How the Hell Did I Find Myself in a Toxic Relationship?

Part 3

I can still feel his arms, strongly tightened around my body in that small museum we visited together at the beginning of our relationship, during our first trip.

We walked around it like a unique person, bound by our sealed torsos.

Or on that train journey returning, late and tired, from a hike. I was sleeping inside his arms as if it was my bed, my house, my place in the world.

I can still feel the sun which was kissing our faces while we were laying down on the grass on the top of that mountain the very same day, no words spoken, our bodies shily in contact.

I miss all of that immensely.

I miss the feeling of being together and separated from the whole world, in a different sphere of sensation compared to the people around me.

I miss the magic of our bodies together.

I miss joking with him, I miss us waking up together, and I miss him speaking to me softly in his language.

I miss us cooking together.

I miss our dreams.

I miss the sensation I was having sometimes, that he was forever gonna be able to hold me, to have my back whatever happens, to make me feel secure and safe, to take care of me.

The truth is, he wasn’t.

He was amazing at taking care of me practically, as demonstrated on various occasions, and that was priceless… but he wasn’t able to hold me emotionally.

Often enough, he didn’t make me feel secure and safe at all.

Simply put, he wasn’t able to accept me in my entirety. He wasn’t able to stand the weight of acknowledging my own separate reality, my own separate thoughts, weaknesses, insecurities, opinions, and memories.

My past.

All of that would cause his toxic patterns to come up at random times, no matter the situation. No matter if I was suffering a fresh bereavement in my family, or if I was pregnant.

The moment he was starting to ache from whatever was eating him from the inside, I would stop to exist in his mind as a separate person. The taking-care part would go out of the window, together with the kindness, the empathy, the respect, and any compassion.

If he felt criticized or put down (which was often a product of his own thoughts and insecurities rather than anything really said or done by me), or when taken by his obsessive jealousy of my past lovers, he would transform himself into a completely different person within a matter of seconds, to the point of looking physically transfigured.

Then the explosive reactions would come, together with the anger, the impulsive acting out, the nasty words, the sexual shaming, the terrible insults, and, a few times, the threat of him taking his life.

I tried to adjust, to make him feel as safe as possible.

I tried to talk, explain, understand. Incessantly. I tried to be the calm one, even if that wasn’t always working — he was so good at pushing all my buttons. I tried to repair, restart, and rebuild. So many times.

I addressed my own responsibilities and recognized the mistakes I did do. We went back to them again and again. I was honestly trying to do better, whatever that was meaning from time to time in his mind. I was constantly trying to make him feel as little threatened by my preferences and my life as possible.

Even if that meant being robbed of my privacy. Even if that meant renouncing some activities that I like, cutting people off, or being continuously aware of the flow of messages on my phone while I was out with friends. And it was never enough.

But things went too far even for all my good intentions, even for my unbreakable will to comprehend his pain and his needs, or my indestructible faith that we would understand each other eventually and things would get better.

So, midway into my pregnancy, disrespected and insulted once too much, I broke up. It was the hardest thing I have ever experienced, and it still is.

Nowadays, my body is still shaken by the memory of all the traumas. My body that also misses him and his hug. My body that now carries his son.

I wonder how all of this is affecting him — our baby -, and I feel bad for him. However, I know that I consciously chose for him the lesser of two evils: to have a dismantled family, rather than a family where violence is an everyday possibility, where respect is an unknown word, where every next day could just as easily be a heaven like a hell, and where there is no space for listening when things become hard.

Also, I want him to have a mother that respects herself. I want him to know stability. I want at least him to feel safe and secure, to know that I can forever hold him. That I have his back.

Read the continuation of my story here: