Terrified Partner Will Leave After Abusive Relationship

Things ended pretty brutally with a 3+ year partner I was very very close to last autumn. He had abused me (sexual violence), I was in denial for 6 months before everything surfaced. At first we talked about it (not irl though), trying to salvage what was left of our friendship, he felt awful... but quickly got annoyed with me for needing time to process and simply disappeared with a very very harsh horrible text. The whole thing messed me up real bad. My other partner was working overseas at the time, and we were making the long-distance thing work.

But since he came back I am just swamped in post-traumatic anxiety (my psychiatrist's words) and keep being terrified of him disappearing all of a sudden. I have always been an anxious person, but now I can't shake the feeling that there's something I am not seeing, that at any moment he will just decide to leave even though he keeps telling me that's not gonna happen.

I am very aware of my (for now feeble) attempts at sabotaging the relationship to try and regain some sense of control, but I really do not want to end things, nor push him to leave. Do you have any advice? Cause anxiety meds and time are the only solutions I can imagine right now.

This might seem antithetical, but this is actually the best advice I have given myself when it comes to this fear.

You can't control whether or not someone decides to leave you or not. If your goal is to regain a sense of control over that, you will forever be flailing to find it because you simply can't control another grown adult and what they decide to do with their life or their actions.

You also can't control whether or not someone becomes abusive or harmful towards you. And if your goal is to try to control that, you will also be flailing forever. But it makes total sense that your brain is doing everything it can to protect yourself.

While you don't talk about your own personal history, a lot of people learn early in childhood in relationships with their caregivers to adapt to the fear of losing that caregiver they need to survive, by believing that they can control what that caregiver does through their own actions.

A lot of abusive people will reinforce this idea by literally blaming you for their own behaviours. During periods of distress, believing this makes you feel more empowered than abuse or neglect does. Thinking that we have the power to change things about a situation we can't escape feels so much better and is a lot easier to cope with.

But when we're not in these situations anymore, this belief is maladaptive and also comes back to bite us. You can't believe that you have the power to make your current partner stay without also believing that you had the power to make the abusive partner leave. The abuse you went through was absolutely not your fault.

The fact that you were in denial of it for so long gives me the feeling that there is an aspect of this that you are still blaming yourself sub-consciously for. This belief also tells us that we're not capable of handling the loss of the person we're afraid of losing. Whenever we give in to this anxiety, we reaffirm the idea that we need to control the situation because we can't handle it otherwise.

Furthermore, whenever your partner reaffirms to you that he won't leave, it may remind you sub-consciously of all of those times your ex said things that later on did not match his actions or said he cared about you while also doing things that hurt you.

The fact that your ex also apologised for what he did, attempted to make things right and then suddenly cut things off is a clear example your brain absolutely knows of a time when someone has said for sure they will not leave... and then has. You can't blame your brain for relying on the information it's been given.

Of course, you can sit in discomfort and see your partner coming back again and again. That will probably help. But I think what actually works best is short circuiting this thought process by telling your brain the truth.

When you're terrified that someone will leave you or someone might hurt you, instead of giving into that fear, you can say, "Hey, I know you're really scared. It's a scary thing that this could happen to us again. And it makes sense that you're scared. You're looking for things because you want to protect me and I love you for that. But I want you to know that no matter what happens, I'll be there for you. We will be able to get through anything that comes our way. You don't have to control everything. You can rest now. We've got this."

The reassurance you are getting from your partner is the reassurance you need from yourself, because you are the only person you can control. You will always be there for yourself. You will always be able to take care of yourself. You will always be able to look out for yourself. There might be times that people mistreat you and it might be hard for you to see, but you will be able to ask for help from the people you need help from.

You will figure it out. Rebuilding that trust with yourself might take some time, but it is something that you will be able to do. Your anxiety has always been there to help protect you. You're always looking out for yourself. But you absolutely do have the tools to be able to cope with situations that you confront. And you also have the ability to reach out for help if you're struggling, just like you're doing now.

If you can approach your anxiety as the inner child in yourself trying to protect you instead of an enemy or a self-saboteur, that can be immensely helpful. If you only give it temporary comfort through seeing this partner come back to you and be true to his word, it will only be a temporary fix and the rest of the anxiety you have about the situation can remain.

It's definitely not going to happen overnight and it will involve sitting in discomfort. Anxiety will crop up every now and then because it's trying to help you. But if you can counteract it in a different way, you might find that helpful. I would also check out my episode on Childhood Trauma and Polyamory which may be immensely useful.

I hope this helps and good luck.