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holdtylersandersonaccountable · 5 years ago

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Elizabeth Moroni

Dating him was probably the most traumatic thing that’s happened to me in my life. We started dating after I had just turned 19. Tyler was 24. He was incredibly manipulative. He flattered me with the typical “you’re not like the others” routine, which, on a 18 year old girl, totally worked…but not at first. I was reluctant to engage with him because I already had a partner, and I saw how he treated his girlfriend with disregard while hitting on me. Tyler’s fixation on me made others uncomfortable to the point where the friend group collectively decided that I was “off limits”. But Tyler had different plans. Tyler didn’t go to my college, or any other college—he came to my college town weekly to go out drinking, and to prey on me. He repeatedly isolated me from my group, dragging me outside for cigarettes to get me alone. These moments were common and we began to kindle a friendship despite all of the red flags. He was friends with really kind people, so I reasoned that even though his behavior was troubling, if he was a bad person he wouldn’t be surrounded by good people. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Tyler took me out for smoke breaks over and over. He even told me that a song reminded him of me, “Silver Words” by Sixto Rodriguez. He said the song reminded him of me, and he even sang it to me. It was very romantic, but I still didn’t budge. When he wasn’t in town, he would call me constantly, leaving sloppy 2am voicemails confessing his love to me. The messages were frequent. I said no so many times. I was polite, but firm. There were so many drunk calls I let go to voicemail��I recall a specific conversation I had with his childhood friend about the situation. “What do I do about this? How can I get him to stop? I’m not interested.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJRXUftkPE

This group of friends I was with would all go out together to drink in Greeley. I was underage but access to alcohol wasn’t hard. Everyone put a drink in my hand. I remember being too drunk and lying on the floor in a room alone because I was nauseous. Tyler came in and laid down beside me--I felt his hand grab mine in the dark. He only tried to hold my hand when I was drunk. It was a small thing, at the time I thought it was cute, but it made me uncomfortable. He did it covertly in front of friends. Innocent enough, but I see now he was testing me, grooming me to accept more next time.

Tyler eventually became frustrated that his teenage fixation (me) wasn’t complying. He separated from his girlfriend at the time, (he didn’t, he was lying and gaslighting her as well, coming up to Greely to cheat). Tyler then changed his strategy. Quickly, he found a second teen, which he flooded with attention. He brought her to places he knew I would be, giving me the cold shoulder completely (he acted like he was angry at me). This was all in the span of a few days, so I was surprised that he went from being my friend to refusing to speak to me. I felt like because I wasn’t complying, I was being punished. Despite his unrelenting forwardness, we were friends, and the silent treatment was undeserving. My already low self esteem made me question what was wrong with me. A particular low point was when I overheard Tyler singing this young girl the same song he said reminded him of me—“Silver Words”.

You’d think that I would have been relieved and appreciative for Tyler to move on from me. But as a child without the tools to recognize (or even have the vocabulary for) gaslighting, manipulation, grooming, and typical predatory behavior, instead of relief I felt devalued and thrown out. Looking back, my ignorance made me so unequipped for this situation, and I wish I knew at the time how to identify what was really going on.

Eventually (not long after) Tyler and I began talking again. It felt good to be acknowledged; there was a sort of emotional high I found myself feeling when he was nice to me. If a dog is abused by his owner, but thrown a bone every once in a while, the dog will stay loyal. That was me—riding the high of being treated well after not for so long. This was a theme throughout the relationship.

I started to interpret his red-flag behavior as romantic gestures. Not long after, we started seeing each other romantically. Tyler’s unwavering persistence was disturbing, but it always got him what he wanted. I should have seen the start of our relationship as a start of a pattern. This situation is emulative of what was in store for me for our entire relationship. Constantly being devalued, insulted, and torn down, only given brief moments of decency that bring floods of endorphins. I was addicted.

CHARGE. Did you know he has this word tattooed across his chest? Does a charging bull comply when you say “stop”? “No”?

The bull charges regardless.

The abuse didn’t take long to start. Tyler had an inner rage that his friends and family seldom saw, and that he made sure they never saw. Tyler would casually say hurtful things to me on a daily basis, and generally do things to make me feel like less than nothing. He would then groan about how “depressed and annoying” I was, and how I always kept him down. He was extinguishing my light. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, and as a result my relationships, my grades, my dreams, all started to crumble before me.

He started treated me like I was a burden, a thorn in his side he couldn’t get rid of, but when I tried to leave the relationship he would manipulate and guilt me into staying. Sometimes he would blame his attitude on his hangover. But it was more than that. It was consistent emotional abuse.

I was 18 when he first pressured me into having sex without a condom. I was not comfortable with it, and it took a while for me to give in. Maybe three times we had protected sex. Later, he refused to wear them, assuring me that it was safe, praising me for complying. Shortly after my 19th birthday, I got pregnant. The pregnancy was ectopic and after an extremely painful process, the baby was miscarried. Tyler was verbally supportive over text, but in person was cold.

One of the FIRST things Tyler told me that he had a “sleep sex disorder” that made him have sex with whoever he was lying in bed with. “I don’t really talk about my condition” he said. I didn’t realize it then, I laughed actually. We shared a laugh about it, I remember. How weird, how funny. I found out later that this allowed him to take me at any time, even if I declined sex hours before. I was stupid, but I was 19.

A “sleep sex” condition. When do you think Tyler got this diagnosis? What is the treatment plan for this kind of condition? I never saw Tyler taking medications or doing therapy to counteract his condition. Is his condition only triggered when the person lying in bed next to him is a woman? What runs through a man’s head when he wakes up over a woman in the middle of an episode? Does he stop? or does he finish?

I confused Tyler’s jealousy for love. I confused his controlling tendencies for caring ones. Shortly after my miscarriage, he started cheating on me. Every time I confronted him, I was gaslighted. I reached out to friends and they pulled away, not wanting to get involved. I felt like I was going crazy. I was so weak and so vulnerable. I asked him to leave my house the day I found out he was cheating. He wouldn’t leave. He stared at me loathingly from MY bed. He denied me acknowledgement, he denied me my personal space. He stared and stared, emotionless. He didn’t say a word, he didn’t leave. I had to leave my own home, and crashed on a friend’s couch. Tyler later told me that I “probably fucked [friend]” to get back at him.

He used that as leverage to continue his cheating and not feel bad about it. He openly texted and called women in front of me. Tyler told me on one instance that he might keep cheating if I kept the nosering that I had gotten without his permission. He said it made me look gross. He told me that he cheated because I was too “depressed” all the time and that pushed him away. He made me understand that everything that was causing me pain was my fault. This self-blame mindset obliterated my individuality, my intuition, my confidence and self worth. I was trapped in the relationship, a prisoner to my abuser.

I broke up with him after being tired of the mistreatment. He slit his wrists. I came back. We started dating again. He started cheating again. I wanted to die. He isolated me from my friends and family. He got very angry when I would go out. He punched holes in doors and walls. The threat of Tyler’s suicide kept a gun to my head and prevented me from causing any conflict. I was constantly stepping on glass, trying not to upset him.

One night stays seared in my memory forever. Drunk, he singled out one of my coworkers and called him a “pussy” for liking a certain band. This conversation escalated, Tyler got more aggressive, and I had to usher him out, embarrassed that he had started an altercation at my work. Driving home, I confronted him about his alcohol problem. Tyler was silent for about thirty seconds before he began repeatedly smashing his head into the dashboard. I had to pull over and physically grab him to get him to stop. I can never forget that disturbing repetition of him slamming his face into the dash—and the raw fear I felt in that moment.

“Abuse creates complex bonds between survivor and perpetrator that are difficult to break; it also causes a great deal of cognitive dissonance as the survivor attempts to reconcile the brutal reality of the abuse with the person he or she once saw as their greatest confidante and lover in the early stages of the relationship. This cognitive dissonance is a defense mechanism that is often resolved not by seeing the abuser for who he or she really is, but rather by denying, minimizing or rationalizing the abuse that is occurring as a way to survive and cope with the trauma being experienced.”

-Shahida Arabi

TW: Miscarriage, Rape

He started doing coke, and drinking every day. He got meaner.

One day I remember we had a tender moment on the floor. I was feeling vulnerable and safe in the moment, and decided to confide in Tyler about my feelings about my miscarriage from about a half a year before. He listened intently until I finished speaking. He then looked at the floor for a few seconds before softly chuckling and shaking his head, smiling. “Wow. That’s the kind of fucked up shit me and [Friend] joke about”. He continued to laugh. He said that the miscarriage “really ruined” me. I was shocked. I never forgot that moment—I’ve re-lived it a thousand times in my mind. His lack of empathy still gives me chills.

He could be tender to my dog, but when he was frustrated with her barking he would shove her around, too hard. This deeply upset me, but at the time I couldn’t even protect myself from the abuse. At this point he pressured me into sex regularly, no matter how exhausted I was or how much I resisted. I saw it as a thing I had to just do to get out of the way. Times I would refuse I would find him on top of me in the middle of the night. It was easier to let him finish. One night in particular I detail in a letter to myself that I wrote when I first broke out of the relationship—a note that would force me to acknowledge my abuse, even if I fell back in love with him. We had been drinking, and came home to sleep. Sex wasn’t on the table, and I was exhausted. I woke up feeling him on top of me. I had a tampon in…he forced himself in anyway. The pain was indescribable. I remember just lying there and thinking, “This shouldn’t be my life. How did I let this happen? How can I get out?”

Then a friend in the group began taking Tyler to shoot guns. Immediately he wanted to buy a gun, even though we had talks about how guns make us uncomfortable. He admired the power a gun would grant him. He began being obsessed about having protection, as justification. His cocaine use increased. I told him to seriously reconsider because he knew and I knew he was mentally unstable. He bought it anyway. I started feeling very afraid. I was always walking on glass, not wanting to set him off, never feeling like enough. I suffered greatly.

He pressured me into getting an apartment with him. I knew I didn’t have money to afford the one he wanted. We argued about it for a long time. I wanted to move in with some girl friends of mine, but he rejected that adamantly. He said he would help me pay for it, that we would do a fair split of the rent based on our income. I didn’t want to live with him because I was scared of him. He said that if I didn’t move in with him, I was destroying the relationship. I was desperate and broken. I signed the lease. A day after I moved in my stuff, I reached a breaking point and realized I had to get out. I broke up with him, and in response he tried to give me oral (which I had not gotten in a long while). I pushed him off of me and left. His friend texted me, chastising me for ending things with Tyler “out of nowhere”. He did not know the extent of my abuse, but the victimization of Tyler was hurtful. Tyler did not allow me to leave the lease. The leasing office needed his permission to let me off of it, and despite the abusive situation, explained I was bound to my abuser and there was nothing I could do. I moved in with my parents. For the next year, I paid $500 a month so that Tyler could live in that apartment with his brother. I’m still in debt from that.

Tyler’s friend confronted me later, telling me to block Tyler on all forms of social media because he had seen a picture of me and tried to kill himself. I was frustrated. I never got to be a victim, because my predator, my abuser, was suicidal. He used suicide attempts in order to not only avoid being accountable for his actions, but also to be comforted by everyone he knew and victimize himself. This is why I believe that his friends and community have continued to protect him throughout his trail of abuse. And have continued to hang out with him, play in bands with him, drink with him, do coke bumps with him, laugh with him, post selfies with him, and allow him to hurt women time and time again. I’m reminded of my trauma every time I see him in a friend’s Instagram post, smiling, unapologetic, unaccountable.

Sometimes I look back at pictures of myself then. I was a child--right out of high school. I look at pictures of me and remember the isolation and pain I was experiencing at that point in time.

After I broke things off with Tyler for good, I wrote that letter to myself that I mentioned. October 2015. It begins:

“Dear Elizabeth, I am writing you today because this morning you were thinking about Tyler. I don’t know what the future holds, and I don’t know if you will ever be tempted to date him again. Here, I will make a list of reasons why you should never consider being with him again—times he hurt you, stifled your growth, and made you feel like less than you are.”

Here is the list:

-He was flippant about things that mattered to me.

-He would schedule things to interfere with my own plans, and then guilt me into abandoning my plans for his. He was always in control.

-If he was mad a me, he would only cook dinner for himself while I was there.

-I wasn’t allowed to pick tv shows and movies to watch.

-He often pressured me to drive to visit him in very dangerous weather (one time I nearly spun out).

-He blamed me for his own personal issues.

-I got the silent treatment often.

-He pressured me to sign a lease with him.

-He stole my jokes and told them to his friends, taking credit.

-He drank often—whiskey usually, and drinking made him mean.

-He cheated on me with other teens, younger each time.

-He insisted we drive everywhere together so I couldn’t leave.

-He pretended he didn’t know me in social gatherings, and would pull away if I was affectionate in public.

-He would tell me he would pay for dinner, but on the spot refuse to pick up the tab so that I would have to. One day I remember I told him I couldn’t afford to eat out. He convinced me to come because he “really wanted me there” and said he would cover me. We went to an expensive ramen place on Pearl in Denver with his brother and shared sake. It was a nice treat until Tyler suggested we split the tab at the end of the meal. I mentioned what he said to me before about paying and he stated he never said that. Frustrated and not wanting to cause a scene in front of his brother, I paid for the meal. He would do things like this constantly, which really made me question reality at times…what had happened versus what I remembered. The deeper into the relationship I got the more I was disoriented and confused, and his control over me grew.

-He insulted my close friends, and was not okay with me being around men, or talking to men.

-He would even get upset if I would text or talk to people in our friend group, especially when he wasn’t present. One night, Tyler invited the girl he was cheating on me with to the county fair with our friend group. He was shameless about this and would often invite her to hang out in front of me, which was psychological torture. It was normalized. No one in the friend group would acknowledge this, and I was slowly losing my mind. She was even there during Tyler and I’s anniversary. But that is another story. We are all at the fair together and Tyler is acting like I don’t exist…isn’t walking with me, talking to me, looking at me, like we are strangers who have never met. The group gets on a roller coaster, and I get into a cab with another male in the friend group, as Tyler had already picked his seat. After the roller coaster, Tyler pushes past me forcefully to show me he is angry. I say his name and he doesn’t answer. I touch his arm and he yanks away and says, “why don’t you go and fuck [male friend]?” He then joined the girl he was cheating on me with. I decided to leave the fair, in disgust, and I had a mental breakdown. I looked back on this moment with great shame because no one asked me about it later or saw if I was okay. I felt very alone then.

-He pressured me to cut ties with my family

-He would punch things when he was angry, which scared me. He punched a hole in the wall, and a hole in the door. One day, while moving stuff, Tyler got frustrated and punched the side of a moving truck in front of his dad. His dad got really upset, which meant he doesn’t really see that side of Tyler.

-When I found out he was cheating on me, I asked him to leave. He refused to leave my home, and refused to leave my bed. He didn’t stay one word…he just stared at me, silently, arms crossed. I had nowhere to sleep, so I asked a friend at the music college if I could sleep on his couch. Later, when I returned, Tyler verbally attacked me and claimed “you probably fucked him last night”.

-He threatened that if I ever studied abroad I would be hurting our relationship and he would break up with me. The internship I was considering was 3 months long.

-He could eat my food I bought, but I was not allowed to eat his food unless he let me.

-He thought it was funny to urinate on me in the shower which truly disgusted me.

-He never did anything special for me on my birthday.

-If Tyler took me out for a date and paid for dinner, he 110% expected sex in return and was enraged if I refused. Some nights I would be studying hard and completing homework to meet deadlines—the deadlines came after his needs. He often pressured me into sex while I was working towards something positive, whether that was school, art projects, or self care tasks.

So where do we go from here? Basically, I started this blog so that this will not continue. So that people who speak up and aren’t heard have a safe area to talk about their experiences. Despite the abuse, there were times I really saw hope in Tyler, but his abusive and self-sabotaging behavior has continued to hurt himself, those close to him, and those he has victimized…not to mention future victims. I do think that Tyler can get better, but he has to take one long look at himself and recognize his trail of destruction. It’s only when he can find empathy can he then seek treatment in forms of domestic violence rehab classes and extensive therapy. If you choose to be close to Tyler, you have a responsibility to inspire those changes in him instead of enable his behavior. Your silence is more hurtful than you ever know. There were so many times where friends, and kind people, have turned their backs on me every time I reached for help, not wanting to acknowledge the extent of Tyler’s abuse. I feel that the constant normalization of violence on women is gut-wrenching. But the only person who can really change is Tyler himself.

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