This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/Snail_Queen_Forever on 2023-09-05 09:43:24.

When I was 15 years old, I began having a sexual relationship with a 18 year old guy who went to my highschool. I had been good friends with him for a year before we dated, so I didn’t think anything was wrong with our relationship. We dated for 3 years, and the relationship just got worse over time. First, he began to emotionally abuse me. Then, he began to slap me. He also often love bombed me with trips to the local mall or 5 Below.

I felt so alone in that relationship. He ostracized me from all my friends (who were also his friends at the time), and I was convinced that no one else but him liked me. There was a point in time where I was also convinced that I deserved to be slapped too. Eventually, I gained enough courage to talk to some mutual friends, who immediately called out my ex for how he had been treating me. In the end, it was my ex who broke up with me because I “ruined his reputation” (I feel like I need to mention that he’s in college to become a therapist).

After the break up, I went through a really bad period of mental turmoil. Even though I knew the slapping was wrong, I was still so madly in love with him that I couldn’t handle the single life. I had no idea who I really was either, as for so long, I had been “Ex’s girlfriend” and nothing else. So, I began therapy sessions and have been figuring out myself more and more each day. Life has been really good to me since the break up, but one thing that I still struggle with are people who immediately try to defend my ex’s actions.

For example, I recently ran into someone I knew back in highschool, who I haven’t spoken to since our graduation. He had asked about my ex, and I explained we were no longer together. He asked what had happened, and I was honest and explained that my ex started to slap me and we broke up. Right away, this guy goes “That doesn’t sound like [Ex’s name]. We had a math class together and he was super chill. So…I’m not gonna believe he did that. He’s too chill to slap anyone”, and then just walked away from me.

On another occasion, I was at a party with some people that I didn’t really know, and the topic of worst exes came up. Someone asked me my worst ex story, and I tried to keep it simple by saying “Oh, I once dated a guy who slapped me”. A random woman piped up with “What did you do to deserve the slap?” and I didn’t really know how to respond. I just kinda shrugged and said “the reasoning behind the slap doesn’t matter. It was abuse”, but that woman was adamant that slapping your partner is totally justified in certain situations. After a while of her asking me questions like “Did you cheat on him?”, I cracked and explained that I was slapped because I had failed my driver’s test and my ex was angry at me because “I wasted his gas and time” (he let me use his car for the test). So, he slapped me really hard (for the first time) right in the middle of the DMV parking lot. From there, I began living with the expection of being slapped often by him, until we finally broke up. This woman goes on to laugh about how it was totally justified then, because “Gas ain’t cheap” (this party took place during the really high gas prices in America).

Finally (and this was the worst one) I had gone on a date with a guy who I thought was really sweet and interesting. He had asked me what was a guilty pleasure of mine, I told him that I loved Rihanna’s “Shut up and Drive” a bit too much, and he admitted that he didn’t think Chris Brown did anything wrong. The explanation that he gave me was that some women, “especially famous women”, love to be in the spotlight and “will do anything for attention”, such as “ruining the lives of innocent men with rape/domestic violence allegations”. I never ran out of a restaurant and blocked a guy so fast.

I just don’t understand how there can be people out there ready to defend abusers to fast. It just makes me feel so disheartened to think about, like I’m not enough of a victim to be taken seriously. But then I think about how even if my ex did do exactly what Chris Brown did to Rihanna, but to me, there still would be people convinced it was all an elaborate lie for attention. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to handle someone who tells me right to my face that they didn’t believe what I went through, or that I deserved it.