Grow
How it Began
“I met my abuser in my human sexuality class in college. I took that class because my high school classes didn’t really cover things they should have.”
It was her first semester of college, and she loved being in the class. One day, he flagged her down and noticed she was wearing a rugby shirt. He asked her how she knew the team and she told him that she used to play and had family and friends who played as well.
“He was super sweet and gave me a ridiculous amount of compliments and I haven’t been treated like that before”
Looking back on it, she recognized that his behavior was over-the-top, but at the time it felt amazing to her. He made her feel like a princess that was constantly being doted upon. It took her the course of the entire relationship to recognize how she was being manipulated.
Then, Things Changed
After seeing him for a while, she wanted him to meet her family and get their approval. That was when she started noticing that when he told them stories of their time together, he would exaggerate everything. He’d play off the feelings of whoever was listening to him.
“I have never seen someone manipulate people that way before.”
While he always seemed genuine and sweet around their friends, his negative behaviors when they were alone were increasing. More and more, he had to be in control.
He’d constantly show up at her house unannounced. If she didn’t answer the door, he’d come around and knock on her window. She was never allowed to be with her friends alone; he had to be with her or she couldn’t go out.
When they went out to eat, he would always order for her in a restaurant, even if she wanted something other than what he chose. If she didn’t eat everything, he would constantly ask her if she wanted something else or if she didn’t like it. He’d make her feel terrible and guilty. Due to his constant pressure which revolved around her eating, she went from a size 16 to 24 in four months.
“I thought it was me, that I just... wasn’t mature enough. The way he was treating me, I wasn’t mature enough to engage in it I guess. He wasn’t my first sexual partner, but I had never orgasmed before him. He was actually able to do that. That was then his goal after I told him that, which included not stopping when I told him to. It was his focus”.
One of the first times he refused to stop she remembers telling him
“No.”
“Please.”
“Don’t.”
“Stop.”
They were clearly all separate words, but instead of stopping, he laughed at her and said “No please don’t stop. I won’t; don’t worry hun.” When tried to talk about it, he would always tell her that she obviously liked what he was doing because her body was responding to it.
“I thought he was right. He was five years older than I was. I thought he knew things I didn’t”.
Ending the Relationship
She knew she had to exit the relationship when she began to see him and would taste bile in her throat, as if she was about to throw up.
“That was the tipping point, when I realized that this isn’t okay. Something is horribly wrong if I feel like I’m going to throw up every time I see my boyfriend. I tried to start distancing myself from him and he just clung on more”.
At this point, she started seeing all the red flags she never noticed before. He made sure to integrate himself into her entire life, her family and friends. She had never once met his family.
“It wasn’t an impulsive breakup, like ‘Oh, we had a fight over something silly’. He had abused me, and I knew I needed to get out.”
She really needed support, but she wasn’t able to reach out to friends or family. She did not believe that anyone in her family would believe her if she told them that the relationship was abusive. She also didn’t get any support from her friends. He had charmed all of them, and when she ended the relationship, they decided to support him. His manipulation throughout the relationship caused her to doubt herself as well. She still felt that she was to blame.
“I couldn’t tell anyone about the abuse, or I didn’t feel that I could. I didn’t feel like anyone would believe me. He manipulated people close to me. When we broke up, I needed their support. Instead, they chose him. My family would ask why he’s not visiting. When I told him that we had broken up, they would tell me to figure out our differences and get him back. They really liked him. To everyone but me, he seemed like a really nice guy.
“On top of that, I had just gained a ridiculous amount of weight and none of my clothes fit. I felt like it was all my fault”.
After she ended the relationship, he kept trying to get back in her life. He would come over all the time, trying to get in the house and she wouldn’t answer or tell him to go away. She often saw him driving past her house. She tried to justify it to herself by saying that he only lived a couple blocks away, so maybe it was just coincidence, but it really upset her. This lasted for 1.5-2 months.
It finally ended the day her mom came up to give her $10 for mowing the lawn, but she hadn’t done it. She called him and found out he had come over and mowed their lawn, which she found to be very creepy. She told him if he ever came near her or her family again, she would call the police. That was the last time she had any direct contact with him.
Starting Over
Without the support of her family or her old friends, it felt like she was starting from zero.
“It was over, but I didn’t know what to do next. I was just so lonely because I had no one. My friends were gone, my self-esteem was gone, and my family kept asking where he went, still hoping we might get back together. There were even days I wanted to call him, just because I felt so lonely.”
Going to school became extremely stressful because she was always worried about running into him. When he saw her, he would smile at her across the hall. She found this creepy, so she started to hide whenever she saw him in the hallway. Some of those times she wasn’t even 100% sure whether it was him or someone his shape and size. Sometimes, she was so scared she threw up. All she wanted to do was hide at home. She stopped going to school all together.
It took her a long time to process what had happened during the relationship.
“I didn’t even call it rape to begin with. I kept telling myself it wasn’t rape because it was a boyfriend, my body responded, and toward the end, I didn’t fight him. Also, I was a rugby girl. I was tough. I was strong. That made it harder to accept that he was so much stronger than I was, though he had proved that over and over again. I think it took me 1-2 years realize that all those things, that’s what they were.”
Moving Forward
After the relationship ended, she stopped trusting people. In order to protect herself, she became a chronic liar.
“I wouldn’t have told you my favorite color for the life of me. I was trying to protect myself as much as possible. I disowned my body. If someone wanted to do something to me, fine, so be it. I started sleeping around a lot. I would tell them we can hook up or be friends, but if we hook up forget my number. That was it.”
Then, after 6 months, she met J.
“Somehow I came across this really weird, nerdy guy. We both played a Facebook game, and both had a cat as a profile photo, so we talked online about how we both had cats and things progressed from there”
They decided they wanted to meet in person.
At the time, she had a rough relationship with her mother, who hadn’t been the same since her divorce. She loved her mom, but she struggled to communicate with her. They had reached the point where they were communicating solely through post-it notes.
The day before she had plans to meet J., she had a fight with her mom. Afterwards, her mom asked her to go get the mail. She went out to get it and came back to find the front door locked. She walked around to the garage and that door was locked so she came back to the front where she found a few of her things, including her purse. She was being kicked out.
This was in November in Wisconsin. She doesn’t remember if she had a coat, she had her keys but no money and her gas tank was nearing empty. She drove to a parking lot, stayed in her car even though it didn’t heat well, and tried to figure out a plan. She called all of her friends, and then all of her acquaintances, but no one was available, so she messaged J and told him that if he wanted to hang out, she was available. She hoped that this would buy her some time until one of her friends called back.
He told her he had just got off work and was gross. She didn’t want to go into all of the details, but she did tell him that she was stuck in a parking lot and had nowhere to go. He drove straight over to pick her up. They went to Perkins, which was the only thing open at 11:30 at night where they bought cocoa and an appetizer and talked.
She tried to keep the conversation going until a friend called, but that call never came. Eventually, he was ready to go home because he was tired. Not wanting to be left alone outside all night, she told him she had nowhere to go. He offered her his couch, but she was still wary of going off alone with a guy she just met. She needed to make sure that she would be safe with him.
“Before going to his place, I asked him, ‘If I scream, will someone come running?’. He looked at me and said, ‘Well, I live on the 2nd floor of an apartment building, in the middle of the building, with thin walls. I’m pretty sure if you screamed, everyone would come’, so I said okay”.
When they arrived at his house, he tried to make a move on her, but she was still protecting herself by not getting too close to anyone. She told him the deal, just like she did with everyone else – either they could have sex and then he could lose her number or they could stay friends. He decided to stay friends. At first, she felt insulted because no one had ever given her that answer before, but this changed as she got to know him.
She basically moved in with J after that. She stayed sleeping on his couch, but eventually moved to his bed. Nothing happened between them and they stayed friends. After about 2 months of their friendship, she started seeing that he was a good guy who actually cared about her and other people.
“He asked me a question one day and I opened my mouth to answer it and stopped. I asked him if he would hate me if we started over. I’m pretty sure I lied about everything, my favorite music, my favorite color, what I had done in my life. I don’t know what I didn’t lie about. He said ‘Okay, I can do that’”.
They started getting to know each other all over again. It was a huge struggle for her at first. There were times she would catch herself starting to lie out of habit, and say that she had to start over with the truth.
He wanted to have a relationship with her, but she wasn’t ready. He said he would wait until she was ready. He was extremely patient with her and let her recover and figure out what she needed. When they went to a party nearly 4 months later, she finally told him she was ready to have a relationship. By then, she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.
After a couple of months apart because of J’s new job in Chicago, when she was asking him where the relationship was going, he surprised her by asking her to marry him.
“All of the sudden he’s like ‘Will you marry me?’ I told him ‘No! That’s not how it’s done!’”
When she told her friend, her friend took her shopping to look at rings and sent J pictures of rings that she liked. He formally proposed to her and she said “Yes”. A couple of months later, she moved in with J. They were engaged for 2 years, and then married.
Healing
She had struggled with depression and anxiety since puberty, but it was undiagnosed and untreated until a couple of years ago. Her symptoms had gotten worse since her abusive relationship, but now she had a family – J and their young son – and she wanted to be a better partner and parent, so she started therapy, as well as antidepressants.
“I wasn’t taking care of myself and I had a baby and he deserved better. That’s what pushed me to do better, having a boyfriend who cared about me and, several years later, a kid. I always thought men sucked but then I had my son.”
The therapy and medication made a big difference.
“I feel like a new person now-a-days.”
Now, her son is 5 years old. He has been diagnosed with 22q 11.2 deletion syndrome. Now she has more energy to help him with his special needs, but he has helped her, too.
“He’s the kindest person I have ever met. It’s hard to explain to someone that he’s nonverbal, but has other ways to express himself. He’s so compassionate and he cares so much. If there’s a kid crying at the mall, he will try to help them, give them his happy meal toy or try to help rock the stroller. He just wants to help.”
Another time, when they were out, he saw a fish tank with around 100 koi and goldfish. He kept insisting they go back to the tank, and when they did, he was focused on one fish that was staying near the bottom of the tank, not moving around as much as the others. He let the receptionist know (with a little help translating), and only stopped worrying after she told him that she would look after that fish to make sure it was okay.
She wants to make sure that he keeps that kindness and compassion in his future relationships. As he gets older and they start talking about sex and relationships, she will make sure to emphasize consent.
“I want to tell him that it’s not ok to pressure people and no is no and just to be respectful to other people, but also be himself.”
Grounders
Although she is doing much better now that she is in therapy, she still has panic attacks sometimes, but she has medication that helps, as well as several techniques for calming herself.
“I don’t know if people realize this but hyperventilating forces your heart rate to go faster. If you don’t want your heart to race or if you’re scared, control your breathing to help with all of that. My big thing was realizing that I had control, I just had to take control”.
Having her husband’s support has also helped. Sometimes, when they were being intimate, she would see or smell something that brought her back to her abuse. He never got angry or frustrated, and always respected her boundaries. He would ask if she is ok, whether he could hold her, and what he could do to help. By asking, he always made it clear that she was in control and he was there to support her.
Advice for Other Survivors
“Just because your body responds doesn’t mean that you want it. Trust in yourself. Don't doubt yourself.
“My abuser always made me doubt myself. It took the longest time to realize he was an abuser. He never hit me. He held me down, but never left bruises on my wrists or physical signs of abuse. So many people get hit and attacked and he never did that, which made me always doubt that he did abuse me. He just made me completely doubt everything I thought I knew and left me with no self-esteem.
“I also hated myself for not being able to lose the weight I gained when I was with him. I hated myself for so long and blamed him for my body. I wanted to take it back. It’s mine not his. It’s not his damn body.
“When I turned 30, I decided I was tired of hating my body and feeling bad about myself. I had to push myself out of my comfort zone, and every time I did, I felt more confident. I even did a boudoir photo shoot, originally as a present for J, but I really did it for myself. I felt beautiful, and it was empowering. I have also gotten involved in political activism, and started planning my future, even working more on turning my art into a career. Now I can focus on the future instead of dwelling on the past.”
Word/Phrase
Grow - “I’m a completely different person than I was 10 years ago. I grew as a person, growing every single year. It never stops. If we don’t grow we might be stuck in a dark place forever. But we can grow, as a better person, friend, loved one. I think my petals are quite pretty.”