Can't fathom his pain
bwashington
New Registrant
Wow, so many responses to my first post. This is an incredible support...
It's been asked, "How does it work for me?" being in a relationship with a male survivor. I cannot fathom the pain that his Father in Heaven feels for him, because I know what I feel. It's a glimpse to me of how much God loves him. I guess it's really NOT working too well right now, considering we're not even speaking. But I am at the end of my first trimester, and the time is coming that I will need to speak with him. He is so hateful towards me, and I wonder if this is because I have been the closest person to him in his life. He's divorced(He married at 19, and his wife cheated.) and I wonder how scary it is for him to think that I love him.
Serafina said:
I understand how you are feeling. I too am in a relationship with a man that I love very much. Good and bad and believe me, there will be lots of bad, but he is a wonderful person. He too, buried all his memories and became a workaholic, drug addict and alcoholic, but has overcome them all. He didn't start going to therapy until I met him and it has been an incredibly difficult road. You can't help him until he is ready. Make sure you set boundaries because if and when he starts opening up to you and trusting you he will have lots of anger and confusion and you being close to him will get alot of his frustration. If you love him, keep visiting here, you will need support too. Or find a partners support group. Just keep giving him information and keeping believing in him and he can use that information when he is ready. Take care of yourself first. That can be easy to forget!!!
THANK YOU SERAFINA! A wonderful note. Most things are "my fault" between us...always been that way..I guess I'm the only safe one. Right now he has completely demonized me in his mind. So hence the not speaking to him, what do you think about that, because this can't go on forever. But I don't want to exasperate that problem, and I wouldn't know what to say.
It took me many days to read through and actually process what all of you responded with last time. It made me cry, it was so helpful. I couldn't take reading it all at once.
We were best friends for so long, I would have jumped through hoops of fire for him. He has a little boy, the reason for his first marriage. We worked together for 3 years. When he had no food for his son, I snuck out of work early and went to the food bank and the grocery store for him and left it on his doorstep, it was my ministry and I did it every week. We were best friends. I took care of everything he couldn't, taxes, paperwork, as time went on he seemed less and less capable of handling his own matters, and yet somehow progressively resentful as well, and I could never find a line between friend and enabler I guess, if there is one... Probably 7-8 months ago, we sat one afternoon and he told me. I know he had mentioned abuse in his family before, although I had never known it was sexual until that day, and my stomach turned. It didn't even sink in, though. He had suddenly freaked out that afternoon as we were getting into a sexual situation, not for the first time. And we were sitting, talking, when he told me. He was sure to add when he got up to leave that night that I was the "only other person besides his friend Mike," to know. And I believed him. Now I know that this was probably an attempt to lessen the impact that would have on him, and our relationship. Mike is his best male friend, and the leader of his small men's prayer group. I don't know what I thought. That he'd be angry with me for bringing it up again, or sad, maybe I figured that there was no way his dad really RAPED him, he hadn't specified that...But I was dead wrong on all accounts. So months passed. And I know that we still talked about it. He'd say things. But I just never GOT it fully... Every sexual interaction between us was impulsive. He was scary at times. I've told him that. And he feels he is truly reliving the abuse when he is intimate with me. There was a day I went to his house to deliver some job forms(He had been out of work for a few weeks due to being so sick from medication and panic attacks.) He was wrapped in a blanket, looking like hell. He was so physically needy that day, and I get the distinct feeling that he hated himself for every bit of it. For me it was because I loved him. I also wanted to love him enough not to be intimate. I kept saying to him that I was his best friend, and that's what he really needed, not a lover. But he kept telling me he wanted me, and I gave in. I feel so guilty.
I told him I was pregnant 2 weeks later, and that night he admitted himself to the psychiatric ward. Mike's wife told me that he was there. I went to him. It was the most frightening experience of my life, seeing him there. It ripped me apart. He stared blankly at me as I walked in the room, as if I had just caught him committing a crime. The doctors stood around us as I sat down across from him. No one spoke. And I just placed my hand around his on the table and bent my head down and prayed silently for him. When I looked up at him he had tears in his eyes, and he said thank you. The next two days I visited him. He began telling me scenes that were playing in his mind, of his father raping him, that he had never remembered. I told him that he should tell the doctors these things as well. He kept saying, "I'm sorry. I should've told you about me. I'm sorry that you got involved with someone like me." He said that he could not marry me, it would turn out axactly as his previous marriage had, and I assured him that it was not marriage I had come for. He said that I would do the same things to him that everyone else in his life had done, lie, and use him. I told him how much it hurt that he thought that of me, I acknowledged what they had done, and asked him to let me be the first one in his life not to. And he agreed. We agreed to speak in a month. I left him a golden cross, and a note telling him how much I loved him, and believed in him, and left him in the hospital for the next week. When I called him the next month, he had nothing to say but screaming, "I hate you." And we have not spoken since. Mike never knew that his father had abused him in that way. I was the only one he had ever told. And I have no idea what to say to him.
Do I call? Do I visit him? How? He wrote me a letter a few weeks ago, that Mike read over and refused to pass along, saying it made absolutely no sense. I don;t know what to think, because he doesn't even know what he thinks. I'm a little pregnant here, and very much at the end of my rope...
In His grip-
It's been asked, "How does it work for me?" being in a relationship with a male survivor. I cannot fathom the pain that his Father in Heaven feels for him, because I know what I feel. It's a glimpse to me of how much God loves him. I guess it's really NOT working too well right now, considering we're not even speaking. But I am at the end of my first trimester, and the time is coming that I will need to speak with him. He is so hateful towards me, and I wonder if this is because I have been the closest person to him in his life. He's divorced(He married at 19, and his wife cheated.) and I wonder how scary it is for him to think that I love him.
Serafina said:
I understand how you are feeling. I too am in a relationship with a man that I love very much. Good and bad and believe me, there will be lots of bad, but he is a wonderful person. He too, buried all his memories and became a workaholic, drug addict and alcoholic, but has overcome them all. He didn't start going to therapy until I met him and it has been an incredibly difficult road. You can't help him until he is ready. Make sure you set boundaries because if and when he starts opening up to you and trusting you he will have lots of anger and confusion and you being close to him will get alot of his frustration. If you love him, keep visiting here, you will need support too. Or find a partners support group. Just keep giving him information and keeping believing in him and he can use that information when he is ready. Take care of yourself first. That can be easy to forget!!!
THANK YOU SERAFINA! A wonderful note. Most things are "my fault" between us...always been that way..I guess I'm the only safe one. Right now he has completely demonized me in his mind. So hence the not speaking to him, what do you think about that, because this can't go on forever. But I don't want to exasperate that problem, and I wouldn't know what to say.
It took me many days to read through and actually process what all of you responded with last time. It made me cry, it was so helpful. I couldn't take reading it all at once.
We were best friends for so long, I would have jumped through hoops of fire for him. He has a little boy, the reason for his first marriage. We worked together for 3 years. When he had no food for his son, I snuck out of work early and went to the food bank and the grocery store for him and left it on his doorstep, it was my ministry and I did it every week. We were best friends. I took care of everything he couldn't, taxes, paperwork, as time went on he seemed less and less capable of handling his own matters, and yet somehow progressively resentful as well, and I could never find a line between friend and enabler I guess, if there is one... Probably 7-8 months ago, we sat one afternoon and he told me. I know he had mentioned abuse in his family before, although I had never known it was sexual until that day, and my stomach turned. It didn't even sink in, though. He had suddenly freaked out that afternoon as we were getting into a sexual situation, not for the first time. And we were sitting, talking, when he told me. He was sure to add when he got up to leave that night that I was the "only other person besides his friend Mike," to know. And I believed him. Now I know that this was probably an attempt to lessen the impact that would have on him, and our relationship. Mike is his best male friend, and the leader of his small men's prayer group. I don't know what I thought. That he'd be angry with me for bringing it up again, or sad, maybe I figured that there was no way his dad really RAPED him, he hadn't specified that...But I was dead wrong on all accounts. So months passed. And I know that we still talked about it. He'd say things. But I just never GOT it fully... Every sexual interaction between us was impulsive. He was scary at times. I've told him that. And he feels he is truly reliving the abuse when he is intimate with me. There was a day I went to his house to deliver some job forms(He had been out of work for a few weeks due to being so sick from medication and panic attacks.) He was wrapped in a blanket, looking like hell. He was so physically needy that day, and I get the distinct feeling that he hated himself for every bit of it. For me it was because I loved him. I also wanted to love him enough not to be intimate. I kept saying to him that I was his best friend, and that's what he really needed, not a lover. But he kept telling me he wanted me, and I gave in. I feel so guilty.
I told him I was pregnant 2 weeks later, and that night he admitted himself to the psychiatric ward. Mike's wife told me that he was there. I went to him. It was the most frightening experience of my life, seeing him there. It ripped me apart. He stared blankly at me as I walked in the room, as if I had just caught him committing a crime. The doctors stood around us as I sat down across from him. No one spoke. And I just placed my hand around his on the table and bent my head down and prayed silently for him. When I looked up at him he had tears in his eyes, and he said thank you. The next two days I visited him. He began telling me scenes that were playing in his mind, of his father raping him, that he had never remembered. I told him that he should tell the doctors these things as well. He kept saying, "I'm sorry. I should've told you about me. I'm sorry that you got involved with someone like me." He said that he could not marry me, it would turn out axactly as his previous marriage had, and I assured him that it was not marriage I had come for. He said that I would do the same things to him that everyone else in his life had done, lie, and use him. I told him how much it hurt that he thought that of me, I acknowledged what they had done, and asked him to let me be the first one in his life not to. And he agreed. We agreed to speak in a month. I left him a golden cross, and a note telling him how much I loved him, and believed in him, and left him in the hospital for the next week. When I called him the next month, he had nothing to say but screaming, "I hate you." And we have not spoken since. Mike never knew that his father had abused him in that way. I was the only one he had ever told. And I have no idea what to say to him.
Do I call? Do I visit him? How? He wrote me a letter a few weeks ago, that Mike read over and refused to pass along, saying it made absolutely no sense. I don;t know what to think, because he doesn't even know what he thinks. I'm a little pregnant here, and very much at the end of my rope...
In His grip-