At least he said "I miss you"...Whatever he did, it seems you still love him. Right?
Do you know why do you love him? What made him different from other people? Men mess up!

"I miss you." is typical of an abuser trying to suck his/her source back. It's called "hoovering." They will say/do anything to get what they consider to be their "easy" source.

First, Block him from your phone, email, social media. Unless you have kids together and the court has ordered him visitation, there is absolutely NO reason for him to contact you.

Second, as just as critical, find a qualified trauma release therapist who is specially trained in dealing with trauma bonding and get some counseling. Even if you've already been to therapy, it probably wasn't with someone who is specially trained in this area. Sadly many therapists don't understand the dynamics OR effects of abuse.

Please do this for yourself and your sanity.
~healing hugs~

You've said " I feel myself slipping back into a person that I never wanted to be again. I find myself wanting to be with a man who has done nothing but destroy me every chance he has ever gotten. "
If he was only abusive and destroying, you would not care about his text message after so many years, especially when you are about to marry another man.
If you did not care about this person, some text message won't make you slip back. Even if he is abusive, it does not mean he can't miss you honestly.
If you were in relationships, something made your happy there. Right? So, what was it?
Therapists are waist of the time and money. No one but you, time and other people's love can't fix your wounded soul.

What in the world? Abuse is abuse. Abusers have their ways of having you feel like you need to stay with them. I don’t think you’d feel this serious and horrid about it if that weren’t the case.
Guilt. Manipulation. Withholding love. They give kindness almost in exchange for hurt.
You doubt yourself. You feel yourself slipping. Don’t let it happen. You’re strong. You can control this. Tell someone this has happened and how you feel. Write about it. Try to understand what’s going on.
And block him, for gosh sake.
Abusers can do that to you. Make you feel like they’re all you need. Attachment, etc. Even if this person was good at one point, it shouldn’t come at the cost of such pain.

Abusers train us to put their needs first. Texting you that was a cue for you to cast aside everything that's important to you and go right to being his victim. Cues are like triggers that make us act in ways that are not in our best interest.

To feel the way you do, the abuse must have been profound. You are conditioned and need to work with a therapist on how to fight this internal pull the man who is only going to hurt you again.

He didn't even have the decency to say, "Sorry for all the things I did to hurt you, I miss you, Can we talk?" He's so lazy that you were only worth a short three word sentence and yet you're chomping at the bit to get back to him. What's wrong with this picture?

I fell in love with him when I was a freshman in high school. I spent all of high school with him and we were on and off for 2 years after that. Yes, there are a lot of feelings still there. How could there not be? Of course I wish that there could have been a happier ending but in order to save what little bit of myself that I had left, it had to stop. I have been to counseling and I have listened to therapist after therapist judge me and question me for staying with him for so long. I've confided in friends only to have them think that I was making it all up because why on Earth would I ever stay with someone that could do and say such unimaginable things? So I come here. I come here to get support from people who understand and people who know how unbelievably hard it is to progress so far and slip. There are people here are understand that being in an abusive relationship is like being an addict. You know that it isn't good for you. You could be clean for years and it takes on little trigger and you're back where you started. I want to believe him when he says that he wants me back and that he's changed and that he wants to be the one to start a life and a family with me. I want to believe that because it was the only thing that I wanted for so long. And I am fighting with every fiber of my being to keep telling myself that he doesn't mean it. If I don't, I will end up losing a man that is kind and thoughtful and a really good person to someone that can't even bother being a decent human being. I know that I have everything to lose if I continue to slip so that's why I am here. I am not here to have someone tell me that "men mess up" and "I must love him". While all of that is true, messing up doesn't include choking a person until they black out, or raping them on camera and sending the videos to their friends. That is not messing up. That is intentional with the sole purpose of doing nothing but trying to hurt someone. I am here to find the strength I need to not go back there. The second I got that text message, my strength disappeared. I didn't want to fight it, but I have to.

I do not believe there are so many abusers around. But, I do believe there are a lot of weak, needy and immature women who complain on being abused and mistreated for no sufficient reasons. And, yet this women stay with those men when there are lots of opportunities to leave. Why do they stay? For love, for sex, for fun, for a company... for those feelings that they can't feel with someone else. Right?
To me, so called "abuse" in many cases is not an abuse at all.

What you wrote is an abuse and sadism, classical picture. And, please do not be that sensitive to what people say , this is a public board and you did not tell the whole story in the beginning.
This text message is an abrupt blast from the past. He might misses you indeed. However, it should change nothing for you even if it pulled your emotional strings.
Allow those good and bad memories to stir for a little in your mind, for a day..or two..for a week. Cry last time for what it was in the past and let it go.
Considering you have a new life ahead of you, you have lots of thoughts and things that you can refocus your attention on.
Your energy and emotions are where your attention is.
You don't have to change a thing in your current situation because of this message.
Let us know how you feel in a week. I am sure things will be different.

Kudos, Dixiejean for your last comments!!! This group IS about about giving support, not putting people down or making judgments. We do NOT know what another is going through because we have NOT walked in their shoes, ds has made a lot of changes, so you may not know where to find the ignore feature that will keep you from seeing anything the person you block posts. This is the link that explains how to ignore. https://support.dailystrength.org/hc/en-us/articles/207430686-What-should-I-do-if-someone-is-being-abusive-

There's also a link to report anyone you think is breaking the rules of the road. It's the "report abuse" link at the bottom center of every page.

I respectfully and emphatically disagree with Biatta. Especially about therapy and the definition of abuse. Most DV websites offer clear & specific definitions of abuse. It's not just physical. There's a whole lot more to it than that. Verbal and emotional abuse can be overt or very subtle. Abuse is also about grooming & brainwashing someone in order to have control. One way to do that is to change their core beliefs, especially when it comes to their confidence, self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. That's done by tearing someone down, berating them, gaslighting and/or hoovering them. Just to name a few. There's a good book by Patricia Evans called The Verbally Abusive Relationship and it explains some of the various types of abuse. A good rule of thumb - if if feels like abuse and acts like abuse, it's abuse! Trust YOURSELF above all others.

As for therapy, know that it is NOT part of a therapist's job to judge their clients -ever. A therapist's job is not to heal/cure a client. It is to help guide and facilitate the client so the client can heal her/himself.

One does NOT just get over abuse, especially long term abuse and/or abuse at a young age. And, it is very rare that time alone heals any kind of hurt, especially from abuse. It just scabs over the damage only to have the scab suddenly ripped open by an unsuspected trigger.

And, while only we can heal from the inside out, and no one can fix us but us, it helps a lot to have the proper healthy support of a qualified specially trained therapist, family and friends. As I mentioned, not all therapists are trained to help facilitate healing; nor do some even understand the dynamics and long lasting effects of abuse. But there are some very good ones who do. And they also have specialized training in various modalities other than talk therapy. There are therapists who are NOT a waste of money. But sometimes, it just takes interviewing a lot of frogs before we find the prince/princess of a therapist.

Just a thought based on what you described about your experiences and how you reacting to them now. It sounds a lot like trauma bonding. That might be something to ask a prospective therapist about. If they aren't familiar with it, then move on to the next one.

Please don't let one person's words affect you. What each of us says is only a reflection of who we are and not who the words are aimed at. ~healing hugs~

Biatta, if you want to call me a needy and immature woman, go right ahead. I owe you nothing. I don't owe you any type of explanation. Yes, it is a public board and for that exact reason, I didn't share my full story. But it is also the reason that I do owe it to all the women out there who can't stand up for themselves, to explain to you the things that you obviously do not understand. Things that you will never understand unless you are experiencing the effects of abuse, which is something that I really hope you never have to go through. A woman does not stay because of sex or fun or for company. A woman does not stay because she is needy or weak or immature. The last thing I would ever use to describe someone that has gone through an abusive relationship is weak. A woman stays because things weren't always like that. Things weren't always bad. They start out really great actually and it is an often times extremely slow progression into the abusive behaviors. Often times, it's little things at first that are fixed with apologies. Then they get into bigger things and because they promise that things won't always be like that or that they are going to get help or they are going to change, you give them another chance. You give them another chance because you want to make it work, because you love them (which is actually really mature for a person to do instead of just giving up). This is a constant cycle. Things are so great until they aren't and then once he knows that you are wanting to give up, he snaps out of it and things are perfect again. You are just holding out until he's the man that you fell in love with. Once things get really bad, once a woman finally sees what's going on and wants out, she isn't able to leave. Maybe he controls all the money and has isolated her from her friends and family. She has no where to go and no way to get there. Maybe he threatens her that he will harm people she cares about or will kill her if she goes. Maybe he stalks her after she left. Maybe he continues to harass her because he is a police officer and she is unable to get a restraining order against him because honestly, who will the courts believe? Leaving is not as easy as packing up your stuff and walking out the door. I left my ex more than a few dozen times. He threatened to kill himself if I didn't come back. He sent me pictures of himself with a gun to his head. He would call me drunk and tell me he was going to drive his truck off the road into a tree so I would leave in the middle of the night trying to go find him before he hurt himself or someone else. Because if something would have happened, I would have blamed that on myself. He threatened to post personal and private pictures of me all over the internet. He keyed my best friend's truck. He got arrested for getting in a fight with someone for talking to me after we broke up. There were times when the only thing I wanted was for him to just go away and leave me alone but I had run out of options. Sometimes he would leave and go away and I was lost. He broke me down to an empty shell and I didn't know who I was without him telling me. ( I understand that you don't need a man to validate you ever but have the one person you are supposed to trust and love tell you on a daily basis that you aren't good enough or you are stupid or a slut or pathetic or whatever and see what that does to your confidence and self-esteem. It breaks you after awhile.) Sometimes women don't leave because it's easier for them to stay. It might not make sense to you, and that's okay, it doesn't have to, but that is not weak or needy or immature.. Staying or leaving regardless is so incredibly brave and takes an unbelievable amount of strength to survive something so traumatic. So please, before you make any judgmental and rude comments to anyone else on these support group pages,abuse doesn't just start out with a man punching a woman in the face or kicking her in the stomach or throwing her into a wall. It starts out with the perfect most incredible man telling a women that he enjoys making her laugh and he plans dates that take her breathe away. He does things for her that matter. No one stays with someone that hurts them because they enjoy it. They stay because there was a time and there still are times that the perfect man comes back (sometimes he's around more than the asshole that is set on destruction) and makes them fall for him all over again. Remember that. Remember that these people have been through a lot so if you can't say anything to support them or even try to understand what they are going through, then you have no reason to be on these support groups and you are just as bad as the people they need help with for intentionally saying things that could be hurtful.

Yes Biatta, that is a terrible thing to say. The old 'why didn't you just leave' comment as well. Did you just come here to be critical of someone on a support site? And Biatta 'To me, so called "abuse" in many cases is not an abuse at all', what does that even mean? So if someone is physically, emotionally or sexually abused they're imagining it? You are ridiculous.

@dixiejean7, you're best to cut all contact with this ex who texted you. One thing I have realised in dysfunctional relationships is that narcissistic people have a way of making us feel amazing in the beginning, like no other person can...then the relationship can turn to shit and you spend all your time wanting to get back to those early days where you felt magical with them. But it's not based in reality. It's a headfuck which leaves you scarred for years.

Dixiejean7,
In first comment I expressed my general view.
In second comment, when you explained the situation, I supported you enough. And gave you an kind advise. So, why did you reacted with such an angry response?
I know what emotional abuse is, you would cry if I tell you..and this nightmare I do not wish for anyone. And, when I once posted my story, some people criticized me too, some gave stupid advises, most supported. This variety of views is normal on the public board. I just ignored people who made me feel worst and thanked those who supported.
It is not easy to leave the abuser. Attachments are hard to fight. And, this is exactly where the personal strength and wisdom are tested.

Biatta, every comment but your last is bashing this woman for her post and putting her down. It's beyond inappropriate to do that, especially here. If you can't be supportive, be quiet. If you can't manage either, leave.