The Spiritual Stain

The road to recovery after abusive relationships

It would be easier to say he’d put a gun to my head. Then other people would at least know what I was talking about. He made it seem like acting out his will was my only rational option. Afterwards I would be left with guilt and discomfort at having behaved in a way contrary to my own judgement and character.

In the ten year period between 2010 and 2020, I experienced three romantic relationships that, in retrospect, were abusive. One mildly so; two massively so. On an intellectual level, I’m over it. On an emotional level, I’m over it. I’m no longer in love with any of these men. But the sense of violation I feel is still there.

I’ve blamed myself for being in these relationships, not getting out of them quicker, and taking too long to get over them. I worry about what it says about me as a woman. If it happened once — fine! But if it happened more than once, shame on me, right? I’ve had strangers question my relationship with my father.

But these men took advantage of things about my character that are undoubtedly good. Things that would have enhanced any relationship with a better man. My desire to please people. My natural inclination to assume good faith. My unwaivering fidelity. My unfettered optimism.

The pain was healed by time. The intellectual doubt and constant second guessing of my own mind was quelled by a few therapy sessions. But the sense of violation has never fully gone away. It resides on the spiritual level and only spiritual remedies slake it.

My first experience with emotional abuse. 2010/2011. A relationship I would have never pursued had he not been so unrelenting and insistent. I became used to his constant company over Gchat. His neediness matched my hunger and we fed off each other for a while. I had just moved away from Washington, DC and had no plans at that point to move back. He invited himself to England to spend time with me over Christmas. In my excitment I booked a hotel room and told him how happy I was to finally be introducing a boyfriend to my parents. That’s when he told me he wasn’t my boyfriend. He had recently come out of a four-year relationship and had no intention of getting into another committed relationship with me. But he still wanted to take from me. I refused to believe it was over until my best friend said: “Sara, C**** treated you like sh*t.” I cancelled the hotel room and lost the deposit.

He’s a devout Catholic now, apparently. This really annoys me especially in light of my own passion for theology. Although we can’t know the innermost workings of anyone else’s souls, it just doesn’t feel sincere. It feels like he’s trying to distance himself from the person he once was. Someone who treated so many people poorly. Someone who took drugs every weekend. Someone who wrote love letters to another man despite not being gay because he just liked the attention. According to his social media posts, he’s a devout Catholic family man. Okay, then…

The narcissist. Three months in 2014. Cost me two years of searing hot heartache that didn’t end until I fell in love with someone else in 2016. All over me one minute, forgets my name the next. Lovebombing me one minute, abandoning me the next. I can’t talk about the narcissist. I’ve already written about the narcissist. I have no more words for the narcissist.

The angry, bitter, critical, militant athiest. He wasn’t happy. He didn’t want to be happy. He didn’t want to feel joy. He didn’t want to be healed. He wanted me to be miserable with him. He constantly called me fat. I have never felt more relief than when I broke up with him. February 2020. His parting words to me were: “You’ll never find someone else like me,” and by the grace of God I have yet to do so. That relationship was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from and yet he somehow thought that I would miss it. We weren’t so much not-on-the-same-page but on different astral planes. Our perceptions surrounding what constitutes the correct and appropriate way to treat a romantic partner were so different. He thought I was lucky to have him, I thought he was cruel.

In 2020, I took a private vow of celibacy. This vow will stay in place until I learn to make better decisions. There are three things about celibacy that I miss most acutely and the sex isn’t one of them.

I miss the joyful fullness of romantic love; how it makes me smile and talk to myself, and daydream.

I miss lying with my head in the dip between a man’s shoulder and his chest; listening to his heartbeat and watching his body heave up and down with every breath.

I miss brushing my smooth lips and cheek against the roughness of his five o’clock shadow after kissing him tenderly.

But all that has to wait until I deal with the spiritual stain.

Thank you for reading — I hope you found my thoughts interesting. You can find links to my other work here: https://linktr.ee/sayde.scarlett