On Why We May Accept Mistreatment

Due to Trauma and Emotional Abuse

“You must have ignored the signs, the red flags.”

I have heard this many times since my relationship ended and I have come to accept that my former partner is a narcissist.

And the answer to that is, yes, I did.

The process of forgiving him is [much] easier to me.

I see no reason in hanging onto that energy. I know it will only harm and consume me.

And I’ve given him enough of my time, energy, and mental and emotional effort. So that’s an easy one for me.

Forgiving myself has been more challenging:

Haunted by the nagging question: Why did I not think myself more deserving?

I understand and give grace to Danielle from 2018 because I realize that I was still traumatized when I met him. From my dad’s suicide and my mother’s decline and my brother’s financial abuse of my mother.

I understand and give grace to Danielle of 2020 for staying with him because I had just lost 50% of my family, and also had recently lost a baby. Then the pandemic happened.

I forgive myself because I was in survival mode.

I was sleepwalking through my life for a bit. I was on auto-pilot and just getting through day to day.

I have read that trauma does paralyze you, in many ways. It keeps you in the place of when the event or the trauma occurred. Your mind and body can’t process and integrate what has happened to you.

There’s also a great deal of shame involved, that you can’t move past this.

With suicides, there is also the shame of mental illness and what my family members did to themselves.

Though I advocate strongly against this stigma, and I do believe in the need to raise advocacy and do the work to de-stigmatize mental illness and mental health crises and episodes, it doesn’t mean that I am unaware that there are many who will judge me, my character, my person, based on the choices of my family members’ deaths.

I see people’s faces: I watch their eyes. Their awkwardness.

I know. I feel them.

And because of that—There is still shame.

This shame—I think—was partly why I accepted less.

And my former partner knew that. And exploited my loyalty and drew out my feelings of inadequacy.

The emotional abuse he also worked to his advantage.

I know enough about cycles of abuse to also know that you grow to accept that you deserve this.

Yes, I would assert myself often. After his nastiness and passive aggressiveness, I would voice my hurt and say my piece, only for the blame to be projected back on to me.

I would write journal entries trying to convince myself that he would not change, that he had shown me who he was and that I deserved better.

I realize that I didn’t want to be alone. Perhaps I was scared.

I didn’t have any immediate family left. I felt numb.

So, I tolerated a lot.

At points I did know that I deserved better. I didn’t deserve to have him break up with me about every six months, once in an international airport, on the way back from a challenging trip visiting his family in Zimbabwe.

But, also.

I am my mother’s child. I am often loyal to a fault, and when I love and give, I tend to do so endlessly.

I have a tendency to do so even when I shouldn’t. Co-dependency modeled. And adapted. For sure.

Even when I am not getting what I needed or deserved.

But—the important thing, I learned.

I adapt. I survive.

I read. I go to therapy. I write.

I am not the same person who would have accepted the initial lies from him, at the start of our relationship.

Now, I have a partner who validates and affirms me, who acknowledges my experiences and perhaps said it the best, when considering my previous relationship:

“You didn’t have a partner before. He didn’t love you. You were a helper to him, his domestic needs, helping to raise his child.”

Betrayal and abuse and trauma has offered up some very hard lessons.

But I learned.

And I forgive myself through my understanding of what happened and why.

And I vow to myself—

Never again.

I am worth more. I deserve better, from others, but most of all—

For myself.