In late October 2012 I did one of the hardest and most emotionally draining things I’ve ever had to do; I escaped a volatile and toxic relationship.
It had lasted for a couple of years, and we’d been living together for at least half that time. It had taken most of the prior 4-months to finally enact the split, to find her somewhere to live and to actually get her to move out. The process becomes complicated when you’re trying to minimise the impact upon your kids (two of mine and one of hers).
I paid her rent in advance for six months as she didn’t have a job. That was the only way I could secure somewhere for her and her child to live and to get her to move out of my house. I’d accepted her promise that she’d return the diamond engagement ring on the day she moved out (did I mention that we’d become engaged to be married?). I wanted this back so I could recover some of the money I’d had to pay out and she wouldn’t give me the ring up front. She was convinced that somehow I would ‘trick her’ (her words) during the process of moving her out.
As I should have expected, on the day she moved out she claimed she’d given the ring to a friend for safe-keeping and wouldn’t return it. I didn’t let her know that I’d already found the ring in her bag that morning, but had chosen out of honour to leave it in there and allow her to give it to me as arranged.
I never saw the ring again, nor various other items that it later became apparent that she’d stolen, including my spare car key. I doubt she’d ever have taken my car, but I had new keys programmed anyway, and tried to forget about it and about her.
The day I moved her out and into her new home, I did so with the best of intentions, hoping that while our relationship had failed, we could both move on in our lives. I had no illusions of remaining friends nor any desire to do so. I simply wanted to draw a final, dignified line under the whole experience.
It was physically tiring like all home-moves are, and intensely emotionally draining too. I changed the locks on my home and left town to visit with my parents some 200 miles away. I arrived there, consumed with tiredness and an overwhelming sense of relief.
I also regretted that it had taken so long to part. I regretted putting myself and my kids (and her child) through the preceding months of pain and unpleasant anger that had ensued.
Still, it was done.
My purpose here isn’t to dissect that relationship and revisit all the unpleasant events that contributed to its demise. Nor is my intention to cast her in a negative light. We both contributed to the failing of that relationship.
I’ve processed the pain that followed as a result of that relationship and I’ve moved on happily. In the years that have followed I’ve remarried and now enjoy a fulfilling, supportive and loving relationship.
As I reflect on that time, it’s defined by the toxicity that threaded through so many aspects of the relationship. She was extremely narcissistic in the way that she conducted herself; totally self-righteous, calculating, scheming and emotionally manipulative.
She perceived herself as faultless, the victim of the circumstances of her life and above all criticism and accountability. By entering into the games, the arguments and the struggles I was also far from blameless in my conduct.
What I want to share, are the lessons I learned from being in that relationship, and from struggling and eventually escaping from it. These are my own observations and experiences, based on what I went through at the time and in recovering from it.
Some things can only be learned through experience.
We have an absolute responsibility to be true to ourselves
To create a thriving relationship, both individuals must be wholly content and fulfilled in themselves before seeking to become involved with others. Part and parcel of this, is being true to ourselves and not trying to bend or shape ourselves to being something we’re not, just to please others. The same applies to considering changing yourself to suit the needs or preferences of others.
In that relationship we had a long-running disagreement about whether we could or should ever have kids together. I’d been fairly resolute before meeting her that I didn’t want more kids whereas she’d expressed a desire to have kids with a future partner.
The nuances of how this played out during our years together were significant, and a recurring cause of arguments between us. Fundamentally, our starting positions were so different on a matter of great importance and that should have been a good indicator that we were incompatible from the beginning.
Certainly, opinions can change and flexibility, adaptability and the willingness to put the needs of another before our own are all key to a successful relationship.
However, attraction, guilt, enthusiasm or simply a desire to please or impress are never good reasons to abandon beliefs and feelings that you hold strongly.
You owe it to yourself to be upfront and consistent in how you uphold your beliefs.
You owe it to the other person to be honest and consistent rather than giving them false hope that you might change or come around to their way of thinking.
We cannot fix someone else, especially if they don’t want to be fixed or don’t acknowledge that they have issues that need fixing
My ex had-had a pretty rough upbringing and a chequered relationship history (as she relayed it to me). I suppose on some level it was part of the initial attraction I felt towards her. Besides feeling compassionate, I admired that she’d seemingly come so far in life in spite of being dealt a number of bad hands.
I had gone into the relationship feeling like I had it in my power to ‘fix her’ and show her that she too could have a happy relationship.
Looking back, I was vain to think that it was within my power to make up for past hurt in her life. I was also misguided to think that if she had genuine experienced challenges in life, that it was in my gift to make up for them if she hadn’t done the necessary work and healing for herself.
As time passed, and particularly after we parted I’ve come to doubt that many of the tales she told about her past were actually real. Even so, I acknowledge that I was wrong to ever give the impression that I was a knight in shining armour who could make everything alright. I was foolish to even try and cast myself in that role.
We all have to own our baggage, and take responsibility for sorting it out. Undoubtedly, I bought a lot of dysfunction and negativity to the table in that relationship too. I should have been focused on getting myself sorted before becoming involved with anyone else, and certainly wasn’t equipped to solve her problems for her.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
No matter how unpleasant the situation is, the compulsion to stick with it can be powerful
I recall so many unpleasant events and unhappy days spent in that relationship. We would argue and fight, often (to our failing) in front of or in earshot of our kids.
She would make false and delusional accusations that I was cheating on her. We would resolve to part and live in virtual isolation for a few days before falling on each other’s mercy and resolving to give it one last try.
As dysfunctional as the entire situation seemed, it felt impossible to actually commit to ending it once and for all.
There was no single catastrophic event that led to the eventual demise of the relationship. I was so utterly ground down by the situation, and conscious that the three kids in the situation were also being affected that by then I guess it just seemed to be the only possible conclusion.
What struck me as we finally went through with it, was just how much hurt and frustration could have been avoided if we’d taken the decision to part many months earlier on one of the other occasions when she’d threatened it.
We have a tendency at times to not want to be thought of by others or by ourselves, as quitters. We think that the honourable thing to do when faced with challenge or adversity is to fight it. The difficulty comes when we become so blinkered and so lacking in objectivity that we cannot see the realities of the situation.
We are so distracted by the battle that needs to be fought, that we cannot take a step back and consider whether it’s a fight worth fighting.
If we’d parted sooner or if we’d ideally taken longer to determine if we really had a future together before moving in and becoming more entrenched in each other’s lives, then we would have achieved the same end.
A lot of the pain and hardship could then have also been avoided in the process.
In times of hardship it’s easy to overlook and ignore what is right in front of you
The more I became entrenched in that relationship, weathering the storms and dealing with the fights and accusations, the more I lost any ability to see my reality for what it was; something that needed to change for all our sakes.
I realise now how oblivious I’d become to the advice and guidance of those around me, who were witnessing things from the outside.
Perhaps my belligerence came as a result of knowing that I was foolish to stick it out and to put myself and my kids through such unpleasantness. Maybe I was determined to make it work and prove everyone wrong.
More likely I just knew subconsciously that it had to get worse before it would eventually implode and things could get better.
I’m astonished as I look back that I could have been so blind to my situation and so oblivious to the wise counsel of those around me.
I suspect there came a point where my loved ones, my family and friends had to pull back and let me figure it out for myself. They’d provided plenty of advice in preceding months to try and help me through it, now they had to let me work out what to do for myself.
It’s like the old saying; I wasn’t able to see the wood, for the trees.
Maybe it was shame that prevented me from admitting that I really knew I was fighting for a hopeless cause.
Perhaps it was ignorance and pigheadedness that was pushing me to carry on, to prove others (and myself) wrong.
It was likely also fear that was driving me on; a fear of acknowledging my failings and my part in the process. Fear of the harm I’d done to our kids, and in my own life. Fear for the wasted time.
Choosing to remain ignorant to that facts is yet another way our brain tries to protect us from immediate pain, albeit by subjecting us to further long term hurt by prolonging the agony.
Ignorance may be bliss, but the bliss doesn’t last forever.
To hope for spontaneous change and improvement in others, ourselves or our situation, is futile
I suspect the most common reason we keep ourselves in situations that might otherwise be unpleasant or unpalatable to us, is that we vainly hope that things will improve spontaneously. We convince ourselves that if we can just hold out for long enough, the storms will blow over and rationality and common sense will prevail.
I’ve learned through painful experience that this rarely happens (if ever).
With each passing argument I would try and convince myself that with things patched up, it might be different next time. If some issue or difficulty had been discussed to a conclusion then it might just be that-that thing wouldn’t rear its head again.
This never turned out to be the case and whether issues had been discussed or dealt with previously or not, the same problems came up time and again.
Scripted roles were fulfilled by each of us as we played our parts in the games and arguments that we’d played many times before. A period of peace and harmony in the relationship was viewed hopefully as a permanent shift, but it never lasted.
The harsh lesson is that real, meaningful and enduring change doesn’t just happen. It’s the same in relationships as it is in all aspects of life. If we want things to improve or be different, it requires conscious and deliberate effort.
You have to want to change, and be willing to put in the work to bring change about.
At the tail-end of that relationship we attended a few sessions of couples counselling. It was a case of too little, too late and I suspect we were both going through the motions rather than being truly motivated to fix things.
The clear lesson I took from it was that if I wanted to be a better person as a result of this failure, and able to function healthily in any future relationship then I would have a lot of work to put in to address my own issues and failings.
This spurred me on in the aftermath of parting to do that work, and it has continued to be a driver for me in striving to strengthen, heal and grow to this day.
Summing up
I accept as much responsibility for the failing of that relationship as I attribute to her; I hope that comes through in my account. When I look back on that time I see many ways in which I could have done things better.
I also see many ways in which circumstances, honour, pride and fear conspired to keep me in that unpleasant situation, prolonging the pain for all involved for far too long.
If I could talk with anyone in a similar situation then my greatest hope would be to convince them that there are factors keeping them there in that unpleasant relationship that are hard to resist and overcome. As insurmountable as they might seem, they can be taken on and beaten. They can escape.
It won’t be pleasant at the time, but a happy and peaceful life can be theirs once again. I would love for them to believe in that.