How Do You Trust Yourself To Choose Partners After Staying In An Abusive Relationship For Too Long?

Written by Ancilla L.

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I stayed in an abusive relationship for nine years. I’ve been asked by many people, in many different ways, why a smart, independent woman like me would stay in a relationship of this kind for so many years and there are many layers to the answer. I met him when I was a teenager, there were aspects of blackmail and emotional control that trapped me in the relationship, he developed a financial dependence on me which made me feel like leaving him would be an act of cruelty on my part, the sadomasochism and the abuse intertwined to form a sexual mesh which made angry violence feel like romance and love like Stockholm syndrome, to name just a few, but there is one reason that I find harder to discuss than any other.

I was happy in that abusive relationship.

This is hard to understand and, quite possibly, the happiness I say I experienced could be a delusional reality I created for myself in order to cope but there are some things that remain true with or without that possibility. I was extremely lucid throughout this experience, I understood the abuse for what it was on a social and personal level, even as it was ongoing I was writing exploratory essays on the subject, and while I didn’t defend him, I did associate romance with every act of mindless, careless violence to which he subjected me and I did not want it to stop. I don’t say or admit to any of this because I am trying to hold myself responsible for the abuse, I know that I am not, he is responsible for his criminal intentions, actions and violations, I say this because it tells me something about myself. I was happy in the abuse. I didn’t spend each day stressed or worried, I experienced such an abject fear of this man and I still miss that feeling, I looked forward to feeling it. The sexual control, the violence, the anger, the emotional torture were the parts of the relationship that I actually liked, because as a person, I did not enjoy him at all.

He was boring, his politics were dispassionate, he was unremarkable in all the ways, he could be viewed as physically attractive but I don’t really have a good measure of those things anyway, I will find physically attractive, anything that mistreats me. He was also sexist, sort of a bigot, prone to misinformation, and pretty dumb. Talking to him was the worst part of our relationship. Fighting was better because it evoked the threat of violence and the chaos of loud emotions. I stayed with him for that. Sometimes, I am tempted to pretend that I had a realisation and decided to stand up to him and left, but I left because the price I paid for him got too high. I was pretty strongly in the never camp when it came to marriage, that was non-negotiable for me right from the beginning and he tried to marry me (and by marriage, I mean, the uniquely Indian convention of marriage wherein we take brilliant women force them out of careers, devote them to servitude of men, their families and the culture, I know not all marriage is like that, but the fact that the reason I am married, even today, is because my husband’s government job doesn’t allow me to cohabitate with him in certain parts of the country, unless we are married, is indicative to how systemic the compulsion for marriage is). Parts of me were disappointed when I knew I had to leave. Leaving was a complicated process because leaving abusive relationships is unsafe, but this is not about that, it’s about the fact that I am, somehow, the sort of person who was okay with the abuse, and even liked it and viewed it as romantic, even if the price of it was death.

I am still that person.

I am not, currently, in an abusive relationship and I have learnt that the things I deeply desire such as coerced consent, extreme violence, emotional pain, control and manipulation can be had in safe, communicative and consensual spaces. I have practised that for eight years now but I did not change as a person. If I stopped actively working on not being in abusive relationships, I could easily be back in one. Love, of all kinds—romantic, sexual, parental and even platonic—in my life, has been so thoroughly intertwined with abuse and violence, that all my symbols of love and romance take root there. I will never believe it is not romantic to love people for the monsters they are or stop loving in the way that I make my peace with dying at the hands of my lover. I may be able to change that someday but it doesn’t seem like I am truly interested in doing that. Someone asked me how, after knowing that I had stayed in an abusive dysfunctional relationship, did I learn to trust myself to make safe and sane romantic choices again, and the truth is, that I didn’t. Learning not to trust myself entirely was part of teaching myself to do better.

Sometimes, some of us, need to do things because we should, I just know that I shouldn’t let myself he abused again because it will ultimately interfere in my life-goals, and so I solved the problem by suspending my instinct when it comes to romantic interest in people and using protocols, methods, frameworks and specifically designed systems of communication to ensure I do not allow myself to be abused again. However, I also use all of those methods to replicate the systems of abuse in controlled settings, like a placebo. Accepting that I want to do that was crucial to learning how to do it well and more safely. Allowing myself to ask myself questions about why I did actually stay was horrifying as a process of discovery but vital as a process to choosing better partners for myself. Understanding that I will always be tempted to make a mess and put myself in the middle of it, was crucial to effective communication with potential partners so they could make informed decisions about choosing to be with me. Risk-awareness, for me, was a lot about learning what risks I pose to myself.

When it comes to finding an actual partner, though, I truly have to admit, I just got lucky. It was serendipity and I did not earn it by doing the work on myself (which is not to say one shouldn’t, it is to say, one can do it and it may not work to the goal you thought it would), I did not manifest it, it did not happen to us because we work on our relationship or because we are expert communicators. We try, I am not saying we are shit at those things, but the fact that we found one another, was the kind of coincidence that makes people believe in miracles, and god. The part of it that did teach me how to make better decisions was that I let myself learn from my partner. Please note that I didn’t say I let him teach me, he doesn’t and didn’t, and I appreciate that, but by observing his methods, ethics and behaviours, I learnt a lot of things. He has a lot of my fucked up desires but not my motivations and intentions and it makes a lot of difference in term of developing safer practises. I don’t actually think I meant to do it, it just happened because of who he is and my learning style, but it has been very helpful.

As to how I convinced myself to get back to dating and falling in love, though, I never convinced myself out of it. A lot of people expected me to have a crisis of trust, to close myself up emotionally and remain steadfastly solo-poly for a long time, but that didn’t even cross my mind. It just seemed irrational. When you have a tendency to make poor decisions, you learn how to make better decisions, you don’t just stop making decisions, right? At least, I don’t. And, I cannot stop believing in love either, it’s like an unshakeable faith in God for me. I loved my abusive partner, I did, and I loved loving him. I’ve loved a fuck tonne of people and I loved loving all of them no matter how it turned out. Love is a loud, beautiful, insane feeling and I would rather die than never experience it again. I made some mistakes and will probably make some more, but love makes life worth it for me, it’s like living with the potential of magic inside your chest constantly. I was never going to stop believing in that. I was never going to stop making myself go after it. Abuse is rough, complex, difficult and harrowing, but sacrificing love is too high a price to pay for it, I’d rather rewire my methods entirely and teach myself a whole