I’m quite sure that if we conducted a survey of “I’m happy about all my previous relationships,” no more than 10 percent of the population would agree! It’s true you know, because every single relationship, even the ones that we are born with (Ex: parents) has its ups and downs. You will face them, no matter how good a partner you are to your SO or how good a partner your SO is. Most of the times, when the tides of time are rough, it wrecks our boat of relationships. And we either learn to drown in pain or we learn to swim towards the shore.Even I’ve faced this.
If given a chance to time traveI, I definitely wouldn’t want to go back to my college days. The are many reasons for it — my acne problems, those uncomfortable dances, that teenage angst — thinking about it makes me wonder how I made it till here. But yeah the reason that tops the list was Anil, the person with whom I fell head over heels in love. I fell in love to such an extent that my life felt like a desert without him around. Let me take you through my dramatic love story. Read with me, okay? (Smiles)
My First Ever Relationship
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Yep! It was my first and I was 19, he was 20. He was my senior in college. We spoke for the first time in an inter-college debate competition. We both were representing our college in the competition. He thought he would win, but it was me who won the competition, while he got the third place. I thought he must be mad at me. He was the student president in my college. So in my head, I thought my winning must have hurt his ego. We left for our homes after the competition ended. He walked up to me asking if he could walk me home. I said yes (hesitatingly).
We walked in silence for ten minutes. And the next thing I know, he was on his knees confessing his love for me. I was taken aback. Turns out he’d always secretly admired me for almost a year. I told him that I needed some time to answer and ran home.
The Red Signals
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I told my mother what happened. She said it wasn’t a good idea to say yes since I hardly knew him. This should have been the first red flag for me. Instead I chose to gleefully ignore my mother’s advice. After two days, I told him yes because in my head there was this thought that he was a powerful person in school so I would have my benefits. If it didn’t work out I could always walk away. I was under the impression that I would be the dominating one in our relationship.
But the relationship was nothing like I had planned it to be. He pampered me to an extent that I fell in love with him. I began to weave my world around him. I started to hang out in his house more than I did at my own. We were always together, holding hands, exchanging love through our eyes. All my time was devoted to him. This should have been the second red flag for me.
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About 5–6 months of being in this relationship, I had lost most of my friends. I was doing every little chore of my life with him and I did not have time for anything else or anybody else. I noticed that I had stopped getting invitations for sleepovers from my girls and they no longer asked me to join them on hikes. This was my third red flag.
I think he noticed it too. I thought it must have made him feel important. But he didn’t think the same. He thought he owned me now. I remember it was some celebration in school. I wore a beautiful pink floral dress. And every single soul who saw me in it, was mesmerized by it. But, Anil hated that. He yelled at me for looking beautiful. Can you believe that? He even told me that from now on he would approve of whatever I decided to wear. What was this again? Yes, the fourth red flag!
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This mental abuse kept going on till it turned into a physical one. Grabbing me by my arm or snatching my phone from my hand is how it began. Trust me, I thought it was a normal thing in every relationship. It was only after a couple of months of him breaking up with me for another girl, did I realize that I was actually going through torture which I shouldn’t have been okay with. So yeah, my relationship did start with butterflies but it ended with some bruises etched on my heart and my mind.
And you know something, I’m not the lone ranger here, according to a survey conducted by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, nearly thirty percent of women claimed to be a part of abusive relationship whereas fifty percent admitted to having faced violence of one form or another in relationships (1). You can’t obviously turn the time around. But there’s a need for each one of us to recognize the red flags in our relationships and stand up for ourselves. We need to respect and value ourselves first. Only then can another person respect and value us. Have you been in such a relationship? Let us know in the comments below.
The post From Butterflies To Bruises: What My Abusive Relationship Taught Me appeared first on STYLECRAZE.