And to be completely honest...this is my fault. Im really mad at me. By staying in an abusive relationship I brought this upon myself. I hate my actions and I want to scream im so mad. How stupid was i? Like how many times do i need to get burned until i learn? Even when im done my actions allowed him to screw me over again. I did that. No one else...me.
Dreamcatcher, what he did this week is NOT YOUR FAULT. Not at all.
YOU did not MAKE him track you down while you were hiding from him, find the hotel you chose as a safe refuge, ask for the key to YOUR room, and go up and charge expenses on YOUR bill.
HE did this all by himself.
You did not MAKE him go to YOUR bank and take money out of YOUR account.
HE did this all by himself.
For me, after almost 20 years in a marriage to an abusive then alcoholic, at the end I found it very hard to understand where the line was between what was him and what was me.
There is almost a magical quality to how we think: if HE did something bad, it is because I allowed it to happen, and therefore, the accountability for the bad action shifts to ME.
Not true. We are each always solely accountable for our own actions and our own choices. The fact that we may not have in the past made our boundaries clear to our abuser does not mean that we willfully and knowingly gave permission to our abuser to do bad things to us.
You might look up English Garden's "What is Abuse" thread in the stickies in the Family and Friends of Alcoholics forum. She is eloquent in articulating what is included in abuse. My story is there, and you might want to read my prior threads to see the path I've followed as I healed after leaving my husband now almost 4 years ago.
Sometimes when we are brainwashed by our submission to abuse, we begin to see the world through the lense of our abuser. To say that you are responsible for your boyfriend wrongly stealing a hotel room, food, and bank account money from you is twisted thinking. It is something HE might say to justify himself:
"well you left me, and I had no place to live, and if you hadn't left me, I would have had food and a roof over my head, so that is all your fault. Since you caused my problem, it was reasonable for me to make YOU solve MY problem by stealing your hotel, food, and money. After all, you hurt me because you did that, and I am ENTITLED to take back what you took away from me. If you weren't such a "XXXXX", (take your pick of epithets), you wouldn't have abandoned me and the care you owe me, so I am going to break your little red wagon just to show you how bad you really are."
The co-dependence here comes in believing that you EVER owed him ANYTHING. Giving to another person depends on love and trust, and he broke that. He owns what he did to break trust, and he owns everything he did after that.
Alanon says the famous three "C's":
You didn't cause it;
You can't control it; and,
You can't cure it.
Once we, as co-dependents, really get this through our minds and hearts, we are freed. We still own our prior bad choices, but we are free to let our abusers live their own lives without feeling responsible for their choices.
ShootingStar1