Thoughts on the Ex
Apr. 1st, 2019 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oletherosUntil her, I'd never been in an abusive relationship. She didn't think that she was being abusive, of course. She had been in a very abusive relationship when she was younger. That wasn't something she was going engage in. Not on purpose. Mostly, her abusive actions towards me were passive-aggressive. She practiced benign neglect - she would get what she wanted from me sexually, then completely ignore me for days or weeks at a time. Completely drop off the face of the planet, no communications or indications that she was dead or alive.
She gave me vague, unconvincing excuses. One of her favorites was that she "avoids conflict." That's not how object permanence works, though. When someone tells me that now, it's a red flag. People who "avoid conflict" are actually avoiding the resolution of conflict. In other words, they don't want to deal with the situation - very often a situation that they created - because it's complicated. And requires effort. And communication. I know these things because I get paid to resolve conflict and spend a good portion of my job chasing people down to get what I need from them. I recognize the behavior.
Another excuse was that she had no time. She had plenty of time when I was the escape hatch she used to avoid dealing with other conflicts in her life. But when those conflicts got resolved and/or I became a challenge, suddenly she had less time for me. I'm not going to pretend that I did nothing wrong in the relationship, but her reactions were often dramatically over-the-top and were mostly signaled by an extended period of no contact. As a means of communication, total silence is super inefficient unless your intention is to torture the other person.
It will not surprise the reader to discover that she's currently not talking to me. Mostly because she asked me if she could not talk to me for thirty days and then broke up with me over email (something I asked her not to do) when I said that wasn't going to be mentally or emotionally healthy for me. The irony being that she lists "negotiation" as something she's good at on her OKC profile.
If she was talking to me, she'd probably tell me that I don't understand her at all. That she needs that time to regroup and mentally gather herself or something else along those lines. That it's not about me at all and any abuse that I'm reading from her inability to deal with the realities of maintaining a relationship is entirely on me. Well yes, that's how it works. She doesn't get to tell me how I should feel about her behavior. She acknowledged this exactly once in the entire relationship, then made up a series of reasons about why she had to continue acting in a manner that I explicitly told her was abusive.
In the end, she broke up with me because I was crass enough to want to discuss our relationship in an adult manner. The way that she discussed our relationship was to focus on how I was a bad person and needed to change to meet her needs. The interesting part about this was that she didn't actually like to discuss her needs - that was "too much effort." She wants someone who does the things they do without her telling them to do them. Because if they just do them instinctively, then they're not doing something just to make her happy. And that's as far down that rabbit hold as I was allowed to go.
Obviously, I'm not going to post this on FL, because we have a number of friends in common and calling out your ex about being abusive in a public forum is not necessarily good form. But I had to write it all down because I only talk to my therapist quarterly and it's better outside my head than inside.
She gave me vague, unconvincing excuses. One of her favorites was that she "avoids conflict." That's not how object permanence works, though. When someone tells me that now, it's a red flag. People who "avoid conflict" are actually avoiding the resolution of conflict. In other words, they don't want to deal with the situation - very often a situation that they created - because it's complicated. And requires effort. And communication. I know these things because I get paid to resolve conflict and spend a good portion of my job chasing people down to get what I need from them. I recognize the behavior.
Another excuse was that she had no time. She had plenty of time when I was the escape hatch she used to avoid dealing with other conflicts in her life. But when those conflicts got resolved and/or I became a challenge, suddenly she had less time for me. I'm not going to pretend that I did nothing wrong in the relationship, but her reactions were often dramatically over-the-top and were mostly signaled by an extended period of no contact. As a means of communication, total silence is super inefficient unless your intention is to torture the other person.
It will not surprise the reader to discover that she's currently not talking to me. Mostly because she asked me if she could not talk to me for thirty days and then broke up with me over email (something I asked her not to do) when I said that wasn't going to be mentally or emotionally healthy for me. The irony being that she lists "negotiation" as something she's good at on her OKC profile.
If she was talking to me, she'd probably tell me that I don't understand her at all. That she needs that time to regroup and mentally gather herself or something else along those lines. That it's not about me at all and any abuse that I'm reading from her inability to deal with the realities of maintaining a relationship is entirely on me. Well yes, that's how it works. She doesn't get to tell me how I should feel about her behavior. She acknowledged this exactly once in the entire relationship, then made up a series of reasons about why she had to continue acting in a manner that I explicitly told her was abusive.
In the end, she broke up with me because I was crass enough to want to discuss our relationship in an adult manner. The way that she discussed our relationship was to focus on how I was a bad person and needed to change to meet her needs. The interesting part about this was that she didn't actually like to discuss her needs - that was "too much effort." She wants someone who does the things they do without her telling them to do them. Because if they just do them instinctively, then they're not doing something just to make her happy. And that's as far down that rabbit hold as I was allowed to go.
Obviously, I'm not going to post this on FL, because we have a number of friends in common and calling out your ex about being abusive in a public forum is not necessarily good form. But I had to write it all down because I only talk to my therapist quarterly and it's better outside my head than inside.
