Toxic relationship: He treated me like dirt, but I found myself

“It’s your fault. You with your fat thighs. And look at your saggy breasts. Do you think they turn me on?”

I lay on my side trying to hold back the tears. In ten minutes at the latest, Marcel would calm down and confess his love to me while weeping. He was sure of my consolation. Like every time.

I had recently moved to Paris, looking for a job and planning to study in a few months. I ran into Marcel at a concert the first week after my arrival. The handsome southern Frenchman with the funny accent quickly cast a spell over me. He was studying mechanical engineering in his last semester, far from home. I was happy to offer him a new one, and soon Marcel exchanged his dorm room for my small one-room apartment. In the anonymity of the big city, I found my first paradise in Marcel. I was madly in love and happy. And didn’t want to see the catch.

Marcel suffered from erectile dysfunction – and it was my fault

I wasn’t inexperienced, but having sex with Marcel quickly became a problem. He couldn’t climax and suffered from erectile dysfunction. I tried everything to please him. Nine times out of ten it ended in disaster. Marcel blamed me for that: not attractive enough, too plump. That never happened to him with previous girlfriends. He showed me pictures of long-legged, willowy beauties. I gulped, but counted myself so lucky that he had chosen me anyway.

I wanted and should become more attractive to him. But he dismissed my diet attempts with contempt, my thighs, my sore point even when I was a teenager, would always remain “herb mashers,” he said. At the time, I was not only normal weight with a size 38, but also an ambitious runner. He was also critical of that.

Running would only give me uglier legs, running isn’t erotic, it’s not feminine. My study plans: unnecessary frills for a woman like me.

He always wanted to be admired

But he wanted to be admired for his looks, his engineering degree, his triathlon successes, which were mediocre at best, while forbidding me to wear jerseys from competitions I had competed in.

He was my one-man show and the only thing that mattered to me was his mood. When he was fine, I was happy. And when he failed at sex, I took the blame, then felt infinitely stronger and loved as I dried his tears in my arms. He was so persistent in his views that I accepted them wholeheartedly and agreed with him everywhere. Of course I was fat and ugly. running and studying? I didn’t need it. My own personality was completely pushed into the background and my only task was to do everything for him, unconditionally. I hardly felt the punches in my face. You were justified too, I thought. And I was… happy.

In the peep show, I would finally learn how to turn men on

When Marcel ordered me to apply to a peep show during his internship absence, I didn’t even bat an eyelid. There I would learn how to turn men on, of course I would do that for him. My still shy call for the ad was followed by an “interview” where I had to strip down in front of the assembled staff and I was actually accepted.

After my normal office job, my path now led to a well-known Paris street with lots of sex shops. Only spectators are allowed in peep shows, but the poses to be taken are quite lascivious and pornographic with legs spread. The other girls were almost all addicted to drugs, in debt or forced to work. They quickly found out that I was working as a peep girl for other reasons and didn’t take me seriously. They enviously saw that I was booked more often than them, which meant extra money. I got a lot of compliments in those four weeks, especially for my shape. So beautiful, so feminine, so crisp, so … clean and so fresh. I told Marcel about it, beaming with joy, and I got … an outburst of anger. me and compliments I didn’t deserve any. He raged on the phone. At the end of the internship he had me pick up his things, threw the key in the mailbox and did not return.

Instead, I learned to love myself

I quit both jobs and hung around the apartment for days in a daze. Then I stood naked in front of the mirror. Wrote the client’s compliments in lipstick right across the reflection. I dressed up and went out. Alone.

A time followed that I am not particularly proud of today. Up to three affairs a week in Parisian nightlife. With every single one, my question “Tell me, is there something wrong with me, am I too fat, too underotic…?” invariably smiled at and at best with “Are you crazy?” answered.

I had to hear this answer again and again, needed confirmation to finally be able to gain a more positive body feeling. After the deep fall caused by the loss of my one-and-all relationship, this was the only way I could finally feel and accept myself again. However, I still had to go through a phase of self-harm before I learned to respect myself again and rediscover myself as a woman with many lovely details. I also had to seek medical help for this. Irony of fate: The peep show, which was supposed to bind me completely to him, had laid the foundation for my new body positivity.

A year later, among many applicants, I was accepted at a renowned Paris university.

Nothing happens without a reason in this life. I was addicted to Marcel, but I grew back the feathers that my personality had lost on my own. Today I proudly wear a shiny plumage and am at peace with myself and my body.

The author: Janine* (name is known to the editors), 52, is married and has three children. She works in the healthcare system, but her passion is writing. She lives with her family and Aussie Shepherd bitch in southern Baden.

Bridget