Dating: "My Secret, Painful Past"

Dating: "My Secret, Painful Past"

An article given to me from one of my group friends.

By Stella Scott

When it comes to dating after exiting an abusive relationship, you eventually have to dish—or ditch. Here's how one woman made the call.

I didn't want to tell him. Ever. But it came up. One night in bed, he slipped a hand over my shoulder and felt where the bones had healed unevenly. I froze, then shifted positions, and tried to distract him with my feminine wiles. But I wasn't as wily as I'd thought. A few days later he came home as I was washing dishes in the sink. He kissed the back of my neck and massaged my shoulders—both of them.  

"Did you break this?" he asked, as his hand rested on the ugly shard that was part of me. 

The sink dissolved into iridescent flashes as my stomach dipped into my intestines. I took a deep breath, still looking forward. "It was broken, but I didn't break it," I told him. "Someone else broke my shoulder." 

To hell and back

Nearly a year before, I had been at the bitter end of an eight-year abusive relationship. The first few years had been fine, but as my ex had gone through a personal crisis, he had returned to some former bad habits — drinking, drugs — and developed some new ones, like beating the holy hell out of me. I'd tried to stick it out by going to Al-Anon, couples counseling, and partners-of-depressed-spouses web sites. But when his rage sent me to the emergency room, I'd packed my bags and headed across the country, too afraid to press charges, too hurried to take any of my belongings. 

Since resettling, I'd hooked up with a great therapist and gotten oodles of support from an online bulletin board populated by survivors like me. But when I started dating R, I wondered what to do. Should I tell him what I'd been through? The advice from the board was mixed. Some said never to tell—they'd had the information used against them, or it "scared him off." But others had moved on to healthy, happy relationships. I wanted to be in the latter group. 

"You should tell, as a general rule, as soon as you start developing feelings for that person," says Steven Stosny, Ph.D., author of You Don't Have to Take It Anymore: How to Turn a Resentful, Angry, or Emotionally Abusive Relationship into a Compassionate, Loving One(Free Press, '05). "It's an important thing about you that anyone deeply involved with you needs to know." 

Filling him in, says Stosny, was my chance to gather more information about him before I got in too deep. If the revelation scared him off, good riddance. If it evoked an angry, vengeful, knight-in-shining-armor response, that would be a red flag, too. "Anyone who responds with anger and aggression will eventually turn that anger and aggression on you," says Stosny. I needed to look for a compassionate response, the sign of a partner more concerned with my recovery than anything else. 

This was echoed in advice from two women I knew who had moved on to healthy relationships after long battles with abusive husbands. One of them, code-named Tallulah, said she even depended on her now-boyfriend as a sounding board. "He was with me through the divorce," she told me recently. "I knew he was non-judgmental and fair-minded." 

But it wasn't all up to Tallulah's boyfriend. "I had to put a stop to my codependent behavior," she says. That, says Stosny, is key. As long as women like Tallulah and me respect ourselves, we'll be attracted to people who respect us, too. If not, well, that same broken part of us may seek out a matching broken bit in someone else. 

"After you've been hurt, you put up subtle barriers for self-protection. Non-abusive people will recognize and support those barriers by backing off," notes Stosny. "But a person likely to mistreat you will either not recognize those barriers or completely disregard them." He'll come after you, possibly in a seemingly-awfully-romantic way. When Stosny said that, my brain lit up like a Christmas tree: My ex had powered through my boundaries in a romantic fury, unable to live without me—very "you complete me," from Jerry Maguire, mixed with "STELLA!" fromStreetcar Named Desire. My new guy wasn't like that. I felt swept away by feelings for him, sure, but not by a tidal wave of emotion or by his over-the-top antics. 

Leap of faith

In the end, it came down to this: I didn't want to be with someone who would think less of me because of what I'd been through. And I also didn't want to accidentally get triggered, freak out at my new boyfriend, and hurt his feelings. He had to know that I was still recovering, and, while I didn't need him to fix things, I might need him to understand. 

And we were at that point in the relationship. Not too early, but not yet committed. I felt like we had to get past this hurdle or we wouldn't go any further.

I explained it quietly, without looking at him, and finished by saying that it wasn't his job to rescue me from this or make up for the bad things I'd been through. As I told him, I also silently told myself these things. And in the end, he passed my "test" — not just in the moment, when he said "I thought it was something bad, I'm so glad you got out safely," and held me quietly without pressuring me for more information — but also down the road, when he handled a little post-traumatic freakout of mine with a long hug and some much-needed space. My revelation didn't become the central theme of our relationship either. It was just one more piece of the me-puzzle. And his reaction was a huge, necessary him-piece for me. With the air cleared, we could step a few paces forward and see how the next level looked for us. 

Thanks to some time alone, a good therapist, and some serious self-examination, I'd picked a good egg. And that was no small victory. My crooked little shoulder might not be ready for a tank top, but it sits a little taller, and might even be ready to feel the reassuring pressure of a friendly hand. 

Stella Scott is a pseudonym for obvious reasons. The woman behind the name writes forHappen and other magazines, online and off, and hums the Chumbawumba song "Tubthumpers" when she's feeling low.

Check out more about R.I.S.E. at any of the following:
Website: avoiceforheather.tripod.com
Myspace: myspace.com/avoiceforheather
Blog: avoiceforheather.blogspot.com
Facebook:www.facebook.com/avoiceforheather
Twitter: www.twitter.com/VoiceforHeather
Email: VoiceforHeather@yahoo.com

A Story From the Other Side - All You Need is Love

Everyone has different things they need to heal. For me I needed someone to believe in me, some to comfort me, someone who could just be there. I ask my fiancé to write something for R.I.S.E., something about what it's like taking care of someone with a past like mine. This is what he wrote.

Before I start, allow me to preface something. Before I met Rindi, I had little to no knowledge of sexual abuse. There was no history of it in my family nor friends. I never took part in any psycology classes and participated in counceling twice in my entire life. Stepping into her world could be compared to a little boy being asked to do brain surgery. Its interesting what you can learn about yourself by being immersed in something like this.

When I was told of her troubled past, my initial thought was that there had to be a simple set of words or actions to make things right again. Perhaps it was arrogance, ignorance, or even both, but my inner compulsion to fix things kicked into high gear. Despite all of these new things coming to light and my belief that things could be made better, I could think of nothing to say. I simply held her and continued to listen to her speak. The more she spoke, the more I continued to get angry and feel that much more helpless. This was not my element. This was not something I could correct with a comparison of a simmilar situation that happened to me. I had nothing.

These conversations continued for a while. Each time that I learned more. After enough time, she began to grow concern that her information would lead to me running or requesting to not hear any more. I told her that there was no chance I would ever think of doing anything like that. This answer seemed to come out of me so easily. I love her. There is no other option. Every answer I had for her came so quickly, I began to think I had done this before. (Or at least in a previous life.)

When I observed her first flashback, I was horrified. It was as if I was watching her leave the room without moving. I was afraid to speak or touch her, assuming it would only make matters worse. I watched her fall into her own mind for nearly thirty minutes. I stayed at her side until she retreated to a bathroom where her friends (with more experience) came to her aid. Afterwards, I returned to her side and held her in silence. It was then that I realized that I trully loved her. I spent so much of my life hiding, denying, or running from things I could not control or fix. Here I was, so far in over my head and yet I remained.

It doesn't take patience to be with a woman who has endured so much pain. It doesnt take an understanding of that world. It takes love. I hate to sound like a Disney movie, but love seems to be a larger factor in her healing process than I thought. I can't say that others must find a person to love them to heal, but I knew what she needed specifically.

Sorry for the random blurt of words, just thought I would share some insight into a newcomers brain.

Anthony Hankins

 He couldn't be more right. It's scary and overwhelming to anyone trying to help that has never experience such a past. But there are people out there that are willing to learn, willing to keep trying if they fail. As hard as it can be to come forward and tell your significant other of your past it has to be done. How else will they ever learn, ever be able to provide for what you need, ever be able to help you heal? Having someone validate your pain and care I believe are some of the most important gifts you can receive in your healing process. It literally challenges everything your abuse has taught you. I encourage everyone who can to speak up as soon as they feel they are ready, just to be able to experience these chances. 

I'd also like to point out that if  your partner isn't ready to deal with this, or prefers to push your pain to the background don't settle. You are not damaged goods. You are not broken beyond repair. In the same token we cannot complete depend on our partners for validation of our own self worth. Not only will we exhaust them, but we will continue to need constant reassurance. At some point we have to rebuild and reform our own self worth, and let them be someone we can lean on, but our self worth should not complete be crushed without them. This is one of the hardest things as survivors we have to learn and balance, but if you do, you can finally live again.

You can also find R.I.S.E. at the sites below:

Website: avoiceforheather.tripod.com

Myspace: myspace.com/avoiceforheather

Blog: avoiceforheather.blogspot.com

Facebook:www.facebook.com/avoiceforheather

Twitter: www.twitter.com/VoiceforHeather

Email: VoiceforHeather@yahoo.com