What No One Tells You About Abusive Relationships

We started dating my senior year of high school and I instantly fell for him. He was charming, funny, polite, a true gentleman... or so I thought. It wasn't until about a month into our relationship when things changed for the worst. He started controlling every aspect of our relationship, what we would do on dates, where we would go, when I could hang out with friends and with who, he tried to control how I looked, and he attempted to tell me where I should go to college. That should've been when I ran, but for some reason I didn't, I chose to stay in an abusive relationship that would eventually drag me down.

No one tells you how to prepare for a relationship that takes everything out of you; they don't tell you how dark everything becomes, how scary it is to go through, they don't even tell you how to cope with the fallout of a breakup. There's no rule guide telling you how to leave someone, or how to deal with the fallout of leaving that person. You have to be the stronger person, you have to make the choice to walk away, no matter how painful it might be for the both of you.

I began to see it was time to leave him the night of the homecoming dance. He wouldn't dance or socialize with anyone. I think things turned for the worse when my ex showed up. I went to talk to him and that made my current boyfriend jealous, even though he knew why I was shocked to see my ex. When we left I remember getting this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, something changed. We were on our way back to my house so he could drop me off and I started to cry from the shock of the night. I remember looking over at his face and it was full of disgust and anger. I remember the deafening silence of the walk to my backdoor and how I felt as he kissed me goodnight and turned to walk to his car.

Halloween night was the worst. We had done a couples costume of Harley Quinn and the Joker. He had come over to my house to get ready since my friends and I were going out with him. He didn't seem thrilled, he seemed like he hated being with me. I vividly remember him criticizing how I looked, how he looked, and how we were going to be spending our night. Looking at my friends faces, I knew a break up was inevitable. The night went by painfully slow, but eventually minutes turned to hours and he finally went home.

It was long after that night that I gave up on trying to get him to love me. It was right before Thanksgiving when I told him we needed to talk, but he didn't want to talk, instead he broke things off and relief washed over me, but it didn't last long. Soon he became a stalker, he showed up to my house to leave my birthday present along with a note that made it seem like I was his only source of happiness. Finally we got the police involved and I never heard from him again.

See no one realizes the different types of abusive relationships. There is physical, mental, and emotional. While he was never physical, it was mental and emotional abuse. He manipulated me and messed with how I felt about myself and other people. He would make me feel shut off from everyone else, trying to make me completely dependent on him; he wanted me to feel so isolated that I had no choice but to be with him.

I'm one of the lucky ones that was able to escape an abusive relationship, and I pray and hope that other people will be lucky like me, but to those who aren't, know that you aren't weak, you're more brave than you think because you fight everyday to live.