[salix11]

I had no idea what was wrong with the last relationship I was in for about a month, besides that I felt just as crappy as I did when I dated someone who yelled at me, gave me the silent treatment, twisted my arm when I disagreed over stupid things like whether I liked a certain car that he did, nearly bashed my head in with a desk lamp because he didn't want me to see him with his shirt off, etc etc. I guess you could say my last ex played the nice guy card for the most part, but now that I look back, he really put no energy or interest into the relationship, then when I finally told him I'm tired of being dead last to everything in his life he simply, coldly replied with a good riddance.

I finally looked up neglect as abuse online and found a nicely detailed list stating how it is abuse and I'm so upset that it's just more of the same, in a different way. Making promises to visit me and never doing it then not caring when I said it hurt, late for dates and didn't seem to care, criticized in small ways every big thing I was doing, conversations always turning back to him, ignoring me to the extreme the few times I was upset with things he did, giving just enough attention to keep me around but never any beyond that, and refused to refer to me as his girlfriend. I start putting pieces together about how bad his attitude really was, and when he refused to take responsibility for anything and would steal my ideas and pretend he came up with them, I was done.

It's just devastating to see how invasive and cunning this crap can be and you don't even recognize it until down the road when your self-esteem has been dumped on yet again. I've read TONS about abuse over the past few years, have avoided dating another person who yells and hits and outwardly has anger issues, and yet...here we go again.

[Sannah]

Salix, I'm sorry. I think that a person has the best chance for not doing a repeat by educating themselves on what is normal behavior. We all had to learn this. Watching healthy people and being around them is the best way to learn.

[LadyHermit]

I'm truly sorry you have had to go through all that. From experience, I'm going to state what I've had to face and learned from far to many bad realtionships than I care to count. Take what you need and leave the rest.
Of course, the biggy is the low self-esteem. I had to learn I did deserve to be treated with respect. I deserved to have a healthy realtionship with anyone. I had to learn to respond in a respectful way. Had to learn not to except anything less. I still have a hard time believing I can be loved and respected.

The hardest thing I had to learn was, after being abused in one form or another since childhood, the abuse can be the comfort zone becasue it's all you know. Being loved, respected and excepted for you, can be uncomfortable, even scary, because it's the unknown. Hope that makes sense because I'm not sure how else to say it.