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My Friendships Didn’t Survive My Abusive Relationship

Maybe I was the bad friend all along

Zita Fontaine
7 min readJun 23, 2020
Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

In life, you pay for the sins that were committed against you.

To say that I paid a high price for being in an abusive relationship is the understatement of the century. There were times when I felt that everything was taken from me. My dignity, my feelings, my common sense, my sanity, my self. I felt worthless and empty. Someone who deserved the abuse. Who deserved all the hurt and pain that she had to endure. Someone who was just as bad as the wrong partner she chose. As if I became complicit in all his acts just by proxy.

I just wanted to be loved. And instead, I got beaten, humiliated and abused in every way possible. The love I was promised and made believe faded away quickly, giving place to a mixture of hatred laced with obsession, misogyny fuelled by insecurity, and pain in the form of verbal, physical, sexual abuse — this is how our days looked like.

I stayed. I wanted to. I saw the red flags and I chose to ignore them. I believed that he was inherently good — someone who was dealt a hand of shitty cards and who can’t help himself. I believed that he hurts me because he is hurt. I believed that I can love him out from his darkness, save him from himself and his…

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Zita Fontaine
Zita Fontaine

Written by Zita Fontaine

Writer. Dreamer. Hopeless romantic. Newsletter: zita.substack.com Email me: zitafontaine (at) gmail

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