Reshma is a 23-year-old professional from the development sector in New Delhi.
If I had to sketch it out, my relationship with him would probably look like a tightly drawn squiggle. I was often dreading the good days, because they were usually followed by a “bad phase.” A bad phase simply meant him being annoyed with how I take his love for granted, how I don’t understand the pressures he’s under, how unstable I am for trying to leave him and go. The guilt trips were many, the grief, unbearable.
Sometimes I would try to sneak out of the apartment before he woke up so that he wouldn’t find out I left. Unfortunately, he always found out, and I had to bear the brunt of my disloyalty later on – emotionally, physically and sexually.
Physically abusive
In one such episode, he flung a coffee jar towards me. It shattered into countless pieces, and while I mopped the entire floor – once, twice, thrice – sobbing, trying to get the appalling fragrance of coffee out of the apartment, he slept on, peacefully, as if nothing had happened.
The next morning, he did not seem to remember events from the night before (like always), and I chose not to remind him, for the fear of triggering anger in him again. The evidence however, was right there – his extreme stoicism the morning after, and the numerous cuts on my knees and hands from the tiny glass shards.
Persistent bad moods
Soon the bad phases followed everything. A quiet giggle maybe, if he was sleeping. The way I smiled. One word I used. If I talked to a particular co-worker for longer than he permitted. If I used the phone in his presence, if I kept him waiting, if I said no to staying overnight at his place.
I did not know I was in an abusive relationship until the red flags were glaring right into my face. The breaking point came when my heavy bag was thrown at me with full force, missing me only by an inch. Surprisingly, until then I had never suspected him of perpetrating “abuse” towards me, since he would quite often spoil me with love. I always assumed he had a lot of stress and this was just him venting it out.
Many last chances
It is never easy to come to terms with the fact that someone you love so passionately would inflict abuse on you like this. He assured me many times that he’d improve, that he’ll never get so violent or aggressive, that he needs that “one last chance,” after every tiff we had.
An abusive relationship has all the following – manipulation, deception, the abuser identifying themselves as the victim, shifting the onus of the argument to the victim, extreme bouts of jealousy and possessiveness. I don’t recall how often I was accused of “provoking” his anger.
Bound by “duty” and guilt, I decided to stay by his side till this “difficult” chapter of his life got over, in false hopes of going back to our initial, rose tinted romance. It never did.
Freedom finally
I was conditioned to believe that anything I did without his approval was wrong and caused him immense pain, for which, I was liable to handle his outbursts and face punishments. His “love” seemed to “win” every time he humiliated me and held me responsible for the cracks in his fragile ego.
When I finally decided to leave him, he was verbally abusive. He threatened to kill himself and called me an unappreciative jerk who failed to acknowledge how he’d gone out of his way to protect me from the harsh world.
I initially panicked at the thought of moving on because of how I had gotten used to the idea of loving him. After he had tried and failed at every method he knew to choke my escape, I was free. I was free from the burden of somebody else’s inappropriate decisions weighing in my life.
What’s love?
It is never going to be easy getting out of an abusive relationship, at any point. By the time you notice the first signs, chances are, its roots are already too deep. There is also no “one key fits all” solution to this.
It has been two years since, but each incident of mistreatment is etched clearly in my mind, never to be forgotten. It took me a lot of time to understand that I was not responsible for his mood swings, that I did not deserve to be hit, have stuff thrown at, blackmailed into doing things I did not want to, or clean up after him whenever he messed up. I had ceased to exist as myself, and survived only as an extension of my partner.
The shadow of the whole experience still remains. After my partner painted me this distorted idea of love during the course of our very tumultuous and difficult relationship, one thing I know for sure is that love doesn’t harm like this, it only flourishes and nurtures.
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