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CarlaMaria7
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Member Since: Jun 2019
Location: England
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Trig Jun 30, 2019 at 04:05 PM
  #1
Hi everyone,

This is gonna be a long post -

I’ve run out of places to turn for advice and support, so I’ve ended up here.

I’m in an awful, dark place at the moment because a few months ago I had to leave my job, which I absolutely loved, due to being abused by a colleague and disbelieved, deliberately mistreated by managers and other staff.

I got into a relationship with an older male colleague last summer, who on the surface was the kindest, most loving person you could ever meet. He had his own place and I was having trouble with my housing situation, so at first he was letting me stay at his and then he became very flirty etc, one thing led to another and we started seeing each other. He took me places, bought me things, he stayed with me at my parents house, met my friends etc and everyone including me was like wow, what a wonderful guy! I felt so happy at first.

I have BPD/c-ptsd and am very sensitive, I was going through a low and was very lonely so it I felt very lucky to be with this person. I felt recovered and that I was finally getting my life on track.

He was very keen on us keeping the relationship secret from work, I agreed to this thinking it was just that he didn’t want things to be awkward there. Leaving personal lives outside work etc.

Things started to get uneasy however, he kept telling me other colleagues were sending messages about me or disliked me, my boss was putting on a lot of pressure at the time as well and my ex was acting like a bit of a go between, but he would tell me things like my boss would fire me, said I was unreliable etc etc. At the time I believed my ex, but whenever I spoke to the manager or other people they would say they didn’t understand why J would say those things. (I’ll call him J - my ex).

I was feeling more and more isolated in work but I loved my job itself so I kept at it. However I kept becoming more and more scared of being fired, and around this time J started pressuring me to do sexual things with him in work. He also started saying things like “I think I’m a sex addict” and “you don’t want to see me when I lose my temper”. It got to a point where he would just turn up to somewhere I was working, and expect me to have sex with him in the toilet or the car park, wherever. I didn’t like this and was uncomfortable, but I didn’t tell anyone what was happening because my boss already knew I had mental health issues, and I was scared of looking “crazy” - even I was doubting myself, because my ex was the typical “nice” guy on the surface - how would anyone believe me if I didn’t even believe myself? I wouldn’t have been able to prove I didn’t want the sexual contact, so I stayed silent and to this day it’s one of my biggest regrets.

He clearly has problems that are showing by now, but I’m too wrapped up in it - I was in love with him, dependant on him, and almost felt sorry for him. He told me all about how awful his “crazy alcoholic” ex was and how he’d “saved” his kids from her. He would tell me he thought he had a sex addiction and was sorry if he ever went “too far”. He also told me that he’d learned one of his neighbours’ routines and watched her in the shower with a telescope to **** off to, and that he’d done something really inappropriate in a clients house while working as a support worker. I was scared and horrified but I stuck by him - at this point me, BPD (he knew all about my illness and played on it), ptsd, a stupid idiot really - I felt powerless.

Fast forward a couple of months and I’m ragged, crying all the time, isolated from my friends and colleagues, and I find out I’m pregnant. Any niceness in him vanished - his response was something like “I’ll support you if you have it but actually I feel too low and I might end my life if you have this baby”. I was devastated but felt so under his control by now, he felt the keys to my job, my life - he was my life now - so I had no choice.

Possible trigger:


He made no attempts to hide his real self from me then , and gaps started to show in his stories about his “ex” and other women - there were prostitutes he’d been contacting and blatantly showing me on his phone, and I started to wonder whether his ex was really an ex at all as he seemed to be spending time with her again - if I ever asked he just told me it was “in my head” “it’s your BPD” and that I was “making him out to be a monster”.

Meanwhile I tried to go back to work. People were hostile to me now thanks to J and his campaign of isolation and misinformation. He told our manager what had happened as our manager was wondering what was causing the atmosphere. J told him I was the cause of it, J told other colleagues I hated them, that I was crazy, that it was all my fault. My manager banned me from the office as he was J’s friend.

Over the next few weeks I had to endure a disciplinary hearing, bullying, abuse, and by now I had started to try and speak up but everywhere I turned I was blocked. I started to talk about J to my manager, who said “I won’t hear anything about him” and shut me down. J was still trying to pressure me into sex.

I finally left my job when J was nearly promoted, but I was, and am, destroyed. I lost the job I loved with colleagues I once loved too. It was a big deal for me to even be working and stable, and happy - I had been in and out of therapy a few years beforehand, on the brink of suicide, not able to live with BPD and being “dramatic” - but this made me vulnerable and this time, when “dramatic” things were actually happening - not exaggerated - I couldn’t speak up. My abuser and managers used my mental health as an excuse to get away with everything.

After leaving my job I was incredibly unstable and unwell again, so a massive BPD relapse followed. So I was constantly calling and texting J, desperate for support. I went back to work to hand in some old documents and J called the police. It turns out he accused me of harassment, and I worry I now have a record - the police believed him over me when I tried to explain the real truth - he lied and made a false report, including the nature of our relationship and the abortion. He lied and lied to them and they bought every word about how I was just making the whole thing up and I was a “crazy stalker”. But this now means I may never be able to work in what I loved again and that devastates me.

The last straw - I went to his house. His “ex” answered the door. At first she was sympathetic to me in my pathetic state, saying “I’m sorry about what happened to you, you need to get some help”. I explained all of the above - she threatened to do away with me at first - then proceeded to tell me he’d been sleeping with her on and off for the last two years and he’d even moved back in with her while he was with me. While keeping the other house. He had somehow managed to lead a complete double life and suddenly all the isolation from colleagues and the secrecy, the abuse, the grooming all made sense. She told me about his mental health issues and that he’d been putting her through hell too.

So here I am, two suicide attempts and a possible police record later, very unwell, jobless, friendless, soon to be homeless, alone and abused. With no justice. I tried to complain to the charity (yes, CHARITY) I was working at - the ceo LAUGHED at me. When I tried to go to the police they said I was “too unstable” to make a report.

I was made to feel like everything was my fault the whole way through.

If anyone has any advice, kind words or just anything at all to say, then please do. I feel like I can’t cope anymore, and why should I, for being so stupid.

Last edited by bluekoi; Jun 30, 2019 at 07:46 PM.. Reason: Add triggger icon. Apply trigger code.
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Smile Jul 01, 2019 at 02:39 PM
  #2
Hello CarlaMaria: Thank you fir sharing this dreadful experience. I'm sorry you have had to endure such terrible treatment. I see this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to Psych Central.

I'm afraid there's not much I can offer in terms of advice. Hopefully there will be other members, here on PC, who will have insights and / or suggestions they can share. I see you list yourself as living in England. I know we have quite a number of members here from the U.K. One additional forum, here on PC, that may be of interest to you would be the Women-Focused Support forum. Here's a link:

https://psychcentralforums.com/women-focused-support/

And then here are links to some articles, from Psych Central's archives, that (hopefully) may be of some help:

7 Steps of Healing from Domestic Violence | The Exhausted Woman

Recovering from Abuse: Collecting Pebbles

How to Heal After an Abusive Relationship

How to Heal (Hesitantly) From Narcissistic Abuse | Liberation after Narcissistic Abuse

https://psychcentral.com/sexual-abuse/

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

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"I may be older but I am not wise / I'm still a child's grown-up disguise / and I never can tell you what you want to know / You will find out as you go." (from: "A Nightengale's Lullaby" - Julie Last)
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nicoleflynn
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Default Jul 01, 2019 at 02:45 PM
  #3
You were not stupid.....you were trusting; can you afford to see a therapist? NONE of the terrible things he said and did to you were your fault; he CHOSE his behavior....abusive....and using emotional blackmail (re killing himself).
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