2. It’s not all bad
“People seem to think abusers are always abusive, but they are not. After all, you start dating that person for a reason. They’re not a monster all the time. Sometimes you’ll think, “this is it, I’m leaving,” and they turn around and do something incredibly sweet that makes you feel like you’re falling in love with them all over again. You weigh in your mind the good and the bad, and for some sick twisted reason, you decide that the good is worth staying for.”
3. You don’t believe they’re doing anything wrong
“My ex-boyfriend made me believe the sexual abuse was genuinely my fault because I didn’t display my love for him enough and as his girlfriend, I “owed” it to him. I’m by no means a shrinking violet, but he would act so wounded by my rejection, and add a combination of anger, sadness, pity, pleading and then outright abuse that in the end, I felt so awful for him that I would do whatever he had originally wanted. If someone had asked me at the time, I wouldn’t have thought I was in an abusive relationship, because I genuinely believed that I was the bad guy, not him.”
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