With him, it was nothing short of magical. Soul to soul. Body to body. Our demons danced in the fiery passions that burned hot enough to make me a believer. In him, I found the place I had always longed for. I had found home. He saw me in ways no one ever had before. He captivated me. He captured me. He touched depths in me no one had ever explored. I reached parts of me I thought were untouchable.

His love was intoxicating. It was rejuvenating and invigorating. It felt safe, warm, and never ending. His eyes rested on me with adoration. His voice soothed and softened me. Singing songs of praise my tortured soul could dance to. He activated the deepest and most submissive core in me. For the first time in my life, I rested in the safety of a man’s presence. When he loved me, it was nothing short of heaven itself. His love washed over me like an ocean. I wanted to drown in it forever.

Then slowly, the Illusion began to crumble. The facade began to face. Small moments of distance. The space filled with silence where there had once been warmth. Cruel words slipped through the lips that once soothed. The songs of praise he once sang, now was replaced little by little with harsh criticism that stung. Each blow landed, not below the belt, but below the surface. They didn’t bruise my body, instead they cut into my soul. Each slice became cracks which grew into voids. Dark, cold, hollow spaces between the love I had tasted and the expanding ache of its absence.

“It’s me” I instinctually knew it was. I was all wrong. I was too broken. I had shown him all the broken pieces. I invited him into all the hidden places, behind the doors that had been boarded shut for decades. He had seen the devastation left by the tortuous attacks I experienced so long ago. The leveled ruins I tried to bury beneath mountains of denial. I had given him a tour of the after math, and I was convinced he saw it and said to himself, “I can’t build here. No man will ever want to live here.”

The tsunami of shame crashed over me, sweeping me away in the rushing of its waters. It awakened in me a desperation to swim. Not just a treading of water, but powerful strokes fueled by the desire to not just survive, but live. All fingers of blame pointed directly at me, and I was determined to correct every one. My healing journey began. It was not for me though. It was for him. I couldn’t lose what he made me feel. I wouldn’t allow it. I needed to feel it again. I needed it to live. His love became as vital as the air I breathe. He was my oxygen.

Yet, despite everything I did and was willing to do, the great chasm grew. No matter how hard I tried to fill the space between what once was and what not is. The emptiness I felt in the abyss overwhelmed me. It was paralyzing. I lived suspended in it, confused and longing. One moment, he would pull me close, wrapping me again in a tenderness that made me forget everything. The next, he withdrew, punishing me with coldness or silence. I never knew which version of him I would get, and so I stayed frozen, spinning in place, waiting for the good to return. My fists clenched tightly around hope. I had convinced myself that love would return. It had to. After all, hadn’t I felt heaven in his arms? Surely that love was real. Surely he felt it too. Surely he’d want that blissful place where we basked in love all day back. Surely he would come back. Surely.

But on the other side of that void it was not love that waited. Instead, it was the place where nightmares lived. An unknown misery awaited me. His silence became a weapon. His words cut deeper than any knife. With every turn of the blade he twisted with it my reality, until I questioned my own sanity. His “love” now came with conditions. If I wanted to be loved again, it had to be his way, or not at all. My pain, my needs, my truth no longer mattered. They were irrelevant. Inconsequential. My role was to serve his peace, even if it destroyed mine.

I wanted to agree. I wanted to return to that place. I wanted it desperately. I wanted it with every part of me. Yet… I couldn’t ignore the absurdity of his proclamations. How could he ever deliver on his promise of love if it required my abandonment of everything I needed to feel loved? This wasn’t at all what I wanted. The more I fought for me, the harder he fought against me. The more destructive he became. Violence erupted out of him alongside unfounded accusations. Explosions of contempt and criticism. I was a whore. I was lying. I was cheating. I wasn’t loyal.

I fought to get him to believe that wasn’t me. I wasn’t any of those things. I was in love with him. I wanted love from only him. Why would I lie about that? Why would I even desire to play that game with his heart? I had more respect for him than that. I wouldn’t chase someone I didn’t want to keep. I wouldn’t long for someone I didn’t want. The kind of hate for him to be so cruel to him just wasn’t in me.

The loving bliss we once lived in became only a distant memory. It had transformed. Mutated. It became the most abusive, toxic relationship I have ever been in. That contradiction nearly broke me.

I’d still be trapped there if not for one promise I made to myself. A promise I made long before I met him. That promise was that I would never again abandon myself in silence, that I would never again bury my pain just to be kept. I promised that I would always name my pain. I would speak up for myself and state clearly what I needed. That promise became the one thing I clung to. I spoke my truth. I refused to swallow my hurt. I never gave him the submission he demanded: to erase myself in order to please him. My submission came with one critical need. To feel safe in his love again. The promise I made to never abandon what I know I need was the thing that saved me.

I wish I could tell you that it ended because I had finally realized that he had no intention of ever making an effort to love me. I wish I could claim ownership of being the one who ultimately decided. But that would diminish the severity of my situation, and how stuck I was in it. The desire to return to that sacred place was too strong for me to ever want to leave.

Eventually, he ended it. He was tired of my refusal to meet his demands. He was done hearing about how I would not agree to his terms. He left, because I would not make myself small enough, quiet enough, obedient enough for him to have any desire to stay. If he wasn’t able to get everything he needed, while I accepted nothing in return, then he was no longer interested.

He had repeatedly told me it would be his way or no way at all.

And so, it became nothing. 3 months of bliss had trapped me in over 3 years of agony only to vanish into thin air as if it was nothing at all.

I wish I could have told you that I was the one who walked away. I wish I could claim that kind of power. But I can’t. While I am proud that I had the strength to never abandon myself this time, I am also filled with the shame that I was not strong enough to be the one to leave.

This is what love and abuse intertwined will do to you. It makes you proud and ashamed at the same time. It leaves you longing for the very thing that is destroying you. It convinces you to stay in the void, hoping the love will return, while ignoring the destruction piling up all around you.

If you’ve been there too, please know: the confusion is not weakness. The paralysis is not failure. It is what happens when heaven and hell live in one body. When pain and pleasure exist together inside of the one you love.

I didn’t leave him. But I never surrendered myself either. My conviction became my single saving grace.