Getting advice as the abuser

Throwaway account for obvious reasons.

I (30F) recently made the realization that I have a tendency towards abusive behavior towards my partner (30M). I’m taking accountability for it, and I am looking for hope and means of healing.

I was raised in a pretty abusive household, where emotional and physical abuse was ever-present. My mom has PTSD and is likely also bipolar II based on her behavior throughout my life. My dad left a civil war as a young adult and has emotional control issues like yelling and sometimes throwing things. Corporal punishment like belts and hangers and threats, and sometimes more creative forms of discipline, were a regular. My sister was diagnosed with BPD (through treatment I believe this has changed) my brother had a substance abuse problem since teenage years, and eventually had a psychotic break (he is now schizophrenic), and I have struggled with very severe depression since early teens.

That being said, I have been able to cope relatively well, and was the only person in my family able to graduate from higher education. However, it’s also worth noting that I was in a DV relationship for almost 2.5 years during college, and was sexually, verbally, and emotionally abused throughout this time. That was the context where I stated behaviors in the realm of reactive abuse, like intense yelling, going through her phone, and running away when things got bad. I started going to therapy towards the end of that DV relationship, then on and off after it ended, and consistently since that first break up with my current(ish) partner. I never wanted to be the type of person who perpetuated anything close to this behavior to anyone outside this relationship, but here I am.

Long story short my (ex) partner and I have been together for about 6 years. The first 3 years of our relationship, there were a few moments where I was very hurt and had emotional breakdowns (intense sadness and crying) and we argued about his avoidance and emotional stonewalling. We had one particularly bad fight towards the end of the first iteration of that relationship, and intense argument about relationship expectations where I ended up yelling. Although I apologized afterwards, the damage was done, and we broke up for 9 months.

I took accountability for my behavior, and took that time to go to therapy and worked on myself. I was diagnosed with C-PTSD, and mostly worked on community building, positive behavior building, and emotional control/regulation strategies, as well as working through past trauma. During that time, I dated someone casually for a few months, and then got to the point where I started looking for something serious again, which is when my partner and I started talking again. I’m still in therapy today.

We decided to give things another shot, apologies were made both ways and things were good for a while. I was open about the people I dated during the breakup, and he told me he never so much as kissed someone during our time apart. He told me he did date but never found anyone he was interested in, and took that time off for himself. I was surprised, given he is a total catch, but accepted his truth and we were doing well. He also told me that while he never kissed anyone, he did go on a few dates with people, including a date with someone who was polyamorous and who occasionally shows up in the same spaces as he does. He said he was interested in being friends with her. Generally, I trust him. He is the type of person to be friends with a lot of women in a very respectful way, so while I still didn’t love this scenario, he assured me he was not at all attracted to her, and realize that quickly on their first date. He was new to the city and wanted more friends, I had a few friends who were poly so I didn’t think too much of it, and I conceded as long as he set really clear boundaries.

We dated mid-distance for about a year, then decided things were going well enough and moved in together for the first time. A while into us living together, he started spending less time at the house without communicating where, and I got suspicious and decided to do something fairly toxic and went through his phone. And while it turned out he was only spending time away going to cafes and playing music, I found other things.

During the time we were apart, he had been sleeping with a girl, who he had been spending a lot of money on, more money than he had ever spent on me such as taking her out to fancy restaurants and to an expensive ballet. She had given him her favorite book to read and he had kept it, reading about half of it and then keeping it on our shared bookshelf. He officially cut it off with her about two months into us getting back together, although the last time they had slept together was before we rekindled. And the polyamorous girl he had told he was just wanting to be friends with, turns out that he had made plans to go to the museum alone with her. While making those plans, he told her he was not in a committed relationship, although if she wasn’t interested in romance he would also just be interested in being friends. Not quite what he had told me. I also found out that he had a friend during that time who admitted to having feeling for him and ended her longterm relationship over it. She had been texting him as well without me knowing.

When I found this, I lost all emotional control. Being lied to was a trigger I didn’t know I had or how to handle, and what followed was disaster. I yelled, I cried, I screamed, I got suicidal, I accused. I broke wine glasses, I tore up the book from the other woman, I made him cut it off with both of them, along with the friend who had admitted her feelings. I burned a love letter that friend had given him which he kept, and made him delete all the pictures of her, along with their numbers. I was so deeply insecure, I asked him if the poly girl was more beautiful than me multiple times and eventually he said yes in a moment of feeling pressure, which he has since taken back.

He felt so guilty about how he acted, he accepted this abuse and I felt like such shit for acting this way. Absolutely no one was winning.

We went to couples counseling, I asked for an apology letter and he refused and the counselor told me he didn’t have to do it since it wouldn’t even be helpful. I never received an apology for this, and I heavily blame myself for that. My response was so out of control and unhinged and horrible, that he now had trauma over the way I acted, and it trumped the way that I was treated.

We had a very rough go following that, trust was broken, damage was done and my self esteem was in the gutter. I became very insecure about sex, feeling deeply rejected whenever he told me he didn’t want to have it. I tried everything in the book, but still felt unwanted. Which made sense I think, since he was so hurt and trust was destroyed between us., not to mention his already preexisting avoidant tendencies. The counselor told us to have sex twice a week and to make time for couples homework twice a week. He didn’t want to and felt too pressured. We stopped going to counseling because I didn’t feel like it was helping.

In addition, his already avoidant tendencies to avoid conflict and stonewall during conflict and avoid serious conversations and become defensive became amplified. And became even more triggering for me. I found myself becoming more and more reactive, and I stopped being able to recognize myself or feel good about myself.

Recently we got into a short fight after a date that ended without emotional or physical connection. It turned into him sleeping on the couch and then finally after a day of him ignoring me, it turned into an argument that lasted all the next night where I kept asking him to talk to me and he refused. I pulled out every act of desperation in the playbook, coming to the living room to talk to him, turning the lights on, I even took his phone and tried to make him talk to me, but he just got angry, took the phone back and stayed shut down. Hours later I finally left him alone. Everything I was doing was so out of control, I was allowing myself to act out of panic and in the end hated myself for how I behaved. He told me the next day he felt abused and traumatized over the way I have been behaving and he does not feel safe with me.

I thought about this for the rest of the day and knew he was right, that I was being abusive, knew that there was no excuse for my behavior, and I felt intense grief about the way I was treating him. I didn’t respect myself anymore, I felt pathetic and depressed. I love him so much and I’m tired of hurting him and came to the realization that this within this relationship I just can’t stay in control of myself.

So after thinking things through, I called for an extended break. I realized things can’t go on the way they have been, and something had to give. The avoidance was too triggering, the stonewalling was too much and I recognize my inability to handle that in a controlled and adult way. I wasn’t showing up as the person I wanted to be.

We’ve been avoiding each other for the past 2 weeks as we process and decide what to do.

I am heartbroken and filled with guilt and remorse. I feel like a fucking animal. I loved him so much and feel like I’m just too fucked up to be capable of handling or work through issues in a relationship that matters to me. I’m looking for hope from people who have acted this way in the past and fixed their behavior and were able to have healthy relationships in the future, and what it took to get there.

Tl;dr: I am guilty of abusive behavior, I have hurt and traumatized my partner and broke it off with him when realizing things were just going to keep spiraling. I don’t know what to do going forward, and would like advice about how to cope moving forward, and wonder if I can ever be in a healthy relationship.