The thing about your first relationship being an abusive one is that it skews everything that comes after it. You question everything in every following relationship. You constantly wonder whether you’re overreacting; you struggle to define what is normal healthy behavior from your partner and what is not. Your first relationship was abusive so you never had an adequate model of what a good relationship should be like. That first relationship sets the tone for how you feel in each new one.
You struggle to assert boundaries and demand respect early on in new relationships; you feel as if you have to tell each new partner about your history of being abused, have to get them to delineate very early on what they’re looking for from the relationship, what they want, what their expectations are, so you aren’t led astray. You have to figure out very early on who they are so you can be on guard at all times. This can be awkward and uncomfortable because sometimes it makes the new partner feel confused and annoyed that you need reassurance and as much information about their expectations as they can give you.
You constantly seek out hints; you have to consistently ask the tired “What are you looking for from this?” question because you need to know. You need to know what they want so you can brace yourself for hurt. For the fall, the failure, the letdown. You bring up trauma to prospective partners early on, perhaps before it’s considered appropriate, because you have an innate need to show them who you are, that this is why you’re like this, this is why you get scared and fumbling and sad and messy sometimes, that this is what they must prepare for. You come off as unhinged and erratic and weird for simply wanting, no, needing to know the guidelines for each new interaction. You have to have the map, the chart, the graph, the dots to connect. Nothing can be out of line. If even one dot is out of place, you’ll be hurt again. In the corner again.
And as time goes on, when other unhealthy relationships happen, you start to believe that this is just how all relationships are. And some people think that for you, it will be easier to deal with the fallout from new unhealthy relationships. Because you survived the first so surely you can survive the others.
But it’s not easier. It’s worse. Because you begin to believe that there must be a reason that you’ve become entangled with additional unhealthy, abusive people. And you start to do the math, carry out the equation, balance the numbers. And you start to believe the reason is you.
When the good comes, if it does, if you finally get to experience what is normal and loving, you’re constantly braced for impact. You can’t let yourself go completely. There is always that wounded animal fear in the back of your mind, like a dog with an electric collar.
No one taught you how to do it right. There’s fight or flight. But you don’t do either. You can’t fight if you’re not sure you should be. You can’t flee if you’ve never been taught how to smell the smoke before you see the fire.
