Going through my trauma would not make yours easier
Lately I've been entertaining romantic relations with someone I'd already established a good friendship. As I mentioned in my last blog post, he has been through some pretty horrifying shit. He also was kicked out of his home as a teenager, and his mother told his sister that he moved to a different country (when in reality he still lived in the same city as them). He moved to the United States a few years ago to start over and earn a degree here.
Naturally, we developed a close emotional bond. Different experiences for sure, but we respect each other for enduring these hardships.
It's nearly impossible for me to explain to kept people what it is like to be adopted, especially in my case as I lost an entire country, language, and culture. I've managed to recount to him my entire life circumstances—how, when, and why I was given up, the search for my biological family, trying to reclaim my identity by renewing my Russian passport and learning the language. I've even more than hinted at the shitty relationship (or lack thereof) with my adoptive parents who did not congratulate me on my successful search for biological family, instead reminding me how much I cost them and my lack of gratitude for being stripped of everything that was supposed to belong to and take care of me from day one. He knows that I go to therapy and that traveling to meet my sister was an enormous step for me in my healing.
I felt safe talking to him. I also felt very safe with him physically.
I knew for a while that he himself desperately needs therapy. Like me, he bottles up a lot of shame. He also cares intensely about how people think of him. He is not monogamous, and I don't think it's for the right reasons (I have nothing against those who pursue ethical nonmonogamy). He tried talk therapy for a while. He could talk only on the phone, didn't even dare to show his face to the provider. He quit after six months.
Because of our emotional and physical chemistry, I decided to be patient with him for a while after we admitted our feelings for each other. I could potentially be okay with an open relationship if he were to work on his issues.
I've let some red flags slide over the past several months (even just as friends) go. He has said that he envies me, wishes he had my life. After I told him that I texted my adoptive father on his birthday, he said that I should be the bigger person and call him even though it's obvious that I set these boundaries for a reason. I'm pretty used to society and media telling me that I'm lucky for what I've been through and should be grateful and all, so I can easily shrug these things off.
Recently, his sister came from their home country to visit him for a week with her children. They didn't have a close relationship during childhood, so he savors opportunities to kindle a real sibling relationship. Unfortunately, she betrayed him this time. He caught her stealing money from him.
Understandably, he is frustrated with his family. He then had to entertain more distant relatives who were visiting the area.
Exhausted, he called me on Saturday while I was at my best friend's home. He started saying something strange.
I wish I were adopted.
It wasn't the time or place to be bothered. So, I kind of laughed it off and said it was a bit rude and insensitive. He should know his audience.
I didn't bring it up again, but he did the next day via text. I assured him that it wouldn't keep me up at night. He said that it might for him. Okay.
On Monday we had planned to have a more serious chat about communication and the state of the relationship, as I felt he was being avoidant in several regards.
Then he brought it up again.
I wish I were adopted because then I could cope with what my parents did to me more easily. I wouldn't give a fuck.
I rolled my eyes.
Then he started describing someone he knew from his home country whose birth parents could not afford to take care of him, so he was adopted. Thanks to his adoptive parents, this guy was able to attend an Ivy League. Even the "actual" (he used this adjective) siblings attended his graduation. He was so grateful.
Apparently he is familiar with others who have similar stories. And it worked out positively for them, so obviously it would have been better for him if he were adopted.
I was speechless. Holding back tears, I couldn't bring myself to hang up the phone right then and there.
He thought he could tease me then.
Clearly you aren't saying anything because you know you'll lose this argument.
I was going to lose an argument about my own lived experience? To someone who has never and never will go through the same thing?
He noticed and asked if I was crying. Well, of course. I was so upset. In his defense, as he said, he couldn't see my facial expressions because it was just a phone call. So, he thought I was just listening to him. He attributed the mismatch to cultural difference: In the West, we don't pay attention to which person says what and in which way. It isn't like that for him back home. I had to say that, well, it's actually more hurtful that someone close to me would say something like that.
Though apologetic, he insisted that these were solely his feelings.
It's not about you!
I was still shocked. He had to go to a meeting, but he sent me an apologetic text and offered to come see me. There's no way in hell I wanted to see anyone at that point let alone him. I could barely carry on with my workday, concealing my hot tears from my co-workers.
That evening he sent a fake apology. He was sorry for the way I felt, for the way his words made me feel. Not because he invalidated my own trauma or anything like that. He also didn't like that I intended to consult my therapist because apparently she doesn't know him or our dynamic, so she would automatically side with me and think he is evil.
For some reason I agreed to talk to him the next day. He consulted my best friend via phone right before the meeting, and she was also stunned by his line of thinking. He somehow claimed that he didn't bring up the topic. He said that he didn't tell me I was wrong, he feels how he feels and he isn't sorry for that, and it's about him, not me. We agree that this is someone who hasn't dealt enough with his own issues to have enough empathy for mine.
I don't know why I decided to rant at him for hours from the passenger seat of his car in the parking garage attached to the café where my best friend and I first introduced us. But I did. It took me almost an hour before I could even say anything to him. For no good use, I ranted about how adoption makes me feel and why adoption is a trauma, objectively speaking, and not some alternative and automatically better reality for his brain to entertain. If anything, being adopted on top of his other issues would have further complicated things.
I was half-hyperventilating, half-crying as I described how adoption has made me view myself: I was part of an experiment that served the adoption industry and adoptive parents. I was purchased to fulfill a role for an infertile couple who thought I was a blank slate but never could have been. I failed not one, but two families. I didn't see anyone who shares my blood in real life until I was 28 years old, and it was for less than three days.
I hate having to justify myself. I've witnessed enough of it growing up, all the sunshine-and-rainbows narratives about adoption. Sometimes I think I ought to say that I was trafficked as a baby and taken to and raised in a different country. Wouldn't that child be fucked up by that experience?
I've been in fight-or-flight mode ever since this day. I came home from that tirade feeling like I ran 100 miles. I was physically and emotionally ill.
Even though I think he is an inherently good person, I still don't know why the hell I decided to forgive him.
No one who hasn't been through this gets to tell me that it would have made their life easier. I'm tired of my lived experience being treated like it's something up for debate, like it can somehow be contested by a positive counter-example. Especially when it comes from those whose identities were never severed before they could consent to it.
I told him that I would not continue romantic relations with him unless he actively seeks a therapist within the next two weeks. He outrightly refused.
It is no longer safe for me to discuss these things with him.