2. Proud of myself. : stressLess-life

Proud of myself.

false

I'm feeling a lot of things right now in the wake of ending a tumultuous 6-month relationship. But I can also say I feel proud of myself for exiting a relationship that wasn't for me with grace and firmness. In the past, I have stayed and clung to hope, ignored my gut, and twisted myself into knots to make things work. This time I listened to myself, my Higher Power, my program community, my therapist. I wanted so badly for it to be different, and I realized that the only way it could be different was for me to leave.

Some things I experienced in this relationship (not to justify myself to strangers on the internet, but rather in case anyone else out there is going through something like this, you're not alone!!):
- emotional unavailability disguised as program talk (ie: "don't do for others what they can do for themselves" as a reason to not do simple things with me, not offering words of affirmation because "that's codependant", etc.)
- no accountability or apologies (similar to above, they claim they were "taught in [their] 5 years of program" that people cannot hurt other people, that people are only responsible for their own feelings, and thus they should not have to apologize to others. They were willing to "negotiate" when I was considering leaving the relationship to say the words "I'm sorry" but they don't believe they have the capacity to cause harm or hurt others).
- DARVO, of course
- general rigidity (we did not text, ever. we have to eat at the same time every day, we have to go to sleep at the same time, we pray together before conversations/bed/intimacy)
- triggers around intimacy (they have a trauma history which I used to justify a lot their behaviors, but any time I would flirt or even be sweet, they would twist it to me being sexually deviant --- I once gave them a card with two bees cuddling in a flower and they made it into me expecting sex).
- using vulnerabilities I'd shared with them (my mom dying) as justification for bringing forward a relational concern ("ie: what about this is actually about your family?")
- correcting how I talk to maintain upper hand (interrupting me to make sure I always use i statements, I was writing out everything I wanted to say before I say it, sometimes with ChatGPT to ensure there were only i statements so they wouldn't interrupt me and ask me to say it again) (telling me not to bring concerns to the relationship, even though they could, because that's "bringing in fear".)

But, what does all this say about me? In a moral inventory, what's my side (for us 12-step folks)? For six months (although shorter than usual for me), I was still willing to stay in this relationship. It says I need to work a more rigorous program, that I'm still scared to leave and that "I won't be able to get better", or that love can manifest like this because maybe I'm just "expecting perfection". Willing to shrink and doubt myself, and my HP.

It's so scary and stressful for me to realize that people can say all the "right" things early on in a relationship (this person talked about accountability, trauma-informed work, etc. and used a common language to me via 12-step), and yet live something entirely different... the cognitive dissonence was real and intense, but I still caught myself faster. I'm not ready to date again, I need to re-enter a 'withdrawal'/single-ness to properly grief this and understand this. But when I do... I need to do things differently, even differently than I thought I was this time.

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