Sometimes, I miss my abusive ex but those feelings are a lie

How trauma bonding masks itself as love and how it returns to haunt you years after breaking free

My dog died on March 7. It was pretty traumatic and not the peaceful passing I would have wished for her. A few days later, I texted my ex to let him know. I hadn’t spoken to him in about two years. We don’t communicate and it’s better that way, but when my dog passed, I was drowning in grief and guilt. Before my ex and I were together, he had two dogs with his ex-wife. He’d asked me if I was okay with him going to go see them in Colorado (we were in NJ). I knew he was still hung up on his ex-wife because he was sneaking calls to her, so I said no. I was only 18 at the time and this was my first serious relationship, but my gut told me saying yes would have been a bad idea. It would have been much more than just “seeing his dogs.”

To be honest, if he really wanted to go, there was no way that I could have stopped him. I was a stupid, naive teenager. He was a 28-year-old man. And being the inexperienced and isolated teen I was, I probably would have put up with it. I put up with a lot of things he did back then.

Still, as I sat in my grief over the passing of my beloved Milla, guilt began to drown me. Had I cheated my ex of the chance to say goodbye to those dogs? Was I being cruel if I didn’t tell him about Milla who he’d known for about eight years?

So I called him. He didn’t pick up. Finally, I texted him that she had passed. He responded and called me back. We spoke briefly. I told him I just wanted him to have closure and to know that she’d passed. That was the entire intent of contacting him. Nothing more. I sent him a few pictures of Milla from the last few years since he hadn’t seen her in a long time. I intentionally didn’t send him any pictures that included me. I also intentionally didn’t give away any information about where I was, what I was doing, etc.

He asked if I was okay, if I needed any help. Sounds nice enough, but I remembered that it was all surface level. It never turned out well and it wasn’t truly genuine. The last time he “helped me,” he let me into his home when I was sliding hard and fast into severe depression (partly caused by him also). Then he proceeded to embarrass me whenever he could to his girlfriend, demean me, and gaslight me before he raped me and tossed me out on the street with Milla with nowhere to go. I would have not leaned on him back then had he and I not had 20 years of history together. At the time, I still thought of him as family, even if we weren’t together anymore, because 20 years should mean something, right? I’d helped him build his career, supported him through everything he wanted to accomplish, bailed him out of tough spots a few times, surely now that I was drowning in darkness, he’d help me, right? Even if there was no more romantic love, surely there was some caring love, right? Wrong.

To me, our years meant something. I created in my head and heart this idea that even if we weren’t together anymore, he and I would always remain family because we’d been in each other’s lives for so long. It turns out, I was the only one who thought that way. He’d always just been about himself.

In my pain, I’d momentarily overlooked that. I was drowning in grief and part of me selfishly wanted to reach out to someone who’d known my sweet girl too. I wanted every bit of my dog. I wanted to stay connected to the memory of her, so perhaps reaching out to my ex was also partly selfish of me too. I knew she was gone, but my heart wanted her alive, wanted to hold onto the memory of her. I needed to connect with someone who’d known her and loved her.

Part of me also wanted to make peace with the past and with him. It had been a long time; but realistically, I also knew it wasn’t possible, especially now. He’d made himself out to be the victim. I saw that much when I lived with him during that short window of my mental health crisis. He’d told his best friend and his then-girlfriend-now-wife that I was awful. That I called him names and browbeat him with nagging.

The name-calling, I’ll fess up to. I called him an asshole and a jerk, although that didn’t start until years after we’d been together and he kept lying and cheating. His 7 AM walks of shame were a regular occurrence every weekend and he’d constantly be hooked on his exes, comparing me to them and making me feel like I was lacking, that I was too fat, that I was not pretty enough, and a million other things. He’d search for his exes on Facebook and reunite with them, meet up for “coffee.”

Eventually, he would actually leave me for “the one that got away.” That ended miserably and he came back, but when he’s 10 years older than you with a lifetime of relationship manipulation and experience ahead of you, you don’t know how to properly navigate the abuse and dysfunction. It took a lot of courage after years to finally stand up for myself a little bit and tell him to stop being an asshole to me.

The nagging and browbeating, no. It was more like begging.

“Please, stop hurting me. Please stop leaving me behind. Please stop cheating on me. Please stop going out every night and not coming home until the early morning. Please call me to let me know where you are at least. Please spend some time with me, all I ask is just one day a month…”

I was a sheltered, dutiful nice girl who’d grown up in a traditional Asian home. Never dated before. Never even spoke to boys in any kind of flirtatious manner. As the eldest daughter, I was completely drowned by familial responsibilities and duty. There was no time for fun so I was completely ill-equipped to handle a relationship, much less one with such different power dynamics. I approached my relationship with idealism and romanticism that would later be weaponized against me.

I was raised watching the women around me putting up with shit behavior from their husbands and sticking with it to make it work because divorce was so taboo. I’d internalized all of that and applied it to my idealistic management of my own relationship. I was Betty Homemaker with the gourmet meals and homemade birthday cakes. I worked a full-time job also so that I could cover half of everything and never asked for him to pitch in or asked for money from him. I anticipated and addressed all his needs before he even had to ask. I was a sexpot in bed to keep him interested and faithful, even though that didn’t work. Infidelity happened because it was not about me at all. Instead, it was about him and his own insecurities. Truth is, he was never worth that amount of commitment or loyalty, but young traumatized me didn’t know any better. I mistook trauma bonding for love; and the older and more mature I became, the more problems we began to have in our relationship.

Trauma bonding is quite the drug. It keeps you latched onto unhealthy situations because your mind and body are trying to survive a difficult situation. It creates this constant state of insecurity and anxiety and floods you with bonding hormones to this other person, even when they do not deserve it. The worst part, you’re most likely not even aware that it’s happening. You just think it’s love.

For a moment as I sat with my phone in my lap, staring at our short text exchange, I had a rush of feeling that perhaps he and I could be friends now because we did have some common interests and some fun conversations in the past and such a long history together. Maybe it was time to make peace? But that was the trauma bond and the emotional attachment memory rearing its ugly head. Trauma bonding makes you want to forget all the majority bad things and focus on the few good things.

I had to shake myself and remind myself that any sort of friendship was impossible and that this really had to be the last time I talked to him. Both dogs are gone now. I’d done the decent thing by letting him know. There was nothing remaining between me and him, no more reasons to ever communicate again.

Even on the phone, his voice sounded slimy to me. It wasn’t comforting. His first words to me were “why are you calling me?” But it was the way he said it, the tone of it. He’d lowered the register of his voice to that sleepy, raspy, deep tone that men use when they’re trying to gauge interest. It sounded predatory like he assumed that I was calling because I missed him or wanted him back or something. It didn’t occur to him that after radio silence of more than two years (the last time we talked was when I called him to confirm the passing of Rocky, our Boston Terrier), the only reason why I would reach out to him was that something horrible had happened, not because I wanted to jump his bones. Not to mention, the remainder of the conversation, he thought I was still local to him and he also assumed that I was alone and single — all of which I never confirmed nor denied. The truth though is that I am thousands of miles away from him. I could no longer live in the Tri-State area because everything triggered me.

The last time I had seen him almost six years ago, I’d made him promise me and I returned the promise that should anything happen to the dogs (he had Rocky and I had Milla), we’d let each other know and that would be the only reason we’d need to talk to each other. It was the decent thing to do. I was upholding my end of the promise, even when he didn’t keep his. I had to find out Rocky had passed via Facebook months after Rocky had been put to sleep.

And I knew that whatever I hoped to get from him, experience says otherwise. The reality never matched up to the hope and imagination. The comfort and care would not be there. That had always been the reality of him, but my trauma bond wanted me to survive so badly that it kept hope alive and drew pictures for me to hope for that never ever came to be. I would just always be disappointed for even the smallest bit of decency from him.

Still, it took me a moment to shake myself out of those old feelings, to remind myself of why I am thousands of miles away, of why I cried all the time when I was with him. I had to remind myself of the reality and why my love for him turned to hate until I stopped myself from caring. I did my duty. I kept my promise. And now, it’s time to move on. I have to focus on my sweet girl, on mourning her and building a memorial for her. She’s what matters and she’s where the real love lived.

I miss you, Milla, and I love you now and forever.