New rules for loving me

by Lucy Hutchings Hunt

I’m a naturally friendly, warm, and outgoing soul. I love people. I love connection. I love sharing with others in deep, meaningful ways. I love the dance of eye contact, of laughter, of open-hearted conversation with strangers in passing. I always have.

Sadly, this natural joy, my extroversion and flirtatiousness with the world, has been misunderstood, mistrusted, and, at times, used against me. Most recently, and most painfully, by my last significant other.

When we met, it was these very qualities he said he loved most about me; my warmth, my light, my social ease. But as time went on, those traits became the very things he sought to diminish in me. Quietly at first, so subtly I barely noticed, and then more cruelly and overtly. He began to shame me for being who I am. He sneered at my chatty nature, scowled at my friendliness, and was suspicious of my joy.

And slowly, over the course of about eighteen months, I became someone I barely recognised. We moved in together around the six-month mark, and soon after, I began to retreat. I stopped going out. I stopped seeing friends. I distanced myself from family. I gave up the gym. He didn’t like it when I left the house without him, and he certainly didn’t like people dropping by unless they were his guests. My sister, who couldn’t stand the way he spoke to me, stopped calling. My circle shrank. My light dimmed.

I tried to please him. I cooked for him constantly as it seemed to make him happy, and I desperately wanted peace and for him to be happy. But in the process, I began to comfort eat. I gained weight. I stopped recognising my own reflection. I felt unworthy, fat, ugly, embarrassed by the change in my body.

Worse still, I stopped writing. My poetry, my essays, my thoughts. They all dried up. I felt like my truth had lost its voice. I had nothing to say. Despite writing as a way to process life, my thoughts and the world for as long as I could remember, I’d hit a wall and could not write on it - perhaps because it was already plastered in words written in invisible ink. Nothing came. Just blankness and numbness. My pen would not write and my fingers would not type. Deep down, I know I no longer believed I deserved the flow of words. I had betrayed them with such a catastrophic failure at love and adulting. I no longer believed in myself. I was ashamed. I was too sad to write.

My work and business suffered. I began turning down clients, particularly male ones because he couldn’t handle me having any kind of professional relationship with other men. At first, he asked. Then, he demanded. Eventually, I stopped entirely. I applied for jobs but he didn’t like the idea of me working full time (or even part-time) outside the home. His jealousy and mistrust were exhausting. My business ground to a halt, and with it, my financial independence. I became entirely reliant on him, which only gave him more power. It became one more guilt stick he could beat me with. I was shamed for not earning, even though he had made it virtually impossible for me to do so.

I felt completely trapped. I had no money. We had a tenancy agreement I couldn’t break. For various reasons I didn’t feel I could turn to my parents. I wanted the children to have stability. I couldn’t see a way out.

After a year, I ended up in hospital with a nervous breakdown. A well-meaning mental health nurse suggested I apply for benefits, but I wasn’t eligible as I was still legally married, and still living with a partner. I was educated, experienced, desperate to get back on my feet and yet the system felt like a closed maze, and I was lost in it. I tried to stay afloat by convincing myself I could “fix it,” that if I could just make him happy, things would be okay in the end.

But things were far from okay. Over the next six months, I tried to leave a few times, but at each attempt I chickened out. He reeled me back in with guilt, threats, promises and heart-wrenching apologies. But his jealousy got worse. His control got tighter. And then came the accusations - daily, obsessive, exhausting. He accused me of flirting with school dads, the man at the supermarket checkout, the children’s teachers. He spied on my phone, broke into my computer, trawled through my social media inboxes, always looking for “proof” that I was cheating, evidence that I was a slut, that I was unfaithful. I felt like I was drowning in shame I didn’t deserve. My nervous system shattered. Old traumas came roaring back. I was deeply depressed and barely hanging on.

When the police became involved in December 2023, and they firmly urged me to leave or press charges, I finally did. I left and went into hiding. I lay low for the better part of a year. It took time, more than a year and a half, to begin to feel safe again. To trust my own instincts. To create again. To feel myself again.

And only now, after all that time, do I feel strong enough to even contemplate romantic love again.

But I tread gently. I’m still wary. I still don’t fully trust my own ability to discern what is safe and what is not. I feel sadness and shame that I, a woman who thought she was emotionally intelligent, educated, a good judge of character and full of love, didn’t see what was happening until she was in too deep. I feel guilty that I brought him into my children’s lives and then had to rip him away from them again after they too had learned to love him in their own ways. They were confused, hurt, and grieving. And in fairness, he was always generous and kind to them. That only complicated things further.

So, these days, I move slower. I keep one foot on the ground. I try not to fall too hard, too fast although that is a challenge as it’s always been my nature to do so.

What I know for sure now is this: my love of people, my joy in connection, my friendliness, my sensuality - these are not invitations. They are parts of me. They do not mean I’m seeking sex or attention or approval. When I’m in an honest and mutually committed relationship, I am fiercely, wildly, tenderly loyal. I give everything. I love hard. I show up. I want to rise together. I want to support my partner in becoming everything they’re here to be. I want us to manifest magic together.

But this time, it has to be mutual. No more giving everything and getting crumbs. No more sacrificing my work, my joy, my sanity, my body, or my children’s wellbeing for the sake of “love.” Never again.

I also believe that true loyalty shouldn’t require anyone to erase their past. I will never again be with someone who forcefully demands I delete all former lovers or male friendships, or expunge the memory and presence of my ex-husband, or pretend my life started the day we met. That’s not love. I carry the people I’ve loved (and the many and varied lessons learnt from them) warmly in my heart. I’m not longing to return to them, but I honour what they meant to me.

So to the one who may become my next, maybe last and possibly my greatest love, whoever you may be (and it’s likely that, in the immortal words of Michael Bublé, “I just haven’t met you yet”), please don’t ask me to forget the people, places and things that have made me who I am. I want to build a life with someone who respects where I’ve come from, just as I will honour where you’ve come from too; your family, your heartbreaks, your friendships, your growth.

I’m planting the seeds of these new rules for loving me into the ether as I want and deserve real love. Rooted love. Soul love. The kind that is brave enough to hold space for both our pasts, and still step forward with open arms and open hearts.

And so it is…