Importance of Healing
Hey ya'll! I've been contemplating sharing a few more experiences since my 2015 Match.com debacle and decided that the best way to figure this whole thing out is to be completely honest with myself and with you all! I often struggle with vulnerability, so this is a totally new experience for me, so pleaseee bear with me and definitely ask some questions/leave some love in the comments!
I'll pick up where the story previously left off after the craziness of the southwest road trip and how that experience impacted me and my life since then. It's important to talk about this time period of my life because looking back, I don't think I took the proper time to heal after experiencing the trauma of this situation. One of the most important things I've learned from the research with ABM is that healing is SO, SO (I really cannot stress this enough) instrumental when entering new relationships. I know now that I don't want a partner who defines himself by the shitty things that have happened in his life, why would someone want that from me? For the longest time, I thought that I WAS the experiences that happened to me, when in reality, those things were merely things I carry. I described them recently as a backpack that I wear, which, yeah I do carry that with me at times, but I can take that shit off and I'm still a really bomb ass individual who is smart, empathetic, creative, caring, loyal, and confident. No one can take that away from me. If I had taken the time to realize this after my situation in 2015, I might have saved myself from a string of shitty situations - I'm getting to that!
After the road trip from hell, I went through a sort of quarter-life crisis. I was 100% running from the situation I was just in (granted, I wassss being blackmailed and stalked, so I had pretty good reason to run & to run far! No judgements here, ever!) I quit my job in pharma, started working at party bars in another state, started drinking way too much, made extremely unnecessary, expensive purchases, and dated men that were TERRIBLE for me. I was in full on self-sabotage mode for over a year and was unable to take responsibility for any of the negative things happening in my life.
After a while, I eventually left the bars and found a more stable career, but my relationship choices were still suffering. I was terrified of dating online after my first experience, so I avoided it like the plague. I began a two year relationship with a parental seeker with someone I met at the gym that finally ended after a girls trip (which I consider a form of therapy) to Sint Marteen.
A few months later, and after talking to my mom, realizing that I had so many friends who had major success with online dating, I decided to download Hinge and give it a shot! This is when I matched with a person who later identified himself as a "Dissociative Sociopath". The beginning of the relationship was amazing, but I ignored countless red flags such as rapid comfortability (love bombing) and vagueness. He knew I had bad luck in previous relationships and used this and his friends and family to break down my walls only to rip the rug from underneath me as soon as I allowed myself to become trusting and vulnerable. He was a suicidal addict, with NPD hiding the fact that he had a child. I was distraught. I thought I loved him and wanted to help him, but realized there's no way to help someone who doesn't want help. By the time I found out about his child, he was already onto the second relationship after me and was only keeping me around as a way to feed his ego. He used online dating as a way to find his next victim, and this is another reason why ABM exists today. This story really brings everything full circle.
Hopefully, my story and the resources we aim to provide will help even one person from making the same mistakes I made. Know yourself. Know your boundaries. Don't let someone in too quickly. Take your time. Make sure you heal any past trauma before you enter relationships because unfortunately there are people out there who are looking to take advantage of that. Online dating is simply a method that enables them to do so more easily than any other. It is a pervasive tool that has grown exponentially since it got its start in 1995, but there are so many areas for improvement in the way its implemented into society. We believe closer collaboration between research and service providers is the key to creating a safer space and creating A Better Match.
