Pinings — Advice by Sherry Hughes

Dear Pinings,

I am back in the same place I was in over two years ago and it feels terrible. I’ve moved back in with my mother and little brother (he’s 18) and am back at my old job. Three years ago, I met the man of my dreams. We met at a wedding and fell in love fast and hard. He was friends with my cousin, who had nothing but good things to say about him. I was working full-time and going to school at night, but after we started dating, more and more of my time was taken up by him—going to see him 200 miles away every weekend and calling him and talking for hours. I ended up moving there to be with him about 6 months after we met. I wish I’d never done it.

At first everything was wonderful. We had romantic dinners, he brought me flowers, we traveled. I found a job I liked and started to check out transferring to a new school. Everything started going wrong after the first few months. He didn’t have any tolerance for my sloppy habits. He insisted I keep everything put away, all the time (he’d have a fit if I left my mail on the shelf unopened, for example.) When it came time to unpacking my things, there wasn’t really enough room for everything. Instead of making room, he said I should rent a storage unit.

Later, when I started to talk with him about schools, he wasn’t very encouraging, but I didn’t give it much significance. Then, when I went to sign up for my first class there, he accused me of wanting to meet other men. I was shocked, because he’d never shown this side before. And honestly, I’m as loyal as the day is long.

The worst part of the whole thing was that if I didn’t comply, he’d punish me by sleeping on the couch or leaving the house and not coming home for several hours. It was awful. I hardly knew anyone in that city and felt abandoned. He rarely apologized for his actions (even if he was really nasty or called me names) but expected me to be all lovey when he came home.

I’m sure by now you get the picture. I knew it was going to get worse. I told him I was willing to work on things but quickly realized that he was a control freak and that I spent most of my time feeling afraid— to say how I feel, to put things where I wanted, to pursue my interests. I just knew it was all wrong.

Now I’m back—and I’m glad to be done with that relationship. The problem is that I see people and they wonder what happened and I feel like a loser. I don’t know why, but I feel like such a huge failure. I’m not saying I was perfect in the whole thing—I made plenty of mistakes. But I really believe that some of the stuff happening was about emotional abuse … and without going in to long, boring details, people don’t understand. And yes, they ask. When I left here, I really thought I had met Mr. Right. And I told everybody! I feel like such a fool. And to top it off, I miss him sometimes. I don’t miss the jerk he turned out to be, but I miss the good stuff, when he was kind and fun.

Any insights that might help me would be greatly appreciated.

- Cecily

Dear Cecily,

First of all, you are to be congratulated for getting out of what was clearly a bad situation as quickly as you did. I’ve been in an eerily similar situation before and it took me way longer to get up the courage to get out. And I felt some of the same things you are feeling now.

Of course you miss him. Clearly, you cared for him. Missing him doesn’t mean you want him back. It means that you miss the good stuff you shared together. That’s normal.

And I also understand the way you feel in terms of feeling like you failed in some way. That probably has a lot to do with your let-down expectations. You thought it was going to be happily ever after, and it’s not. And when people want to know what happened, it’s not just about him being a jerk, it’s about the whole thing didn’t work out. That’s hard, and sometimes, for whatever reason, it feels embarrassing.

Give yourself a break. As you learned, there are worse things than being at your mom’s house living with your little brother. You could be living with a control freak who treats you badly.

There are many lessons to be learned from all of this and unfortunately some of those lessons are fairly painful. Take some time for yourself and time to heal. Get to know someone well before moving on to the next step (are you ladies listening out there??) And get rid of the bat you are using to beat yourself up. Everyone makes mistakes. You’ll find someone who loves you well someday. Now that the jerk isn’t in your life, you’ll be available.
 

Sherry Hughes welcomes letters from readers. Reach her at sah103@hotmail.com