My boyfriend and I broke up 2 weeks ago. I think. We got into a fight and things got physical. He hit me in the mouth. Someone called the police and he was locked up. He was charged with DOM Battery. He had been drinking and was out of control. He had never hit me before. We had never fought like that before.
We both had hard childhoods.
My mother was a drug addict. I was taken from her at 3 months and put into foster care. I was returned when i was 5. She had gotten married. She was still on drugs at the time. She and her husband fought all the time. And he started to beat her. The nights the fighting got bad she would wake me up and run away with me. One night we left and where picked up by two men. We stayed in a strange house and one morning while she was outside with one of them the other one molested me. I was 8 years old. I remember it clear as day. When i was 10 years old, my mother disappeared. I thought she was at work. I kept calling and calling and they said she wasnt there. She was gone for weeks. She would break into our house when her husband and I were at church. She stole things from my room. Finally, she came back, cracked out. I wrote her a note saying if she left me again I would leave to live with som eelse. And she begged and promised that she wouldnt leave again, but she did. I used to sleep on the couch waiting for her to come back but she never did. Her husband called my grandparents and they came and got me. Ive lived with them since. Im now 22.
My boyfriend is 29. His parents broke up alot when he was young. Finally they divorced when he was 12. His dad had another whole family, in the same city. His mother suffered from serious depression. He said he never saw her much. She only came out of her room to cook or go to church. He was molested when he was 7 or 8 by his babysitter. When he was 12 he got into trouble for molesting a girl at his school. When was 16 he and his mother got into an argument and she sent him to go live with his father. When he got to his fathers house, 3 months later they put him out. Hes been in and out of jail since. His last offense was in 2004. Hes also been bed hoping which resulted in him getting and STD. He thinks hes sterile now because of it.
When we first started dating he told me that he saw alot of him in me. And he wanted to help me work thru things. We started off strong, this was the person I lost my "virginity" to. Then things went to ****. We started fighting alot but we always made up. After this last fight i was ready to end things that night. But as i started to think thru all of our fights and all of our disagreements I came to alot of realizations, many of which extremely painful. I wrote him this email:
Email:
How are you? I hope you are doing well. Spending time apart has been hard to say the least. I took some time to think clearly about our relationship. I came to some critical realizations, issues that haunted our relationship, that ultimately have brought us to this breaking point. I think that it will help you to understand why things developed the way that they did. The things that I’ve written here are directly from my heart.
We are both CONTROLLNG ppl and I believe for a lot of the same reasons. Unfortunately, control has been at the root of a lot of our disagreements. In the beginning of our relationship, it started with small things. As time progressed, more decisions and choices were made at the expense of my feelings, and without sharing the choices with me. It happened time and again and when it did, it left me feeling small and insignificant. I started to feel the need to be more assertive, to try to “make” you see me as the other half of our relationship. I started trying to show you that you where going too far with certain things. Crossing personal lines and boundries that made me uncomfortable, that hurt my feelings, that made me upset. As I tried to be more "assertive" my frustrations got worst. My “assertiveness” turned to aggression and resentment. At times I felt that your goal was to be the only leading force in our relationship and that I was in tow, like a child. That my “role” was to do and be the things you wanted me to do or be, regardless of how I felt about it or how scared I was. So I just reacted. I reacted by being disagreeable. I remember when you started telling me that I wasn’t feminine enough. So I went out and bought pretty panties and lingerie thinking that is what you meant. I now recognize what you meant by me telling me I wasn’t feminine enough and that I was “acting like a Man.” The aggression and the way I was expressing my frustrations is what you were talking about. My intention was never to disrespect you. Although I know I did. I was only trying to “make” a balance between us that I was comfortable with but I went about it the wrong way. My apprehension and resentment made it extremely difficult for me to be agreeable and cooperative. That’s why you felt like I was always bucking you. A lot of times, I felt like you were trying to change me. Although we have lot of the same experiences, our opinions, beliefs and values have been shaped differently. We look at the world through two very different looking glasses. I didn’t feel or think the same way on a lot of things, but when you questioned them and sometimes criticized them, I felt like I was always defending myself, fighting to just be myself, when we were supposed to be on the same team. I felt like a lot of times you discredited the things I thought or the opinions I had because of my lack of age, experience or because of how I developed my perceptions. Instead of accepting those things as a part of who I am, recognizing that they would change with time or when I was ready to change them; I felt like you if you didn’t like them or disagreed with them, you tried to change them then and there. I realize that I started doing the same to you alot more. I know that wasn’t your intention to change me or to make me feel bad but every time this happened it made me feel less and less significant in our relationship. Then when we argued over our differences it made it more and more difficult for me to do right.
TRUST was another issue we always had. In the beginning you never gave me a reason not to trust you, but as time went on you made choices and did things that really made me question your true intentions toward me. I recognize that I am guilty of the very same things. At the time I didn’t realize it. When things happened, It made me doubt how much you valued having me or how much you valued us and our future. This fed into my biggest INSECURITY, which was that you would leave me. You never gave me a reason to think you would. It’s an emotional scar and a fear I will live with for the rest of my life. I feared that you didn’t value me in your life, that you would just leave me wherever or whenever. I feared that you would hurt me, when the only thing I wanted almost more than life itself…was for you to love me scars and all. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. For so long I felt like damaged goods. Like I would never be good enough for any man. I knew you loved me but at times, I wanted you to do more than just say “I love you”, but to show it by do things to make me happy, like what you did in the bathroom. When we fought about the groceries, it wasn’t about the groceries. I felt like from the beginning of the relationship I tried to get the things you asked me for, to do things that you asked me to because it made you happy. But when I did those things, and I asked very little in return, it left me feeling unappreciated and insignificant. More and more I started to think you wouldn’t consider me an equal or important in our relationship. I recognize the efforts you made when I finally brought it up. Please don’t think I didn’t appreciate the things you were doing or all the things you did for me. I tried to change my approach to us and I asked you to also. I thought that if we both tried as hard as we could to make things as 50/50 as possible with our ENTIRE relationship and ALL its aspects, we would stop clashing so much and go back to loving each other. We would both feel more appreciated and learn to depend on each other more. One night I asked you to stop trying to “lead us” and to be my friend, to be my best friend. I knew you were trying very hard to make things work but at this point I was at a breaking point and it overwhelmed me. I started to recognize these things in myself and I asked myself again and again where I went wrong and how I could fix it. I was trying to slow down and pull back a little, go back to the pages we missed, and to let go of those things that were haunting me, so that I could start loving you they way you deserved. To be the person you met and fell in love with. I could tell that you sensed something was wrong. I remember during that same argument when I asked you to stop trying to “lead us”, you actually started to cry, which broke my heart. You stopped arguing and just kept asking me “What’s wrong ? Just tell me whats wrong.” But didn’t know how to explain any of it. I was overwhelmed by it, and I was afraid. I had been weak and let my demons get the best of me and they started to get the best of us. I was ruining everything I had prayed so hard for. I knew that I wanted to be with you. To share a life with you but these emotions and fears where weighing my heart down.
Regardless of any of the things I said, I never thought you were a bad boyfriend or a bad man. I knew that the only thing you wanted to do was to protect me and to protect us. Like me, the people in your life that were supposed to protect and provide for you didn’t. They left you to fend for yourself when the only thing you wanted was to be loved, to have peace, and to be acceptanced. Not having those things left a hole in your heart that would be hard to fill. Just like me. I was trying to fix myself and to make myself stop being so afraid. To stop being so difficult to stop being such a crazy bitch. But I kept failing. I started to feel like I was broken and was falling apart. In the mist of all of my inner confusion and stress, I didn’t know how to express any of these things to you, so I bottled them up until I erupted like a volcano and it hurt you and resulted in the situation we are in now. I apologize for the all the heartache and stress. When you first asked me out, I told you that you didn’t know what you were asking for. What you would be dealing with. By that I meant, I was still that hurt scared little girl. That hurt scared little girl came out in our arguments. It was never you personally that I was angry at or afraid of. Things happened that opened old wounds and that little girl came out. I didn’t know how to put her away again for good. I remember one night after a fight we had I was sitting on the bed crying. I was so embarrassed and ashamed at how I yelled at you. You came in the room and hugged me. You apologized, and I told you that I was sorry that I was so angry and that I was afraid that maybe I would never be able to just love and let go of all my fears and insecurities. This was the deepest pain id ever felt. You didn’t cause me that pain. It was a pain that I had buried deep inside, hoping that it never came back. As I cried, you told me that you would help me. You said that you aren’t that man you want to be now, but every day you try a little more to get there. I’m not the woman I want to be either but everyday with you made me want to be.
I am asking you, to please give us and me another chance. As I looked back and sifted through our all our memories, the strongest emotion left in my heart for you isn’t resentment, anger or fear. It’s love. True love and the memories of all the jokes, laughter, nose picking, ear picking, face licking, halo, resident evil, left 4 dead I & II, breakfast time, dinner time, and sexy time. I don’t regret one day. Even the days we argued, even the days we threaten to break up. For once in my life I was truly happy. With a lot of forgiveness, open hearts, open minds, determination and help we can pick up these pieces. We can be in love again. We can be US again. Without the fighting, the tears or the heartache. This is the opportunity to set things right. We have both invested too much emotional energy, mental energy and love to throw our love or our relationship away.
I know that we are under a court order to have no contact but I would like to spend tonight together. Between you and I, I’m right around the corner. Literally, It’s like a 10 minute walk. Let’s bring in the New Year together. Leave all this drama and stress behind in 2009. If you would rather not, please tell me. Unless you want to, you don't have to reply to anything that Ive written in this message. I'm sure you will want time to think about everything and If you want more time or more space I completely understand and Ill respect that. Just let me know.
End of Email
He never wrote back. I cried myself to sleep on New Years Eve. I thought that the issues i had would go away. But they didnt. And im afraid they ruined everything. In a way he and I are direct reflections of one another. I recognized that while i was writing that email. The break up has been devastating for me. I feel like someone died. Im on anti-depressants but im miserable. One day i was just walking down the street trying to make sense of everything that happened. And I ended up walking 5 miles away from my house.
The reason for our fights and the breakup i think all come down to Abandonment issues.We always had trouble with control, trust, insecurity and fears. I was always afraid he would cheat on me or fall out of love with me. I even started to walk out on him because of it. But he always talked me down from walking out. I dont know how to fix it. I cry and cry trying to understand everything. I know that he and I can get help and be in a healthy relationship but he wont talk to me. I feel like we have both put some much into trying to love each other through these demons but we failed.
Can anyone help me please?
Topic: Abandonment Issues [Lengthy Entry] (Read 1590 times)
November 06, 2008, 12:32:09 AM