It\u2019s well past time for me to share an update on my relationship with Romeo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m sad to say that things have changed about as dramatically as they could have. For the first few months of this year, I was coming to terms with the understanding that I was going to have to move out. Without going into too much detail, the long and short of it is that he was emotionally abusive towards me for the duration of our relationship. Don\u2019t get me wrong– we had many many many<\/em> beautiful and loving seasons and moments between us throughout our relationship. It wasn\u2019t all horrible, all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But one key aspect of the cycle of abuse is the peaceful period that comes between abusive episodes. The cycle of abuse, for those who don\u2019t know, follows the pattern of: tension building, then an abusive incident or incidents, then reconciliation when the abuser apologizes and promises change, and then a period of calm before tension starts building again. For us, the calm periods could last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks; and at least once that I can recall we even had a few months straight of relative peace. During those periods, our relationship felt amazing. The love we had for each other was real, passionate, and deep. But unfortunately, the abuse was just as real and it always eventually reared its ugly head again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was so committed to and in love with Romeo that it took me a very long time to even label what was happening as abuse. Even after I came to that conclusion, I still chose to stay. There were many factors that contributed to that decision. For one, I loved him and the thought of not having him in my life was incredibly painful. Another reason was my desperate desire to keep our family together. I wanted to give our youngest kiddo an intact family, something that I had vowed and then failed to give to my other kids. I also had a visceral fear of losing my stepdaughter if I was no longer technically her parent, and that was the factor that put the nail in the coffin for me. The possibility of losing a relationship with one of my kiddos felt like a dealbreaker for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finances also were a factor, because I\u2019ve always been a stay-at-home mom. I had no confidence that I could even get a job, let alone come close to supporting myself. I felt completely trapped by my circumstances, and so I tried for years to make the best of it. My pride and stubbornness contributed to my choice to stay, too, because the idea of having to eat all of my words about \u201cforever\u201d with Romeo felt like an affront on my character and a violation of my core values. Staying seemed like the right choice for a long time, despite the emotional trauma I endured. I told myself that it would be different if he was physically abusing me\u2026 despite knowing that emotional abuse is just as harmful, even though it\u2019s invisible; not to mention the statistical probability that it could one day evolve to physical abuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually things did get to a point where I couldn\u2019t stay. Even then, though, I wanted to try to make our relationship work. I decided to move out, but keep working on our relationship as long as he was also willing to. At first, the separation helped a lot. Things started to feel better between us and I felt super optimistic about our future. It wasn\u2019t going to look like I\u2019d thought it would, but it was still something and it meant that our family could in many ways stay intact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, that peaceful period didn\u2019t last long. After my breakup with Truly, Romeo was incredibly sweet and supportive. He really helped me through that painful time, and I felt encouraged by his loving behavior toward me. But when I met Mica, things shifted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, Romeo and I sat down to have a conversation about our relationship and he said that he couldn\u2019t be with me if I couldn\u2019t make him a higher priority in my life. I said that I couldn\u2019t be with him if he couldn\u2019t stop the abuse. We both decided that neither of those things was going to happen, and that we had reached our end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I wish I could say that I cried. But the truth is that I have grieved our relationship so excruciatingly deeply, so many times over the years, that I had no grief left at that point. Little by little, I had built walls around my heart to protect myself from him. When that final blow came, it was nothing more than a fist pounding on a brick wall with me safely on the other side. I couldn\u2019t even feel it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, things have been up and down as usual. We\u2019re still co-parents and I think that he will probably always use whatever he can to try to continue to hurt and control me. I protect myself with distance and boundaries, and by keeping my side of the street clean. I still love him in many ways, and I care about continuing to treat him with kindness. When he\u2019s in calm periods, I appreciate the harmonious co-parenting relationship we can have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had a lot of feelings about the end of my second marriage. I\u2019ve felt sadness, regret, anger, frustration, and even relief. I know that I will continue to process our relationship for years to come. But most importantly, I know that I have learned some very important lessons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through that relationship, I discovered how strong I can be. I discovered that I can take control of my life. I found a job that I love, and I have my own apartment, and I love my life so much more now than I have in years. And not to sound braggy or anything, but I<\/em> did that. I had help, absolutely. I have a support system that kicks ass, and I appreciate the hell out of them. But I also know that I did a very hard thing that only I could do for myself: I left an abusive relationship. I chose myself for once and regained my independence. I\u2019m pretty proud of that! I also learned a shit-ton of emotional regulation skills over the past several years, and those are skills that will continue to serve me throughout my life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My feelings about \u201cforever\u201d could have easily been changed for the worse because of everything that has happened. We decided to end our marriage on the heels of my breakup with a partner whom I also temporarily believed I would be with forever. Obviously those relationships were on two extremely different levels– one was a marriage with a partner I\u2019d been with for almost five years and had a family with; the other was a boyfriend I was with for about six weeks. But one thing that was the same was my belief starting very early on that I had found a forever partner. One might assume that after those relationships both ending, I would swear off the concept of \u201cforever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then there was Mica. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mica is my person. He\u2019s my soulmate, and I know that in a way that makes other times I\u2019ve used that term feel a bit silly. My first husband was someone I thought was a soulmate. I think the correct term for what we were to each other is actually kindred spirits. We had a connection that felt easy and natural and deeply emotional. It felt like our souls knew each other in a different lifetime. That is a beautiful feeling, and I do believe it\u2019s a part of being a soul mate.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I used to believe that Romeo was my second soul mate. I believe in the possibility of multiple soul mates, but then again I also wonder if those aren\u2019t just kindred spirits. Perhaps soul mates are the two that were meant for each other in every lifetime. In any case, I no longer believe that Romeo was a soul mate. Instead, I believe that he\u2019s something known as a karmic lover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the interwebs, \u201cKarmic partners are intense, passionate relationships meant to teach hard life lessons, balance past mistakes, and spark personal growth rather than last forever. They are commonly marked by cycles of high drama, an addictive pull, and deep emotional exhaustion.\u201d If that doesn\u2019t describe my relationship with Romeo to a T then nothing does. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve also called Benny a soul mate before, and I believe that he also fits better into the category of kindred spirits. I love him in a way that feels certain, and happened so easily. I still hope that we will be together forever. But I know that the way I feel for him and the way I\u2019ve felt for all of the people whom I\u2019ve considered soul mates in the past is very different from what I feel for Mica.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will be writing a more thorough post about these feelings, but for now I will just say that with Mica, I don\u2019t feel silly for promising forever and believing him when he promises the same. There\u2019s a sense of rightness that I have never felt before, as cheesy as that sounds. I feel incredibly lucky to have found him, and I know that we\u2019re both holding on to each other with such immense care, love, passion, and tenderness that we can\u2019t fathom ever letting go. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s well past time for me to share an update on my relationship with Romeo. I\u2019m sad to say that things have changed about as dramatically as they could have. For the first few months of this year, I was coming to terms with the understanding that I was going to have to move out.… Continue reading This is the story of an ending I never wanted.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}