By Chelsea Moreau

June 25, 2019

Nine years. 

It took me nine years to garner enough self-worth to leave my “ideal” relationship. As someone who grew up in the South, watching the television show Boy Meets World, and having parents that have been together since they were ten and twelve, I learned that the way to finding love and happiness is by marrying your high school sweetheart.

Through real-life experience and fictional characters from television and movies, I was led to believe that being with the same partner from teen years into adulthood was a literal way of life; a life to strive for. We met when we were seven and started dating at seventeen, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-seven before I had the insight to know I had been blinded by love and its false ideals. 

The first time I truly noticed unhealthy behaviors was about four years into our relationship. He went to every music festival that he could over that summer and convinced me that he would be in areas of bad reception, so communication would be difficult. I learned that this was a lie and realized that we had only communicated eleven days out of the forty he was away. I knew this behavior was abnormal, but, because I was taught to accept this brand of dismissive behavior for love and because I was financially dependent on this person, I felt like I had to stay. 

For much of my relationship, I was gaslighted and led to believe that most, if not all, things were my fault. I loved someone who did not take responsibility for himself or his actions, and that took a toll on my mental health after a while. 

But it wasn’t always bad. He was still my best friend. I truly didn’t know life without him. He was the best travel partner and taught me to not take life too seriously. He helped me to be more open to change and trying new things. 

In many ways, we just grew apart. After eight years together, I grew up and was ready to settle into home ownership and marriage. We took the next year to save and plan for an epic three-week trip to Europe. I knew if he didn’t propose while in Europe after nine years, I needed to finally move on, because, at the end of the day, he probably didn’t want the same things in life as I did, even though he had convinced me otherwise.

Two-and-a-half weeks into our trip, I had an epiphany at a random moment in the London Underground. I garnered enough courage to directly say to him, “I feel like you are gaslighting me.” He acted as though he didn’t know what that word meant. At the end of our trip, I learned that all my gut feelings were true. He did have a ring, but there was no proposal, and he was even hurtful enough to show it to me. He didn’t care enough about my feelings and concerns to move our relationship forward. It took me another six months to be done with him and our eight-year relationship completely.  

Nearly a year after I last spoke to my ex, I read an enlightening book called “The Sociopath Next Door”. The author, Dr. Martha Stout, shares that sociopaths learn early on in their lives to display false emotion, but underneath the façade, they are indifferent to others’ suffering and are unable to truly love. Sociopaths, according to Dr. Stout, live to dominate and can act in any manner without feeling guilt. I could find parts of my ex in every definition or sample character. 

“A sociopath is someone who “fails to conform to social norms,” or who is “never monogamous,” or who “fails to honor financial obligations,” for the straightforward reason that an obligation of any kind is something one feels towards beings, or towards a group of beings, who matter emotionally. And to a sociopath, we simply do not matter.” 

This was all I needed to read to redefine my recollection of my relationship and accept strength in the reality that I may have been dealing with a sociopath for all of these years. 

Since reading this book, I have a better understanding of warning signs to look for in an emotionally abusive relationship. Gaslighting is not normal. Having blame placed on you every single day is not healthy. And acquiring PTSD from such relationship can happen. And it happened to me. 

Processing the PTSD from my emotionally abusive relationship took a while to understand, and I’m still learning every day as I experience triggers in the most unsuspecting ways and at the weirdest times. With the help of therapy, I was able to learn that the ups and downs of my relationship were not my fault and recognizing this has helped me build better relationships moving forward. However, every day is a process.

Not long ago, in the middle of drafting this piece for The Anniversary Pact, I had a chance encounter with my ex. It was triggering to see him unexpectedly, but thankfully we didn’t interact at that time. Three days later, he found an excuse to reach out to me to see if he could lure me back in to his abuse.  

The difference this time is that I did not respond, because now I know my worth, and through therapy and self-evaluation, I know that loving myself is far more important than receiving love from anyone else. 

Even a love that could be false.