I’m a 22-year-old female who has had a friendship/relationship with my ex-boyfriend’s cousin for the past two years. My ex was extremely abusive emotionally and sexually exploited me, and caused extremely toxic relationship traits such as lying, threatening suicide, cheating, and coercing me into exploitative situations when I was 18-20.
I sparked a friendship with his cousin who helped me out of that situation. I left the abusive situation, and started a loving friendship with his cousin. I was in a vulnerable place, and enjoyed all the positive attention, but as the months went on I started self-sabotaging our friendship because it was too good. I felt I didn’t deserve it. This sparked fights, which he told me he would not stick around for, as he’s dealt with fighting his whole life.
Two years in, fighting has become a regular, daily occurrence because of me. I use him as a way to beat myself up emotionally. He tells me he can’t talk to me, I’m emotionally abusive, and he feels alienated and suicidal because of me. This makes me react emotionally, and causes my cycle of self-abuse to reignite, and my longings for suicide to reveal itself. I cannot live with myself knowing I made another person feel like that. But I use it to make my self-misery even worse.
He has been nothing but supportive and helpful in trying to help me with these issues for two years. I’ve sought therapy, read books, had good streaks of no fighting here and there. But I haven’t changed. If anything, I’ve gotten worse - and my threshold for misery and choosing misery increased because of my cycle of: obsessing over negative traits about myself, seeking validation in the form of arguments/crying to my friend, and using that fight as more fuel to ignite my self-hatred and extreme attachment to my self-image and how I affect others. So, the more fights and pain I’ve caused, the more fuel I have to hate myself.
When we started being friends, I was in a really vulnerable spot as I’d just come out from emotional abuse, I’ve always had incredibly low self-esteem, and he was giving me an intense emotional bond that completely ripped the fabric of who my ex thought I was (worthless, etc.) But as his intense attention to me faded with time, I started getting in my head about him hating me and realizing I’m not what he said I was, thus beginning a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He’s at the end of his rope, and I don’t blame him. I’m disgusted with the behavior I’ve chosen, and the misery over all the fights I’ve caused makes me suicidal and compounds the misery cycle even more. He’s told me I make him want to die, that I’m a burden and abuse people to fulfill my own prophecy of self-hatred, and he’s right. He draws parallels to me and my abusive ex (his cousin), and his other abusive ex’s and family members. He keeps telling me if I just stop, I can fix it, and he’ll forget about my past behavior.
I am too attached, however, to the dread and misery I feel over my past mistakes. Every day I tell myself “it could’ve been 2 years of happiness instead, you chose this”, and the guilt and regret of that causes me to spiral into self-hate and causes fights later between my friend and I because of me being obviously upset and withdrawn. I honestly do not know how to live with myself, or continue the privilege of calling myself that persons friend when I am nothing but an abuser. It makes me not want to live anymore, and I think that is me trying to escape accepting that I have been abusive. I know I caused all of this. I’m so incredibly disgusted and upset with doing this self-fulfilling prophecy that I’ve actually provided solid reason for myself and others to hate me.
After being abused for two years, I know exactly what he’s going through, and it makes me sick to my stomach I’ve turned into this person who abuses others. This past weekend was especially awful, and I put him in situations that could’ve gotten him fired from work because I looked as if I had been crying, after we argued and he told me he wants to block me and never see me again out of anger, and forcing me to admit I’m selfish and don’t care about anyone because of how I treat him, calling me countless names and cussing, all to which I understand. This caused me to spiral and cry uncontrollably.
I know I’m abusive. I’m posting this as a way that I can hopefully admit it to myself and accept it. But I’m so fearful over the pain and scars I’ve caused in our relationship, and I’ve made it so much harder on myself to recover and move on from being miserable after the behavior I displayed this weekend. I want to move on and do better, but I can’t let go of the pain of being seen as as an abuser. I don’t want him to see me that way, I want him to feel emotionally safe with me, and I worry I ruined that for good, even though he constantly says (and keeps saying), if I offer a sincere apology in the form of changed behavior, he’ll forget about the past.
On another note however, he tells me relationships are like photos, and if you tear and crumble them, you can never fully get the creases out. I worry I can never repair the pain I caused. I’m obsessing over my regret and I don’t know how to accept the creases and move on. My self-hatred makes me want to lay in bed and never wake up again. This person was so good to me and I have brought nothing but turmoil into their lives.
I feel weak and cowardly. I am seeking any advice for how to move on from this attachment to misery so as to not hurt him anymore, especially since I’ve given myself countless reasons to be miserable and feel awful about myself. Thank you for reading.
I'm in my early 20's, and for the entirety of my life (despite the past two years), I have been overtly empathetic. This has caused me to struggle in social situations and being overly sensitive due to the varying emotions I can feel in situations. For two years, however, I was in a relationship with a narcissist that would be emotionally abusive - and would often threaten suicide. This caused me strife with my education, and seriously strained my relationship with my family. Quickly after my relationship ended two years ago, I attached to a new friend (who is very objective and rational). This did not appeal to my current emotional state and neediness for his validation (especially after getting out of my abusive relationship), and caused me to emotional spiral which has been going on two years now. This altered my entire perception of myself, due to my external validation needs, which I am trying to learn how to get rid of. I have found myself incredibly numb, especially within my emotional state and how I feel towards others. I find myself not caring when I hurt someone's feelings, which causes extreme strife in my relationships. I can recognize when someone can feel pain towards my actions, however, I am so internally occupied with my own frustrations and feeling miserable, that I don't feel any emotions towards those I care about. This is upsetting for me, and makes me feel foreign within my own skin - as I used to care immensely for everyone and everything (a skill I would love to regain, without the attachment/neediness for validation). I believe part of this is also due to the fogginess I feel in my brain - I cannot consciously think through many things. Something that is also incredibly foreign to me, as I've been pursuing consciousness work since my early childhood. I am worried that I never truly cared, I only cared so much to gain other's validation. I worry I was only so nice and giving because I felt I had nothing else to offer. Then I wonder if this is true, then I need to learn how to build genuine empathy. Whatever the reason, I would love anyone's input on how to regain my empathy, or any thoughts on my situation. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.