On how choosing yourself can sometimes feel like the harshest punishment
There comes a moment when you can no longer stay silent.
Not because you want to scream,
but because the silence is slowly eroding you from within.
Emotional and psychological abuse doesn’t start abruptly.
It begins subtly.
A comment. A glance. A seed of doubt planted.
You start wondering if it’s your fault. If your feelings are valid.
And before you know it, years have passed—years spent making yourself smaller.
For the peace. For the children. For the hope.
Until one day, you begin to feel: this is not right anymore.
You start pushing back. Softly at first. Then with more clarity.
And then resistance comes. And sometimes, yes, even physical confrontation.
And still, you keep reaching out for connection.
Searching for the human behind the pain.
But what if that person keeps twisting everything you are?
What if you try to protect, and they say you’re destroying?
What if your love finds no shelter, and instead gets weaponized?
Then you decide to rise. For yourself.
For the first time.
Not out of spite, but out of survival.
You say “no.” You say “this ends here.”
And suddenly… you’re the aggressor.
Because you’re a man.
And men who set boundaries must be dangerous.
Men who show pain must be manipulators.
Men who walk away must be hiding something.
Suddenly, you are the perpetrator in a story in which you’ve been the victim for years.
Your lawyer doesn’t show up. Your voice gets lost in the noise.
Your honesty isn’t seen as strength, but as weakness.
The other lies, twists, and gets room.
You stay silent—and lose ground.
And then comes the verdict.
A restraining order.
No access to your own property.
No camper. No space that feels like yours.
What you tried to make right falls even further apart.
Not because you did wrong—
but because you finally stood tall.
And even then, you keep giving.
You sign a mutual agreement.
You sell your shares in the business.
You even transfer your son’s shares.
They can’t secure the loan, so you say: “Pay me in installments. At your pace.”
Because you want peace. For them. For yourself.
And in return, you ask just one thing:
the use of the camper.
Confirmed in writing.
But even that is now being denied.
And as if that weren’t enough, even your personal belongings—
things from before the relationship—are withheld.
You ask for your Swarovski collection back.
Your property. Your memories.
But even that’s refused.
“I need to sell it for my surgery,” she says.
And you hear yourself wonder: how far can someone go in holding onto what was never theirs?
Even your race cars—part of your life, your passion—were sold without your consent.
Officially for a set amount, partially off the books.
Divided up without any consultation.
And you?
You’re left empty-handed. But still standing.
What makes it so painful is that each time she continues this behavior—
refusing, clinging, twisting—
she gets away with it.
Worse: she’s rewarded.
By rulings. By institutions.
By a system that prefers the simplicity of a stereotype over the complexity of truth.
So it’s not just you who’s ignored.
She’s being strengthened—
in the exact behavior that’s been causing harm for years.
The system doesn’t see what you carry.
It counts the words, not the silence.
It counts the facts, not the sacrifices.
And suddenly, you understand why so many people just stay quiet.
The road to happiness starts feeling like a punishment.
The freedom you seek feels further than ever.
But maybe… this is the way.
Maybe this is the moment you learn:
Self-respect is not aggression.
Setting boundaries is not violence.
And letting go… may just be the purest form of love.
Reflection
There’s something deeply disorienting about standing up for yourself—
and being punished for it.
I made decisions with full awareness.
I withdrew. I stayed honest. I avoided conflict.
And yet I was labeled as the aggressor, the threat, the one to be removed.
What began as a soft exit from a toxic dynamic
became isolation, loss, and even legal sanction.
I’m still trying to understand:
How can taking responsibility, protecting boundaries, and refusing to keep fighting
be interpreted as manipulation or cowardice?
What does that say about how our society perceives vulnerability?
The reality is harsh:
If you don’t shout, you’re not heard.
If you yield, you’re suspect.
If you stay kind, you’re dismissed.
Psychological insight
I encountered the dynamic of projective identification—
where one person projects their own destructive feelings onto the other,
and then attempts to control those feelings in that other person.
The one on the receiving end—me—eventually begins to act in line with that projection,
out of exhaustion or self-doubt.
I also faced a classic double bind—
no matter what I did, it was wrong.
If I stayed, I was controlling.
If I left, I was selfish.
These kinds of patterns are common in relationships
where one partner shows narcissistic tendencies,
and the other—often highly empathetic—
falls into a fawn response:
the survival mechanism of pleasing, avoiding conflict,
and losing oneself in the name of peace.
That fawn response kept me going for years.
Until it no longer could.
Spiritual perspective
On a spiritual level, this phase can be seen as the dark night of the soul—
the moment when everything you built starts falling apart,
and you’re forced to re-examine your identity, your values, even your faith in justice.
In mystical traditions, this isn’t a punishment.
It’s a transition.
What collapses is not who you are—
but what you were holding onto in order to be accepted.
And maybe that’s the deeper invitation of it all:
To stop trying to be understood—
and to stay true to yourself,
even if that means being wrongly judged.