Abused yet he became the abuser

It was the abuse that my ex boyfriend claimed to have suffered in childhood that made me feel a connection with him and the reason why I let him into my life as I felt like I could help him as I too had suffered from very similar abuse in childhood.

I had been fortunate enough to move on from this though by getting the necessary help to heal from it by putting myself through years of therapy which was by no means an easy road but worth it as subsequently I was finally able to put it behind me and go on to live a life beyond my greatest expectations in adulthood.

My ex boyfriend was still very much in pain and had not been able to process it and as a consequence his life was still being affected by his childhood which I felt certain that he could recover from with the right help and support which seeing as I had been through what he had and had come through the otherside, I was certain that he could too and that I was probably the best person to help him do this.

At first he was not abusive to me and he was infact very unsure of himself, very gentle and sensitive but clearly suffering with an inferiority complex as well as paranoia that everyone was out to get him which was not too dissimilar to how I was before I had years of therapy.

As a child he had been beaten regularly by his mother and his father was an alcoholic who wasnt there for his family, emotionally or financially and would regularly have affairs and would beat his mother.

His mother eventually left his father and fled to Italy when my ex boyfriend was in his early teens leaving him in Bulgaria where he lived with his grandmother who was strict, controlling and ruled him by fear rather than love.

Nothing he ever did was good enough and he had developed the belief that he was unloveable and that everyone would always abandon him in the end!

For these reasons I tolerated his insecurities which would often be shown by him constantly accusing me of lying and cheating on him as well as him thinking that I was plotting behind his back to hurt him as I didn't love him!

When he was in these episodes I would patiently endure his hours upon hours of interrogation in the hope that I could reassure him, thinking that he would not continue to do this forever if I was tolerant and just put up with it until he felt secure with me.

For months I would have to answer to the same accusations and calmly give him a second by second account of my actions pretty much on a daily basis for hours until he felt convinced that I was telling the truth.

He would also go over and over the events of his childhood pretty much on a daily basis too and I would just listen to the same stories over and over thinking that he had to get it off his chest and be heard in order to process it.

After a while I started to offer him my thoughts and opinion on how he could look at it differently through adult eyes as well as offer him suggestions about the things that had helped me to move forward in my life and what had worked for me.

At first he seemed appreciative and open to my help but he never did any of the things that he said he would try and just carried on going round and round in circles just going over the same things but without any desire to at least try to reach a solution that would end his constant torment of reliving the events over and over which I felt was keeping him in the pain and keeping the pain as raw as it was when these things happened which although was now over 25 years ago, to him it was like it happened yesterday!

I was also having to live through it all now too on a daily basis which I pointed out was not good for either of us as it was now consuming both our lives and preventing us from having the time together in the present moment to enjoy our relationship.

I spent months and months trying to help him move forward but instead of get better, it got worse and he started to become more aggressive in his episodes of paranoia when he would accuse me of lying and cheating.

He was also becoming more insulting to me by calling me dreadful things such as a whore and a bitch who was just like everyone else who had abused him in life.

He would also belittle the abuse I suffered from as a child and say that I was lying about that too as he had suffered far worse which I personally did not agree with but nevertheless I did not say that to him or let him provoke me.

Before long he was smashing up my home and my personal belongings when he was in a paranoid mood and when he was recounting his events of his past.

He was starting to make me feel frightened by his rage which I tried to explain to him when he was calmer as It was making me feel like I had as a child and I was on edge that he could possibly hit me which would happen when I was a child after my mother would rage and smash up the house. He laughed this off and said I had nothing to fear as he would never hurt me as he too had been beaten by his mother and grandmother and knew exactly how it felt.

He continued to be aggressive and smash my home up in these rages though but I tried to remain calm in the knowledge that he would never hurt me.

It was not long however before he started to hit me!

What makes it worse is that he was fully aware of my abuse as a child and how being beaten up by a person who claims to love you has the power to destroy you emotionally as it had happened to him too yet he was quite happy to inflict it on me and then would still go on about how much his life had suffered from the abuse of his childhood!

• I believe that instead of heal from it he prefers to live in the pain and to cause this pain and suffering in others that like him didn't deserve it too and so he feels fully justified to do so!