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Old 06-16-2015, 06:38 PM
  # 24 (permalink)  
lanier
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Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 31
Get out. Now. Everything you wrote I could have written four or five years ago. I remember one instance where the verbal abuse was so bad ("you are the lowest, most horrible person I have ever known...if your parents knew the truth about you they would be so ashamed"), that I wrote down everything he said so I could make him read it the next morning, knowing he would say he had no memory of it. For what it's worth, at the time I was very accomplished professionally and doing a lot of pro bono work for indigent clients...so obviously a horrible person my parents would be ashamed of.

But in the end I always forgave him. Because I would also do stupid things when drinking as he would point out (slightly embarrassing things, like singing too loudly at a bar, but as he said, it's all stupid drunk stuff, right?), and he was always so sorry. So I doubled down, got engaged, quite my job and agreed to follow him to another state. And then once I gave everything up, I found out that he had been living multiple other lives, had multiple other relationships, had seen prostitutes, and God only knows what else.

I'm not saying that that last part is true of your boyfriend. But I struggled for the last four years trying to make sense of it all, giving way too much significance to that last part, and basically tore my life apart. It shouldn't have taken those revelations to make me walk away. The abuse itself should have been enough. Why did I stay? Because when it was good it was really good, and to the outside world we were the perfect couple. This was aided by the fact that, unlike you, I didn't share what was going on. I was ashamed (though didn't realize it at the time) and told myself it would get better once we were living together, once he started drinking less, etc. It had ruined my self-esteem in ways I could not comprehend at the time. To this day I still hear his negative voice in my head, though I am slowly learning not to give it credence.

I wish I had told more people, and I wish someone had slapped me across the head (figuratively of course) and made me see that I had to get out. As I said, I don't know you or your boyfriend, but I do know from my experience that my drinking only amplified the negative voices. The fact that you are posting here means you know something is wrong. I knew something was wrong even before the revelations. I knew it was not normal to constantly live in fear of whether that night would end with me locking myself in a bathroom, curled up on the floor in tears. I knew but stayed the course. I hate giving advice to anyone I don't know, but what you wrote reminds me so much of myself at that time I feel compelled to chime in and say get out. We all do stupid things when we are drunk, but consistently abusing someone you purport to love is sick. I believe people can get better and hopefully he can. But you do not deserve to get dragged down with him.
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