“Have you ever considered bankruptcy?” 🧐
My stomach dropped when she suggested that to me.
I was having a chat with My Budget, exploring options to get me out of the hole I’d gotten myself into. 🕳️
I was sitting in my newly built house, not being able to afford toilet roll. No landscaping, no blinds, and concrete floors after living there for three years.
How did I let this happen? 🥺
I’d spent almost 8 years at that point with a guy who was financially and emotionally abusive.
In the earlier stages of the relationship there were many things that came up that acted as a cover for the fact that he was terrible with money (as well as being a generally shitty person).
We were on/off all the way through, with him winning me back by suddenly becoming the guy I fell in love with again – or through guilt tripping me. 😶🌫️
As time went on, it became apparent that things weren’t going to change and I did my best to set boundaries where I could, to see if things could improve.
But when you live with someone and your gas gets cut off because they haven’t paid the bills, you give in and pay it after a month of cold showers. 🚿🥶
When he gets behind on his rent, you pay his share so you don’t all get evicted.
You ask each week if he can please help you out with the bills, but each week there’s a new excuse and you’re left to pay it all alone. 😔
You buy the food, including his son’s school lunches so you can all eat.
You fill up his car so he can get to work (because surely that’s better than unpaid days off work?)
You start getting resentful when he buys things for his boat and motorbike because how has he even managed to get them? 🤷🏼♀️
When you point out he’s able to spend $100 on booze on payday but can’t fill up his car or contribute towards bills, he deflects by claiming you’re accusing him of having a drinking problem. 🥃
You’re shocked when even though they’ve come five times to take his car because he’s always behind on the loan, he buys a new car because they can secure it against your mortgage – the mortgage that he doesn’t have his name on. 😳
The resentment builds up, but you stay silent because every time you try to talk about it he makes you out to be the problem and it’s “easier” to keep the peace.
(Except it’s not, because it’s eating you up inside).
You withdraw, become isolated and beaten down from the daily critical comments from him – about every little thing – and try to avoid any of his angry outbursts. 🤬
You stop cooking because it’s never good enough, then get criticised for not cooking.
He says your mates are using you, so you stop seeing them.
You don’t invite anyone over because you don’t want anyone in that shitty energy. 😖
He doesn’t like how you take the bins out, work too much, hang up the washing… how you’re “too much” around his friends.
I was angry… but mostly with myself. Because I was enabling him, I was the one allowing this to happen.
When I found myself over $53,000 in debt, with my house in mortgage collections, I knew I had to do something drastic.
So I found myself on the phone to My Budget and after she mentioned bankruptcy, I saw my future flash before my eyes.
Losing my house, a shitty credit rating, losing all the things I was working seven days a week to pay for.
While I paid for his fucking life, while he went out on his boat, while he stole from his friends and his mum, while he complained about it all to me.
Fuck that. I’m not losing all of that, for him.
I did sign up with My Budget and they helped me get out of debt way quicker than I thought was possible. But I refused to go bankrupt.
It lit a fire in my belly, and it wasn’t too many more months of enabling his shit before I’d totally had enough. 🔥 ✋🏼👊🏼
He went on a fishing trip to Exmouth that he conned his mum into paying for, would have been at least $5k.
When he got back and I got up to give him a hug hello (because isn’t that what you do when you haven’t seen each other for a week?!), he pushed past me.
When I ended it, he tried guilt tripping me by using his son, who I loved very much.
Talked about how they’d be homeless.
But I knew I couldn’t give in again – I’d spent so many years longer with him than I should have to make sure his son would be ok.
He tried all the tricks in the narcissist’s handbook – ignoring me for days, gaslighting, love bombing, deflection, projection, dismantling my character and saying he’d heard I was fucking a married man (I wasn’t so much as breathing on another guy), guilt tripping… nothing worked.
I just wanted him to fuck off and leave me alone. 🖕🏼
I heard soon after he was telling everyone he left me because I was angry and I was cheating on him.
Ha, ok, fuckwit. 😂
You hear of mates who thought about calling child protection because they knew his behaviour was abusive.
Stuff that brings up anger as well as validation. It wasn’t all in my head, like he said it was. Other people saw it too.
Since I kicked him out in 2018, he continued to find other people he could use.
I rebuilt my life from the foundations up – dealing with the core wounds of abandonment and rejection that had kept me attracting unhealthy relationships into my life. ❤️🩹
I got out of debt, rented out my house, paid off my car early.
Worked hard as usual, but this time without haemorrhaging money paying for someone else’s life.
Realised how much I was actually making, and started being able to save.
Healed my heart, met the absolute love of my life – a healthy, stable, sexy man who treats me with nothing but love and respect. 🥰
We got engaged, bought our dream house and we’re literally living happily ever after. 💍 🏡
None of this came without a shit load of hard work, healing, coaching, mentoring, educating myself, deep reflection and exploring and understanding where the patterns in me came from that kept attracting guys into my life who abused me.
And that’s how my Project Self Worth coaching program was born – because while I spent 18 years during all those relationships not just being in unhealthy relationships, but also being a parole officer supervising perps of family violence, I formed a deep desire to focus my time and energy on helping other women out of these shit situations.
So they can figure out who they really are free from that B.S and live their best fucking life WITH the love of their life – whether that means in another relationship or just in the most important relationship of their life – with themselves. 😍
If any of this hit home babe, I made a special freebie for you: “10 Signs Your Relationship is ACTUALLY Toxic.”
Link in bio.
And if you’re keen to know more about Project Self Worth, comment WAITLIST and I’ll message you.
You’ve got this, and I’ve got your back.
You’re not alone babe.
Big love,
