Dear Roe,
I’ve recently come out of what I now recognise was an abusive relationship. My partner’s behaviour, always quite bossy, became increasingly jealous, domineering and controlling and he was unrelentingly critical and verbally abusive towards me. I am lucky to be out of it.
My question, though, is how helpful is it to me as I recover to find out more about my ex’s past? I’m beginning to doubt the things he told me about how previous relationships of his ended, and why none of his family members speak to him. I believed everything he told me at the time because I had no reason to think he would lie or be so deluded as to think of himself as the victim. But now I’m wondering if he might even have had safety or restraining orders against him. He was paranoid at the end of our relationship that I might make official complaints about him. Is it worth my while trying to find out? Would it ease my pain to know for sure that he has a history of abusing women?
If you’re a regular reader of the column, it won’t come as a surprise that I’m going to recommend finding yourself a good, trauma-informed therapist. You’re coming out of an abusive relationship and while it’s great and important that you’ve safely extracted yourself, this time can still be incredibly difficult. Leaving an abusive relationship is sadly not the end of the impact of the abuse; the effects of abuse can linger and reveal themselves in insidious ways over time. There can be a lot of emotional processing as you come to understand what has happened to you and that re-evaluating of the relationship can bring up a lot of distress, pain, grief, anger and sometimes misplaced feelings of shame and guilt.
Being in any form of abusive relationship can erode your self-esteem but also your sense of self-trust and confidence moving through the world. Getting support right now to help you process what you have been through to focus on rebuilding your self-esteem and self-trust is vital, and to help you construct boundaries so that you can feel safe moving forward and connecting with other people in the future.
Talking to a good therapist will also help you explore your desire to find out more about your ex. I completely, utterly understand this desire – I have been there and felt it. I understand the desire for more information, for answers, the impulse to wonder whether a pattern could explain more about why this person did what they did to you. This desire for some sense of understanding and control after an experience where control, disorientation, power, autonomy and safety was taken from you is natural. However, my instinct is that by channelling this desire into researching your ex’s past, you are merely going to keep yourself emotionally connected to him and keep your healing dependent on him.
I see this desire for information and control playing out a lot in our culture at the moment, and it makes sense – as we learn more about the nature of abuse and trauma, more people are realising what that they have experienced and are trying to understand and protect themselves. But sometimes this desire can focus so much on getting external validation that the experience was abusive that it overtakes the inner validation and healing required to move on. I see this a lot in the obsession with pathologising other people and the now ubiquitous use of the term “narcissist” or other armchair diagnoses of people.
Again, I understand this desire, particularly if recognising a pattern of behaviour or abuse allows us to process what has happened. Calling someone a “narcissist” may help us feel more confident saying that how they treated us was bad. But does the (often misapplied) label act as a shortcut, focusing on pathologising someone when we could be focusing on truly internalising that no matter the reason for the other person’s behaviour, whether it was a pattern or a personality disorder or a perpetuation of an abuse cycle or simply, devastatingly, a choice they made, the abuse was not and never was our fault?
I understand your desire to find out if your ex has abused other people. Doing so feels like it would confirm that the abuse was not your fault and that you were not to blame. But here’s the thing: you already have your answer. The abuse was not your fault, and you were not to blame. This is true regardless of his treatment of other people. And I think you need to really focus on internalising that, rather than continuing to look to your ex. He has affected your life deeply but he does not define you, your worth, your value or your future. I think focusing on him is continuing to give him power he does not deserve.
Let’s think through the potential outcomes. One: you could discover that he was abusive to other people. This will tell you that he can behave abusively and hurt people close to him. You already have this information from how he treated you. Two: you could discover that he has not behaved abusively with anyone else. This does not detract from what he did to you, or mean that you were at fault or to blame for how he treated you. Three: you don’t discover anything concrete, which leaves you with the information you have now, which is that he abused you and that you didn’t deserve it.
The latter two options do not change what happened to you, but may cause you to remain confused or to wonder why he abused you, This could cause you to experience misplaced feelings of shame and guilt because you haven’t yet internalised that what he did wasn’t your fault. The first option, discovering that he has abused other people, may temporarily make you feel less alone and let you correctly label him as a serial abuser. But you’ll still have to process what happened to you, you’ll still have to build back your sense of self-esteem and self-trust, you’ll still have to heal. And the possibility of your search for more answers holds the risk of prolonging your confusion and keeping yourself and your healing connected to him feels too high.
Turn to yourself now. Get yourself a good therapist, and when you’re ready, reading books on abusive relationships such as Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That? could help you understand the nature of abuse and see that it has happened to other people. This could help you in your search for understanding and solidarity without remaining connected to him. If in the future you learn more about your ex, it will only confirm what you know to be true, instead of making your healing dependent on this information.
In your work with your therapist, you can focus not only on how his behaviour affected you, but look at the ways you can build up your self-esteem, your self-trust and your boundaries. When you heal – and you will – you will be able to enter new connections and relationships feeling confident that you will never again accept abusive behaviour, and that you can trust yourself enough not only to walk away from bad treatment but to believe that you deserve love and tenderness, and will embrace it when offered.
You have survived something awful, and deserved better. That was never in question – so this man does not hold your answers. He is your past, so let him stay there. You have all the information you need, and you are your own answer. Focus on you and your future. There is so much beauty waiting for you.