Last night I broke down crying in the kitchen over honey mustard.
My husband and I had gotten home from the store and was making dinner. While we were at the store, he wanted to pick up some honey mustard and I said I was pretty sure we had some at home.
When he went looking for it in the pantry, he couldn’t find it so I went to look for it. I couldn’t find it either so I came out all upset (because I was sure I had seen it and thought I was losing my mind) and told him and he said it was fine. I went back in there searching over and over. When I came back out he had already taken his food and left the kitchen. I immediately started crying.
You see I had previously spent 6 years in an emotionally abusive relationship. My brain immediately jumped to ‘he’s mad at me’. That’s what would have happened in my past relationship. I would have been “punished” for it. He would have yelled at me, probably made me go back to the store at 8pm to get it and would have held it against me for days, gaslighting me and not letting me sleep until I made up for it somehow.
Even though my mind had forgotten the abuse, my body recognized the situation and I had such a visceral breakdown in the kitchen while my husband was non the wiser.
Mentally I knew that he didn’t care about it and it wouldn’t be a big deal at all. My husband never sweats the small stuff and something like this wouldn’t even be a mild annoyance, merely an ‘OK we’ll get it next time’. But my body was convinced I was back in that emotionally abusive hell scape. I was shaking and could not stop crying.
It’s been 7 years since I got out of that relationship. In that time i moved on, found a great man and got married and adopted 2 cats. Life is great. I thought I was over it and that the trauma was behind me. People always talk about physical abuse, but emotional abuse stays in your body as well.
My very confused husband found me crying shortly after and held me while I explained that it wasn’t about the honey mustard.
Comments
I’m glad your husband is supportive of you. And I am bummed for you that your former partner was destructive and abusive.
You deserved to move on and find a healthy love. And you DID!
Enjoy the good thing you have now. Mourn the damage that was done to you, and remind yourself that you’re safe now.
Then feel the happiness and gratitude for how far you’ve come, and how much better your life is nowadays.
Best wishes to you for continued health and happiness.
I’ve been out of my abusive 12 year marriage for 5 years. For 4 of those years I have been in an incredibly loving relationship with the most non toxic man who absolutely adores me and is rarely ever upset with me.
I can still feel the slightest shift in moods and energy. I still default to “what did I do wrong” and “I fucked up.”
It’s better now with therapy and my guys support, sure. But it still makes me so angry that I am still so quick to label myself a problem.
Hugs
Absolutely. I had this reaction when I accidentally broke a glass and my husband just went to get the broom and said he’d clean it up.
I’m sorry that you are still experiencing that type of PTSD. However if you’re ever in that situation again, you can just mix mustard and honey up to your preferred sweetness
I’m sorry you experienced that, this sounds like PTSD. I highly recommend going to therapy and trying to work through those feelings if you can. When I was able to go, it helped me immensely- but it is definitely not an easy or fun process and everyone responds differently. Please be gentle on yourself 💛
I don’t have tons to add, but just. I’m sending you so much love, OP. I’m so proud of you. Getting out isn’t easy, healing from stuff like that isn’t easy, but you’re doing it anyway ♥️♥️ You just keep taking care of yourself. You’ve got this🤗
Hugs. I feel this in my bones. I’m proud of you for recognizing what is actually wrong and processing it.
It’s ok to break down, our bodies remember things we don’t. I was in your shoes. Spent 2 years in an emotionally abusive marriage, and remarried 5 years after that. I spent so long expecting my husband to react the way shithead would, walking on eggshells when I didn’t have to. We went to marriage counseling together, and learned that we were both a little broken and expecting each other to react the ways our exes would, and we got much better at communicating. We’re celebrating 22 years married, and just keep getting closer. Please give yourself some grace, and some space, and hug your husband and don’t forget to let him know what’s going on with you.
Trauma and PTSD are live in your body on a cellular level, even changing gene expression (certain autoimmune diseases are actually triggered by stress on the body), and creating new neural pathways. If you haven’t given therapy a try, I highly recommend it.
Hugs, friend ❤️
PTSD is no joke. One thing that has helped me, is recognizing that this is my body trying to protect me – because in that same situation, I might be literally killed for it (something I only learned was a genuine risk many years later). Seeing the inner freak out as a well meaning if misguided form of care and protection helped me a lot – the self compassion is very necessary to heal.
My boyfriend told me about something similar. He was making us dinner. And he got upset that he forgot to marinate the chicken. He had therapy later that week and realized he felt something similar to you.
Took me ages to feel entirely safe with my husband. Thanks, abusive exes!
Oh honey *hugs*. Glad you’re safe and properly loved now. Alas, even though we have healed, those scars never completely go away.
<sharing my own story as a way of empathising>
A long time ago, shortly after I had married current husband, we had gotten home from a romantic weekend getaway in the city. It was about 11pm and as we were going to be bed he realised that he’d left his phone charger in the hotel. I immediately grabbed the car keys to do the 90km drive back to the hotel because in the previous relationship that was going to be an explosion because he would’ve blamed me for not checking he had everything and would have insisted I fix my “stupidity” straight away. <I now roll my eyes that somehow I was responsible for another grown arse fully competent adult>. As I got into the car, hubby opened the car door and YELLED at me to get back inside. That’s when I absolutely lost it. Crying, shrieking, hysterical shaking. I was an absolute mess, because again, in a previous life, the GET BACK INSIDE was a beating before then having to correct “stupidity”. What hubby was actually yelling, but I couldn’t hear him through my trauma, was that it was *ridiculous* for *me* to drive the 4 hour round trip to get a $15 phone charger that *he* had forgotten, he absolutely wasn’t going to let me drive a four hour round trip at 11pm just for a stupid $15 phone charger (especially since we have a plethora of spares at home) and that I needed to come back inside, not worry about it, and go to bed.
Once he realised that I as absolutely not OK, he got in the car too and just sat there with me. After a while, he grabbed my hand and held it, letting me know he was there, and we were going to be OK. After some more time, he said that if I was going to spend the night in the car, then so was he, no question.
He has never, ever raised his voice around me again, not even in fun, because he *knows* what happens to me if he does.
The sound of a man’s voice bellowing in anger still freaks me out all these decades later. I can usually calm myself down quickly and not lose it, but sometimes it catches me out and I start to shake.
I’m so glad you got out of that relationship. I can absolutely relate. Side note – mayo plus Dijon mustard and honey = amazing homemade honey mustard. You’ll never buy it store-bought again.
“The Body Keeps the Score”, by Bessel Van der Kolk.
I haven’t read this book in its entirety but since reading your post, maybe I should. It’s about healing from trauma- emotional, physical, everything. Hugs to you, sister.
Totally feel this post. Thank you.
If you have honey and mustard you can make your own just as an fyi
I know this feeling all too well and it’s so nice to go from that hellscape to a safe partnership with a loving person
You are definitely not alone, as other commenters have already said! I’m 5 years out of an emotionally abusive relationship and I have similar things and feelings come up too. Most of the time it’s just a passing comment to my wife of “oh, this would have previously gotten me in ‘trouble’” and other times it hits harder, like it did for you. I recently found out my ex girlfriend passed away about a year ago, and am working through how weird I feel for feeling so relieved when I learned that.
So proud of you for being able to understand what’s going on and explaining it to him. That’s not always easy in such a situation.
I’ve never been in this kind of abusive relationship and I’m so sorry you had to experience that. But I have been in a situation that caused the same kind of response.
I think people severely underestimate the lasting effects these experiences have on you. It’s not just about living through a bad experience, it changes your brain, it rewires your instinctive reactions, and it’s not anywhere near as easy to change them back.
It’s so emotionally draining to live your life on high alert, to be constantly monitoring your surroundings for an indication that something is not quite right. And you can go for months or even years without a (legitimately) triggering event occurring, but anything that even remotely resembles a trigger can still cause those same reactions within you and your body and brain instinctively respond.
I’m so glad that you have found a supportive and loving husband to move forward with. Take care of yourself as best you can. ❤️
I spent 30 years in a marriage with a compulsive liar who had no emotional regulation and blamed me for everything. He’s dead five years now.
I am in a relationship with an absolute gem who’s one of the most emotionally mature and self-secure people I’ve ever met. Four years, we have never fought or had a real disagreement. He’s amazing and I’ve never been happier with a relationship.
I still have the same trauma responses and probably always will. I just have to deal with them and I’ve learned to put them aside instead of between us. They’re not about him at all.
I hope you find peace and I’m glad you are happy.
I had a milder reaction to spilling a glass of water at my grandma’s house. I started to freak out, and she was weirded out by it. “Heck , I needed to wash that counter anyway. It’s just water.”
With my folks, it would have been a whole deal. Getting huffy, shouting, calling me clumsy, not paying attention, etc. Any time I break or spill something, I get anxious.
The logical mind can work through it. The body, though, always remembers.
It’s nearing the 4 years “free of him” anniversary for me and I am glad to hear that I am not alone with this. That others know how I feel. I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody to experience an (emotionally) abusive relationship but on a very selfish level – it feels so good to know that I am not alone/crazy.
He weaponised the word “crazy” against me. I was crazy and emotional and loud. He was rational and acted only on logic. I was the crazy one.
That little bitch was throwing toddler tantrums on the regular because of video games. He lives only a couple streets away (small town) and I swear I heard his “my game sucks! It’s not my fault the game cheats!” – shriek the other day.
I had to leave while he was at work and only told him after my most important/precious things and I were safe that I was leaving him. I hadn’t slept close to 6 hours a night in months. I slept 8 the following night.
Others already claimed to have found the perfect man after their shitty relationships but I am sorry to tell you: I got the perfect man. He cooks, does the shopping, folds the laundry, learned to crochet with me and in a recent adventure helped me restore a table I fell in love with.
To anyone who needs to hear it: leave. It is not worth your sanity. Your lost money and time will never be worth staying there. It will not get better. It will get worse and you don’t want to become a statistic of dv victims ultimately murdered by their partner.
I grew up in an abusive family, and even 25 years after the last time I was beaten over something I still have that same response sometimes. It’s really tough to get past that deeply ingrained reaction. I’m glad you’ve got good people to support you now.
Hugs to you. Your post left a shiver down my spine, it’s so familiar I could have written something similar.
I’m not sure if anyone has suggested this yet, but perhaps you should read the book The Body Keeps The Score.
The book did wonders for me and changed my perspective on how I respond to situations. Made me change my perspective.
I hope you can find your way through this struggle.
Goodness this is all too real and I feel I could have written something very similar. I’m in a great relationship now with a wonderful and safe person; but occasionally I have to “mind the gap” between what I still perceive as a trigger and the actuality of what’s happening.
Some triggers I’ve noted are: a glass bottle top popping. Any kind of can cracked open. A silence that’s a little too long in a freezing house. Dirty-dusty-animal-fece-covered clutter. Urine and feces on the carpet. Cat litter in the bed sheets. DIY projects that teetered between fiending usefulness and expressionistic “art”. The smell of dirty boiled bong-water. The lingering musk of cigarettes. The smell of days old beer in sticky disposable cups – because eventually it was “easier” to have disposable plates and cups. Trash collecting because someday it will be poorly executed “art”. Hard alcohol on the breath. The scent of musty smoke-and-alchohol-sweated clothes after walking through snow-covered asphalt streets.
Now I take a few moments between the trigger and reaction. I tell myself to wait. I ground myself and look where I am.
And then it passes. I am safe. I am loved. And though its only been a few years, I am no longer where I used to be.