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Warning Signs

My story: Emotional abuse, sexual assault, and narcism.

By Lauren EdmundsonPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
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I want to preface this by saying that I am writing in the first person to more accurately tell my story. This is also the first time I am telling my story from start to finish. I would not normally tell such a personal story on the internet, but I think it is an important lesson that everybody, young and old, should know. I have learned from my mistakes, and I am happy to have made it through this ordeal, but it very well could have crippled me. This happened during my junior to senior year of high school. I am writing this a year later, now in college. While I have moved on, and my life is exponentially better now with a wonderful, almost saintly new boyfriend, this is a story that will haunt me forever. I know a lot of people have or had it worse than me, but I would rather others not make the same mistakes that I have.

I have made many mistakes in my life, but I think the one that I regret most is being careless with my last relationship. I had met this boy in junior year of high school in English class. I sat diagonally from him, at the back of the class, and I was so entranced by him. I remember the second day of school, I asked him, "Hey, did we have any homework?" I wish I had never said anything. Throughout the entire year, I tried to win him over, despite him already having a girlfriend. I respected their space and never intentionally meddled in their affairs, but I was crushing on him big time. We became best friends over the summer, hung out a lot, and everything was pretty good. During the beginning of our senior year, his girlfriend broke up with him and I immediate pounced. This was the biggest mistake.

The next four months were the worst months of my entire life. Looking back, I could compare it to a big sleep. I felt like I was not truly awake for the duration of the time I was with him. The first month was alright, and I wish I could remember it more for this story's sake, but in retrospect, I am glad I do not. It almost feels like a horrible nightmare, like when I finally woke up, that it was no longer real and it was all in my head. Alas, it was not; this was real, it really happened, and I still struggle to come to terms with it.

Let me lend my first bit of advice to you. If you bring your new boyfriend home to meet your parents, and all he does is sit in your room and avoid them, he needs to go. The was the first warning sign. My parents did not like him at all, from the get-go. He would repeatedly insult them and bash them behind their backs, mostly about how he thought they were too protective, and their curfew times were unreasonable. My parents are the dearest people to me, so this was not okay to me. Towards the end of the relationship, he even began to insult my best and only friends. I remember he forced me to face-time him saying, "Are they even your friends? Do they even like you? They are weird!" I remember yelling at him, defending them through tears. This is where the emotional abuse was at its height. Every time I defended myself, I was made out to be the "bad guy". This was the second warning sign.

I had to be constantly texting him, seeing him every morning before school, between classes, and take him to work, and back home after work because he was not allowed to drive. This is the third warning sign. A man who cannot support himself is not on the same level as you. I think at the time, I told myself that I wanted to do these things, but they were all out of courtesy and fear of him getting mad. I had to have my read receipts on at all times, and if I ever turned them off, all hell would break loose. He would get offended, pout, and assume it was because I hated him (which I realize now, that I did). This was the most annoying part of our relationship because I like talking to people in person, and even now, I can go the majority of my day without texting my boyfriend and be just fine. I thank him greatly for that. Anyway, this is the fourth warning sign.

Nothing was consensual by the end of the second month. This is where the pressure to please him began. I always felt like I owed him sexual favors, and that every time I was alone with him, something had to happen. Neither my house or his was fit to commit such acts, so the majority of what we did was done in the car, at night, in his neighborhood or in a vacant parking lot. There were multiple times where we were caught, which led me to become very uncomfortable because it was out of my character to do such things at the time. I got in trouble with the police once on two occasions because of it. Why did I not stop? I felt pressured. There were multiple times that I explicitly said no, and he did anyway. Why did I not stop it? I felt pressured. This is the fifth warning sign. If your partner pressures you into sexual favors or ignores your no's, it is sexual assault. No ifs, ands, or buts. Unfortunately, I could not recognize what was happening to me, and I did not do anything to stop it.

I think he used sex acts as a way of salvaging the relationship. We did not have the spark, that connection anymore. I felt so distant from him, and I liked it that way. He wanted desperately to control me. The last straw was when he asked for my phone in class to "take a photo on snapchat", but went through my phone instead without me knowing. We had a huge fight in the middle of the hallway, and I believe it was the angriest I had ever been in my entire life. I had nothing to hide, but the fact that he did this made me extremely angry. This is the sixth warning sign. A partner that does not trust you and does things like that, is not worth being with.

Shortly after that incident, I broke up with him January of 2017. I then had to sit in front of him during my first hour class until May, graduation. I listened to him say passive-aggressive things that he knew would hurt me. He even tried to separate me from my friends, trying to befriend them and talk smack about me to them. He even told intimate details about our relationship to my ex at the time, who I was still friends with. He had become the literal reincarnation of the devil to me.

The months that lead up until now were spent recovering, suppressing, and telling myself I had moved on. It was not until a few months ago that I came into terms with what had really happened to me. I realized I had been emotionally abused, manipulated, and sexually assaulted. I should have gone to therapy, but I did not. I do not know if I will now, but that is still to be decided.

These are the lessons that I give to you, and I hope that you have not had to deal with any of this before. These are all signs of an abusive relationship. Unfortunately for me, I was so blind, and I could not see what was happening to me. It does not have to be like this for you. Take care of yourself. Stay tuned for part two, where I talk about my recovery.

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