The Hidden Wounds of a “Nice” Relationship. (Pt. 1: Reed)

Why I Felt Broken in a Relationship Without Violence

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING — READ WITH CARE, READ WITH POWER

This story holds:
— Emotional abuse without visible bruises
— Betrayal through silence and porn
— PTSD symptoms, dissociation, and somatic collapse
— Mentions of sexual trauma, chronic illness, and disordered eating
— Infidelity as survival

There is no violence in this story.
But there is harm.
And the nervous system remembers.

This is a map for survivors of invisible erasure —
for the ones who were never hit, but still bled.

Read this in a moment when your body feels ready.
Pause when you need.
Breathe when it burns.
You are not alone in this remembering.

Why I Felt Broken in a Relationship Without Violence:

“THE QUIET ONES KILL YOU SLOWER.”

This is a coroner’s report signed by my nervous system. A post-mortem soaked in softness and silence. This is the holy wreckage of a relationship that never hit me—just hollowed me out with a smile. This is about the man who didn’t yell but still watched me disappear.

His name wasn’t really Reed, but we will call him that. The wreckage was real.
He stayed quiet. Gentle. Kind.
He also lied.
He gaslit.
He watched porn while stroking my hair like I was a pet.

He told me I was beautiful with one hand and minimized his tabs with the other.

And I stayed. For four years.
Until one morning when my body finally screamed louder than my conditioning.

🛋️ “AT LEAST HE’S NOT LIKE ELI”

“Eli” is what we’re calling my other Ex husband.
He was the walking red flag. Loud. Religious. A bully with a Bible. The kind of harm people actually believe.
So when Reed came along—soft, clean, “emotionally safe”—I thought I’d found the jackpot.

But calm isn’t care.
Politeness isn’t safety.
And silence is a slow acid that dissolves the self.

Reed never struck me. He never had to.
He watched me rot in real time and drank another beer.

🚨 NASCAR Sunday: The Final Snap

We were watching NASCAR. Yes, that’s your first red flag.

I was curled up in his lap. His hand playing with my hair and I fell asleep. And when I woke up?

His phone was in front of my face.
Streaming porn.
While he kept petting my head like nothing had changed.

That was the day something ancient in me snapped.

I punched a hole in the wall. Threw his phone. And that night, I jumped back into the arms of Eli—the ex I’d already escaped.

Not because I missed him. Because my nervous system thought chaos meant care. Attention—even twisted—still felt like proof I existed.

I became the one who cheated.

At least with Eli, I knew where the blows would land. His yelling, his hands, his heat—I could predict the storm.

With Reed? I was drowning in a room with no weather. No sound. Just lies whispered through a smile and silence thick enough to choke on.

And in that moment? I chose the devil I could hear over the angel who watched me disappear.

🕯️ 3 Years to that Breaking Point

That wasn’t the first time I caught Reed watching porn.
That was just the last time I let it gut me in silence.

For years, I found it.
On his laptop.
On his phone.
In digital shadows he assumed I wouldn’t trip over.

I wasn’t searching. I was stumbling into it.
Like the universe got sick of me handing him the benefit of the doubt and decided to hurl the truth at my face at 7am—sun slanting through the blinds, body still sleep-soft, soul already bracing.

One of the first times I caught him was just a few months in.
Early days. Honeymoon haze.
We’d already been circling the porn issue. Tension thick, excuses thin.
You’d think this moment would tip me off.
And honestly—I knew right there I should have left.
But I stayed.
Another 3.5 years.

That morning, I walked into the living room—and there he was.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor. Naked.
Our throw blanket draped over his lap like shame wearing my laundry.
Laptop open. Browser tabs like open wounds.
Eyes wide, frozen. A deer caught pleasuring itself in traffic.

He closes a browser and slammed the lid shut so fast it cracked the silence.
Like guilt trying to beat the speed of light.

Crow would say:
“First red flag? That’s your exit. Everything after is self-abandonment in costume.”

I didn’t need a magnifying glass. I didn’t need to “catch him.”
It was sloppy.
It was obvious.

Matthew McConaughey once wrote in Greenlights that addiction gets sloppy when it thinks no one’s looking.
“When the sneaky gets sloppy, you’re past the warning light.”
That was Reed.
Porn was his cocaine.
And I was the partner walking in on the nose dust.

Every time I brought it up, I got a masterclass in gaslight linguistics:

“I wasn’t doing that.”
“I would never lie to you.”
Or.. he would be straight up silent.

Translation: “Let me stack charm over truth until your gut stops talking.”

Then came the syrup:

“You know I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Gag me.

This—THIS—is why I flinch at compliments.
Why I side-eye teddy bears.
Why I don’t trust a bouquet unless it comes with a receipt for accountability.

The compliments never felt like affection.
They felt like hush money.
They felt like, Here’s something sweet to distract from the hole I just ripped in the trust.

But I wasn’t crazy.
So I started tracking our sex life in a notebook.

Not for fun.
For evidence.

To prove to myself that intimacy had really gone extinct.
That I wasn’t just “in a dry spell.”
That I was withering.

Some months, we didn’t touch.
Some weeks, I felt like a ghost in my own body.
Eventually, I stopped craving sex.
I started craving evaporation.

🧨 SECTION 2: THE COLLAPSE POINT
“WHY ‘REED’ WASN’T THE WORST—JUST THE LAST STRAW.”

Before Reed, there were ten rapes.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s math.
Not one man. Many.
Over years.
Some used force. Some used charm. Some just waited until I froze.

I was trained to perform.
To comply.
To smile while dying.
I was taught that silence keeps you safe—even when my insides are screaming.

So when Reed showed up and stayed quiet?

I thought that meant safety.
But silence isn’t always sanctuary.
Silence is just the cage without the bars.

Reed didn’t “feel dangerous.” That was the trap.
He became the final container—the last mask.
The one my PTSD poured itself into like poison in a vase of fake flowers.

And instead of pouring it out with me,
he watched it overflow.
Then handed me roses and a stupid teddy bear.

🧠 THE PTSD FILES: A COMPLICATION, NOT A PARDON

Let’s be clear.
My trauma didn’t make him harmful.
It just blurred the line between “he’s calm” and “I’m collapsing.”

I dissociated during sex.
I froze during arguments.
I called the porn “normal.”
I called the distance “maturity.”
I called the ache “healing.”

But he didn’t hold me.
He held space for my erasure.
He held the door open while I disappeared.

I kept waiting for him to reach into the darkness and say, “I see you. I choose you”
Instead, he dimmed the lights and called it ambiance.

🧬 WHAT MY BODY SAID WHEN MY MOUTH COULDN’T

I didn’t feel “bad.”
I collapsed.

Here’s what Reed’s silence did to my body:

Fibromyalgia. My body screamed because my mouth couldn’t.

Cluster headaches. My skull pounded out suicidal Morse code.

Bulimia. I swallowed feelings, then purged what I wasn’t allowed to name.

IBS. My gut refused to digest betrayal.

Dissociation. My safest place was nowhere.

Vertigo. The world spun every time I tried to stand up for myself.

Blackouts. My body chose OFF.

Stair paralysis. I couldn’t walk up into the life I was pretending to love.

Pelvic pain. Sex burned. My body recoiled like it knew the truth before I did.

Chronic UTIs. Louise Hay would say I was “pissed off”—and my body agreed.

Collapse as strategy. When I fell apart, he showed up. So my body learned: bleed to receive care.

Let’s be real.
He was more attentive when I was sick.
So my body said: Fine. I’ll be sick.

I wanted his attention. I wanted safety.
But collapse was the only doorway where comfort ever showed up.

Lundy would say:
“If he only comforts your weakness, he’ll never respect your strength.”

🏃‍♀️ SECTION 3: THE ESCAPE PATTERNS
“CHEATING WASN’T A CRIME. IT WAS A SURVIVAL SIGNAL.”

Reed begged me to come back.
After the NASCAR incident. After the porn. After the wall and I slept with Eli.
He cried.
He downloaded the parental block apps.
He tried to initiate more sex.
I stayed for another year.

Maybe it was real.
But my body didn’t care about maybes.
My body had moved out before my suitcase did.

Sex started to burn.
Literally.
My nervous system flared like a warning flare.
My pelvis locked up like it had heard the lies before I did.

So I stopped confronting.
And I started sneaking.

Reed slept heavy.
So I learned the rhythm of his breath.
Waited for the stillness, then the saw-like snoring.
Slipped out barefoot like a haunted housewife.

Colt would be parked two blocks away.
Door open. No questions. He was married too.

He’d drive us to the lake nearby, we’d have sex.
I’d go home.
Crawl back into the silence like nothing had happened.
Like my body wasn’t screaming: Do anything. Just feel real.

I cheated to hear myself over the sound of disappearing.

Crow would say:
“If you break a vow to stay alive, it was never sacred.”

💬 THEN CAME SILAS: THE ONE WHO SAID “I SEE YOU”

Silas was the backdraft.
A voice from childhood.
A witness I hadn’t realized was watching.

He told me he had loved me always.
Quietly.
And when I heard it, I jumped.

One night, I left my Apple Watch on the nightstand.
I needed to be tracked nowhere.

I went to Silas.
And Reed found the messages.

All of them.
Every quiet gasp.
Every breadcrumb of betrayal.
Every proof that someone else had said, “You matter.”

Reed begged again. More flowers, letters and cookies.
But my body was already screaming in a language he refused to learn.

He moved out the next month.
Silas moved in.

From the outside, it looked fast.
But collapse is only sudden to the ones who weren’t listening.

🧨 THIS ISN’T A CONFESSION. IT’S A CONSEQUENCE.

I cheated because love had already left the room—and I stayed too long trying to convince it to come back.

This was the wreckage.

Reed didn’t hit me.
But I bled in every place nobody could see.
He didn’t raise his voice.
So I raised mine for both of us.

The sex burned.
The silence roared.
And my nervous system walked out long before I did.

“When the door stays shut, the body breaks through the window.”

🕯️ SECTION 4: SILENCE WAS THE SLOWEST ERASURE.

Here’s where we bury it—with fire, with receipts, with holy clarity.

🕯️ THE GIFT BOX GRAVEYARD

He gave me flowers when I collapsed.
Cards when I flinched.
Presents when I pulled away.

Guilt wrapped in ribbons.
Silence padded in soft gestures.
A reward system for swallowing my voice.

So here’s the ritual.

Take the gifts.
The letters.
The trinkets of apology.
The things meant to distract from the things that didn’t change.

Put them in a box.
Seal it with the truth:
“This wasn’t love. This was strategy.”
“This was compensation for harm you wouldn’t name.”
“I was bleeding. You gave me flowers.”

Now bury it.
Or burn it.
Or label it and leave it in plain sight with a tag that says:
“Here lies the silence I mistook for safety.”

Crow would say:
“A grave is the most honest way to hold an apology that never changed a thing.”

🫀 FOR THE READER WHO’S BEEN THERE

You who logged sex in notebooks.
You who snuck out just to feel alive.
You who got sicker the longer you stayed.

You who began to hate being called beautiful—because it always came with a lie.
You who cheated, not from lust, but from vacancy.

This story is yours.

This isn’t guilt.
This isn’t shame.
This is data.
This is body-truth.
This is the map.

You are not a problem.
You are the alarm system still working.

Lundy would say:
“When no one believes your truth, your body keeps the record.”

📩 THE LETTERS HE NEVER OPENED

Mid-relationship.
Somewhere between collapse and numbness.
I tried to reach him.

I wrote letters.
Stacked. Sealed. Spell-labeled.

Read this when you feel like giving up.
Read this when you forget I love you.
Read this when you're angry.
Read this if you had a bad day at work.

and on…

I left them on his pillow.
Gently. Hopefully.

When we ended, I found them.
Unopened.
Unread.
Untouched.

That’s the part that tore the deepest.

Not the porn.
Not the silence.
Not the shutdowns.

The unopened letters.
The refusal to even read my voice when I handed it to him wrapped in love.

He didn’t just ignore my body.
He ghosted my truth.
He looked away from the version of me that still tried to speak gently.

Crow would say:
“The worst kind of ghosting is the one done under your roof with both eyes open.”

🪶 FINAL BLESSING FROM LOUI CROW

May your body never again have to scream to be heard.
May your truth arrive clean, unedited, unapologized.
May your nervous system find stillness where it once found war.
May the next touch you receive be one your body welcomes without flinching.
May your spine return to upright, in a house that doesn’t ask you to fold.

This wasn’t collapse.
This was the molt.
This was the crow flying free from the silence that once made a nest in your throat.

Crow would say:
“You didn’t lose love. You outlived the illusion.”

💔 What pain or struggle is this blog addressing?
Chronic emotional pain in relationships that look “fine” on the outside. Feeling erased by silence, ignored while screaming inside. Porn betrayal. Somatic trauma. PTSD in partnership. Feeling guilty for leaving “a nice guy.”
Soul win: The reader leaves knowing they’re not crazy—they were just reacting honestly to invisible harm. They leave with clarity. With fire. With permission to stop folding to be loved.