004. BUT WHY DID YOU STAY?
the ex. toxic relationships. red flags. everything from the outside looking in, after the shitstorm.
It’s probably taken me over fifteen years to write this essay.
Fifteen years to write about this sort of destructive pattern I found myself in and the red flags that provided emotional chaos. It’s one of those things where you finally find yourself in a happy relationship and you’re talking about the experiences you had with your ex that you realise just how incredulous it all was. But you were in the bubble.
That anxious and complex little bubble of what you deemed as love.
By all means, I’ve never been 100% confident in myself even though the articles claim that one should be in order to shape a more positive outlook in relationships moving forward. Blah, blah, blah. I experience all of the emotions one should when falling in love – the butterflies, the anxiousness, the clumsiness and that dang Virgo-foresight in daydreaming about scenarios that haven’t even realistically happened yet. Fast-forward to a relationship lasting almost ten years down the line where two-week ‘breaks’ seemed to instantaneously plant themselves in the overly watered-down soil as the ‘norm’.
‘I’ll change, I promise.’
‘That was nothing, we’re just friends.’
‘You’re being paranoid.’
‘What did you do all day? Just clean?’
Even writing down these phrases now sends shivers down my spine. Every one of these phrases was met with me trying to defend my opinions and my actions only to be shut down at every turn. I didn’t see it coming. Days spent waffling and shuffling along just trying to get that much closer to sanity, just seemed like the only hurdle amongst many that I was just trying to get through before the next day. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, and I always have; when I’m in a relationship, I go all in. My thoughts seem to pour out of me intertwined with a dash of sarcasm and wit and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think that there wasn’t anything I hadn’t already shared with you. I keep my cards close to my chest and if those boxes on the mental checklist are being ticked then I find myself opening up more. It’s an attachment style that sways between fear and anxiousness – that feeling we’ve been so conditioned to experience and overcome from sandbox to marriage. You remember that feeling right? Falling in love for the first time? How it ended and the gut-wrenching sobs that ripped into your soul. The proclamations in your journal and tears shed on a friend’s shoulder paired with muffled cries of being sure that you’d never ever recover or fall in love again?
Oh, the trauma.
The memories of all the times shared. The effort. The playing ‘housewife’ so that it would make his day seem ‘less stressful’. I remember being in a stage in my life where I was between jobs and the anxiety of trying to find a stable job was nerve-wracking. I wanted consistency and I wanted a job that would house that passion. It was a literal needle in a haystack and most days I’d find myself sobbing in this state of limbo where comparing myself to the success of others reared its ugly head daily. Updating resumes, rewriting cover letters, cleaning the house (his house btw, because he’d never let me forget it), and ensuring any grocery requests were covered; in all honesty, my salary at the time just wasn’t covering his high end demands. I didn’t make as much money as him, have the latest in technology and what I was spending was in a way little spurts of joy and self-care to provide some kind of normalcy to an otherwise mundane, walking on eggshells routine. It wasn’t always like this. That honeymoon phrase lasted until adulting came into play. Paying rent and bills, moving in, avoiding the nonchalant comments of when grandchildren were coming, house talks, Sunday family dinners. It was like the ‘where is this relationship heading’ gas was slowly seeping in, coating everything in its wake. The spontaneity subsided. Temperaments elevated. Frustrations soared. Phone conversations became requests for $30 steak and steamed vegetables, that at the time, for a casual job girlie was just atrocious but I still did it. Why? Why did I stay? I wanted stability and security and as f**ked up as this all seems, when you’re in that bubble, you don’t see anything else. I thought this was all normal to me. Oh, the excuses and the lines of defense I would bring to the table - ‘He said he would do things better’ / ‘I think he’s listening to me’ / Yeah, things are fine’ / ‘Oh, he’s just not feeling well, so he couldn’t make it’. You know the gist. It was that fear of having your actions being contested or counteracted that I thought it was better to just nip it in the butt first. You don’t get any questions that way, right? Nope, just looks of contempt and doubt. I could see it in the eyes of loved ones. And deep down I knew they were right, but it was easier to shove it aside for the sake of a punitive moment of happiness and joy. And I still stayed.
I hated flowers from him. They were a dying afterthought. She’s an ‘acts of service/ receiving gifts/ words of affirmation’ girlie but I guess you can tell already that none of these things existed in that almost decade-long relationship. The pros and cons list of the relationship started having more con’s than pro’s, and anything resembling that of heart-fluttering romance made my insides recoil and I started deeming myself of unworthy of receiving anything remotely like the movies. I remember watching films and turning it off before the end because I knew that it was going to be a happy ending and I just couldn’t stomach it. It took me back to the rooms that I sobbed in. That deep visceral, back of the rib’s kind of cry. The kind of one I would just fall asleep to. My heart was beyond repair. I was lonely but I still stayed. Why did I stay?
I came across an article a few years ago describing Attachment Theory – a theory originally coined by psychoanalyst John Bowlby and later expanded on by psychologist Mary Ainsworth. It draws on how the relationship we have with our parents as children basically shapes the kinds of relationships, we have long-term in the future. Attachment patterns seem to fall into four categories – secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized/ styles that we learn as children and continue to learn as we journey into adulthood. Throw into the mix, intimacy, honesty and security and you have yourself a smorgasbord of trust issues. If I was to look back on my relationship with my parents, I’d say it was a lot harder as a kid – I was angsty, wild and constantly breaking the rules. I wanted to be independent but I also wondered why other friend’s parents would say the words ‘I love you’ so freely, when they were barely uttered in my own home. Love and safety were shown instead through the abundance of home-cooked meals and its funny how even today, I’ve always proclaimed that ‘the way to my heart is through food.’ Maybe I stayed because he was a great cook. The love from his family was filled with hugs and traditional family dinners – a language that was culturally different to my upbringing. Yet feelings from him exuded a sense of immaturity and a lack of commitment. What lay before me was utterly impossible to puncture or understand and in its entirety, it was just plain toxic.
Looking back now, I can see that in some weird way, I dated guys who feared closeness, there was a bit of trauma there, a shield that I wanted so hard to pierce and breakthrough. That stupid rescue technique. But why did I have to put in the work? The effort? The chasing? It was the kind of banter I heard over and over again. The advice I would give others but wouldn’t take myself. I was stubborn and still am. Walls went up. Should I stay? I was tired. Broken. Done.
It took two years to get over it. I was still triggered from the simplest of things. I found myself wafting through the stages of grief and in denial that I would ever find another ‘fish in the sea’. My ‘sea’ was full of duds and f**kboys and I was tired with it all. I became Negative Nancy in her purest form. A combination of Sally and Gillian from Practical Magic; I had fooled myself over and over and I was finally free, but f**king scared. That ticking time bomb of everything I had to achieve by the time I was in my thirties had just suddenly malfunctioned and I was left raw and shivering. Lost but inspired. Pouring myself into books gave me solace. Comfort in other worlds far from the chaos that was my own. I felt myself breathing again. I could watch romance films to the end and not feel heartbreak. I was healing. Taking accountability. Rebuilding. Growing.
I didn’t stay but I had to keep pulling at the thread of this emotional baggage in order to unearth long-swallowed feelings. Inside, a gallery wall of thrifted images fills a living room wall. The scent of a sandalwood incensed candle wafts from room to room. Bookcases filled to the brim. Sleep ins. Hugs. Flowers.
Honestly it's a lot to take in. Often times I too feel scared of not finding someone to commit to, hang on to my entire life. But it gets better everytime make myself love my life a little bit more. Whether indulging in books or movies or essays like this.💕