So I wrote a blog post about dating a survivor of abuse already. I wrote it when my boyfriend and I first started dating a month ago because he was already showing me that he was capable of dating me despite my PTSD.
Now that we've been dating for a month, I want to tell you how dating feels for me, as a survivor.
In order for this to make sense though, I need to give you some backstory, hence the title of this post. I have a lot to say about what I’ve been thinking about recently, so I decided to split this topic into three segments. I'll post parts two and three over the next couple of days probably. Part 2 will talk about the hardest part about dating after being in an abusive relationship, and Part 3 will actually talk about a perk! So bear with me, it will get better in the end.
But anyway, here we go.
I’ve had self-esteem issues for a very long time. I think that it started to get especially bad when I moved up into middle school. I really struggled to make friends in middle school whereas I had had a pretty solid group of friends when I “graduated” elementary school.
High school was no better. I felt unimportant, unwanted, and quite thoroughly miserable through most of it. I felt like I wasn’t pretty enough, talented enough, funny enough, smart enough, fill-in-the-blank enough to be worthy of people’s friendships. In short, I wasn't enough.
By my senior year, I finally had a pretty solid group of friends. Friends that I could go to football games with (to cheer on the band more than the team, our team kind of sucked… Haha), have sleepovers with, etc. It was so great! I finally started to feel like I maybe belonged somewhere! But then partway through the year, my friends just kind of, I don't know, faded away. They never said anything mean to me or outright rejected me, but they did stop talking to me much or inviting me to do things with them. I started to feel again like I wasn’t good enough after all.
Throughout my high school years, there was also a boy that I really liked. And he even seemed to like me back for a while! But as I became more comfortable talking to him, I started to become more honest about my self-esteem, my worries, and my weaknesses (including mental and physical health problems). And so he backed away as well.
Eventually I got to the point where any time I became friends with someone, I was just waiting for them to leave me too. It had happened over and over again throughout my life, so of course it would only keep happening. Because my friendships always started out great! We’d have lots of fun and they would see me as a cheerful, energetic girl.
But as time went on, the closeness that we had developed would start to unravel as they learned that I wasn’t always happy-go-lucky. As they realized that sometimes I would be really sad. And that I was sick an awful lot. And they would realize that they didn’t like me nearly as much as they thought. And so they would vanish too.
I tried to hide my weaknesses. I tried to pretend that everything was fine and convince myself and them that I was worth keeping around. I tried so hard. I tried to the point where I was miserable because I was so paranoid about making sure that my friends were happy and that I was not in the way of their happiness in even the smallest way. But despite my efforts, the "truth" would always come out. I wasn't good enough. And there they would go. Just like everyone else before them.
This pattern left me feeling like no one truly cared about me and no one ever would. I also got to the point where I felt like anyone that DID spend time with me must only be doing it out of pity.
After my mission, I lived with my sister in Virginia for about five months before heading up to college. For the first time since my family had moved away from Maryland, I actually felt like I belonged somewhere. I had two jobs, two callings in church, and (most significantly) I actually had friends. And not only friends, but there were actually guys that were interested in me. ME!
You have to understand that before my mission, I had been on all of three dates in my life. I’ve never even had a date to a dance. I went to both my senior homecoming and senior prom with my friend Bridget.
To be fair, there wasn’t a ton of competition in my teensy YSA branch. The guys had already tried dating the few girls that were there, so I was “fresh meat.” But even still. I was amazed that not only did I have friends, but I also had dates. (It was actually super overwhelming for me as a newly returned missionary with zero dating experience. I would have been perfectly okay for the moment if I had continued to be undesirable to the opposite gender. Hahahaha).
But I digress. The point is, I actually felt attractive and like people genuinely wanted to be around me for the first time in a VERY long time. I finally felt like I was home and it felt SO good. But it was only for five months, and then I had to leave and start all over, yet again. Idaho would be the fifth state that I would live in in the last five years. I had already started over quite a few times.
Going to college honestly low-key terrified me. I had finally found a place where I felt like I belonged. Where I felt like I was important to those around me. I was not excited to leave that. I was also just really nervous about being in school again as I hadn’t been in any kind of school for about three years by that point.
My first two semesters in college were kind of rough. I did well in my classes, which was great! But I was back to feeling like I was unimportant. It wasn’t that I felt like everyone hated me or anything. I knew that there were people that I could call upon if I needed help. There are lots of wonderful people here in Rexburg that care about people a lot. And I appreciate that. But I didn’t feel like anyone cared particularly about me. No one ever thought of me when they were bored or making plans and thought “I should see what Anna’s up to!” No one ever asked how I was doing. People cared about me because they’re good people, but it didn’t seem like people cared about me because they particularly liked me.
This left me feeling extremely lonely, and I started to feel worthless again. I wasn’t good enough to grab anyone’s particular attention. Maybe if I was just smarter, or prettier, or funnier, or more talented. Maybe then I would be worthy of anyone’s attention and friendship.
It was during my second semester, in the midst of me sinking deeper and deeper into myself, that I became best friends with my ex. It was SO nice to have someone that I just knew actually cared about me and wanted to spend time with me. I wasn’t at all attracted to him at first, which actually made being friends with him a lot easier. Eventually though, I did end up falling in love with him.
I think that the two main reasons that I fell in love with him are 1- I could talk to him about anything and everything and 2- I wasn’t afraid that he was going to leave me. And that second one was a HUGE deal for me. Because I always feel like people are going to leave. It’s happened so much in my life. But my ex had seen me when I’d been really low. He knew about my medical problems and the weaknesses that I saw in myself. And yet he still seemed to think that I was the most amazing person that he’d ever met. Being with him made me start to believe that maybe I actually was worthwhile. And I fell in love with the man who made me feel that way.
And things went great for the first 6ish months. We got engaged and I’d never been happier. But after we’d been engaged for almost two months, something changed in my ex. He just seemed grumpy all the time. And then the mental, emotional, and sexual abuse began.
It was happening again. I wasn’t good enough for him. I did everything that I possibly could to BE good enough. To be worthy of his love. I again started to feel like I wasn’t valuable. I started to fear that he would leave me after all. Just like everyone else, he seemed to have realized that I wasn’t worth keeping around after all. He made me feel more worthless than I had in a long time. And yet I stayed. Because this was the pattern. People would come into my life, be my friend for a little while, and then they would leave.
I couldn’t let that happen again. If I just could be a little bit better. If I could only prove to myself and him that I really was worth keeping! Man oh man. I was messed up. My past experiences combined with the manipulation of my ex twisted me into something that I shudder to think back on.
The sexual abuse finally became too much for me and we broke things off. But then he started working with our bishop, getting counseling, etc. He started to seem like the person that I had fallen in love with in the first place. He started treating me like I was wonderful again. And so I gave him a second chance. We got re-engaged. I was still a little bit afraid of him because of what had happened in the past, but things seemed to have become so much better!
And then he was arrested. And I learned that I still wasn’t good enough for him. He loved my body more than he loved me.
But this time I knew. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough. I was more than good enough, but he didn’t see it. He didn’t treat me as something valuable, something to be cherished. He saw me as a possession. A means of obtaining sexual pleasure. He went from sexually abusing me myself to hiding cameras so that he could fulfill his sexual desires by himself with my image. I was a body to be used, not a person to be loved.
And so another relationship went down the drain. But this time was different than all of the previous times. This time it was very clear that I wasn’t the problem. But that doesn't mean that the feelings of inadequacy that he brought back during the time of abuse haven't all come flooding back.
I want to finish off Part 1 with some lyrics from the song "Words Fail" from Dear Evan Hansen:
I'd rather pretend I'm something better than
These broken parts
Pretend I'm something other than
This mess that I am
'Cause then I don't have to look at it
And no one gets to look at it
No, no one can really see
'Cause I've learned to slam on the brake
Before I even turn the key
Before I make the mistake
Before I lead with the worst of me
I never let them see the worst of me
'Cause what if everyone saw?
What if everyone knew?
Would they like what they saw?
Or would they hate it too?
(To be continued...)
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