Story Background

Our Relationship - The Four Pillars

During our relationship, I often said that I wished we hadn’t met under extreme circumstances or that our lives would finally stabilize, so we could see how we truly were when standing on solid ground. The four pillars from the theory of life balance, which give life stability and support a person's well-being:

1. Work
2. Home
3. Friends
4. Relationship

All four were completely missing in our lives.

Pillar 1 - Work
He explained his outbursts of anger, even toward the end, as being due to the lack of the first two pillars: work and fa home. Many people described the beginning of our relationship as "fate." For three months, we were both on the same tiny island in Southeast Asia without crossing paths, only to meet three days before our respective departures—and discover that we lived just ten minutes apart in the same city back in Europe.

During our first meeting, we were so immersed in conversation that we didn’t realize the place where we sat had long since closed. Both of us were at a turning point in our lives, despite successful careers in the past. We had each left behind our old professions to pursue new paths. He, once a mountain and expedition guide in the jungle and Antarctica, had founded a positive-impact company during a two-year stay in the rainforest and now wanted to shift his focus to his mental strengths and become a businessman.

I, after decades of worldwide success as an actress, had co-founded a film production company abroad with a colleague to finally realize the projects I was truly passionate about and to gain creative freedom. I also wanted to fulfill my dream of living in the countryside.

"If I had known from the beginning that you were an actress, I would never have dated you. You said you were a producer. You deceived me," he later accused me over and over again.

We spent our last three days on the island together before we kissed on the third day. He said he wanted to date me. I was confused—how could he know that so quickly? But I wanted it too. We were both impulsive.

However, I was on the verge of leaving the city we both were based in. Lucas made it clear that he didn’t want a long-distance relationship. When I arrived at the company, I realized that my relationship with my business partner had already been strained for months. And then there was this new person who made me feel the way I had long dreamed of feeling: safe, interested, fulfilled on all levels. During the first weeks, I flew to see him every weekend. After a month, I gave up my share of the company and quit everything without a plan B. At the same time, I left the agency that had provided me with twenty years of security, as all my acting jobs came through them. Having abandoned my dream of filmmaking, I no longer had the energy to invest in the old. I had no new direction.

Lucas gave me that direction. Alongside his positive-impact company, he founded a film company that I was supposed to lead. He wanted to be in business, no matter the industry. But his investors never materialized, and I couldn’t manage to get the films we had planned get financed. All this time, I was writing scripts, creating pitch packages, organizing our contacts, festivals, and our lives. I also shopped and cooked for us every day—both lunch and dinner. I brought him coffee, tea and snacks, so he could focus on his work. Yet, every day, I was told I couldn’t get anything done and didn’t contribute to our future together, unlike him.

Pillar 2 - Home
When I moved away, I didn’t plan on returning quickly, and my apartment was sublet for several years. Given the high rent and tight housing market, it was difficult to find something new. Temporarily, Lucas took me into his room. When we met, and he told me he was a business owner and lived in the center of the city, he exuded the confidence of a man living in a luxurious loft. But when I arrived at his home for the first time, I found myself in an outdated shared apartment with five others. Lucas loved luxury, but he didn’t live in it—and that gnawed at his self-esteem. Through his travels, he had learned to make do in hostels and tents. Since I didn’t have a home of my own and wanted to spend every second of my life with him anyways, I accepted his invitation to move in with him.

He always said it was temporary, and we dreamed of where we could live in the world, with a long-term plan to move abroad. But without investments or income, we remained in that shared apartment room for over a year—with roommates who, despite their age, behaved like freshly moved-out students.

After a year on 15 square meters, while trying to launch two startups (which could have been a success story), we couldn’t take it anymore. We gave up the room and moved into the world without any security. It was his decision, and I supported him on that. We were both used to a nomadic life, and it sounded exciting: "We’ll be digital nomads" (which sounds better than homeless). At first, he was enthusiastic, but after two weeks, he panicked. Being a digital nomad works when you're established—but building companies while constantly searching for a new place to stay was anything but exciting.

Fear of homelessness trapped Lucas. He constantly blamed me, saying that I worried less about our future because I had the security of a rental apartment waiting for me in a few years and health insurance coverage. He also claimed he had left the shared apartment only because of me, as the shared-living situation had become unbearable since I entered his life. I was to blame for him no longer having a home.

In two years together, we lived in eight countries, 30 cities and towns—17,784 hours in total—because from the first day, we never left each other’s side.

Pillar 3 - Friends
Just as I was to blame for Lucas no longer having a home, I was also blamed for him no longer having friends. He didn’t for a second consider that it was summer and most of his friends were traveling. Or that he was so focused on getting his company off the ground that he didn’t want to meet anyone without showing success. I was to blame because I was jealous of a friend he claimed to have fallen in love with at some point. He idealized and elevated this person above me, while he crushed me daily, even though I did everything for him. That he had equally destroyed my relationships with my male friends out of jealousy, to the point that I could no longer meet them, was far from his reality. In his eyes, it was my fault because, according to him, I was hiding something from him regarding my friends.  He even questioned my therapist, suggesting he wasn’t a 'real' therapist and was only working with me because he was interested in me. He based this suspicion on the fact that we argued every time I came back from therapy – though, honestly, we fought nearly every day. Everyone close to me was a thorn in his side. But he was very skillful in how he communicated: rather than forbidding me outright, he’d offer critiques until I started doubting those people myself. Despite his accusations, it barely bothered me not to see my friends, or leave therapy. Despite his accusations, it barely bothered me not to see my friends. Our emotional instability made carrying out any plans uncertain, as at any moment something could happen to throw us off course. I had no other topics anymore besides the company, him, and my emotional misery. I didn’t want to burden my friends with that. So, we both withdrew from everyone. When we finally moved away entirely, we had no one but each other.

Pillar 4 – Relationship
We originally came from two different countries. When we left the island, we both flew back home. But we couldn’t last even four days apart. As soon as I arrived, I took the next flight to see him. When he saw me, he took my hand and symbolically put handcuffs on me. I belonged to him; I was his girlfriend. We were inseparable.

But just a week later, the foreshadowing of the next two years began. After our return, he showed frustration over the fact that in the four years he had lived in his new home country, he hadn’t learned the language. Only later did I understand that he wanted to be the best at everything, and that his low self-esteem often emerged through comparisons with others. At the time, I didn’t know this and tried to cheer him up, which was a mistake. He didn’t want to be comforted; he wanted to be heard. He said I didn’t understand him and was only making things worse. The first weeks and months revolved around this issue. He felt misunderstood, while I tried to reconsider my usual communication style to make him feel heard and understood.

He felt lied to and suspected secrets on my part, such as when two weeks into our relationship he did not know that I needed glasses to drive. This was a sign to him that I have something to hide. I tried to justify myself. He felt that I wasn’t revealing enough about myself, so I tried to shed my life as an independent woman and see myself as a part of him. I forced myself to share all my thoughts and feelings with him so that he wouldn’t feel alone.

Then came the jealousy. One evening, when we were out separately, he told me that a female friend he had met with had kissed him and wanted to take him home. Why he told me this remains unclear to me to this day. Did he want to show me how desirable he was, to make me feel lucky that he came back to me? Or did he want to stir jealousy in me to keep control over me? From that moment on, he constantly accused me of being pathologically jealous, feeding it with comments like, "My ex was fully tattooed, that was hot; your tattoos are cheap." Or things like, "She was crazy, but at least she was fun, or that the last one was an angel, the other had a firm body – as if my body had lost value with age. I had to work hard for his affection, while everyone else was praised to the skies without having to do anything.

At the same time, he wanted to be the only for me. Our special connection could only exist if I completely erased my past with other men. Sometimes, even during intimate moments, he would ask if I had done this or that with someone else. When I answered with "yes" without giving the full history of my relationships, it became yet another reason for him to belittle and degrade me.

If I were to list all the details of our relationship, I could fill an encyclopedia. But one thing must be noted: After just a few months, I realized that the "man of my life" possibly had a narcissistic style – more specifically, that of a vulnerable narcissist – and that the verbal attacks would never stop. But because the good between us was so unique, I accepted this realization and the consequences that came with it. I allowed everything that made me who I was to be destroyed until I no longer existed.

It was only after two years that I began confiding in others and realized that something was really wrong. But I secretly blamed them for judging from what I shared with them and not understanding the pressure Lucas was under, what made him act this way, and what part I played in leading him to this behavior.

Only the fear for my life, after days of unending verbal punishments and humiliations, and the moment he told me one day that he couldn't rule out potentially killing me, saved my life.

One night, when he wasn’t home, I packed the essentials and ran. But it took several attempts, as he always managed to win me back. Until one night, I lay beside him, unable to sleep or breathe out of panic, and asked myself how, after resolutely leaving, I was back in his bed.

I couldn’t stay, but I didn’t want to leave. What was there to defend? Without him, I had no life left. He was my life. My thoughts and feelings depended on him and his mood. Even though I had only known this man for two years, without him, I was nothing.

The strange thing is that many things can be perfectly clear to us rationally, but our emotional world often lags behind. I kept finding reasons to justify our life together. Only through numerous conversations was I finally able to take the first step and detach myself physically. The path of my emotional detachment, however, is something I will share with you on the journey ahead.