How an Emotionally Abusive Relationship Led Me To My Feminist “Ah-ha!” Moment

*Names have been changed because I don’t speak his name. Ever.

This is a story about emotional abuse. It’s a story about figuring out my own feminism. It’s about a time when I found out what love isn’t, which is just as valuable as finding out what love is.

I met Bryan five years ago at a football game. Bryan was outgoing and whip-smart and tall and lean. I was a 26-year-old virgin, a consequence of ten years of eating disorders and hating my body so much I didn’t want anyone else to see it. He thought I was hot. Kryptonite.

We fell into a relationship nearly immediately. I was completely enthralled by him. He treated me like a princess (which I thought was something to be celebrated, I guess). I lost my virginity to him.

I found myself excusing behavior that wasn’t so euphoric. So what if Bryan was slightly moody when things didn’t go exactly his way? So what if he called groups of college girls “skank parades” and got offended when I politely asked him to stop? So what that he mockingly compared me, more than once, to a TV character with Asperger’s? It was love, dammit.

Two years in, I asked him what he saw in our future. He chuckled at me. “Ally. I don’t think about the future. Come on.” I rolled over in bed and said nothing, just waited for him to doze off while tears streamed down my face. I stayed.

Three years in, I asked him what he thought about us and kids. “Ally. You and I? Children? Are you serious? You’re barely working.” I put away my dream of being a mother.

One night he got drunk and pushed onto me; he yanked my body up into his arms, hands bruising harsh chords into the flesh of my arm. For two minutes — two minutes that lasted forever — I wondered how I would break the news to my sister and mother that the man I love had raped me. I grabbed his face and told him to stop, and, thank God, he stopped. He got out of bed and fell asleep on the floor. I shook violently. The next day Bryan didn’t remember any of it, sobbed when I told him what happened and told me he hated himself. I apologized to him. I stayed. I excused his abuse as depression.

I have generalized anxiety disorder and, at first, Bryan understood, but once it cut into his plans or his life, he got cold with me; he’d roll his eyes when I wept outside of a bar because I didn’t have the courage to go in. My weight went up. Our sex life disappeared, and I blamed myself for it. I started to dress provocatively because I thought it would lure Bryan into bed, but Bryan would look at me, click his tongue, and say “You’re really dressing like that?” He stopped kissing me on the mouth, jerking his lips away like I was poison. I would wave to him at a party, across a crowded room, and he would roll his eyes. I have never felt so small.

There would be times where he would stare at me, doubt and vitriol filling his eyes, but respond with “I’m fine, Jesus, stop, you’re not my Mom,” whenever I timidly asked if he was okay. Mini heartbreaks, stretched out over four years, turning deadly. Slowly deflating my self-confidence. Slowly making me doubt that any other man could possibly want me.

So I stayed, and stayed, and stayed some more. I just needed to work harder. I just didn’t know what my life could even be like without him. I was so empty, so scared of what my life would be like without romantic love, that I was willing to accept being emotionally pummeled over being alone.

Four years in, we finally broke up. It happened when Bryan caught me reading a bridal magazine. “You’re not trying to tell me anything, are you?!” he raged. That was it. We decided to go on a break, and I broke up with him a month later. I’m thankful I was the one who ended it, but I was still heartbroken. Afterward, I kept trying to text him to figure out what went wrong and how we could at least salvage our friendship.

My heartbreak was short-lived. I found out he had started dating someone else, someone much younger, about three weeks after we broke up, and he had already been on dating apps during our four-week “break.” “That’s cheating, Ally,” my best friend told me kindly after I tried to excuse it. When I heard that word, “cheating,” something in me snapped. I blocked him on every single one of my social media networks, sent him an email telling him that I couldn’t ever speak or hear from him again, and that was it. A great wave of relief washed over me and I realized, suddenly, that none of it had ever been my fault. He was toxic, manipulative, and bad for me. I felt at the time that I didn’t deserve anything better, so I felt like he could get away with it. At the time of the break up I felt completely foolish. But now I know it wasn’t my fault.

My life is one thousand percent better without him in it. There are times I still have to digest the grief. But in those times I just lean on my friends, my family, my therapist, and the things I’ve regained since breaking the cycle of manipulation — I hadn’t done musical theatre, a thing I’m passionate about, in the entire four years we were together. My writing, too, had floundered a lot in our relationship. Once I was free of Bryan, I realized I missed those things in my life. It’s been a year since we broke up, and I’ve done four theatrical productions and two staged readings, and I”ve had my work published in a variety of places. It makes me proud and happy to know that I’m finally doing things I’m passionate about. I reunited with a wide variety of my friends and I’ve rebuilt my social circles after four years of being sucked into solely Bryan’s friend group (I love his friends, but after we broke up I realized I had absolutely no one to talk to because I had pushed my entire friend group away).

I’ve even been with men. Nothing serious — a fun kiss at a party, a few lovely dates to good restaurants. I know that that will come when it will come. I’m not forcing anything anymore.

I don’t regret my relationship with Bryan, despite how horrible it ended up being. The good times were really good. The bad times ultimately outweighed the positives. But it taught me about what being a feminist is. Sometimes, as women, we are taught that we need to just become the mother to our partners — the kind of self-sacrificial entity that gives up practically their entire identity for the care and keeping of someone else. I don’t want to be that type of lover, or wife, or partner, to anyone. I want to come into a romantic partnership on equal footing, with someone kind and honest who makes me laugh and makes me better. Thanks to Bryan, I have a closer idea of what that kind of person could be like. And I have a better idea of what love isn’t.

By Alysa Auriemma

Originally published at obviweretheladies.com on September 8, 2016.