By Elliott West
“The only person that deserves a special place in your life is someone that never made you feel like you were an option in theirs”.
Shannon L. Alder
Introduction
Often it is very difficult for a man to open up and express his feelings especially when he has been emotionally and physically hurt by a person who claims to love them. Society has deemed it a requisite that men stay strong and in control and opening up to someone with what you are feeling inside and thinking, is often wrongly construed as a sign of weakness. I know this only too well because I was a victim of gaslighting in a long and emotionally abusive relationship of 21 years that took me to the very precipice of despair, fearful of my next sentence uttered and filled with a sense of dread every time I walked through the front door. A lifestyle where you were walking on black ice, strewn with eggshells and made to feel small and worthless, always wrong and at fault.
I spent years, flailing in this sea of persecution, an emotionally abusive coma that caused me to weep into my pillow in the early hours of the morning and tremble in the presence of my then-girlfriend. This was a deep secret that I kept stored in my heart for many years until I couldn’t take any more. My heart was at breaking point and the brave face that I had held for so long was beginning to crack and melt. I stayed for so long because I loved this person, hoping that she would change but it just got progressively worse as time wore on and the leash of emotional control just became tighter around my neck.
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is defined as the subjective experience in which an individual’s perception of reality is repeatedly undermined or questioned by another person. An emotional state that was taken from the 1944 film Gaslight. Through actions and words, I was made to believe that I had a mental illness and was accused of being a narcissist. The C word was often thrown into a conversation and the name-calling would cover a range of personal insults including the word retard. I lost my power of speech, having to dodge the emotional bullets with quiet words of reassurance in my head. I was told that I couldn’t do anything right, leaving a toothpaste ring from my toothbrush on the side of the bathroom sink or not taking the bin out at the right time. I was the person in the dock, accused of countless home crimes and punished with the solitude of an icy stare.
Control
It became so bad that when I came home, the bin bag was waiting for me on the doormat to put out or I was sent an abusive voice message at work. On my days off work, I was left a chore list. Scrub the toilet, clean the bathroom sink, dust and hoover the flat. Woe betide if I didn’t reach her standard because all hell would break loose when she returned from work. Doors would slam and her voice would raise, never actually hitting me but giving me a virtual sucker punch that threw me against the ropes, winded and drained. If I missed a speck of dust, dusting of hovering, she would shame me and do the task again herself, rubbing my nose in the dirt.
Yet at the sand time, she wanted to go on date nights and play an act, referring to me to friends as her “other half”, a half that was, in reality, drifting away from her second by second. The woman who I had first met and fallen in love with, had become an unrecognisable monster, devoid of sympathy and on a tireless wrecking mission to destroy me and throw me out onto the street like a discarded sweet wrapper. I think she deep down knew the error of her ways but by then it had been the norm, leaving notes on the toilet seat for me to pack my stuff and leave. It was as if she secretly enjoyed persecuting me and wasn’t happy until she had driven me into submission.
Financial Control
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she set up a bank account that I had no access to. She claimed it was a rainy-day fund for holidays and the odd treat and demanded that I transfer £1,000 of my salary each month into this account. At first, I did to try to maintain a quiet life but after a few months, I got brave one day and didn’t transfer it. She went ballistic and started swearing at me. She told me to just do it or there would be consequences. She always threatened me with a phone call to my father, telling him what I was really like. I decided to stand up for myself and reached out for an olive branch, asking her to set up a joint bank account but she laughed it off. This was the moment that I knew it was time to pack my things and leave. I plucked up the courage and told her that I wanted to split up. She told me to go and sleep on the sofa and for two weeks, I slept alone on a sofa with makeshift cushions as pillows and a duvet that barely covered my legs and feet.
The Exit
I started to pack my possessions and by the time I was ready to leave, the packaging became rushed, piling years of memories into endless black bin bags. On the day in question, I returned from my last night shift at work and started to move the bags from the front room to the hallway. I thought she would be at work but instead, she sat upright in bed, staring at the wall. I told her I was leaving and she replied by telling me to close the front door and put my key on the kitchen work top. Her only gesture was to give me the television from the living room that I had recently bought. Her parting words were “What am I going to do for money now?”. I shut the door, got in the car and never returned.
