My Boyfriend Was Emotionally Abusive - Article Health

I used to be one of those people who loves the treadmill—I'd hop on every day for over an hour, listening to my favorite playlists and just zoning out. It allowed me to be alone with my thoughts, and that was what I wanted...until my thoughts would end up leaving me in tears instead.

This was back in grad school, when I ended a tumultuous two-year relationship with a guy who was all sorts of unstable. I didn’t realize it at the time, but almost all of our interactions were examples of emotional abuse. He worshipped the ground I walked on when I did what he wanted, but he screamed at me when I didn’t. He played on my fears and criticized me during fights, and he'd blackmail and threaten me if I didn’t agree with him. Once, he even left me waiting for an hour outside his dorm building, refusing to sign me in because I came back from a party later than I had promised… after which he started punching walls in front of me to scare me.

The final straw, however, came during an altercation at my gym when I was using the treadmill. He showed up to run on the track, which faced the row of treadmills I was in. Earlier we'd had an argument, and I was hoping we could ignore each other and deal with it at a later time. Instead, he started screaming at me in front of everybody at the gym. When I tried to get away, he took my arm and twisted it behind my back so I couldn’t leave. It was the first time he’d ever physically harmed me, and I ran crying to my apartment. We never spoke again.

After that, I was lost. Not only had I ended a relationship that, despite all of its flaws, meant something to me, but I also no longer had my source of solace, since I was so terrified to go to the gym again. This took its toll on me in several ways. I barely ate, I burst into tears without provocation several times a day, and I slept all the time. It was so hard to get me out of bed that my roommates used to have to force me to go to class. One time I woke up, heard a song that made me cry, and physically couldn’t leave my bed the entire day. This wasn’t at all a healthy way to live, and even though I knew that, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it.


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