How My First Relationship Kept The Childhood Abuse Alive

I used to look back on my first relationship with so much shame and disgust- for how I could have so little respect for myself, for why I didn’t have the strength to walk away sooner, and for why I let someone else dictate my worth.

I’d like to say love is blind, but I don’t know if I really believe that. I think love is too raw and real to be blind. Maybe lust is blind. Maybe our late teen hormones fueled with a lack of romantic experience is blind.

Whatever it was, I lived in his shadow for almost four years. I accepted it as my fate.

It was something I had become accustomed to. My mother only approved of my existence when I was a proper extension of her. And my stepfather worshipped the ground she walked on, so he wasn’t exactly a source of comfort. They were also both physically, psychologically, and emotionally abusive.

As for my biological father- the last time I ever saw him, he was getting arrested because my mother called the cops on him for being drunk. He was also a physically abusive alcoholic.

I didn’t have strong, positive role models and was left to figure life out on my own as a child. So, when the first boyfriend entered the picture, I didn’t pay attention to the red flags or my intuition.

He cheated. Not once. Not a little, but incessantly. He was also my first and I had traditional views of sex and marriage.

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He always blamed my appearance for why he cheated- my looks and body weren’t up to his standards. Yet, no matter what I changed about myself, he still cheated.

He used to tell me that I was privileged to be with him. And the thing is, he was average, but acted like he was an ancient Greek relic in the flesh and blood.

He also used to find ways to diminish my trauma while sensationalizing his experiences. He knew about the abuse from all three of my parents, but used to tell me that I was the one who was sheltered because his mother had to use coupons when he was growing up. According to him, I had no idea how cruel life can be.

Every insecurity and vulnerability I had were exploited in that relationship. And if I didn’t have an insecurity prior to him, he made sure to give them to me.

I tried to keep my distance from him every time he broke up with me, only to find myself getting sucked back in. So, as the relationship continued, my self-esteem withered away.

I was also expected to fulfill the role of being a “woman” when I worked full time and paid for everything in our relationship, while he was incapable of holding more than a part-time job for 3 months a year and never chipped in.

He would pick fights with me right before an event (his step sister’s wedding, times he promised we would do something I wanted to do, family functions) just so he could leave me high and dry. He then blamed me for why I wasn’t there or why he didn’t attend.

As horrible as it felt, it was also familiar.

One night, he told me during one of the many times he broke up with me, he took a date to our restaurant and he paid. In all of New York, he chose the restaurant we regularly went to that I always paid for. Something shifted or died in me at that moment. Maybe both.

Whatever loyalty he mind f*cked me into thinking he was owed, while mine would never be earned, left. Everything I ever felt for him was gone.

But I didn’t blow up. I didn’t say a word. And I didn’t break up with him. I should have, but I didn’t.

I gave him a dose of his own medicine and cheated on him. Eventually, I broke up with him.

Yes- he knows, because I told him.

The aftermath of the breakup haunted me for years. About two years later, I reached out to him. I don’t even have a good reason for why I did, but we spoke in person. As embarrassed as I was for contacting him, it also gave me the clarity I needed. But the psychological toll continued.

It was this vicious cycle of tormenting myself, but also not wanting to feel anything at all- partly because of my childhood abuse, and partly because he made his emotionally incestuous relationship with his mother my burden.

And no, the cycle didn’t end with him. But that’s for a different time.

I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.