You’re Mine All Mine

From very early on in our relationship she was very possessive of me. She endeavoured to limit how much time I spent doing other things. Now some of this was probably for good reasons as I was overspending but there was also the sense of  I’m here staying in with nothing to do and you’re out having a good time. The problem didn’t come from the desire to be sensible with money – the abuse came from the means that she employed to get me to follow her demands – if you don’t do what I say then I will cry and scream and embarrass you through my reactions.

She was also very possessive of my time – I had to spend every weekend from after work Friday until the last possible moment on Sunday with her. Then when it came time to part she would nearly always throw a wobbly so that I either had to leave her in tears or stay and miss Monday at work. This pattern of kicking off and “making” me miss work was a long term pattern that greatly affected both my career prospects and my own attitude to work.

Looking back on this I really can’t believe that I let her control me in this way – the problem at the time was that I didn’t have the emotional/relationship skills to deal with it. I think other people had no idea at the time the pressure I felt under. The pressure from her to be one way and in fact the pressure from my parents to break off the relationship – the end result of course is that I got ill from all the stress – but then that illness and stress actually fed back into the cycle to make things worse.

The other thought I have in thinking through all this again is that someone else will think I’m making a fuss about nothing. I think you have to have been in an abusive relationship to realise the power that the other person holds over you and the terror of going against their wishes. That’s what made it abusive. Was it all her fault? Certainly not – it was a combination of factors – my character, my life skills at the time, her character, her life skills, her past – in once sense those are all excusable, we all have baggage, but it becomes abuse when control is exercised deliberately in order to get what the person wants.