Love-Hate Cycle

by Samaria
(Silver Spring, MD )

I've been with my fiance for a year now, and we've been talking about getting married. But then we end up getting into arguments here and now. He tells me that he loves me more than I think, and he is a very responsible and hardworking man.

He tries to take care of all my needs and wants, but when he starts drinking too much, he starts blabbing a lot. He may start with a small tease and we'll both laugh. Then he'll call me names like fat and obese. I wouldn't even say I'm that fat, but the fact that he'll just shove it to my face just to see me react is really immature and it's like he enjoys degrading me.

I know he's an alcoholic and he's going through tough times but I myself am going through difficult moments. We always end up making up but I never forget the things he does. He justifies himself by saying that I get even by hitting him and throwing things at him; but he also does the same to me and I'm left heart-broken--but I remain believing that he is my one and only.

I know that I may be the one who initiates physical abuse but it is him who starts by emotionally abusing me by poking at my deepest feelings and fears. It doesn't even stop there. His ex-wife doesn't like me at all and has made his life very stressful by manipulating the situation and asking for child support money or he won't see his kids.

He misses them a lot and he gets very tense and depressed at times, and I'm the only one there by his side. I feel sorry for him but I don't appreciate his ex making false accusations of me, and claiming that I steal away child support money when I am in fact helping him by taking him to his job sites. She reported on him and he had his license taken away.

I have also helped him do demolition work and a few electrical jobs. I pick up his kids and drive them back, I cook, clean, do their laundry and I even play with them. I try my best but it's never good enough. He sometimes tells me nasty lies just to make me jealous like the time when he said he did it with his ex-wife in our car two times when we were starting to live with each other.

It made me feel very low of myself by just hearing it and that is when I started being physically intense and for him calling out things and saying I'll burn in hell. I love him but all this emotional abuse has to end. I have to learn how to deal with anger because I am scared he'll end up beating me so hard.

I don't know what to do. I am both a victim and an abuser but in the end I feel like I'm the one being abused the most. I feel like I won't find someone else, and I am even considering being alone for a very long time after we break up.