This is my second post on here.  I wrote on here last year in January about my ACOA fiance who was abusive to me, and also my ACOA Mom. I am going to write everything that has happened to me recently.  I hope it helps someone in the way that

I have been helped by reading people's stories.  Here goes

I left an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship a month ago today.  My ACOA and I had gotten engaged, and I ended the engagement and left.

Since leaving, I have had awareness flooding over me everyday that is sometimes too intense to deal with.  I finally understand so many things about our relationship that I didn't see before: that I was in love with a dream that never existed, that we had a cycle of abuse, that I planned to change him from early on, that his drinking was a problem and that he was passive-aggressive as well as aggressive and on the way to physical abuse.

His verbals: explosions, about 25- 30 over two and a half years, yelling an inch from my face, waking me up while I was sleeping by yelling at me, calling me a "dumb 'xxxx',"  "sometimes I need you to actually think and be smart," "Only an idiot would think that," "Get out of MY apartment" "Now I know why you didn't want me to call you an angel, because you aren't one" (in regard to my sexuality), "Shut the 'xxxx' up" "Don't think you are getting extra points for crying" "You are trying to control me" "You don't love me" "You hate me" "Someday you will be old and ugly and won't have to worry about it anymore" (in regards to his father staring at my chest and touching me)

His Passives (that I didn't see): "nothing"ing me by pretending I hadn't spoken when I said something, pretending I wasn't in the room, pulling out his phone and texting while I was playing a new song I wrote that I was excited about

His Physicals: yelling an inch from my face, slamming doors, punching the wall, punching the door when I was on the other side, blocking my entrance to a room, falling onto me and putting his full body weight on me (nonsexually) when I was trying to sleep, so I couldn't breathe.

The relationship of course did not start this way, and it took me a bit to see our new relationship, from our old one.  He was also not like this all the time.  We had a lot of fun together, and he was sensitive, supportive and loving, in a lot of ways.

It has been crazy to have this realization rushing over me that I couldn't see the forest for the trees for the last few years.  I guess I was hoping that he would see how much he was hurting me, and that I was going to leave our relationship and then, change.  I was hoping that he would snap out of it and be the man I believed him to be.

It's so sad that I couldn't see the person he WAS, because I was so fixated on who he COULD BE.

I felt bad for him because he grew up in an alcoholic, occasionally physically and regularly verbally abusive home.  Both his parents and both his brothers are alcoholics.  His stories were just so sad.  I wanted to give him the love that he always deserved.  I believed that if I were just patient and understanding, he would bloom, and I think he actually did, in some ways.  I wanted to give him the reaction that I wanted when I was hurting when I was young.  I wanted to heal him and save him.

At first I blamed myself.  I thought, "If he is that mad, I must have done something really wrong!" and I tried to figure out what I was doing to set him off.  I changed my behavior, and would try to say the right thing, or avoid saying the wrong thing, especially when he was drinking.  I tried my best to keep a good house (didn't try that hard though-- haha) so that he would have a clean home with good food.

Once I realized it was him more that me, I went to Al-Anon and read everything I could find about Adult Children of Alcoholics.  I read books to him, took him to Al-Anon, made therapy appointments for him or nagged him into making appointments, and eventually went to therapy with him.

It's like his problems, his family alcoholism, started to consume me.

Both his parents and both his brothers are alcoholics.  His drinking is causing him problems, but he is having trouble controlling it, although he doesn't drink regularly that I know of.  I had trouble seeing that he was a problem drinker/on the path to alcoholism, but once I did, it was one of the main reasons why I left.  Unlike other things, I knew that alcoholism was one thing I could not control, mostly from Al-Anon.

I did try to control him, with kindness.  Admittedly, my goals for him and for us were nice things to want for someone-- a respectful relationship, being able to state your needs, letting go of old hurt-- but I was still trying to control him and make him into a "better" person.

In addition to having all these things come to the front of my mind-- most of them were buried under obsession with HIM and HIS PROBLEMS and how could I reach HIM-- I have realized that my family was emotionally abusive when I was growing up.  I feel like I have lost not only my fiance, and the dreams I had for him, but my concept of my family as "healthy" and "nice people."

If I hadn't ended up in this relationship with my ACOA fiance, I wouldn't have become educated about emotional abuse and realized that what my sisters and my parents did to me and each other was not just "a sucky time," but abuse which has stayed with me, and that continues, albeit on a more minor scale.  I have realized that part of the reason I ended up in an emotionally abusive relationship is because of the "training" I got as a young person.

Starting in about 5th grade, my older sister B. would exclude me from time with my sisters and put me down continuously.  She would roll her eyes or make faces when I was telling a story, and, amongst other things, scrutinized me and would correct my behavior, telling me what I was doing was weird, annoying, wrong, or just to get attention.  Sometimes she would not let me sit by her, sometimes she would gossip about me with my other sisters, or tell them not to talk to me.  She was an enforcer of what she deemed as "normal" and things I did that were not in her box were "deliberately done to bother her." I think she really hated me.

One of my younger sisters D., was an active supporter of the abuse, while the other, F., was kind of just in her own world, and just passive.  D. was vicious with her comments would tell me I "would always be a worthless druggie" and would call me a "loser."  She read my journal and would make fun of what she read in there.

My parents didn't look the other way, persay, but they kind of did.  When B. would say things in front of them, and they wouldn't jump in.  They have said they were talking to her all the time in private about it.  They probably were, but I never was aware of this actually happening and wasn't really informed of it at the time.  I am so angry and sad that they didn't protect me from her, and I am really struggling to understand WHY.  For some reason when I would try to talk to them about it, they would tell me over and over that I needed to get over it.  At home my response to my sisters' meanness was met with anger and my parent's, especially my ACOA Mom, telling me my feelings were wrong.

I feel guilty even writing all this.  I can hear their voices in my head right now (especially my Mom's): Other people have it a lot worse, I'm too dramatic, I always need attention, I never listen to anybody, I'm too sensitive, I don't let things go, It didn't happen that way, My perceptions are clouded, She was just having a bad day, I need to be understanding and not take things so personally, I am the most selfish person in the world, Everything is about me.

I know that part of the reason I stayed in my abusive relationship is because I talked myself out of my gut feelings, telling myself I was too sensitive, that I misinterpreted the situation, that he just had a bad day and needed an understanding ear.

My Mom and Dad were also emotionally abusive from time to time in the form of insults, criticism, blaming and shaming. My Dad had a temper that came up along with really high anxiety, when he was frustrated, or things were different from how they "should" be.  My family essentially engaged in scapegoating, where people would dump their problems on one person for a few years, then move to someone else.  I was the main scapegoat for five years, then off and on since then for a period of months at a time.

Just like with my ACOA fiance., this was not all the time, and I kind of feel like I am focusing on the negative and that I am whining and complaining.

I don't want to see all this.  I feel like I am blowing things out of proportion and holding grudges.  I feel like I need to qualify all this with all their positive traits, which are very real, and also had an impact on my life.  I feel like I should now write every bad thing I have ever done to my family and my ex-fiance as well.

I don't want to be a victim!  My family would look at this and say that I want to find someone to blame for all my problems and that I can't take responsibility for my choices.  Up until the last week, I would have agreed with them, and tried to talk myself out of whatever experience with them (or A., too) was making me uncomfortable and hurt.  ("I shouldn't") I doubted my perceptions to such a crazy degree with my ACOA fiance, that in the end I did not know what was real and what was my perception.  One night, for example, I thought my mom had CANCER (was a misread x-ray-- yay!) and turned to him crying and upset for support and he ended up yelling at me and calling me a bitch, telling me to shut the 'xxxx' up, punching walls, tearing down the shower curtain, etc., and the next day I thought WE had failed each other, and I SHOULD have noticed he was tired from traveling and not dumped my upset onto him right away.  I should have listened to him first, before talking about MY MOM'S CANCER, and noticed that he was stressed.  The next day, we went to therapy and I was very surprised that the therapist focused on him, because I thought we had both made mistakes.  Therapy seemed to go well, however, afterward he asked me if I had "deliberately set him up" to get a rise out of him.  He said he wondered because "things just fell into place so perfectly" to get him angry.

The thing is, I WANT this all to be my fault, my childhood abuse and this stuff with my ACOA fiance.  I wish it were all me, so I could control it, fix it, and still believe that the people in my life that are supposed to love me don't use me as a dumping ground for their emotional baggage and try to put me down in order to control me.  I wish the people I loved the most protected me, were my haven, instead of being the people that I can't really trust, that I can't really be myself around.

I wish all this was my fault, so I could spend some time in therapy, and then have my dreams and the reality I thought I had back.  Instead, after therapy, I see more and more bad things about my life.  Why did people do this to me?  What have I done to enable this, or support it?  I feel I must have done some things to deserve at least SOME of all this.  Is there something about me that makes me a target?  Maybe I am just really sensitive.  I feel like I can't even trust myself.

I want to forgive myself and learn to love myself, but I know that first I have to stop comparing.  Even though my forms of emotional abuse and experiences with Alcoholism were not as bad as some people have experienced, mine were still painful to me and have had an impact on my life.  I have good things that I do, things I am successful at, that count for something, and I am not sharing all this in order to blame, but to understand.

Well, that is all for now.  I have a few other things I am thinking about, including some positives that have come out of the whole thing.  I will write about them in detail later, but I do want to end on a positive note: With this painful awareness also comes freedom, and in the month since leaving, joy has started to seep back into my life.  I AM FREE!  I am finally starting to find the real me!!!

Recommendation to the Newbies in an emotionally abusive situation: write down what he/she/they say to you.  Then later when you try to rationalize/deny/understand/remember the situation, you have a record of how long it has been going on and what exactly has been going on.