Even now having little lightbulb moments

I had a 2 hour drive to my parents' today which gave me some thinking time. I'm still feeling very raw after my trigger on Wednesday and I've dreamed about XN 2 nights in a row now, which I've hardly done at all.

I was thinking today about how upset I was to lose my holiday to Spain in July as I kicked him out the morning of our trip. I was thinking of how much I'd wanted to go and wondering what would have happened had I gone, despite finding out that morning that XN had lied again (it was his subsequent reaction to my asking about it was what prompted me to pick his bags up and put them outside the front door and then ask him to leave - all before 3:30am).

I wondered if I could have had the trip and sorted things out after?

I realised that - no, I couldn't have done. Had I done, I couldn't have looked at myself in the mirror again. I'd clearly had very weak boundaries before that but this time I had reached my limit. It meant losing him and losing my holiday but there was no other option for me. Yes, I was gutted my trip to Spain but had I got in the car with him to drive to the airport, I would have been saying that the way he behaved was acceptable and I wasn't prepared to do that anymore.

Despite me saying, 'don't treat me like this', me going on holiday with him would have sent him the clear message that it was ok to treat me however he wanted because I wouldn't enforce my boundaries. Luckily, I had enough self-respect left to ensure that this time I did enforce my boundaries. My holiday wasn't an option anymore.

XN always said to me that it takes two to make a relationship this dysfunctional. My therapist agreed - one to dish it out and one to take out. As soon as I refused to take the abuse anymore, there was no relationship, dysfunctional or otherwise, any longer.

The other thing that occurred to me was about XN's swearing. He swore all the time, swore at me, called me names, called other people names (but behind their backs). Whenever I asked him not to swear at me, he would say that it didn't mean anything. *His* swearing, apparently, didn't mean the same to him as swearing did to everyone else so it was ok to call me names!

I realise now what a grandiose and stupid argument that was. He was arguing that, because he used swear words in the same way that others would use ordinary words, it was ok and I shouldn't read too much into them.

"Excuse me, Officer - yes, I murdered the person whose corpse you see in front of us. But it's ok - I don't view murder in the same way as everyone else. My view of murder is special so you can let me off!"

Hmm....what an argument!

Jess