I just learned this term today and I felt like Andy crawling out of the pipe full of crap and being washed by the rain in the movie Shawshank Redemption.

So, if you've ever been in an abusive relationship and questioned whether you did anything wrong, I encourage you to read this and research reactive abuse. (https://breakthesilencedv.org/reactive-abuse-what-it-is-and-why-abusers-rely-on-it/).

My ex and I were together for almost 3 years. He was amazing when we first met. Very active, friendly, outgoing, ATTRACTIVE, all things I'd always wanted in an SO but couldn't really find in a bundle. Until we moved in together.

5 months into dating, he tells me he'd struggled with addiction in the past (cocaine & adderall) but that he'd been clean for a year. I was taking diet pills to suppress my appetite (legitimately prescribed). He knew & it hadn't been an issue. Anyway, I get to work one morning and notice the bottle, which I kept in my car, had 2 pills left. There should have been at least 15.

It never occurred to me to suspect him, but eventually I texted him to ask if he knew what happened. He immediately apologized, cried, basically didn't let me react and got super mad at himself. I learned later that this is actually a manipulation tactic: they're so hard on themselves so that you end up feeling bad for them & consoling them. It worked on me.

That day, he buys a lockbox so I can keep the pills and I start using it. Well, 2 weeks later I have to go out of town for a week. He asks me if he can drive my car while I'm gone because his was broken and he was in the process of buying a new one. I say yes. He drives me to the airport but I end up forgetting my pills in my car (stupid, I know, but it was like 4 am and I hadn't slept well). I call him to tell him, because the last time he told me that he didn't think I'd notice the pills were gone. In my mind, I'm thinking "if I tell him, it will help him stay accountable". We talk throughout the trip, I check in on him via phone, all goes well. I get back home and the pills are gone. Again.

I'm pissed at this point, and we get into an argument. But this time around, he's mad at me. He says it's my fault for leaving them out and how could I be so irresponsible and jeopardize his recovery? At this point, I kind of back off because I start to feel guilty. From then on, whenever the pills were brought up in an argument, he'd always blame me for it, and was super dismissive, like "yeah, yeah, I stole your pills, big deal, it was your fault anyway".

Living together was rough, because he was FILTHY. I'd seen his place before we moved in (he lived with roommates), and he was very respectful of their mutual spaces & kept them clean. I think he felt like because he was dating me and we were a team, he could drop the ball and I'd be there to pick up the slack. Or say I was being too demanding.

It was getting so bad that we would fight nonstop--I mean, he'd leave dishes in the sink for days, food on the floor, beer bottles everywhere, spit bottles (he dips) everywhere. He had a mole on the back of his neck that he picked until it bled. Well, there was blood everywhere--his clothes, the brand new couch we bought together, doors, walls, pillows, comforter. When I got mad, he'd just shut down and leave.

I'd thought it would be a good idea to get a credit card and add him as an authorized user, because he had bad credit from not paying a CC that he forgot about. We agreed that we'd only use that card for mutual expenses, like bills or groceries. Well, he ended up putting 2k on the card ($600 alone were for a suit for his brother's wedding, $100 were for bitcoin), which really screwed with my credit score. Every time I asked him about the money, he'd get mad and yell, telling me he'd "pay me back when he could" and how heartless I was being because I knew he didn't have the money and was stressing him out.

For reference, I am all by myself and have no family. His family is rich (like, trust fund rich) and his grandfather paid for college & first car for all his grandkids (also for their first HOUSE). I know that doesn't mean that he'd feel comfortable asking his family for money, but he also knew that I couldn't afford to not pay my CC bill--and his family could have helped him. I had no one to help me.

Anyway, we started getting into these fights late at night, after he'd been drinking. Here's where the reactive abuse part comes in. On several occasions, in the middle of a fight, he'd cross some serious lines--making fun of my mom for having an abortion, calling her a whore, threatening to have me deported (I'm an immigrant), telling me that the reason my father was/is emotionally distant is that I'm so broken that not even my parents could love me & everyone will leave me, etc.

Now, at first, it would just wound me. These were things shared in confidence, and he used them to attack me. After the arguments were over, he wouldn't even apologize. His reason? OF COURSE I should know that he didn't mean those things, and I obviously had to know that he was sorry.

Well, after a few of these I started to get angry and used his own trauma to hurt him. I'm better at it than he is, so my words usually cut him more deeply than his cut me. At that point, he'd usually start recording (or make me believe that he was recording) and then threaten to send the recording to my boss and friends.

I snatched his phone from his hand once, and ran to the door. He pinned me by the throat until I gave him the phone back. He's 6ft and muscular, so I couldn't move or breathe. Within 30 seconds, he denied choking me and has yet to acknowledge it (it's been almost 2 years since). Instead, if I ever brought it up, he would get FURIOUS with me for "making things up" and "gaslighting" him. At some point, a few days after that incident, he said something about my mom and I was so mad that I slapped him, twice. (He kept taunting me to do it again, but I was able to get ahold of myself and stop.)

I said a lot of screwed up things about him and his family, and I truly regret saying them. After the fog had cleared from each argument, though, he'd deny whatever awful things he'd done or said to me, and instead focused on what I had done or said, calling me the abuser. I always felt like I couldn't really hold him accountable without acknowledging that I had abused him, too, and I felt like the shittiest person. I thought, well, since I also said some screwed up things to him, this is my fault too. What I didn't realize is that when I lashed out, it was in response to him and it was when I felt trapped or cornered and needed a barrier to protect me from his insults. I still wish I hadn't stooped to that level, but I understand now that reactive abuse is a thing that happens, and that abusers will use that against you to convince you that you're to blame and manipulate you.

It was like dealing with Bruce Banner and the Hulk. Banner is not a bad person, and if he could just be that way all the time, then he'd be a good partner. But he randomly and often has "Hulk episodes", so I know it's not healthy or safe to try to make that work. He's been completely out of my life for a month now, but I know his reddit username and occasionally look at what he's posted (he doesn't know mine). The other day I saw that he replied to someone on AskMen about disclosing past trauma, and he went on and on about how his ex (me) weaponized that trauma and used it to hurt him during arguments. He got a lot of sympathy points and comments, and the whole time I kept thinking of what a huge bully he was to me and all the emotional damage he inflicted. And the worst part is that I bet he genuinely believes he was the victim, because being the victim means he doesn't have to apologize, change or fix anything about himself.

In conclusion, reactive trauma is a thing, and now I feel like less of a monster, and less guilty (though not less sorry) for the way I acted in that relationship. I hope that knowing this helps me heal and move on, because that shit is hard.