Does the pain and disgust of being used as a rebound and then trashed ever stop?

[banquetee]

Hi, to keep a long story short: my first relationship was with a guy who used me as a rebound and then got rid of me in the worst possible ways.

 

Background: I had been severely abused by my mother at that point and therefore stupidly got involved with this man who at that point had been in unrequited love with his HS classmate for ten years. She had just recently gotten engaged (now married). That's when he decided to finally give up on her and seek out a serious relationship with a new girl. When I first met him, he almost immediately started to pursue me. He treated me very nicely at first and seemed head over heel into me so I thought his old crush was just a crush. A relationship is different. Anyway, the situation with my mother put a lot of stress on me, and at around the same time when it finally came to the boiling point, he started checking out of the relationship and nitpicking every little thing I did. Soon afterwards, we broke up (I broke up with him first, and then we got back together for a week before he broke up with me), and he texted me all kinds of really haunting, harrowing things.

 

For a while, I really believed I was such a terrible person who did him wrong. Then I sorted of fell out of love with him, and realized that he had been using me to replace his fantasy girl all the time. Now the memories of EVERYTHING we did together, EVERYTHING he said to me reek of her. For instance, she was a lot shorter than me, and when we first went out he made a lot of comments about how short girl and tall guy together look weird. She had really long bang on round face, and without knowing it I used to make jokes to him about how people with round face and long bang had no sense of style (I mean it looks bad let's be honest), and he would reply "Well, it's a trend" in a defensive and hurt tone. I could go on and on. The point is EVERYTHING has been tainted. And I feel so so disgusted at this point, but also really hurt because at the end he texted me that he had no respect for me and my mother was right to beat me. I would often ask my friends if I were really that ugly, but I actually have a number of suitors who say otherwise?? Coupled with the past abuse of my mother and my father's abandonment, I feel truly worthless and ugly and stupid??

 

I have had such a hard time coping with this. I feel like, after all my past experiences, I was born to not have a love of my own, as people, including family, have all tossed me aside. Nothing in our relationship was even real, and I loved him so so much. What a joke. I feel like I was a mistake or something and that I should have never been born.

[divegrl]

You are not a mistake. You are loved more then you can imagine.

 

His actions are a reflection of his brokenness, not your value or self worth.

 

I'm so sorry you are hurting. You have every right to feel this pain for as long as you need to. Keep writing here as your emotions come up. Please know you're not alone.

 

Hugs my friend!!!!

[preraph]

This wasn't a nice guy, so my main worry is that because you grew up with not so nice mother or parents, not sure, that "not so nice" is what seems normal enough to you that you ignore red flags and let a not so nice guy in.

 

You are smart and it is easy to see he was trying to substitute you for this obsession of yours. I can't imagine what he thinks you said or did to him to make him become so venomous to say you deserved to be abused as a child, but I refuse to believe that extreme statement was the first crap thing he said to you. So you must have ignored some and let it slide. Don't do that. To get past abuse, you have to rebel against it and reject it! You're already smart. You know you are not worthless. You feel depressed and so you feel worthless and your upbringing did a number on your self-esteem. But if you vow to treat yourself right, to run off anyone who shows the first sign of nastiness, and to give yourself what your mother never did, you will slowly build up your own self-worth.

 

And you must not waste time mourning the loss of someone who was never who you hoped they'd be. You loved an illusion of who you hoped he'd be.

 

Good luck.

[banquetee]

Thank you for your replies. I feel very ashamed and pathetic talking to my friends about the abuse I have gone through. As a result, I don't have any close friend except for one guy who has always wanted to sleep with me, which frankly at this point disgusts me, so I have distanced myself from him. I must admit that there were red flags that I ignored. For once, when we first met, he spoke very lowly of a girl who had a crush on him but he did not return. He hated her simply because she was not pretty enough. But despite all that, he was very effusive in his affections at first, which swept me off my feet. Now I know that's how abusers lure their victims into relationships.

 

I am so heartbroken, despite knowing all this. He said all kind BS that unfortunately still haunts me, like "everybody hates you because you're so selfish" etc.We were together right after I stopped talking to my mother altogether so I needed a lot of time dealing with the fallout emotionally. After the breakup, I have found out that it is not true that everybody hates me, it is just that lots of people don't know how to get close to me, as I close myself off in order to deal with the trauma of abuse. It is so shocking now thinking about how he treated me, heartbreaking because I loved him so much, and crazy-making at the same time because all of mutual acquaintances (we used to work in the same place before I quit) treat him like he is the nicest guy ever (they would say to me "I would never think he was someone to say things like that" but then would still smile and make nice to him, it makes me sick to the pit of my stomach). . I am not perfect, but I never cheated on him nor said a hurtful word intentionally to him ever. I feel like he was so angry with me because I was not her, which is sick. I believe that he might value me a lot less because I returned his affections, unlike this girl who never bothered to give him the time of the day.

 

To be honest with you, sometimes I feel due to all this past experiences real love was not meant for me. I see women showered with love and affection, and I get crazy with jealousy because I feel like it is never gonna be me. Men only offer me sh*t.