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Health

Living and Leaving an Abusive Relationship

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Living and Leaving an Abusive Relationship

Everyone wonders why the abusee stays. I wondered for several years after the conclusion of my relationship… why did I stay those 3 years, my college years? The simple answer may sound banal: I loved him. The convoluted answer is that love was worth fighting for, no matter the costs.

I thought that I could fix him, that I was the only one who could or would understand him. And for a long time, that made me feel special and important. But sometime between the belittling insults, the punching and shoving, the time he spit in my face, the time he dragged me across the carpet and threw me out the door in the middle of the night, and the time he cancelled my cross-country airline ticket home without my knowledge, leaving me stranded, penniless, and hopeless in the JFK Airport, I stopped feeling special.

The end started at that exact ticket counter. Andrew and I had spent four painful days in Manhattan visiting his sister, an NYU sophomore at the time. Our return flight to California was scheduled to leave early Tuesday morning. After nearly a week of yelling at each other, we both figured it was finally over, but despite my better judgment, I agreed to share a cab with Andrew to the airport. We hopped into a cab at 4 am with the plan of beating early rush-hour traffic and checking in early for our flight. The cab ride was particularly painful because after four days of fighting, we couldn’t even make eye contact. All I wanted to do was get home and away from him. Something in me told me that this was it: all I needed to was to get home and then I would be safe, with my family and friends there to help me through whatever storm was brewing.

We arrived at the airport with several hours to spare before we were allowed to check our baggage and print our boarding passes. I piled my suitcase, backpack, and purse into a makeshift cushion and tried my best to nap after the exhausting previous days. I was so close. I didn’t even need to sit next to Andrew on the flight. I could make it home on my own, without him, as long as I had my belongings and my plane ticket. I slipped into a light sleep for an hour or so before it was finally time to drag myself and my things to the ticket counter.

The airline employee at the ticket and baggage check-in counter asked for our ticket confirmation number and our IDs. He typed in our information, checked and double-checked his computer screen, handed Andrew his printed boarding pass, and looked up at me sympathetically, “I have one flight reservation for Andrew, but it appears the other ticket on the reservation, the one for you, miss, has been cancelled.” My knees buckled, my mouth dropped open, and tears immediately flooded my eyes. I looked at Andrew, pleading for an explanation, for his help. Andrew had booked our tickets, and sometime in the previous few days, he had intentionally cancelled mine. After days of arguing and fighting, he was exerting his final act of control over me, this time financially.

Andrew stared expressionless at the airline employee, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t cancel that ticket.” I looked him straight in the eyes and whispered, “You motherfucker.” The one-way, last minute ticket from NYC back home was $800, and I was a broke college student. The employee said, “Sir, it states right here that only her ticket has been cancelled. You cancelled it.” Andrew shrugged his shoulders and grabbed his boarding pass and his baggage. “Well, I better make it through security,” he smirked at me. “Good luck.” And he walked off toward the TSA security line.

I ran after him, not even bothering with my things still parked at the ticket counter. Grabbing his arm, I pleaded, “What are you doing? You’re leaving me here?! How am I going to get home?! Andrew, I need to get home.” I started to beg, my voice shaking, along with my hands. He had complete control over me and my ability to get home. “Andrew, please. I can’t pay for that ticket. My credit card can’t even accept that charge. Please.” The passengers waiting in line to pass through security stared at me and whispered to each other. I looked delusional and crazed. I was panicked, and Andrew was smiling. He was enjoying this. He loved the manipulation.

By this time, I was on my knees sobbing. He looked down at me condescendingly and replied with a smile, “You have that Coach purse I gave you for Valentine’s. Sell that. It’s gotta be worth three to four hundred dollars, easy. You’re half-way there already.” He shook me from his arm and headed off again in the direction of the security line.

Looking back, why didn’t I call my family back at home for help? There was a way to get out of this: all I had to do was use my phone. But that’s the scary thing about abuse. I was so afraid and so wrapped up in Andrew’s manipulative game that I felt completely isolated. He was my one and only confidant. You’re supposed to be able to rely on your partner when things get rough, right? But what the fuck do you do when the person you love is the person who will openly humiliate you in public, just to see you suffer?

Somehow ignoring the surrounding crowd, I picked myself off the floor and walked back to the ticket counter and back to my belongings. The airline employee was fully aware of my pleading attempt get Andrew to help me. I looked at the employee, hoping that there was some magic button on his computer that would reverse Andrew’s manipulative trick and restore my reservation on that flight home. “Please, sir. I have no money. He cancelled my flight. I need to get home.” And this man somehow knew that I was telling the truth and that I was hopeless. That I was forced to stand in front of an audience of airline passengers and employees, pleading for help on my knees to a guy that was getting a rise out of the whole dramatic scene. And somehow that airline employee knew something was wrong. He sighed, “Okay, miss. I can restore your seat.” He typed some commands into his machine and printed my boarding ticket with a concerned expression.

I inhaled deeply and thanked him repeatedly. I wanted to hug him. To this day, I wish I had recorded his name in my memory. He was a stranger who might have risked his job by taking a chance on a young woman who, in that moment, clearly could not help herself.

It took another three months after this incident in the airport to finally leave Andrew.

Revisiting the entries of my journal from those last few months, I now realize how I omitted all the specific events involving physical, emotional, or mental abuse. Maybe writing them down forced me to face them, made the feelings real. What I did write was, “When am I going to be enough? When am I going to be worthy of me?” It took three years to lose my self-confidence and my self-worth, and it’s taken me just as long to gain it back. Now, I know that I am worth more.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Home

We Don’t Know: What Does it Mean to be a Good Roommate?

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I recently stumbled across the awesome How To Adult video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNI1fWTlGwY

To sum up their seven tips for being a highly effective roommate:

Tip #1: Set the rules early on.

Tip #2: Have a monthly status meeting.

Tip #3: Be consistent.

Tip #4: Be generous.

Tip #5: Remember that this isn’t “your apartment.” It’s “your and your roommate’s apartment.”

Tip #6: Keep the lines of communication open.

Tip #7: Prepare in advance for possibly parting ways with your roommate.

I think these are awesome rules for living in peace with a non-related human being.  I’ve somewhat successfully lived in my four-bedroom house with a fairly consistent cast of characters for almost three years now, and I think Tip #6 is pretty much the savior of our lives.

But sometimes I wonder if being neat and tidy and nice and polite is good enough to be considered a “good roommate.”  Certainly it makes you an unobtrusive cohabitant.  But if cohabitant is really as far as the relationship goes: there’s no feeling of family or relationship.  So what exactly is the definition of good roommate?

The reason I wonder about this is probably borne from my own insecurity of being a bad roomie.  On a typical night, my fiancé and I come home from a long day at work and go straight upstairs to my bedroom, where I do some UE maintenance for a bit, he finishes up some remaining work, then I pass out without remembering to take out my contacts, and he plays video games for a couple hours before shutting off the light.

Other than occasionally running into my fellow house-dwellers in the kitchen or living room, my main interaction is the somewhat-daily photo that I spam them of our kitchen sink.  I call it the #NagPic, and they’re unusually nice about my insane neuroticism.  (In my defense, it’s incredibly effective at reminding people of their ice cream dish from 3 am last night, but I really don’t recommend it for households of not-incredibly-chill people.)

On the other side of the spectrum, UE writer Emily Knight used to live in this fabulous house where each roommate made dinner once per week and they all sat down and ate together.  This absolutely blows my mind.  How quaint!  How tight-knit!  How envy-inducing!  Just hearing about it inspired fantasies in my head of 1950s-esque hairdos and someone wearing a cute apron from Modcloth.  (I’m not even going to go into all the bike rides, pumpkin carving, and Christmas tree decorating that went on in that utopia of friendship.)

Admirable as it is, it’s just not feasible in my life.  Does that make me a bad roommate?  Probably not.  Does walking upstairs with no acknowledgement of my cohabitants other than “hey” make me a bad roommate?  Probably.  I think it depends on your definition.

While I’m still deciding whether I’m okay with my definition, what’s yours—and are you okay with it? Share your enlightenment in the comments.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Career

Office Drama, or #WHATSHOULDWECALLTOXICJOB

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How many times do you need to come home from work in tears before you start considering a new job? My last job was terrible almost from the moment it started, but I stayed for nine months trying to make it work, and then trying to hoard enough cash to get out. Looking back on this past year, all I can see is the slow buildup of quiet-yet-demeaning incidents that made me question my worth, my abilities, and my general sense of why I am at all interested in do what I do.

Here is a list of the major red flags.

  1. When I started my job, there was no training. None! They actually said: “Here is your computer!” and then left me on my own.
  2. My supervisors act like they don’t trust me, and revise deadlines without telling me. Once, after seeing the timeline for the interviews that I manage, my supervisor approved and implemented it, and then scheduled all the interviews and emailed the schedule to me. She never addressed whether I had done them wrong or late, or any reason why she had done my job for me, even though it was a full week before we had agreed it needed to be done.
  3. There are three people whom I report to. Every time I ask for clarification on whom I go to for what (even things like time off and emergency situations), they tell me that I was hired because I could “work independently.”
  4. And then when I ask one of them for help with one of the other departments, they usually fail to answer the question because they get sidetracked, ranting about how pretentious the other department is.
  5. Once, in a committee meeting, I had an older co-worker stop mid-discussion, turn to me and say “who are you?” I responded with my name and title, and he said, “Oh! I thought you were a student spying on us. Are you even on this committee?” He checked on his phone, found I was, and said, “Oh, well, what can you do?” We had met multiple times.
  6. When I was introduced to one of the departments, which was formerly all-male, and I’m a young woman, several comments were made to the effect of “Well, now we can’t curse in meetings.”
  7. Recently, one of my supervisors has been asking me to help her with Excel spreadsheets, and when I turned in a draft (like she asked me to), she brought me into her office and pointed at a column without borders and yelled at me, “Where is the column?! Where is the COLUMN?!? There is no column there!” and then had me redo it.
  8. I am required to have an autoreply message on my email instructing students how to make appointments. I have gotten back multiple emails from coworkers who are outraged that I would send them appointment instructions. The first sentence is “This is an autoreply.”
  9. This year, one of my papers was accepted to a prestigious conference. When I asked that same supervisor if there was any funding I could apply for, she said “If you get funding, we might as well add a budget line for my cats.” That was about two months into the position.
  10. I am frequently asked when I am planning on having children. These are not subtle hints from people I am close with. Coworkers who I rarely interact with have come into my office specifically to ask me when I am planning on getting pregnant.
  11. After having congratulated me for improving our numbers so much that a particular department might not be at risk anymore, one supervisor came in and told me that the numbers should go up even more because “we haven’t worked that hard

What I’ve learned from this experience is that—surprise!—my happiness really is affected by being treated poorly by the people whom I spend the majority of my day with. I’m really not sure when the turning point was… when I knew I needed to GTFO. I wish I had known when to say something, because maybe things would have gotten better. But by the time I left, I trusted no one that I worked with or for, and I dreaded going to work. I worry I’ll run into coworkers around town and I feel like I’ve developed some really bad work habits (like hiding from my supervisors) that will affect me in the future. My job was affecting my relationships outside of work as well, I was so emotionally drained that I wasn’t myself.

The worst part was that this was supposed to be my dream job—working with exactly the right population in exactly the right role. But my coworkers and terrible supervision ruined it. I put in my two weeks’ notice despite not having something else lined up because not knowing what was coming next was better than being unhappy every day.

Much to my surprise though, leaving my toxic job felt just like a really bad breakup. It probably should have not been surprising, but ah well. My last two weeks were full of utter insanity, and all I could do was hold on to my end date, knowing that it would be over soon. A small sample: My two weeks’ notice was initially rejected so they could “think” (is this legal?). I had more than 12 meetings with all levels of my supervision, where the second question was always “but, your partner isn’t leaving too, is he?” driving home the point that in their minds I was only there because of him. They told me that I would have had a better time in the job if I were “friendlier.” On my last day, none of my supervisors even showed up, wrote an email or left a voice message saying goodbye. And then, as if to tie a big bow on the whole package, about a week after I left, one supervisor sent an email to my personal address about job searching in my field, and how to know if a job is a good fit.

I’ve been free of this job for three full weeks, and let me tell you, life is so much better. If any of the above sounds like your job, get out. ASAP. Don’t wait. If you don’t have a cushion that will let you bail, start sending your resumes faster, network more, do something. It’s not worth being unhappy every day. I also highly recommend just reading the entire archives of Ask a Manager: this helped me figure out the difference between what was simply strange and what actually crossed a boundary, so that I could work up the courage to leave.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Relationships

Avoiding Roommate Drama

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The joys and follies of living with roommates are many and varied. On one hand, you have things like cheaper rent, people to always hang out with, and new friendships that can last a lifetime. On the flipside, you may have to put up with things like less parking, less time to sleep in before work if you want to take a shower, and a daily morning obstacle course of your roommate’s passed-out friends from partying the night before. Whether for better or worse, many of us have to live with roommates at least once in our lifetime. In this article, I’m going to give you a set of guidelines that have helped me resolve issues that otherwise could have resulted in a huge headache for everybody involved.

Imagine something that your roommate does to annoy you. It might be something in the spectrum of forgetting to turn off the TV or rarely doing dishes. No matter what the issue is, the next time you get mad, rather than charging in and confronting them about it, I want you to stop and ask yourself the first of several questions:

Does it happen regularly? The answer to this may dictate the future of your relationship. If the answer is “no,” I suggest you drop the issue and give your roommate the benefit of the doubt that they made an honest mistake. If the answer is “yes,” then move on to the next question.

Is it something I can fix on my own? I find that, more often than not, the thing that is annoying you can be completely overcome by doing a little creative critical thinking. For example, if the house is messy, maybe you need to create a new system of cleaning or hire a once-a-month cleaning service. No matter what your problem is, put a bit of constructive thought into solving the problem. If after wracking your brain for a peaceful solution is unsuccessful, you may ask yourself the next question.

Am I willing to move out if this problem is not solved? The answer to this question puts the importance of your dilemma to the test. If you are not bothered enough by the situation dedicate the effort to finding a new home (while likely burn bridges in the process), you should probably take a deep breath and let it slide. If you find that the issue is so unbearable that you can’t possibly live with it any longer, move on to the next final question.

Will my roommate be open and receptive to a conversation or does he/she get defensive? Now, you are going to have to make a real judgment call. You must ask yourself if your roommate is someone who takes criticism easily and makes an honest effort to change, or if he/she is someone who will likely scoff in your direction and try to bother you even more or shut down and give you the silent treatment. The reason this step is so delicate is that people tend to attach to their behaviors: no matter how persuasive you are in telling them that their behavior may not be acceptable to everyone, they may take the constructive criticism with a dosage of contempt. Some people are good at brushing it off, while others may take it to heart, depending on how much they value the actions in question.

Discussing the Situation

If you decide that you cannot live with your roommate’s behavior but a discussion is not worth the risk, I suggest you begin looking for a new place to live and try to end things on a good note. However, if you can, try to approach your roommate politely and diplomatically so that you can work on solving your predicament together. Be prepared with a couple of solutions to suggest. If you and your roommate decide that you need some help selecting the appropriate solution, consider involving an impartial third party to help act as a mediator.

Living with people can strengthen relationships or break bonds, and the way that you approach the hurdles you encounter will impact the quality of your relationships for the rest of your life.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Career, Relationships

Dealing with Workplace Drama

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Raise your hand if you have ever lost your cool, reacted harshly, or said something you regret to someone else? Now, raise your hand if you were at work when it happened.

Workplace drama exists. We all experience it. The question is how do we deal with it?

I have been working in at least some capacity for several years now and every job has had some sort of office “drama.” I entered the workforce thinking that I would finally get a break from all the unnecessary crap I had to put up with in school.

Right. Then I promptly woke up from my dream-world.

People will always have different emotions, jealousies, dreams, and personalities, no matter where they are. While we cannot control others, we can change how we choose to react to them. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. Be yourself.

Before you roll your eyes and sigh at the platitude, hear me out. When I first started at my current job, I found myself acting how I thought my coworkers wanted to see me. After a few weeks, I was exhausted and felt like I was trying too hard (because I was). Slowly, I began to reveal more of my actual self. I talked about books that I loved, expressed excitement at nerdy things, and made jokes during staff meetings. I stayed professional while still showing who I was and what made me tick. It helped me develop relationships with my coworkers, and cope with stress, because I wasn’t focused on maintaining my work personality, just my work.

2. Pick your battles.

My current job is pretty high stress. We have tight deadlines, a lot of outside pressure, public visibility, and sometimes-unpredictable work hours. While this can create a great adrenaline rush, it can also bring out some pretty intense emotions. When the stress gets high, everyone has to think fast, and sometimes we’re so focused on the end result, that we lose sight of each other. It’s important to remember that multiple approaches can achieve the same end goal.

Knowing when to speak up and when to hold back can have a monumental impact on how you are perceived and how you get things done.  Arguing over every choice might lead your coworkers to see you as an agitator who only wants things to go your way. But if instead, you discipline yourself to only bring up concerns that could have significant impact, then you will be seen as helpful and strategic. By sometimes holding yourself back, you can make the moments when you do enter the fray all the more meaningful and powerful. This same concept can be applied to nearly any office disagreement or issue.

3. Try not to wear your emotions on your sleeve.

This may be the hardest, as many of us do this without even realizing it. I do, and it’s a constant battle to keep hold of myself when all I want to do is scream, cry, or run away.

I am not saying that there is no place for emotion in the workplace, because that can be just as destructive. But being able to control your emotions rather than letting them dictate the direction of a situation—whether it be a meeting, an argument, or just a particularly long day at the office—can make all the difference in keeping your professional cool.

For those of you with a terrible poker face, when things get too intense, try forcing yourself to slow down. At a performance review, in a tense meeting, or when dealing with a particularly difficult person, remember to take a deep breath and think before you respond (I promise that’s not just overused self-help advice, I’ve done it–it works). Even a few seconds can make the difference between an overly emotional response and a rational one.

If your emotions do get to be too much, excuse yourself. Take a walk, go to the bathroom, or find a quick distraction. And, remember, don’t hold it against yourself. We all have bad days once in a while. Emotion is natural and, more than anything, shows how much you care.

4. Know the difference between drama and harassment.

Much of what is discussed above are situations that can often occur within professional environments. However, when something turns into possible harassment, it is important to know when to speak up and take action. There are laws in place to protect you if you feel that someone’s comments or actions are inappropriate, threatening, or violent. If you feel you are being harassed, document everything and talk to someone you trust or your human resources department to confidentially explain your rights and options. It is never okay to be made uncomfortable or threatened in your workplace and it is your right to speak up and change the situation.

Remember, drama finds us everywhere–people don’t magically become professional adults–don’t let it discourage you. It’s ok to make mistakes when it comes to figuring this all out.

One more cliché for the road? For better or for worse it’ll all work out in the end.

…Okay, maybe that one was a little overboard.

Photo by Michelle White

Editor’s Note: This is one of our anonymous articles. We’ll have these from time to time so that our writers can more freely share difficult subjects.