I'm in love with an abuser I left over a year ago

by cassandra

Five years ago I met a Man on his birthday, I had just gotten out of a four year common law relationship, followed by a year of meeting one loser after another. When this man came into my home he was different and mysterious and I fell for the lust of these things immediately. After a short period of time a woman called me very upset and told me she was his wife. I stopped calling him for a while and then a couple weeks later he came to my door. When he came in and was talking to me, he told me the , "I'm unhappy at home" story, and I believed it because I wanted to - I was very lonely, not that it justifies anything.

Over the next year he proceeded to tell me if I left him he would kill me, or he would tell his wife about me and she would bring her friends to hurt me, he gave me an example of a time she did this before. He was extremely abusive sexually, made me cut off all my friends, and if I got caught looking or smiling at a guy, I would be slapped. His abuse only progressed over the next two years, from basic slaps, to throwing me, choking me, and kicking me while I was down, it never got to the point of a true beating, but it was heading there. I can't lack to mention, during the process of these three years, I was giving him excuses for all this and accepting this of him, convincing myself it was good for me to learn how to be a good woman, as opposed to the twenty year old I was when he met me as a 40 year old man. I also fell deeply in love with him.

Well to continue, on the third year said man was deported back to the states, he was not supposed to be in Canada. At that time some neighbors of mine came forward and told me they had been watching my situation and they wanted to help, I told them everything and they began to counsel me on my own self worth and how wrong this man had been.

I then decided it was best to tell him I would not see him anymore, because he was at a safe distance and I had support. The hell began when he started calling women in my city telling them rotten things about me so they would want to hurt me. When I stood my ground, he called my own Mother and told her I was selling my body and doing drugs. I withstood everything, patched up relationships and stayed clear of him anyway. Now a year later, he has contacted my on the net, I am talking to him like nothing happened, I think about him and lust for him all the time and have since we broke up. I still make excuses for him.

Am I a complete idiot? i don't want to love this man. I have now shut him down on the computer again but I want to get rid of my feelings for him, I don't know how to stop loving him and caring how he is doing, I want to forget and I don't know how, I can't move on and have a healthy relationship with this still in me. I need help.

Ben's Answer:

Thank God your good neighbors stepped up and talked some sense into you! And thank God you listened to them, and cut him off. Now he's back in your life. You're addicted to this guy. I don't think I need to tell you that women end up dead sometimes when they stay with guys like him. This is a very very serious situation. As I've said in other posts, once you let a man abuse you, it is easy to lose your self-respect and your perspective, and it is easy for it to happen again and again until you get help.

You say you're "in love" with this man. You say he never gave you a "true beating." I'd hate to see what a "true" beating is. You say he slapped you, threw you, and kicked you when you were down. If that's not a beating, I don't know what is. Usually (but not always), when a person is attracted to an abusive partner and allows themselves to be abused, it is because they experienced some similar type of abuse in their childhood, and so they have a deeply-rooted association between feeling "loved" and being abused. When your caretaker/parent, who is supposed to love and nurture you, actually abuses you (and then is nice to you, and then does it all over again), it set up a pattern of seeking and expecting and even desiring to be abused.

For some people, it simply starts with very low self-esteem. You may have experienced verbal abuse, emotional abuse or neglect as a child. You probably have a lot of deep feelings of shame and worthlessness. And again, once you let a person like this into your life, it's a form of brainwashing. More than two years of accepting sexual, physical and emotional abuse is a long time.

There are two things I strongly recommend if you want to get past this: 1)A great therapist, with a good reputation, that you can trust, and see at least weekly for a good long time (like more than a year). And 2)EFT to use either on your own, or with an EFT trained therapist, to help you more quickly work through the trauma and the addiction to this man. (There's info about EFT on this website).

You can do this. I've seen women change their lives after this sort of abuse, and you can too.

Take Care,
Ben Schwarcz

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