until our final breakup 20 years later when he wanted to buy a huge four bedroom house with a huge yard and I wanted to live as small as possible). He kept saying that I couldn't break up with him until we were even, so finally my earnings caught up to sustain our lifestyle around 2008.
• Our entire relationship consisted of me saying no to everything and him coming to convince me until I would give up and say yes. (This was for everything from house purchases to holidays to my opinions on things).
• He believed he was superior to me and acted like it - he was earning more money, so he could make all the decisions. I had to do all the cooking, the cleaning, the gardening (I never ever even wanted a garden!) etc. He would proudly announce to anyone "the only thing I make, is reservations!". He knew he took advantage of me - everyone kept saying it to us. I always made excuses for this and said I didn't mind.
• My achievements would always be turned against me - or made about him. He would constantly remind me that I'm only where I am, because he made it possible. He even somehow tried to convince me that he helped me to get my degree (he only ever told me how I would never get a degree because I was so lazy - that wasn't help!). I stopped telling him about salary increases or bonuses because he would tell me how bad it made him feel that he didn't get an increase or bonus. Never got a "congratulations, well done". As soon as his sadness was over, he would start booking a holiday or making plans to buy a new car with my money.
• "You hurt those closest to you" was the phrase he repeated to me when I would try to tell him how I felt. I actually started believing that he must love me, because I am the person he repeatedly hurt the most in the world.
• Through everything, I became so numb to feeling anything, I was somewhere in a state of sadness which felt comforting to me. I loved the feeling, after a night of abuse of being made to feel like the smallest person in the world, to lie down in the dark and just be alone, thinking how I would reward myself for being treated this way (thinking of where I would get casual sex the next day). I would always sleep with my back to him, no matter how sore my back would get.
• We drank a lot of alcohol. For at least 10-12 years, we would each be having a bottle of wine each a night, 5-6 days a week. I encouraged him to drink more, because after enough wine, I didn't have to talk to him any more.
• Around 2018, he went on holiday with his mom and he started getting insomnia. He finally had to go for therapy as he was becoming suicidal from the lack of sleep. He started blaming me for his lack of sleep and insisted that I go and get a nose operation (literally, the insomnia started when I was hundreds of miles away!). He blamed me for our neighbours dogs barking ;he blamed me for everything that was wrong in his life.
• Anyway, after a therapy session, he said he had to admit something to me. For many years, he would get me to get drunk enough to pass out so that he could play with me. I told him okay, it's not a big deal, so what. I always wondered why I would get so incredibly horny in the middle of the night when I should have been passed out sleeping (probably after a day of one or two casual sex encounters). Turns out, he would purposefully stay awake until he knew I would be able to say no.
• His aggression absolutely terrified me. I would sit there and have to self-soothe, repeating in my head "he's not upset with you, he's not upset with you" when he would get upset at anything and then start punching walls and furniture. The dogs would get so scared, they would pee themselves, which would upset him further. He was so volatile, I just had to stay out of his way when he got into a rage.
• He had incredible road rage. He wrote off three cars, he crushed a teenagers leg from his aggressive driving and knocked a cyclist off his bike and then just drove off (I was in the car for this incident and begged him to stop).
• He would ask me every birthday, every Christmas what I wanted. Whatever I would say, he would call it stupid and then proceed to tell me how difficult I was to buy for. I said the same thing for 6 birthdays and Christmases and never got it (its an electric keyboard that I bought myself for my first birthday out of the relationship).
• There's so much else, but the entire relationship was built on negativity - he would find better and better ways to put me down and I would be going out and enjoying the positive attention from all the guys. I loved all the attention outside, I hated the attention at home.
• He still doesn't know about the cheating. He still thinks that somehow I was the perfect partner. It's been two years and I hear through mutual friends how he gets stupid drunk at parties and then start crying for me. I am halfway between feeling sorry for him, but also feeling like it's karma for making my life so difficult for 20 years. I really want to feel nothing for him.

It feels like I am suffering more from the abuse now, than I did then. Back then, I had a coping mechanism - I would find positive attention outside and be able to cope with all the negativity inside. My emotions have returned and I feel sad about the fact that I felt sad for such a long time and thought it was okay. I feel sad that I didn't know what love was and allowed myself to get into this situation. I feel sad that I couldn't be who I was with him for 20 years, everything I was, was what he wanted me to be, not what I was deep-down. My sadness is no longer comforting, because I know how good it feels to be happy.

I found my happiness and it continues to astound me. I have flashbacks to the past - when my new partner says something kind or nice, I don't believe it; when I make a mistake, I expect me to be shouted at, I expect my partner to tell me I am lazy every day, when all he does is support me. I am lucky to have been able to see what a loving relationship really looks like, but it makes me incredibly sad that I had to go through so much trauma to get here.

Every day, I take another step towards living exactly like I want to without a fear of shame or guilt, but it's hard. Saying what I want or what I need takes an extreme amount of energy (I grew up emotionally neglected and then was emotionally abused, so not a great start in life).

I am slowly getting there. Time to move on from the past. We were two people who were not nice to each other - neither of us knew what love was and messed up. He's paying the consequences of taking advantage of me for so long - I found happiness, I have something new to focus on instead of wallowing in the past.