On Loving a Man that Doesn’t Exist.

He was the end of the line for me.

He was the place where everything I thought I knew about love failed; swallowed into a black human-shaped void — the color his eyes turned when he was high on his own indifference to my pain or anyone else’s suffering.

How did I get here?

Through the doorway of a shiny facade. He worked hard to present himself as the perfect boyfriend. Caring, romantic, successful—a mirror reflecting everything I thought I wanted. Moreover, he reflected my dreams and concerns as if they were his own. I didn’t question it. I fell in love, we married, and then I realized something was terribly wrong.

The first time he hit me, his excuse was that he didn’t like the way I had slammed the door behind him during an argument. He then begged for forgiveness, blaming stress at work, promising it would never happen again. Until it did.

Within that relationship, I witnessed the fragility of the human mind, the splitting of personality, the ego’s ruthless capacity to maintain center at all costs, and the terrifying absence of empathy. His hypocrisy was woven into the fabric of who he was, invisible to him but devastating to everyone close to him. When the mask slipped, everything went dark.

He was born in Germany to migrant Turkish workers but raised in Istanbul, a city he believed was everything he was not: religious, backwards, stifling. He prided himself on being “Western,” secular, enlightened—a persona that became evident he had pieced together from half-read books, American TV shows, and YouTube videos. Yet beneath that exterior, he had no real values. He was whatever suited him in the moment.

July 15, 2016, during the night of the attempted Turkish coup, despite not being religious or having any genuine concerns for Turks, he paraded through Istanbul shouting Allahu Akbar. I asked him why, and his only explanation was that he just wanted to know what it felt like. This moment crystallized something I had always suspected: his principles were performative. 

Hypocrisy dictated nearly every interaction. He demanded I dress modestly while he wore what he pleased. At restaurants, he would manoeuvre me to sit facing only him, yet he could face anyone. He controlled where I could go in Istanbul, while roaming freely himself. He accused me of flirting while secretly entertaining a young Ukrainian woman named Maria. His sense-making ability was fractured, his stories unreliable, his reality skewed.

Our relationship became a relentless cycle of drama and gaslighting. I struggled to see where I ended and he began. Every negative event became my fault. My feelings were replaced with his interpretation of them. I felt hijacked and deeply alone. 

The truth is, the man I fell in love with didn’t exist. So what had I fallen in love with? What had tripped me into a pit so dark that I could see nothing else? 

Looking back now, I see how I had fallen in love with an idea. The idea that if I could just be what this person wanted me to be, they would change. Looking back now, I see how all my self-worth up till then was tied to this game. A game I started playing as a child with my father, hoping it would stop him from leaving, but it didn’t. 

Eight years later, and living a completely different life, this question still haunts me – What had I fallen in love with? Had every relationship up till then been part of this game? 

Now I see how his emptiness was a container for all the vulnerabilities that I didn’t want to acknowledge as real and that I thought I could fix by believing that they were something else. 

Then the violence escalated, and it nearly killed me.

I remember lying on the concrete floor of our rented London apartment, unsure if there was blood or if I had fractured my spine. I was in so much pain. Moments before kicking me in the stomach, he had grabbed me by the throat in the elevator and violently pushed me up against the mirrored walls. I remember thinking this is how women in abusive relationships die. 

Just like me and everyone else in his life, the mask I fell in love with could be easily discarded.  

Prior to meeting him, I had asked the universe secretly to show me what real love was. I believed I had found it when I met him, but in actuality, I had failed the test. All the signs were there to say ‘this is not love’, but I didn’t have the courage to name them for what they were. So the signs got louder and more violent until the courage was found. 

Looking back, if I wanted to know love, I see now that the universe gave me exactly what I needed—not what I wanted. My relationship with him was a psychological exorcism, stripping away illusions and forcing me to face the parts of myself I had long avoided. The intensity of his love bombing and then neglect and abuse brought so much of my own unresolved trauma to the surface that I had no choice but to work through it. And this is what was necessary if I was ever going to experience the love that I was seeking. 

Sometimes when we think something has ended, we realise that we had been on an even bigger journey all along. My abusive marriage had been cathartic in that it allowed me to examine what placed me in that situation in the first place. What, in that relationship, did I mistake for love and why? What did I think I could fix and why?

The day I left him, I remember standing at Shadwell Station waiting for the tube and for the first time seeing how small he was. He insisted on walking me to the station, crying – looking pathetic, begging me not to leave I remember feeling nothing but the pain of bruising and then relieved when the tube arrived and the door closed and I could watch him and that part of my life disappear into the distance.

From this experience, I learned the following truths: 

Key takeaways from this whole experience:

• Be aware of love-bombing in the beginning of any relationship.
• A person who loves you never changes narratives to deflect blame, contradict or deny your recollection of events, minimise or dismiss your concerns or make you feel that the negative feelings you are feeling are your fault. These are signs of gaslighting, the aim of which is to cause you to question your reality and sanity and leave you vulnerable to abuse.
• You will never get a sense of closure from a narcissist. This requires empathy and rational thinking which is beyond their capabilities. Once you walk away from a narcissistic relationship, you need to give yourself closure.
• A narcissist follows a pattern – Idealize, Devalue, Discard. Don’t engage in the pattern. Remove yourself from it if you can or seek help.
• Remember that narcissists are people who prey on forgiveness. They thrive on your need for closure. They also manipulate compassion, exploit sympathy and manufacture anxiety. They use all three to control your behaviour and keep you stuck. See it and free yourself from it.
• Be aware of multiple personas. Through the course of a word-salad conversation, you are likely to experience multiple personalities ranging from normal to aggressive to childish behaviour.
• Notice the mean and sweet cycle. Sometimes they shower you with attention, sometimes they ignore you, and sometimes criticize you. This is not a normal or healthy pattern of behaviour in any way.

x Martina