Why you should never ignore red flags.

Heyyyyy,

How y’all doiiiiin?! Ok, I know, I know....it must be a special occasion because I’m actually posting ?? Haha, nope! This is the new and improved me. The Soph edition 3000 :D. I originally wrote Soph Edition 2020, but we all know what a shambles 2020 has been and I am not trying to describe myself as the car crash that this year has been! I'm better than that, or at least that's what I like to think. *laughs nervously*

Actually, my bestie inspired me to start writing again...(you should check out her blog; www.blogginell.com). It’s funny because we were speaking recently and she told me that my blog was one of the reasons she started writing! Do you know how crazy but amazing that is? Writing is everything and is a major coping mechanism for me when things get tough, so I'm super chuffed about that.

One of the things I’m so grateful to God for is the friendship I have with her. What a blessing it is to have a friendship where you both inspire/push/motivate each other.

Anyway, let me not go off on a tangent when I haven’t even set the tone for what I’m planning on writing about.

One of the reasons I stopped writing previously (2018) was because I felt I couldn’t speak my truth anymore. Now, if you’ve actually read any of my previous posts you will probably be baffled as I literally bare all and do not hold back.

On a serious note what I mean is, there were aspects of my life that I wanted to share and speak more on, but there were things happening in my life that prevented me from doing so. I’ve now just made a conscious decision to just go for it, because this is my blog and my truth. I want to be able to share my life and experiences in the most authentic way, without having to filter what I say.

Now I just want to make you aware, that what I'm speaking on today is a very personal and sensitive topic to me. Very few people know about it but I feel it’s so crucial to talk about it as it has played a HUGE part in my life the past 7 years.

I'm so nervous to share this and if I'm being honest, I'm scared. I'm scared because it's a part of my life that I haven't openly shared with many people and I feel vulnerable in doing so. I'm scared because I know I'm having to dig deep and almost relive some of the trauma I experienced. I'm scared that I will be judged on speaking so openly about a subject on the internet. I'm scared that people will think I'm overreacting or that it wasn't that deep. I'm scared because I feel silly for not being strong enough or not respecting myself enough to walk away from the situation, before it escalated.

Why are you sharing this then, I hear some of you ask? Well, to be honest with you, my therapist suggested I start writing again (she didn't say to the world, she meant a journal- I made the extra decision to share it, lol), but then I remembered how in the past when I shared things, I was often received messages of support or other people relating to what I had been through. Some of you have no idea how much you helped me get through things in the past and how grateful and appreciative I am of that.

Also, there's something about sharing some of your secrets with people who may not necessarily know you and hearing another perspective on particular situations. I guess because they don't already have a preconceived notion about the situation, so you can just bare all. Anyway, here goes...

It began in 2013 when I was 22 years old. I met my ex online (sorry to those I lied to and said I met him out, I was too embarrassed to disclose which pit of hell I found him in).

He was a 6ft1, average looking white man. He was 24 when I met him. Brown eyes. Tongue piercing. He didn’t drink alcohol, he didn’t go out to bars or clubs. He enjoyed listening to 90s/00’s R&B. Drove a nice car. He was a proper home body. He worked in a call centre, 9-5, Monday -Friday.

There was nothing scary about his appearance. He appeared to be just a normal guy.

Behind closed doors, he was a monster.

I wish I could sit here and tell you how when first met it was all lovely to begin, how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, having sex in all sorts of places and that the chemistry was sooo strong.

Sadly this wasn’t the case.

It was the classic scenario of a young woman with daddy issues, being attracted to a man who is no good for her (see previous post: looking for a dad). I also have always had a distant/on-off relationship with my mum ( see post: For now, I'll just love you from a distance) which until recently, I didn’t know contributed to how I formed relationships with men. I actually feel I want to speak more about my relationship with my parents, as I feel I have grown a lot and understood a lot more in the 3 years since I last touched on the subject.

Going back to the guy- whose identity I will be protecting by the way , so I won't reveal his real name. Maybe I'll call him John?

I think deep down, I was treating him in a way I had longed to be treated. I wanted to see him overcome his depression, then for him to realise what a catch I was, then we could live happily ever after. If I knew then, what I know now, I would have ran a mile.

He had a lot of issues when I met him. I mean its not uncommon for people to enter relationships with past trauma/baggage, however these issues were evident pretty early on. He had insecurities about his body, some health issues and severe depression. I thought we could overcome these things together. Instead, what I had just done is create a recipe for disaster. I didn't recognise some of his other symptoms. You know, the symptoms from that condition. What's it called again? Oh yeah.... wasteman syndrome. Ha!

If you are confused, it will all be explained as you read on.

I was so set on trying to help him get his life together that I was dodging/ignoring red flags left, right and centre. I was throwing my efforts into the wrong person.

I know depression can’t be helped, but we were at completely different stages of our lives.

Around the time that I met him, I had an amazing job in the city (London) that was paying well. I was going shopping with Faith every week, we were always going out and doing nice things together...things were looking up for us. I was outgoing, the ultimate social butterfly and I tried to be positive about most things. I hated staying down for too long. I had suffered with post natal depression a few years earlier, so I was set on just doing better for myself and my daughter.

Then I let this man into my life and life as I knew it changed. Some of my friends and family had tried to warn me on several occasions, based on certain behaviours and characteristics he was displaying. (They were clearly more qualified in recognising the symptoms/characteristics of a wasteman).

The more they told me I should leave, the deeper I dived.

When I think about why I didn't walk away in those early days or when I did I would take him back, I realise it's because I, myself had been in a low place in my life and I knew what support I wished I had at the time, so I tried to be that. I didn't want him to experience feelings of abandonment, like I had felt so many times in my life. As time went on though, I would try and he would manipulate his way back in. I will explain later.

I can’t say there was a key moment when it all suddenly got really bad, because as I said, the pink AND red flags were there from the get go.

He was possessive and I mistook this for him caring about me. He was a liar and he would use his depression as an excuse for it. He was a manipulator and would always twist things to make me seem like the bad guy. He was disloyal, poor and in debt, so because he was feeling low about himself, he would make me feel guilty about going shopping every week, because he couldn’t afford to. He would make me feel bad for spending money on myself, when he was there struggling to pay the basics.

He would say things like “I wish I could afford to buy new clothes...you’re lucky. I’ve grown up hardly having anything. I can barely afford petrol in my car to even come and see you..”

If a man said this to me now, knowing what I have been through, I would be sure to run a mile and never look back.

22 year old me didn’t. I wanted to help him as I wanted to see him do better for himself.

So what did I do? I would transfer £100 for him to fill up his petrol tank, for the Mercedes he clearly couldn’t afford, just so he could come and see me. Then I would buy him clothes because he would send me screenshots and links to items of clothing he liked and say things like “I wish I could afford this...maybe one day.” So what did I do?

I would go ahead and get it for him. He clearly knew what he was doing. I clearly didn't.

I had a Michael Kors watch (remember when this was the in-thing? lol). He would constantly go on about how much he wanted one and how jealous he was that I had one. So what did I do? I won’t use another clown meme as I think you get the jist now.

£400 on the MK watch to make him happy.

Upon reflection, I was such an idiot.

As I write it, it seems like “durrr, he was blatantly using you” but the reality was, that’s not how it came across.

We would talk for hours on the phone. Or stay up all night listening to music, or sometimes just sit in each other’s company and that was enough. So it wasn’t as direct and blatant as it seems now I’m writing it all down. I would open up to him about certain experiences in my life and vice versa. I felt like we had a mutual understanding of each other. This probably wasn't the case. Maybe I so desperately wanted to be understood and I just accepted the first person to come along who would listen? Even if he was a mess.

Over time when he would see me in new clothes all the time, he would start to make me feel bad about it.

He would tell me that I’m reckless with money, that he couldn’t even afford to pay his insurance for the month and meanwhile I was walking around in new outfits, weekly.

So what did I do? I paid his car insurance that he couldn’t afford. He always said he would pay me back and he never did. The weekly shopping trips became less frequent and eventually came to a halt.

He would talk about the fact that I earned more than him and that he felt emasculated by this and that I was stripping him of his male provider role.

So I re-wrote his entire CV and wrote him a cover letter, in the hope of him finding a better job than what he was doing, as he was clearly unhappy and not earning what he wanted. Upon reflection, he was never interested in bettering himself at that point. He wanted everything done for him and felt like the world owed him something. He didn't apply for jobs and I ended just doing it for him. John taught me that you literally cannot help someone, who doesn't want to help themselves.

John always said that as a couple we should “glow up together” meaning, we should both be building and earning money in a way that benefits the two of us. What he really meant was he didn't like that I was earning more than him and that I should lower myself in order to make him feel like more of a man.

What was happening, was that my kindness and efforts were being abused and taken advantage of and i genuinely couldn’t see it at first.

Eventually, I was not only paying the rent for my household and looking after my daughter, I had taken on another expense. Him. A whole adult human being, who had a full time job and lived at home with his parents.

Meanwhile, he had never paid for a single thing. Anything we ever did together, I paid for. Why? Because I cared about him and if I didn’t pay, then we would never have ended up doing anything. He used to complain about how rubbish his life had been and feel sorry for himself all the time. Moping around and bringing me down with him. The more I tried to help him, the more he sucked me in.

There came a point when he would go on to tell me that his parents were struggling to pay bills in the house or that they didn’t have any food. At this point, financially I was starting to struggle. I was trying to meet his demands, as when I couldn’t do something he would make me feel guilty about it or get really aggy with me.

He realised that financially I was starting to struggle with my new found expense (him) this was when he asked me to take out the first loan. He told me that his credit was too poor to do it, so asked if I could get one out (my credit was really good) and that he would pay it off bit by bit. In the beginning he would start to pay them for the first month or two, then eventually the payments would be reduced and he would come up with an excuse as to why he couldn’t pay, so I would pay it. Then he would tell me to take out more loans & credit cards in order to pay the previous ones and that he would help clear them. I never received a penny.

Now, after reading the above you probably think that this isn’t abuse and that I was willingly handing over the money.

I was stupid for even listening or entertaining to him in the first place and you’re absolutely right. I was young and naive and truly believed he cared about me and vice versa. When you care about someone and want to see them do better, you would do almost anything for them. Initially it was willingly, after a while I didn’t want to do it anymore, but felt I had no choice. Regardless of whether I started out doing it with the best intentions, I didn't ask to be treated in the way that I was.

I did these things ' oUt oF lOvE.'

He eventually moved into my home without me fully realising what had happened. He would rarely contribute financially and anytime I asked him to, he would make the biggest deal out of it.

If he contributed money to anything, whenever we would argue, he would bring it up and would demand I give him back his money. If I ever asked him to leave when things between us would get heated and I was scared, he would claim he wasn’t leaving because he contributed £25 to the gas that month, so therefore he was entitled to stay. Yeah, it was that deep.

I was being manipulated/controlled into doing things on his behalf, otherwise there would be consequences...so I just did it. Although he never physically took full control of my finances/cards, he didn’t need to. He had got me to a point where I was his puppet.

...and as a result, I got into serious debt.

Now, while all this was going on, I slowly stopped going out. At first, he would take issue with what I was wearing. I have a big bum, so anything I wear on my bottom half automatically looks 'sexier' and he would get annoyed that I was ‘dressing sexy’ for other people and trying to show off my assets to everyone but not him. All I was doing was getting dolled up to have a night out with the girls. I genuinely wasn’t interested in other men. Anyone from my past who would contact me, got shut down really quickly. I was loyal to this man, even though this was not reciprocated.

He would say that all my friends were just trying to keep me away from him because they didn’t like him. He would also say that they were jealous that I had finally found someone good for me and that they were annoyed that I was now in a relationship and not always readily available for them, like I had been in the past. Or he would create a drama/argument before I went out, which usually resulted in me cancelling plans in order to stay home and try and sort things out. He was smart.

He then started shame me for going out (I was 22/23)and would say that girls that are in the club every weekend are hoes. When I stopped going out, he would congratulate me for being “wifey” material. He would tell me how he wants to marry me and spend the rest of his life with me because I wasn’t like “all the other hoes.”

I ended up distancing myself from my friends and family (this is what he wanted), because they weren’t happy about my choice of staying with him (they could see through everything he was doing and they would speak up as they could see how much I had changed). I would then constantly hear them slagging him off, or hear him talking absolute nonsense about them and found it difficult to maintain both relationships.

He isolated me from my friends and family and I couldn’t see it at the time. There were moments when I would know I had to get out, but he would somehow worm his way back in.

That brings me to the time when we were out in the local town centre. It was just John and I. A guy drove past with the roof of his car down and was apparently staring at me, then he shouted out something like “you’re gorgeous darling,” then drove off. My ex blamed me and said it was my fault for dressing the way I did and that I was clearly asking for it. I literally was in leggings and a top, but he claimed that I entertained him. He didn’t talk to me for days.

Men often would stop me when I was with him as they truly believed he was my gay best friend. Sometimes it would get so awkward and he would genuinely get so annoyed and take it out on me. I then started kind of taking on the role of being his protector and I even started feeling like it was my fault that it kept happening. In the end, I was just walking around with my eyes down, to avoid any conflict. It was around this time that I started to become anxious about leaving the house.

He often would give me the silent treatment when he wasn’t happy with me. I now know that this is a type of abuse and is used as a form of control.

I went from being a social butterfly, who loved being outdoors all the time, someone who had a lot of time for her friends and family, to being an anxious recluse, who just stayed indoors with this man cooking and treating him like a king, when in reality he did not deserve it. Not one single bit.

Although he could be really mean a lot of the time, he would be nice at times and those were the moments I would cling to. I think because I had invested so much into trying to make the relationship work, even though it was a mess, I ended up staying when I should have walked away.

So as you may, or may not know, I had my daughter, Faith when I was 15 [see posts; Being a teenage mum & How do you tell your Mum that you're pregnant at 15..?]

After having her, my breasts became saggy. I don’t mean a little droop, I mean full on cow’s udder sag 😅. The fact that I am literally sharing this with the internet shows me how far I’ve come! #SaggyBoobsMatter #DontJudgeMe #ItWillHappenToTheBestOfUsEventually. Ha!

I’m making jokes now, but that was my biggest insecurity for years. Even before I met him, if I had casual sex with someone, I would always keep my bra on.

He knew this as I did it with him in the beginning. I was so insecure about it, that it took him over a year of persuading me before I would take my bra off during sex and this was only in the dark.

He would make me feel so special on the occasions when we would sleep together (I will explain in the post post) and tell me that he doesn’t care if they sag. He would give me a whole speech (every time) that I had a baby young and she’s beautiful and that my body did amazing and wonderful things to bring her into this life. I trusted him. The only other person I had entrusted to see or even touch my breasts, was my daughters dad. He had seen how they were before and what happened after, so that was whatever.

Back to John. I eventually allowed him to take my bra off and be fully naked with him.

I cried the first few times because I hated them. I hated the fact that my breasts looked the way they did and I felt awful. He would make an extra special effort to make me feel better every time I broke down in tears. Even going as far as telling me that he loves them.

Then not long after, he used that against me.

So there was this side to John that I haven't mentioned yet

Every time we would argue he would call me names.

C*nt, f*cking b*tch, hoe, damaged, used goods, fat b*tch (I wasn’t, I was a size 10- even if I was...you just don’t talk to people like that) whale, ugly, emotional, big nose, butters.

These are just a few of the names I would get called on a regular basis.

So back to my boobs, it wasn’t long before he started with “you’ve got saggy tits, they look disgusting. No wonder you and your baby father aren’t together. How could he bare to look at them? They make me feel sick” Or “you’re actually so butters without your eyelashes” or “look at your nose, it’s actually so ugly” or “you’re f*cking huge” or “no wonder you’re insecure about your breasts, they are proper shit” or the classic “I’m only with you because you give good head.”

These are just a few examples of what I was dealing with. I was with someone who would tear me down so viciously, due to his own insecurities. He absolutely hated the fact that I was confident in other aspects of my life, so therefore he did everything in his power to tear me down.

He would tell me that my life was a shambles because I was a single mum and unable to hold down a relationship with a man and made me feel like I had something wrong with me.

He would tell me that my dad wasn't really around because of me. He would say the reason my mum and I weren't close or didn't get on, was because of who I am as a person. His favourite line was "If you're own family don't want to know you, why would anyone else?"

He would often tell me that no-one wanted me. When he first started the verbal abuse I would always cry when it happened and do you know how he would react? He would tell me that it turned him on when he made me cry. Yup. That’s the kind of sick and twisted individual I was dealing with. As soon as he made me cry, I could clearly see the genuine joy in his face.

He often called me ugly and said that I never looked nice. He only would pay me compliments if I wore false lashes. If I didn’t wear them, he would make it known that he didn't like the way I looked.

In the beginning I would just cry. Eventually, I got to the point where I would say things back and things became a slanging match. I felt powerless and didn’t want him to feel that he had control over me and could hurt me anymore. I know this was wrong of me and in hindsight, I don’t actually know what I could have done different (besides leave him) but he broke me and I no longer recognised myself.

After a huge bust up, he would try and ‘make it up to me.’ He also in the same breath, would tell me that it's my fault for getting him that angry and that if I hadn't got him angry, wouldn't have to call me names. I just never knew where I stood or how to act. He would make me apologise for things I didn't do and make me believe that I was the problem and that everything was my fault. This is why I ended up becoming an entire anxious mess. I had so many feelings of worthlessness.

He knew I had issues about people leaving/being unreliable, so the one thing he would do consistently, is stay. He would never walk out and leave, even if he did- he would always come right back. I used to cling on to this and he would often tell me that no matter what, he would always be there. So even when I would end the relationship, part of me ended up taking him back, because I knew he would never leave. I sought comfort in that, in a weird way.

I had developed low self esteem and started to believe all the horrible things he said about me. As warped as it sounds.

Why didn’t you leave?

It wasn’t as simple as that. There were so many reasons why I felt I couldn’t walk away. Even when I tried, he would always find a way back in and even though he was a horrible man, I allowed him back in. I felt compelled to.

In the earlier days, as things started to get worse, I would sometimes come to my senses and end the relationship, he would beg me not to leave him and promised me he would change. He would cry and tell me I was the only person he had ever cried over (besides his friend dying a few years earlier) and tell me that he needed my help so that he could become a better person. I mistook his false pleas, for love and thought that if a man is crying on his knees in front of me, then he must really love me and be willing to change. He never did.

Another dangerous and naive thing I would believe, is those memes that say "If she rides with you through the bad times, she's a keeper.' So I pretty much felt like I had to stay with him as he had convinced me that his behaviour is the "bad times" the memes talked about.

As we got deeper into the relationship when I would try to leave and he would emotionally blackmail me. An example of this "If you leave me, I will kill myself" or "if you leave me, no-one will ever want you or if they do, they won't stick around for long. I'm the only one who will stay with you"

Growing up, I witnessed more unhealthy relationships than I did healthy, so I guess subconsciously that played a big part in how I ended up where I did.

I’ve taken the following snippet from; https://www.thehotline.org/is-this-abuse/why-do-people-stay-in-abusive-relationships/ in order to explain it better;

• Fear: A person may be afraid of what will happen if they decide to leave the relationship.

• Believing Abuse is Normal: A person may not know what a healthy relationship looks like, perhaps from growing up in an environment where abuse was common, and they may not recognize that their relationship is unhealthy.

• Embarrassment or Shame: It’s often difficult for someone to admit that they’ve been abused. They may feel they’ve done something wrong by becoming involved with an abusive partner. They may also worry that their friends and family will judge them.

• Low Self-Esteem: When an abusive partner constantly puts someone down and blames them for the abuse, it can be easy for the victim to believe those statements and think that the abuse is their fault.

There were many other reasons stated on the website. The above were just a few of the reasons why I felt I couldn’t leave. I had already had a failed relationship with my daughter's dad and couldn't bare the shame of having to tell people that this relationship didn't work out, at the expense of myself! I had started to believe his lies too about not being wanted if I ever left him.

He wasn’t very intelligent, but he was smart in terms of knowing how to control/manipulate and abuse me, which affected my overall mental health in a big way.

This has actually been a lot for me to share and I couldn’t possibly explain several years of emotional and mental abuse in one post. So I've written a follow up, to which I will share next week.

For now, I’m going to leave it here.

I hope you all have a blessed week and don’t let any man tek yuh fi eediyat.

All my love, Soph xoxo