I was in an abusive relationship, and I didn’t even realize it.
How is that possible, you ask?
But it is. Specially when it isn’t physical abuse you’re talking about. When it comes to the physical aspect, it’s black and white to a large extent — that doesn’t make it any easier, but it’s easier to identify the signs, at least from the outside.
This is my story, and before today, I had never dared to put it down in words.
I had been in Mumbai for over a year, post my MBA — working a dead-end job that made me miserable. In fact, the city made me absolutely miserable. It was too expensive, I lived in a dump, the monsoons turned the entire city into an open festering gutter, and I was further from my family than I’d ever been before. I did make a few very close and loyal friends, but it somehow didn’t make up for this absolute annoyance at the world that I constantly seemed to feel.
And then I met him. And he was absolutely perfect. He was confident, masculine and oh-so-mature — something I had always direly missed in the men in my life. He picked me up and took me with him on a whirlwind ride. I felt like I never had to worry about anything ever again. He really took care of everything, and ticked every box possible.
He was very sure of himself. He planned all our days and vacations to the t, the one thing I always had to do — and for the first time in my life, I found I could trust someone else to plan my life for me. He cooked for me. He even volunteered to drop me whenever I had to travel far. And we had a chemistry between us that I had never felt before — we were inseparable, physically and mentally. Within a few months I felt like I’d known him forever. Maybe that’s how you feel, when you finally meet the one.
But then things started going downhill. I’d be a fool to say I didn’t see it — of course we always see it coming, but classify them as the small things to ignore in a relationship where everything else is amazing.
It started off with small rebukes about my past relationships. Judgemental statements. About the kind of people I’d dated, or slept with. I had never pretended to be someone who hadn’t been with other men before, and this sneaked up as quite a surprise. But with time, the judgement kept getting worse. It reached a point where even a reminder of any of my past relationships would cause him to blow up, and leave.
And leave he did. Multiple times. And each time, I’d see my life come crashing down. Because in my head, he was perfect. We had planned our entire lives out together. In a short time, we had lived multiple lives and multiple classic romances already. And I could no longer imagine a life without him. So I took every step possible to make it work.
I cut my friends out of my life, slowly. I stopped meeting them, stopped taking calls, specially when they were worried about me. I cut all ties with past ex’s or any men in my life. I even cut ties with anyone who knew about my past relationships. It was like my entire college life had never existed. I created a 4 year void where my past had been deleted — no evidence, no social media, no photographs, no human contact.
But none of it helped. He still continued to leave — some days because he couldn’t stand to look at ‘someone like me who had slept with someone like my ex’, once because he had a dream about me with my ex which made him wake up ‘fucked in the head’. I would cry and beg him to stay. And he would return after a few days, sometimes happily, sometimes reluctantly — with me making promises to change myself some more.
There was a time when he compared me to an open salad bar, where anyone could get what they wanted.
I was 23, and had dated 3 men before him.
But I believed him. I felt worthless. Like all my decisions till then had been lowly and unforgivable. I still begged him to come back. While he was gone, I’d be absolutely miserable. I couldn’t get myself to even get out of bed. Food was something I didn’t think about. I started losing weight at a rate my body had never seen before. I would fall sick often. I would break out in tears at the smallest of things. I found myself thinking about what would happen if I was hospitalized — maybe he’d come to see me then, and stay with me. Maybe he’d remember about his love for me.
Because surely he loved me. He said so himself. Every time he’d come back we’d have crazy sex — the type we had never experienced, and could never possibly experience again. In all of this, never once did I doubt his love for me, or mine for him.
I barely went to visit my family anymore, because I wasn’t sure if he would still be there when I got back. On one such strained visit, my mother looked at me and said “Between my two daughters, you were the one I was sure I’d never have to worry about. You were the strong one. What happened to you?”
And I cried. A lot. For hours.
Because I couldn’t understand what had happened to me. He would joke about breaking me down and putting me back together the way he liked, and he’d managed to do just that. Except now he cribbed about how I used to be head strong, but now I was a needy crying pathetic thing. Yet, if I tried to be headstrong, he would leave to teach me a lesson. I felt like I was in a never ending fall — the type you dream about and then wake up with a jolt. Except the jolt would never happen for me. I saw no way out, unless it was with him. I was ready to leave my religion, my friends, my family, my life for him. But it was never enough.
And now my Mom was looking at me with pity.
That helped me snap out of it.
I’d like to say that I simply broke up with him and walked away from those horrendous two years of my life. But I wasn’t strong enough for that. The horrendous years were also my happiest. But I did move cities, took a transfer at work, move back home. We were in touch for months after, still in and out of our torrential relationship. But being home, with my family around me helped me get my strength back, tiny atom by atom. And eventually I managed to end it.
Looking back, now, I know it was an abusive relationship — I was made to feel worthless to an extent where I didn’t even know how to exist without him. It took me months to manage to wear a dress to work without having him approve it first. I now know I was borderline depressed, all those days that I couldn’t even get out of bed, couldn’t eat, couldn’t function — something that people around me couldn’t understand at the time. And the worst thing is, I know I could have prevented it from happening.
If only I had walked away, the first time he walked away.
But I didn’t.
But here I am. Years later.
It wasn’t easy.
I have always been a staunch feminist, and it pained me to know I’d fallen so easily and gone against everything I believed in in the name of love.
Today I’m happily married, back in the city of Mumbai. There will always be parts of this city that will remind me of him, and there are days when I feel that I will never truly forget him. But for that I’m glad. I don’t want to forget what happened. I want to remember it every waking moment, just to make sure it never happens again.
And I want to tell my story, to everyone I can, specially to people stuck in relationships that make them feel like shit.
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But it is going to get better.
It always does.
