I Was Abused As A Child. How Do I Stop Letting It Affect My Love Life?

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes

Doctor’s Note:  I’ll be taking  the remainder of the year off for the Christmas holidays. The column will resume normal publication on January 1, 2025.

Hello,

Very long-time reader, first time writer. I’m writing to you because I’d like some advice about a woman I recently met. I’m currently in seeing a therapist and I’m on my way to improvement. I promise you that this is a dating question, I just think that a bit of backstory is needed.

I’m a 40 year old virgin, never been with a woman. I’ve been raised on an abusive family, with an absent father and a very angry and violent mother. Bullied heavily during elementary and mid school, by friends and my sister. Because the apple never falls too far away from its tree, despite not pursuing any act of violence, I’ve always been prone to anger and fear. Around the age of 20, I’ve met my “friends” depression and anxiety, which made me a very negative and bitter person, always very quick to snap. I’ve never searched for a relationship during my teen years.

First time I fell in love happened when I was 21 years old with a woman I met at work, let’s call her S, who asked me directly to go out with her to see a movie. I fell for her pretty hard, maybe because it was the first time that I could think of a woman as more than a mass of atoms, or maybe because she made me feel somewhat special. The date however never happened because she never came at the cinema and never answered the phone that night. I didn’t care, I asked her several times to go out again and again, she always said yes but never presents herself on the arranged time. I think there’s a name for my behaviour, but let’s not digress. In the end I found the strength to stop this “relation” and decided to leave her behind, only to receive her messages asking for a date from time to time. I always refused, and luckily, she went on another city and that chapter ended.

I’ve became very bitter and resentful with others, especially women, and never searched for a relationship. When I was younger, I wasn’t very hot, but I had my own cold-cool-bad-boy style that made some heads turn (I didn’t do it on purpose though, it was just my normal self). Some girls tried to approach me on several occasions, some were more insisting than others, especially when we were forced to be on the same space for several time, such as university class or workplaces. And, thanks to my past experiences, I’ve trapped myself in an idea that all woman only wants to hurt me, or simply search something that a broken man like me didn’t have. With this, I also became obsessed with the idea of love but was too afraid to search. And when a woman tried to approach me, I simply froze. And when that woman stopped searching for me, I took it as a serious offence and became angry, believing that she only wanted to make fun of me, hurt my pride and so on. When I couldn’t contain my anger, I became able to hurt others. I’ve never used physical violence, but I learned how to feel bad a person even without raising a hand by my mother (a grotesque example: when I said that I wanted to go live by myself, my mom didn’t spoke to me for several months, without picking the phone calls or even answering to a simple “hello”). Simply, I became a monster that hurt a lot of women.

The story could go on for several pages, so I’ll quit here. I’ll just add that a few years ago, another coworker tried her luck with me, but my anxiety was so bad that all I could see was white, while I froze, and was unable to even think. I had panic attacks and anxiety levels that couldn’t made me sleep. I remained awaken for 22 days straight with a very fast heart rate. At first, I was able to live in this state, but after a couple of weeks my body couldn’t resist anymore, so I decided to seek help.

As I said, I’m on my way to improving myself, I’ve let most of the anger goes away and changed a bit my style. I feel more comfortable with being a warm person (well, I’m trying), in contrast of the cold-cool-bad-boy vibe I had before, been on a diet, lost a bit of weight, someone might say “the usual routine”. And this is where I’m asking for a dating advice. One of my passions is photography, but never had a specific training. So, I decided to enroll in a beginner course just to polish my skill and, to be frank, to meet other women. I’ve met one that I liked that I could talk freely, let’s call her A. To be fair, she is the first bond with a woman that I created myself, in the past was the other gender to reach out for me.

The first time we spoke I immediately thought that she could be interested in me. She was smiling in a very peculiar way, not using just the lips but her eyes too. She was tilting her head, with her hands behind her back. I tried to control my body language, by keeping my torso opened, with knees and face toward her (at least, this is what I learn from your column). I was struggling with my fear of women, so I politely searched for a way out during the conversation several times, only to be pulled in again by her requests and comments. I still don’t know how, I had a 30 minutes conversation with a person that I didn’t know while keeping in check my anxiety. It was amazing. We had another brief conversation the following week, where my fear made me flee, and I disengaged from the conversation in a polite way. A few days ago, we had a photographic training session outside the studio with the coach ad we exchanged tips here and there on the assigned tasks. She wasn’t feeling very well, sometimes she would sit or just bend on her knees while the coach was explaining the next task. I asked her if she was all right, and she told me smiling that she simply had a stomachache. I thought it could be her period, but didn’t want to pry. I just asked if I could help her by holding her camera or her bag, but she refused. I thought I could be seen too creepy, so I gave her distance. The problem was that, a few minutes later, the coach proposed a few more task, one of which required to create a team of 2 and make a portrait with a blurry background. So, I immediately reached her to say “Hey, you have to be my model.”. She immediately said yes smiling and warned another dude in our class that she had to leave him to perform the task with me. We took pictures of each other, and I also said that I wanted one of her pictures for my Facebook profile.

After that, we sit on a bench waiting for the others to finish their task. We talked a bit, she asked me about my job, I’ve learned that she is still attending university (suggesting me that maybe there could be a 10-year gap between us), our passion for photography and some minor stuff. At the end, I was tempted to accompany her at the station but decided to not be too creepy on her, considering that she could have been on her period. So, we departed ways with a smile. It was the first time I was so open with a girl, even surprised that I could ask her to team up with me. So, I decided that it could have been nice to know her more. I texted her privately to give her the pictures I took of her, she made the same. There was no need for that as we have a Facebook group where we share our pictures so that the coach could evaluate them, but she replied to me anyway. I decided to ask her out the next lessons if she gave me some sort of sign. She arrived a bit late, and we couldn’t talk, but she greeted me with a big smile and a stare that, actually, took a bit too long to be normal. So, I waited her outside at the end, asked to make a few steps together and while walking, I asked if she wanted to do the next homework together. She told me that she was struggling in finding free time, and begun stumbling in her words, so I just smiled to her saying “That’s ok, I won’t insist.”. I believe she rejected me. In the end she greeted me with a sorry smile and a pat on my forearm.

After all that happened, I was happy anyway. I simply regained something what S. stole from me only to throw away 19 years ago. Now, despite the fact that both me and my therapist believe that this is a huge improvement overall, 2 questions remain. The first is: where did I go wrong? I believe the signs were all there, she accepted to be in team with me by leaving another person, she replied to me in a private form without reminding me that there is a public space, the body language was coherent. So why she didn’t accept to go out with me? I’m scratching my head all around, but I don’t understand. I’ve been thinking about flirting. I’ve never actually tried to flirt with a woman and this time made no exception. There were no physical contacts at all between us except for a handshake. The problem is that I want to know better this person before starting a step like this and… I don’t know, should I have been flirting since the beginning? I know very little of this girl, except that I like her and is very easy to talk with. Can I hold the right to know a person better before I make my move? I don’t know how this world works so I’m very confused.

The second question is: how should I approach her from now on? (in the hope that you could answer this letter in a reasonable time). I believe that the right thing to do is to keep talking to her like this has never happened, as a form of respect and to prove that I do not see her as just a cute body. But what if she freaks out? What if I won’t be able function in a normal way? What if my anger suddenly comes back? Giving my personal background, wouldn’t be better if I just say “Hi” and nothing more from now on? Shouldn’t this the safer route FOR HER? I just don’t want to hurt her, that’s all.

It would be a shame to lose her, the course is almost over and there is no other common space between us, so it’s a soon-to-be-goodbye.

I apologize if my writing appears rough, English is not my main language.

Thank you!

Stray Cat Attachment Style

Hoo boy, there is a lot going on here, SCS, and I think we need to talk a lot less about how to handle things and more about whether you’re ready to date. As I’ve often said: you don’t need to be perfect or flawless to date, but you do want to be in good working order. To be sure: I don’t think you’re broken or deficient, but I suspect that you’re still carrying around a lot of anxiety and hurt from the abuse you’ve endured, and I think that may be causing you problems in ways that you aren’t consciously aware of.

So let’s address the obvious right from the start: you have been through a lot. Growing up with a persistently abusive family – even if they weren’t physically abusive – is going to leave you with scars and a whole lot of patterns and behaviors that you’re going to have to unlearn. This isn’t a surprise, nor is it necessarily a bad thing; a lot of what you experienced and dealt with growing up were the ways you had been primed to expect from, well… everyone. After years of mistreatment at the hands of people who were supposed to love and care for you, it’s hardly surprising that you’re quick to recoil and quick to assume the worst about people.

At the risk of sounding dismissive or flippant, you’re a lot like a feral cat; you may want love and affection and the security of someone who cares for you, but you’re so used to having been hurt or chased off that you don’t know how to receive it. You’re raising your metaphorical hackles at everyone who reaches for you in no small part because… well, every other time someone extended a hand out to you, it was to smack you with the other. Now you flinch and recoil and lash out, even from the gentlest offers because it’s what you’ve been trained to expect. Even years down the line, after you’ve left that abusive situation, you’re still dealing with the aftereffects because our brains want to keep us safe; happiness isn’t really a consideration.

And – again, it’s an inelegant but apt metaphor – like a feral cat, it takes time and careful handling to build up that ability to trust and to not automatically assume that people are just trying to trick you and to hurt you.

The irony is, if it hadn’t been for the abuse you suffered, a lot of the situations you mention in your past wouldn’t be as much of an issue. The mix of desiring love and affection, while also being so on guard for the slightest hint of betrayal has left you in an odd position where mistreatment often feels more “hopeful”, while people who are trying to reach out to you in good faith feel like they’re trying to deceive you. For example, if you hadn’t gone through the misery of your childhood, you wouldn’t have gone through so many rounds with the coworker who kept asking you out and then ghosting you. You likely would’ve recognized that situation for what it was – she had her own unaddressed issues – and had better tools for managing how to respond than to try again over and over. But since you grew up basically hoping for someone to extend love to you – and likely with a pattern of “I have to do this particular dance to get care and attention and if I don’t do it perfectly, I get punished” – you get stuck in a pattern of trying to find the exact right method of getting her attention and keeping it.

Thankfully you were able to recognize this was a bad scene and dipped but man, it would’ve been nice if you could’ve caught on that much sooner.

The same goes for that sense of desperately longing for love and then becoming angry and resentful when you didn’t get it. Again, this is something that had been drilled into you; you have something that you crave, even need, that’s been denied to you from people whose job it was to love you and what you did get came from the same hand that smacked you for asking in the first place. The same applies to your behavior – you were taught that this is how you respond to people when they upset you.

I am wondering whether your self-labeling as “I became a monster” is accurate or not. You don’t provide many details and the behavior you mention as an example – your mother doing a month’s long freeze-out – while hurtful, is not something I would classify as making you a monster. This sounds like you were giving the cold shoulder to people who rejected you. That’s manipulative and can be painful to others, but it’s hardly “I am not fit to exist around people” territory either. This is especially true if this was either the extent of your behavior and with people who you basically had no real relationship with in the first place. Shunning relative strangers tends to get seen as being unfriendly or closed off, not monstrous.

Unless there’s something worse that you haven’t shared, which is certainly possible, it’s the sort of thing that makes me wonder if the “I became a monster” talk is more about how you were taught to see yourself by your abusers. God knows plenty of children of abusive parents still carry the unfounded belief that they have some flaw in them (or developed one) that “justified” their abuse; after all, if family are supposed to love you and care for you and they treat you like this, it can feel “logical” to believe the fault exists in you. It takes very little to extrapolate that into “I am the worst” going forward.

Of course, there’s also the fact that some victims of abuse end up passing on the abuse as well; if that’s the case, then I hope that’s been a large part of what you’ve been working on with your therapist and you’ve been looking for ways to make amends (in ways that don’t make things worse for people you may have hurt).

I feel like it’s important to bring all of this up, because it’s directly affecting how you’re approaching things with your classmate. You know how I’m frequently telling men that they’re overestimating people’s interest or confusing friendliness with flirting? I think you’ve actually gone in the opposite direction: I think you’re assuming rejection where there isn’t any, because you have a hard time believing that people like you. As a result, you have a tendency to think that everything is a sign of rejection.

Here’s the thing: the behavior you describe is pretty congruent with someone who likes you. It may not necessarily be romantic interest, but she definitely seems to enjoy your company, your conversation and spending time with you. She’s gone out of her way to spend time with you, to choose to work with you, specifically, on a class project and to just hang out and talk. All of these are positive signs. The closest we have to the negative is that she turned down an invite to study together because, according to her, she is struggling to find the free time. Considering that she seems to be in her late 20s-to-early-30s and she’s a university student, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that this is the unvarnished truth. Depending on circumstances, she may be a full-time student with a heavy courseload or a part-time student who is also working a job (or possibly several) in order to support herself. It would make sense that time is at a premium right now. Her stumbling over her words could easily be her trying to make it clear that she wasn’t saying “no” or that she wasn’t interested; if you were convinced that you were already being rejected, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had stopped paying as close attention or weren’t necessarily hearing what she was saying.

So, for once, I think we have an honest-to-goodness case where you’re giving up too easily instead of trying to water a dead plant. I think this is circumstance where your history of abuse has lead you to assume rejection where there isn’t any and to respond to assumptions rather than seek clarification. You could, for example, have offered to walk her to the station. You’ve already demonstrated you have no problem taking a “no thank you” with good grace, so if she had turned you down, I don’t think you would’ve had an issue.

So I don’t think you’ve really done anything wrong. I think that at worst, she likes you as a classmate and acquaintance, and you are having a hard time accepting that someone might not reject you. I think you may be missing opportunities to follow up or reach out, but I don’t think you’ve made mistakes that would cause her to not like you.

For your second question: well, like I said, first I think you’re assuming rejection and dislike where there isn’t any. Even if she’s turning you down for a potential date, that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t like you as a person or that there couldn’t be a friendship there. I think you absolutely should continue talking with her and being friendly with her. I think it also wouldn’t be amiss if you were to invite her to get coffee, go see an art exhibition or other event. I think you would feel a bit better to invite the “no” if you do ask her out – that is, say, “hey, I’m going to $COOL_EVENT this weekend and I think you’d enjoy it. If you’re not interested, it’s totally fine, but I think it would be fun to go together.”

First, you’re inviting her to a specific event, at a specific time and place; this gives her something to say “yes” or “no” to, instead of a more nebulous “get together sometime”.

Second, by inviting the “no”, you’re making it clear that you’re giving her room to decide what level of interest she’s feeling – if she’s feeling like you might be a potential friend, whether she’s interested in a date or if you’re a classmate but that’s all. It also shows her that you’re not going to get weird if she’s not interested; making it clear that you’re ok with a direct “no, thank you” makes it much less stressful for her, especially if she’s worried that you might misunderstand or take things badly.

Now all that being said: I think you may feel a little more comfortable doing so if you think of it as inviting a friend to do something rather than a date. This is the first time in a while that you’ve felt something akin to reciprocated interest, and it’s understandable that you’re worried that you may overreact or respond badly. You’ve got that history after all, and being worried that your anger might come back is reasonable. It seems unlikely, but it’s not an unfounded fear. This is why I think taking things at a measured pace and assuming friendship for a bit might help you. This takes the pressure off of you to figure out how to make this into a relationship or how to make a relationship work while you’re still addressing a lot of the damage that your abusers have done to you. Everything feels simpler and easier to process when the stakes don’t feel quite so high. Not pressuring yourself or second-guessing everything will free up your emotional and mental bandwidth and give you more of a chance to just get to know this person. After all, you’re classmates, but you still barely know one another.

I would also suggest that you don’t need to assume that the end of the class is the end of ever seeing her or talking to her again. It is entirely normal to keep in touch with people you met in a class like this. Just saying “hey, I’ve really enjoyed being in class with you and I’d like to stay in touch” is really all you need to do. She already seems comfortable talking with you over private messages; this would just be continuing that past the end of the course.

I think you’re still dealing with a lot of scars and negative patterns from the abuse and it’s fucking with your head. You may not necessarily be at a place where you’re ready to date or feeling secure enough… but I think you’re definitely getting there. You’ve come a long way, and you should be proud of the effort it’s taken and what you’ve accomplished. Give yourself more credit for how much progress you’ve made and how much healing you’ve done and don’t be so afraid to accept that people can and will like you. You’re allowed to reach out, to not give up at the first sign of resistance and to believe that people genuinely like you.

You’ll be ok. I promise.

All will be well.