Je veux les memes droits que toi / et du respect pour chaque jour

[saveyoursanity]

Today I am feeling good about my decision to leave Austin.

It's been a long time since I was confident I did the right thing there-maybe never. But today I am feeling good about it. Helping that along is reading this metafilter thread about someone leaving an emotionally/physically abusive person.I don't know that I could call Austin

Comments

[reservoir]

This is a good post and you should feel good.

This part, however: So even though I can look at what I wrote and say to myself, "These things are never okay, you made the right choice." I feel horrible. Someone I shared two years of my life with is no longer in my life and that was my decision (it wasn't mutual) and I feel awful

[saveyoursanity]

No, it seriously hit home for me too. I encourage you to read the responses-they're all uniformly supportive and it was really nice to read them and feel like there was a real consensus that that kind of behavior was never Okay.

[reservoir]

I'm reading them now, they're very helpful and reassuring (especially the one person saying her boyfriend dated again immediately and it took her two years to do so).

Thanks so much for linking this.

[anonymous]

Do you ever wonder if you were emotionally abusive? I know I have been both emotionally abusive, and abused, and it's an awful web to dissect. There's the natural desperation to assign blame, and hunt down the original chicken who begat the nasty egg of abuse that then turned into a diabolical tennis game or whatever (who doesn't love a mixed metaphor when talking about relationships)... Honestly I can't say I have "intellectually"/emotionally? moved past that place of *needing* to point a finger at something or someone, some kind of explanation for anything and everything, but my body just can't take it anymore and I just shutdown to engaging the relationship.

Sorry for the anonymous note - I'm just a longtime reader who doesn't maintain a livejournal account.

[reservoir]

I don't really see how this is relevant here. Whether or not someone else was emotionally abusive or had lapses doesn't change the fact that the partner was also emotionally abusive.

I understand how you feel, but to begin processing the issue? You need to move past the "but I made mistakes to so it's all my fault" part.

[anonymous]

It seemed topical to me, as in I was engaging something she wrote. If the mission of the post was strictly to rally support for her decision to leave her relationship, then yes my comment had no place. I was just "relating" and babbling as I would to someone who was relating these thoughts to me via any medium. I wasn't putting forth any kind of challenge or questioning her actions in leaving. It's absolutely clear she made the right decision and I certainly didn't mean to create doubt about that

[anonymous]

(and sorry for the tortured sentence structure and typos, ErikA. jesus.)

[labyrinthine_]

I don't know that I could call Austin emotionally abusive. -- you can.
It's hard to say whether he was or not, -- he was.
whether part of it was just me being oversensitive -- you were not.
or whether he really crossed the line -- he did.

[saveyoursanity]

heh. You probably saw it the best, tbh, so to have some outside confirmation that I'm not just being oversensitive and that he was really a douchebag is nice.