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I'm so confused and I'm too scared to act on it
So, this story is a little bit long and detailed, so just bare with me if you can :).
I have a boyfriend. We've been together now for about 4 years. But, 2 of those years have been in secret. I'm 25 years old, but my mom runs my life in unhealthy ways. She hates him, and put so much pressure on me to break up with him, that eventually I just told her that I did. In order to salvage the relationship, I kept it a secret. For a long time, I wondered if the relationship was even worth saving. He was so incredibly mean. He also had a severe temper which caused him to get violent. Nothing very serious happened, but he did dislocate my finger in a fit a rage when he had a fight with his brother.
But, lately, he had showed a complete change. He's been so sweet, so gentle, so loving. It was as if they switched him to a better version of him. But recently, two incidents occurred which I did not like one bit. We were intimate and he became very violent. It wasn't out of anger. It was more sexual in nature. But, that only makes me more afraid because if that was in a sexual context, imagine if he was actually angry. I could have been seriously hurt. If he's unable to control himself when he's not angry, how can he control himself when he is?
But, I'm utterly afraid to leave this relationship for so many reasons. I'm afraid that I will fall into a deep depression. I do love him. It's just that I have the ability to see the bigger picture, and it's not pretty. I can't exactly ever marry him without my mo knowing lol. How long can this lie go on? Either I have to come clean to my mom if I decide to stay or I end things. Both are bad. I just can't decide which one is worse.
One major issue is that I've disappeared from a variety of family functions. His nephew is getting baptized into the catholic church this weekend. It poses an issue for me to go because I'm Jewish and it's an internal conflict to be attending a something that another religion considers sacred. I have plenty of catholic family members, so I'm not a hater, nor do I hate them. The thing is that I take these things seriously. I find it disrespectful to members of the faith if I don't take their meaningful things seriously. So, I'm not going to walk in there and pretend like it doesn't mean anything. It means something to them. Just like, in my faith, it it means something to me. He knows the conflict that attending the baptism poses for me, however, he is putting pressure on me to go. But, my conscience is really bothering me about the baptism.
He is not particularly religious. His family is catholic, however. This poses a bit of a problem for the following reason. I don't have a very close knit family. In fact, my family has fallen apart after a death in the family and people's decisions not to speak to one another after a terrible divorce. It's not a good situation. I have ONE family member who is a practicing Jew. Although I accept and respect other faith's, it's important to me to raise my children in one spiritual home. If they change their minds when they are older, that's their decision and I will respect it... just like my family has respected my religious choices. However, I don't want them to fall into a situation like a lot of my friends did. I went to a catholic school, that surprisingly, had a significant amount of jewish students. Most of them came from interfaith families. They did everything twice. Bar-mitzvah and confirmation. The circumcision on the eighth day, and then the baptism. Catholic school by day and hebrew school by night. This posed an identity crisis for most people, as they wanted to make both parties happy that were putting them through both of these educational statues. So, I have made a conscious decision not to put my kids through that. Like I said, once they get older, that's their decision. I, myself, have been on a spiritual journey and explored other religions. But, I would like to minimize that stress by raising them in one spiritual home.
I have very little support from my own family because we are not close. That would leave my children to find the close-knit relationship from their father's side of the family. It is important to me to marry someone that has a strong family nucleus that will provide a comfortable atmosphere to the spiritual home that the children are to be raised in. Since I don't have very many Jewish family members who actually practice their religion, I fear that my kids would be the outcasts, lol. So, it's important for me to marry someone who is a Jew so that the kids can have that bond with somebody in the family outside of just me.
Please help me out here. In summary, I have two questions:
1) I need to dodge the event without hurting or insulting anyone. This isn't about insulting anyone. I don't celebrate Christmas or eat pork on Christmas Eve, like a lot of people in my family do. But, no one is insulted. It's not about insulting people. It's just that customs are different and I feel that both of those customs should be respected.
2) I need to make a decision and I need to stand by that decision... but I have no backbone or strength to do so.
Please help!
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Forst of all, the easier one is really the supporting of someones beliefs even though you may not feel the same. I used to follow strictly just Christian faith but have grown to believe in things they do not condone and consider evil. So if I come across someone who doesnt believe as I do, I remember a time when I didn't either. Think of it as all of us on earth as souls to learn and grow spiritually. Kids learn in school but there are many schools that are different, private schools like Montessori or Religious ones. Then there is the grade levels to consider. So in faith, our different schools are the different religions, and where we are at in our beliefs according to our particular faith or sschool is the grade levels. You can hardly expect a 2nd grader to be at the same level academically as a HS senior of even an 8th grader. So I find it easy to talk to those who are Christian and support their views, talking the talk they are used to hearing. You don't have to understand the talk or habits of another faith but if having it explained, is it a courtesy to those of another faith to cover ones head or have women sit separate, or be okay with being sprinkled with holy water or even having a Christian pray over you. God knows what you believe in your heart, and supporting someone where they are at is a good thing...like a parent not expecting you to be able to tie your own shoes until you got older and wiser. God is the same with us and doesnt rush us to grow spiritually and leaves it to us to move at a pace we are comfortable with if we are even moving at all. It will not compromise your beliefs or where you stand with God to go only with any rituals like that. except for your dietary restrictions, that you must keep and others should respect that in you.
Next:
Your Mother may have been controlling of you and may or may not have seen the bad potential in your boyfriend but in your story, Mom is not the issue, neither is the boyfriend, it all centers around you. What you have here is an opportunity for a heck of a giant leap in personal growth. I know cus I once faced the same.
My ex husband was controlling, had an anger problem, had insecurities that fed into a mental illness that was beginning to show up in his early 20s but no one, not even I could recognize what the problem was at the time. He fooled even all my family at first until he began to yell at them and tell them to mind their own business after I married him. He was great until a few months after marriage. I was counseled to leave him but didnt because my church did not condone divorce. Trust God to heal your marriage was what I was told. So God worked with me to grow my relationship with Him and trust in Him so I trusted my ability to hear directly from God over the interpretations or misguided beliefs and doctrines of my faith. God told me that the verse about Loving the Lord your God with all your Heart and mind and strenght and your neighbor as yourself, had been misunderstood. We have no trouble loving god first, and we assume that due to where the word 'neighbor' falls in the verse and we must love our neighbor first and ourselves last. And that is where he told me I was over the mark and must love myself truely before I can really love others. I said, but I love myself. And God agreed, yes in many areas but one and this one is so crucial that it canceled out all the positives of the other ways you love yourself.
He told me that in allowing myself to be subjected to the treatment I got from my husband that it was a choice I was making that was not good for me. He told me that the churchs counsel to trust Him to heal my marriage was also faulty in that He gave each of us a free will. He didn't give a free will only to take it away from those who didn't make good decisions. So He truly could not force my husband to magically change and treat me good. The husband must learn to want to grown closer to god and be more like him and able to admit he has troubles and ask for help. Only then would things improve. But at this point I was finally hearing this from God, I had been married 29 years. That many years of verbal abuse plus some pushing and shoving around had been stressful on my body and stress has to go somewhere especially if you are subjected to it 24/7. So it went into my body, to my health. Anything that stress caused, I got, headaches, migraines, itchy body rashes, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, etc. The only biggies left were cancer and heart attack which God also said I would die of one or the other if I chose to remain with him. I wasn't because I was a bad person, but the ex needed to grow as an individual in ways where if I remained, I'd continue to be his crutch and 'punching bag' or in his mind 'excuse' for his behavior. He would not grown even a little unless I left. So it had to be by my choice to leave or if I didn't, fate would make sure I died so he ended up in the same spot, single, either due to divorce or being widowed. I wanted to live, so I left. Then, just to be sure I really learned the lesson to love myself enough to not allow myself to be with a guy who treated me that way, I became roommates with a man who ended up as bad as my ex and when I refused to bend to his will, he left me with the apt and I lost it. I knew that would happen if I held my ground but I would not go back to life as before only to have a roof over my head. Usually, financial concerns are the biggest reason a female stays with an abusive man. Her emotions and feeling love comes a close second.
In that many years, the love I had for him, had been killed, slowly dying as he gave nothing to nuture that love. Love is like a tender seedling needing love. So if you stay, no matter how it hurts your heart to leave, you risk what the stress will do to your health over time, and you may die from stress or at violence from his hands. Also the love you feel now, will eventually wither slowly away as he does nothing to feed it.
Then keep in mind that for every one negative act or word, it takes double, triple or more of positive ones to overcome and cancel out the effects of negative ones. No such thing as one good thing he does that will cancel out a dozen terrible things he's done. It doesnt work that way. So eventually you will succumb to the pressure and your life will crumble and get to a point that may be a point of no return for you.
I lacked backbone for most of my marriage so I understand that. I am also loyal to a fault. So what helped me to leave, even when tempted to stay, was to ask myself if I could handle this treatments just one more week...of course...how about one more month....yes, I can, another year, well, I might not like it but I can do it. Then I asked, can I handle it for 10 more years, or till the day I die? Thats when I panicked inside at facing that scenerio and began to sob heavily and realized that I had only been fooling myself cus its easier to put up with bad treatment on a day to day basis, but when you look at the big picture, something deep inside you should be saying, "Oh please, no...don't put me thru that kind of torture for life."
Honey, I know you don't see it now, I didn't, but what I felt was Love for that man, pales in comparison, and actually doesnt even fall into the same catagory as love when I look at my new husband of 6+ years. I know now what a real love is and that what the ex had for me was not love. He was incapable of even loving himself. To this day, he doesnt even treat his kids like he loves them so they rarely go visit him if at all. Just avoiding him. While you may love the guy, it takes equal energy from both to go into a relationship, not just the giving and work all on one part as I was doing. Yes, it made the marriage look successful even to the point some young married couples at church said, oh we want our marriage to be just like yours, just as successful and my quick and puzzling reply for them was, "No, you really don't want this marriage for yourself."
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