https://ask.metafilter.com/356494/Still-in-love-with-abuser-10-years-later
I am an AFAB nonbinary person in my late 30s. In my very early 20s I was involved in an intense and damaging relationship with an older man in a position of power. This was not romantic, but a 'friendship' with a sexual element and a D/s element. I am still fucked up over it but the worst part is that I miss it. Help me feel less insane?
This relationship involved a certain amount of pain and service, most of it consensual or even highly desired, and a whole lot of 'corrective' behaviour which was less so, i.e. telling me what he did not like about how I looked/thought/smelled/dressed/acted/talked to him and what he thought could be fixed. To be clear I was also profoundly attracted to him, in fact I pursued him, and we clicked extremely well on every normal level (intellectual, humour, etc). I do think in many ways it was an abusive or manipulative relationship but his behaviour was idiosyncratic enough that I'm not always able to relate to those frameworks. For instance, conventional wisdom is that abusers try to undermine you because they don't want you to leave, or they want to keep you to themselves. He did clearly want me to be compliant and got angry if I challenged him but he also consistently denied me space and attention -- kicked me out after sex no matter how late I had to walk home, had very specific and narrow sexual interests that were not related to what I might want, scolded me for wanting too much time with him or wanting him to treat me more kindly, didn't touch me or acknowledge our relationship in public or with friends. It had the effect of essentially turning me into a stalker/abuser as I tried to get the care I thought I needed, which makes me feel equally at fault. I truly was exhaustingly needy and I did push his very strict (though not always consistent) boundaries. And he did want to control me, but not out of a desire for ownership -- more that he wanted to keep me available for use. So a lot of the things that are written about psychological abuse just make me feel more alienated. Like, isn't being fucked up over someone who didn't want you more like...sour grapes?
What a Chad... 🤣
At the same time, I have so many long-term effects from this relatively short relationship, including being ashamed of sexual and emotional desire. It has affected every relationship since, romantic or otherwise. And absolutely none of the effects is worse than the fact that every year or two I fall into a deep pit of missing him terribly and being unable to cope with the idea that I'll never see or talk to him again. (He now lives far away, so I can't as well as shouldn't. I don't know what would have happened if we still lived in the same city.) I only have a few pictures of him, but during these periods I'll look at them multiple times a day and think about him dozens of times a day, sometimes to the point of distracting me from other pursuits. I miss the D/s parts of the relationship, which I have not been able to safely engage in since (I mean emotional safety), but it's not only that, I miss him specifically and just talking to him. I am happily partnered and also I hope he dies, but at the same time I am still in love with him and have been for over a decade. Which of course I hate myself for!
We still have a few mutual friends, though they pulled away from him somewhat after I opened up to them about our history. Through them, I know that the ill will (such as it is) is all on my end, and he thinks of me as a friend he lost touch with, even though it ended because he abruptly stopped talking to me. But of course by telling them what happened I made it impossible to reestablish contact (if he finds out what I said he'll be furious, if they found out I reached out they'd be disappointed) and even though that extra layer of impossibility is a good thing, at these times it sends me into a 'what have I done' panic. Like I doomed myself by calling this abuse and now I can never have it back. Even though in my rational mind I don't want it back!
What I'm looking for here is stories from people who have learned to live with something like this. I don't know that I want to 'get over it' exactly. I think if I wanted to do that, I would have done it. I know I could get rid of the photos, for instance, or not google him, but I don't want to do that. I think maybe I'm hanging on because otherwise it feels like all the pain was meaningless. But I would like to keep it to a dull roar, and, maybe, like...figure out why this keeps happening. Also if there are any books about, like, healing from emotional abuse that maybe wasn't emotional abuse and maybe was at least partly your fault. Ones that won't make me feel like shit because they keep saying that abuse comes from wanting you so much. Just like...books about being overly traumatised by a relationship that didn't give you what you needed, due to I don't know, being mentally weak!
I am in therapy but open to the possibility that the answer is 'better therapy'. I don't really talk to my therapist about this -- I have talked to other therapists but it's hard for me to talk about it in a way that both acknowledges that I am affected by it out of all proportion and recognises the parts that were my fault or that may not have happened as I remember them.
Please don't be too hard on me, it's hard to talk about this!
Actually, I get kinda sad reading this. Whenever I try to manipulate a gullible weak-willed person into being my bitch it never works. 😂
It's a fun fantasy but doesn't seem worth all the trouble. Now she's turning all of his friends against him. Imagine all the bullshit she put him through that she's conveniently not mentioning. But I bet they deserved each other.
there doesn't seem to be anything here