As you have probably noticed, updates have been all over the place the last couple of years, months of lots of content, months of none, and I’ve always put this down to mental health. The last few months, I’ve been in pretty intensive therapy and realised that many of the things I put down as me being the issue were actually not.
I spent years in an unhealthy relationship, which I didn’t fully understand or see when I was in it, even when I was assaulted. It shrank my social circle, it controlled how I dressed, and it left me unable to do many of the things I loved.
I wasn’t ever going to share this experience, and then I was talking in therapy about how this blog and my social media was always mocked, was always belittled, how “I loved the people I met online more than her”, how I would laugh or smile at messages, how this was all fake, and I realised it wasn’t fake, this was me being me, and I’m allowed to be me.
Now, the other person wasn’t bad; they have their own shit to deal with, but their responses totally fucked my internal nervous system. So, why am I writing this? I am bringing back my narrative, I’m understanding it, I’m freeing myself, and hopefully, as with the neurodivergence messages I have put out, someone might see what I’ve said and allow themselves to be themselves, not what someone wants them to be.
I’m going to type a short story about how something small can turn into controling behaviour, and how you can lose yourself. If you have ever watched my videos, you’ll see I have facial hair. I don’t have facial hair; my face and I could always change it as I wanted. But what you don’t see is what happened in the background.
Whenever I shaved, my partner would withhold intimacy, no hugs, no kisses, not even the same bed; this is a behavioural-correction mechanism. My ex would always shout at me, and slowly the kids would hate it when I shaved. They would become very vocal about it because they had been conditioned to follow the strongest emotional voice in the room.
I never stopped occasionally shaving, as sometimes my need to become so strong that I would eventually impulsively shave, and then sit and wait hours in existential dread for what was coming. The children would also fear it. The first question was always, “Does mum know?”
Living like this was not fun, I have been thinking the last week of shaving my beard, and it took me a week to do it. I spent the whole time living with echoes that were making me scared to it. Eventually I shaved, I went into the living room, and my daughter panicked. I sat beside her and explained how there was no need to panic now, nothing bad was going to happen.
I broke that cycle there and then, and I felt a high.
I am not going to say I am perfect. I made mistakes; the big one was impulsively spending joint money. Now I can make excuses, but I did it, and I then lied out of shame. I then admitted it, and my partner asked if I could pay it back, which I did.
What was wrong was that I was made to tell the children how I stole it and all my family were contatced by my ex to tell them about it, and then spending the next few years with it being used almost daily to tell me I was a horrible human and to bring in other financial controls on me, under the guise of it being to help me, but as I’ve gone through therapy was actually about using money as a moral judgement. I still have difficulty spending, as I have fears built into my system.
We went to couples therapy. I was the monster, I was always also willing to play that role and be fixed. Interstingly during our first couple of sessions, a lot of the conversation was on me, my ex hated this, and I did ask that they get space. There were some rules implemented for my regulation, and you know what they worked. Turns out walking away was the answer; it stopped my RSD triggering and gave room.
My ex always argued this focus on me was me suffocating her, but I have since found in therapy that, as I was the person they tried to help first, that meant I was the one likely to show growth and become regulated, allowing my ex then to start receiving the help that they needed, once I could support that. I was not the chaotic, unempathetic person my partner said I was; it was clear I was the stable, responsive one on whom to build our foundations. The other partner was not yet ready to face the deep work.
When my therapist told me this, I found it hard to work out. My ex had a counselling qualification, helped people in therapy-like environments, and I saw her as the expert. My therapist slowly explained that they knew how to present, how to say things and be taken at face value, and they then never had to do the deep work or growth that they said I needed. They might never be ready to face that, but what our couples therapist likely saw in our first meeting was the patterns, which, when I look back, there were many. I even, on brave days, brought them up, mainly when I saw them as patterns with her exs.
On a side note, if you are ever in this situation, let the therapist read the other person’s messages to you. They are allowed to do this, and for me, it allowed the therapist to show the control and how it was applied, how I actually was logical and not who I was being painted as by my ex. Genuinely, it was a watershed moment.
My ex said we should cancel therapy as it was expensive, but my current therapist believes this is because they couldn’t do the work that was needed, not perhaps consciously, but because I was following the rules laid by our therapist; her trauma was not being fed in the way it needed for her to feel stable, seeminly this is a comon thing. I followed along as I actually felt this simple rule was really helping me. What then happened was “therapy was all about you”, and the simple rule was broken, my ex would chase, shouting and arguing with me, as I shut down. My neurodivergence would cause me to be quiet; I couldn’t speak, and this was proof I didn’t love her.
Then one day it escalated, my RSD made me tell her I thought she had used my family and then rejected them. She exploded, and I realised I needed to get away. I moved away, locked the door and went for the front door to escape. My ex came round the other way, shouted more and then punched me in the face.
I just stood there.
No idea what to do.
I grabbed my bike and cycled away.
Cycling was another issue. It was a mix of you should go a cycle, and that cycling was the worst thing ever, equal to Bob’s Burgers, which was my TV show for regulation, which the kids also loved, and we could only watch when she wasn’t in, as it was “terrible TV” to her but it shows that the rest of the family could be calm and relaxed without her and that was an issue. As soon as her car arrived in the drive, we had to change the channel. I was told I had ruined cycling for my ex by talking about it. Sadly, this neurodivergent info-dumping trait, which should have told her I loved her, was used to control me rather than letting me be me; it was an issue to let me exist. I find this the saddest bit, as she did watch neurodivergence videos, and they all make it clear that you just give me 5 minutes here and you’ll get hours in return, but it never happened, I was always getting shut down with why I didn’t ask about her first. I was trying to make myself comfortable to sit and listen to her, but instead, I just got dysregulated. Eventually, I would ask how she was when she got in from work and would not info-dump; all that happened here was that I was only doing it as she had said to do it, and I never could regulate, as ultimately there was no correct answer.
I couldn’t even cycle, as over time I had to message when I arrived at places. The idea of this messaging was that my ex had anxiety over journeys. I complied, and over time, this manifested as me not wanting to go places, because the control was limiting me. I’d probably say that through therapy, this was their trauma response, and they were genuinely worried about abandonment.
It reached the point that I was so emotionally exhausted that I would pass out at 8:30/9pm. My brain essentially couldn’t walk on eggshells anymore, couldn’t deal with the next nonsensical escalation, and would just shut down, like a computer when you overload it. This is called dorsal vagal collapse. This is a big point about incompatible relationships. I dealt with logic, my ex’s emotions. My trying to understand where it went wrong in a chain was treated as manipulation or as an excuse, not as a way to understand. This would then lead me to feeling not heard and misunderstood. Eventually, I would become non-verbal, not through choice; I just couldn’t speak, and things for my ex would just escalate from there, as her emotional system saw this as not caring or childish, as was screamed at me, rather than realising that my processing speed had slowed down, and I really need help at this moment, not strife.
The thing about passing out is that I would then wake up first. I would make a coffee, but our moka pot would make two cups, so I’d make one for me and one for my ex. This coffee routine was turned into me “lovebombing” her and “treating her like a child.” Both of which my therapist has assured me were not what was happening. I was just being a normal human being but I was becoming a victim of insecurity and previous trauma. I can’t even buy my friends a coffee in a coffee shop, as these arguments, I say arguments but I mean me just sitting there being confused while someone shouted at me, have so mucked me up.
Once the coffee argument started, it then spread to the school lunches I made for my step-daughters in the morning. I actually quite liked this routine. At first, this was a sign for her that I was a caring and engaging step-father. Slowly, this became that I didn’t believe she was capable of it, and that she wasn’t a good enough mother. Eventually, this spread to every meal, it was wrong, it didn’t have enough veg, it was … My ability to be me shrank. One of the best outcomes here is how happy my daughter is at meal times now. I have removed this chaos and pain.
The biggest sign it was all broken, and the one that finally let me be free. My ex asked me to leave and for a divorce. The first time I left to go to my parents, I was pulled back in because “there was stuff we needed to do as a couple first.” I went back, and really, I was dissociative at this point. This is a trauma response from my ex. Really, it was part of a test to prove love; I was supposed to fight and show she mattered. They might not even be consciously aware of what they are doing.
I then spent the next few months being told to leave and asked for a divorce. I even had to listen to her plans for her next relationship. I don’t know why I felt I had to listen to this, but I did. I, being me, always tried to repair things during this time, though I had no intimacy left. I was told I didn’t love her, I didn’t love her kids, the kids whose phrase during this time was mostly, “Don’t tell mum,but…” Which, according to my therapist, was the surest sign they saw me as the stable adult in the household, but they had to try to keep their mum stable and agree with her emotional outbursts.
So I left, my calm started to restore. I started to plan for a divorce. 5 months in, I asked my ex for her new address to start the process. I was told I hated them as I wanted a divorce. All I responded with was, “From now on, we’ll talk through a lawyer.” More messages. I didn’t respond. The next day, there were more messages, but I didn’t respond. What I did do was block and remove all her friends and family from my social media; it was time to separate myself from her story. I deleted all our chats, so there was no looking back. I did, though, send a copy to my lawyer, as there were times when she admitted assaulting me in there, but unsurprisingly, I had always asked to be punched in the face, which was why she had done it. She never took accountability, as I was always asked for it; this is a classic sign of DARVO.
Then my sister phoned, my ex had contacted them. The sister that my ex always said hated them and her children. My sister, who was always the bad one and another person that I had emotionally been conditioned to keep out of my life, and I’m still trying to repair that internally.
This is called triangulation, when someone who views life through a trauma lens is trying to pull you back in, to emotionally reconnect, to prove that they still matter to you. The narrative here is similar to the kids; the triangulation is designed to be an emotional hook. I just told my sister to block and move on.
What did I do? Nothing. Then I got an email saying I was not to contact her anymore and that I should only use a lawyer in the future. A whole 24 hours after I said that, which I guess seems funny or sad, but what it really shows is someone trying to save their ego and their narrative by reframing the message chain and being in control. This allows the abuser to make the other person the villain.
My therapist told me I was now free and that they would genuinely not contact me again, as their trauma worldview would now need to leave me alone, as I could now break their protective plan of their narrative.
I was free.
My ex will probably not be free, as they need to reframe me as the villain. You know what? That’s okay, as it doesn’t affect my story; they are no longer linked. It does, though, mean the same pattern will repeat for them, and probably already has.
Hopefully, I will see all of you out on the trails next year.
Fiefdom Tracklocross 
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