A fresh start and new beginnings ✨️

I've spent years working through all of my trauma and struggling to understand why horrible things kept happening to me in relationships. I'm finally at the point where I've realized I seek people out that remind me of my dysfunctional, avoidant, and emotionally abusive father. That's part of how the trauma cycle works. I've been married 3 times now and each time, even if it takes years to uncover, they end up acting exactly how my dad did towards me as a kid. In the past, I would've stayed but this time around, I'm making different choices and hoping I'll make it out to the other side. He is not aware that any of this is happening. He thinks it's business as usual because I realized the other night in an argument that if he thinks I'm going to be leaving him soon, it might get dangerous so I've gotta play secret agent and disappear from him and our condo when he'll least expect it.

Healing is so important and if there's anything I wished I'd done differently, it would be to start this trauma work sooner. I can see how things will progress in the future if I stay here. He already promises the world after fights but he never apologizes for anything I care about, yet thinks him apologizing for other, not important stuff, cancels it out.

I'm really not looking forward to spending the next few months living with this man but it's much safer and will be much less stressful than trying to leave right now - with no place to go and no resources to draw from.

I really tried so hard to fall in love with someone who wouldn't eventually hurt me in a bad way and I keep failing, so maybe it's time to just have a lot of cool friends only.

Also, I want to point out that IF he knows I'm leaving ahead of time and I have to still live here for a while first - he is threatening a bunch of things like suicide and to legally enforce a bunch of bills that we agreed he'd always pay, and in essence will just try to make my life harder and use my love for him against me. I hope I can pull this off.

My plan is to pare down my belongings to the bare minimum, save a bunch of money [money I'd still have if we'd never been married] and then rode off into the sunset and try to be happy.

I have no idea what is going to happen. I'm looking forward to this all being in the past, honestly. I'm really ready to try happiness for a while. ✨️