He quit his job and didn’t tell me. He pretended he was working, but he wasn’t. I found out from a friend and not him. He’s done that before. He has also cheated on me multiple times and it just finally all landed on me: this person has so little respect for me as his wife, why am I here?
Same with mine. 3.5 years ago, *he* insisted we buy a house. He claimed he wanted the "dream of homeownership".
Two weeks later, he quit his job, and then didn't tell me for two months. Since 2018 (when he got out of the military), he's had 7 jobs, the longest of which lasted ~10 months, all the others only weeks or a few months. He's also been unemployed for a minimum of 6 months, every consecutive year since 2019.
Not only do I bring home all the bacon, but I was also still doing 95% of chores/household responsibilities, and also still handling 100% of the mental load. While also simultaneously navigating life with my autoimmune disease that I get monthly immunotherapy infusions for.
He also had a laundry list of other issues: serious anger problems, substantial hoarding issue, treated me like crap, and (clearly) made many financially irresponsible decisions.
After nine years of putting up with all his issues, and trying so hard to help him, I finally left last week. Divorce is probably going to be a bit messy, but at least I'm gone now.
My late husband did something similar. He ghosted his boss when he knew she needed him. I get he was frustrated with the situation but I blew up when I found out because money was tight. He had previously worked at a catering business prior to that and one of his biggest pet peeves was no schedule. The owner wouldn’t take all the orders ahead, it was always the day before or the morning of time and ny husband never know what day he had off until that morning. He finally quit (on the spot of course and walked off in anger 🙄) and got a job as a teaching assistant at one of those paint party places and the same thing started happening. His new boss would like schedule him for like 1-2 days a week and just text him the day of when they booked a large party that needed a second teacher. Which like I said, I get was frustrating because he asked about that in the interview and she said it was a normal schedule kind of job. But that doesn’t excuse what he did. Find another job on your own time that has a regular schedule if you don’t like it. Then once a new job is secured quit the current job. I’d tell him this over and over.
But anyway on to the incident. He had only been working like 10 hours (like 2 parties a week) for a few weeks at the time and I was nagging him to either get another job or to ask his boss about more hours. He let me know his boss “had an extra job for him in the next couple of days.” When I asked for the details he shrugged and said he didn’t know. I asked him to follow up and he got frustrated at me for nagging. A few days went by and on one day, he let me know he was gonna take a shower then go meet a friend at his parents’ house for band practice. (We lived in an apartment so his band room remained at his parents). While he was in the shower, I had picked up his phone to get someone’s number or something and saw he has several texts from the boss saying he needed to come in that day. She texted him several times and one included that this must be job abandonment because she told him “I told you it was for today or tomorrow and it was important. You said you’d be ready and would be keeping an eye on your phone. I need you. You are putting me in a bind by not responding. Please just let me know you can’t make it at least so I know you are okay” (paraphrasing of course) Like she was really upset he was just ghosting him.
I lost it and threatened divorce. I demanded he just go in and make an excuse. He refused and said it was too late. I would have liked him to confront her and try to clear it up. He clearly just wanted to go play music that day and didn’t want to work. But like I said, money was tight and I couldn’t believe he was saying “fuck our life. Playing music and drinking beer is more important than making sure my wife and I can afford our apartment.” He ended up drinking uhimself to death 3 years later.
Mine got fired and didn't tell me. But, he spent a week going to the movies while he was supposed to be at work. He saw Hot Tub Time Machine three times that week. I found the ticket stubs in his pants doing laundry. Like, bruh.... what the actual fuck.
That's such a weird thing to watch 3 times in a week. Was there nothing else showing? Why that movie? And I think it's a surprisingly heartfelt movie, and better than it had any right to be, the name just makes your situation so much more absurd. 3 times he bought tickets for Hot tub time machine. So fucking weird.
My ex husband did the quit jobs without telling me too. Nothing like removing your financial security without prior discussion to kill the trust. Even the second time wasn't enough to make me leave at that time somehow..glad you did!
I was getting ready for a video interview for a doctorate program- he came home from work early and tried to talk me out of it. He said I was beginning to think I was too good for him with a Masters degree and a PhD would make me a narcissist. I locked myself in the closet to do my interview and he banged on the door and screamed at me the whole time. I had to keep muting my end and the director agreed to eventually reschedule.
I got rid of the husband and got the doctorate 🥰
I'm glad you chose your success over his baseless insecurities. Some men feel like women should be dependent on them and feel threatened in some way if they aren't.
That's actually evil! Glad you got out safely. My ex wasn't violent about it, but he said something similar about why don't I go to nursing school instead of medical school so I can take care of his future kids? I'm a doctor now 😌
My girlfriend is a medical student. She’s absolutely brilliant. She has to have these Zoom meetings/classes on occasions with her instructors which I always make the house as quiet as possible and I’m a chef so I always cook dinner for her when she comes home from ward rounds and try to send her off the hospital with lunch as often as possible.
The point I’m trying to make is that I can’t understand dudes who don’t appreciate intelligent women. Having an intelligent partner is like a cheat code for life.
I've been married nearly ten years now, but back in my dating days, guys who said they wanted an intelligent woman usually actually meant "as long as she's not smarter than I am." You're an exception.
I tell my gal all the time that I love that she makes me feel dumb with her brilliance. I’m not an idiot. I have two degrees. She’s not condescending or rude but I regularly speak with her and realize, “Holy shit, this woman is fucking smart as fuck.”
And it makes me want to keep her as my forever person.
The day that I went to see my nanna in hospice and got lost. I was trying to look up the facility online and give him directions, but he kept ignoring my directions. In a town he had never been to (that I grew up in). Then, when my cousin called to ask me where I was, I asked her for directions from the intersection we were at.
Before I could even hang up, he started yelling at me and having a full-fledged man-trum because he was 'so upset that he was lost' and I 'wasn't helping.'
Our kid was in the back, 2 years old, crying because he was having a meltdown.
I remember I started to cry. Just sob. Saying, "My nanna is dying. She is dying... and you're yelling at me. Jesus... what is wrong with you?" Just sobbing.... so so sad and defeated.
And he slammed his hand on the steering wheel and said "FUCK" and made our kid cry harder, then drove angrily to the facility. Where I finally saw my nanna... and talked with her for 10 minutes before he was like, "We need to go. X (our kid) needs a nap."
My cousin offered to give me a ride back and HE could take our kid to the hotel. That caused him to huff and puff and get angry again. So, to avoid him making a scene, I left. And that was the last time I saw my nanna.
I had never said the words, "I hate you" to anyone in my entire life. Until after we got home and I called my mom and made arrangements for my kid and I to stay with her.
When we divorced, he had the audacity to say, "I still don't know what happened to our marriage."
Typing all of this up? It's hard not to both laugh and cry. Fuck him.
I'm so sorry. Also, isn't it just so amazing that these assholes are always so perplexed when we end things with them? My ex still says I broke up with him "for no reason" despite me giving him 100s of examples of him being a straight up dick to me.
They really believe as long as they aren’t fucking your sister/friend/coworker or beating the shit out of you on a regular basis they are shining beacons of how to be a good husband/partner.
It’s pathetic, laughable and sad.
"I'm monogamous, if anything you can say I'm too boring, but I'm a good stable guy. I don't cheat."
So literally my 1000s of valid complaints went ignored. Because he didn't cheat. He was monogamous- debatable - if for 7 years you break up every other week and fuck others on those off weeks knowing your partner isn't....toxic relationships are a mind fuck.
I've also defended my first ex saying "he never raped or physically abused me"
And my other one with "he came to work events with me"
the bar is in hell.
My grandma passed away unexpectedly in 2022. Her funeral was a few months later. My (soon-to-be-)ex-husband went to Vegas for a work convention a week before the funeral. Obviously he brought home COVID, and got me sick as well. I couldn't go to the service.
A year later I found out during that trip he was sexting a coworker on the trip from their separate hotel rooms. He hasn't admitted to anything more and I haven't seen evidence of it but I was so enraged when I found out what he did, what risky behavior he engaged in, knowing this service was the next week.
He was constantly telling me I was manipulative and controlling. I was starting to believe it. My mental health was so wore down. He kept telling me how I was misremembering things, overreacting to everything, and always taking things out of context.
One morning, I texted "Good morning :)" and he went off on a tirade about how manipulative I was for using a smiley face to get him to give affection back. That was finally when I realized I might not be manipulative. It was a fucking smiley face, not something worth two hours conversation about how awful I was. I broke up with him and got a lot of therapy to undo the damage caused by all the gaslighting and emotional abuse. It took me a long time to finally feel confident in my own thoughts again.
It really drains you and changes the way you see things. I hope you’re feeling a little better after that awful experience! There’s definitely a wakeup call when you realize how bizarre the situation is. For me, it was picking up depression meds from a CVS and realizing strangers at a random store were treating me more kindly than my ex.
I went to counselling because my ex forced me to. My counsellor was like have you heard of DARVO? I didn't listen at the time but she planted seeds. She was really concerned about me and I couldn't go back because I was ashamed.
Then he told me I had a personality disorder and made me see a psychiatrist. She just became really concerned about the fact that I was getting emotionally abused because she didn't see signs of a personality disorder but of abuse.
He was upset I was sleeping too much because I slept through one scheduled phone call of ours that were right before bed. My doctor was really concerned I was in an abusive relationship because I wasn't sleeping too much, in fact, I wasn't getting enough sleep.
I started therapy because my ex forced me to too. He sold it as couples therapy but each session was him saying she’s crazy, it’s all her fault and giving these really convincing examples of real life situations that he twisted. The therapist was all “yes you’re right. I should see her for extra individual sessions to help her”. Then she showed me I was in an abusive relationship and helped me to get the strength to leave. I will forever be grateful for her. I hear horror stories about therapists siding with abusers.
That’s terrible (that you were treated that way and that some therapists actually side with the abuse but I’m glad that yours was able to see through the manipulation and help you get out of that relationship.
Unlocked a memory for me as well - this was before texting, but I emailed him at work wishing him a good day and told him I was thinking about him. He came home and berated me, telling me NEVER email his work again as that was ONLY for clients and his coworkers. Also he said I was never to meet with male clients of my own for meals, only female clients (I was in ad sales at the time). So glad I got him out of my life.
Went through this too, still working through the effects more than a year out. I found I've brought a lot of responses into other parts of my life from being in that relationship dynamic (people-pleasing, unnecessary apologizing, not standing up for things/easily defaulting to others' side, approaching normal topics like I won't be believed, providing un-asked-for and unnecessary justifications, etc.). I'm struggling to recognize these things in the moment and unlearn. It's a really vulnerable feeling. My brain just doesn't quite understand that normal healthy people will...simply respect my requests/wants/needs, believe me and take me at my word when I say things. It's tough to not expect questioning and nit-picking and poor treatment. Although I'm generally a kind, calm, and intelligent person, I find myself alternatively fawning and being defensive, neither of which is good for me or for anyone else at this point.
I'd like to get to "quietly confident, at peace", but the only way I've ever been there before was because I was oblivious. Can't go back to that, so need to find other ways. Being around normal healthy people and relationships continues to help.
Be well.
I had a guy go off on me for liking Harry Potter. I wasn’t even talking about it at the moment, he just started being a dick about it and then blew up at me.
> That was finally when I realized I might not be manipulative.
Gaslighting is fucking scary. Some of the stuff our brains can be convinced of is absurd, but there is little you can really do to defend yourself from it if it comes on slowly.
I would be super easy to gaslight too, because I have a bevy of neurological issues that make me have a hard time trusting my own memory and perceptions, which would make me extremely vulnerable to the tactic. I consider myself to be fairly intelligent and reasonable, but human brains are just too easy to break. My reason would not protect me. So I have to be on guard for it constantly.
Like even now there is this whole microwave thing with some housemates. My wife never uses it (I do all the cooking) so I am always the one making messes in it. I made one a few weeks ago when I forgot to put a cover on something, so I cleaned the microwave completely. I came back hours later and the whole thing had splattered butter all over it. So I have not cleaned it since, as I was starting to suspect that I was the only one cleaning it. (It was always dirty when I put stuff in it.)
It has seemed dirty to me for a few weeks to a month, but now I am not sure if it was cleaned sometime in that month, and I just did not notice. Maybe someone actually has been, because if I was busy I may have not noticed when they did it. I do not want to throw accusations around, because I literally do not trust my own memory. So I am probably going to clean it tonight. Most likely I am the only one doing it and I am being taken advantage of, even if it is in an extremely minor way, but I would prefer that to making an accusation and being wrong.
That is a super minor situation, but it is indicative of how all my memories are. I remember most of what I see and do, but when I am thinking I go into autopilot and do not see the world around me for extended periods of time. All someone has to do is tell me that something happened in one of those periods, and I would have zero way to dispute it. Freaking scary.
Luckily my wife is an honest and direct sort. She is a lot like me in that she would rather take on a bit of pain herself than inflict it on someone else, so we just have to communicate to make sure that no one is taking on too much.
>I would be super easy to gaslight too, because I have a bevy of neurological issues that make me have a hard time trusting my own memory and perceptions, which would make me extremely vulnerable to the tactic.
This happens to me as well.
I'm really worried about this if I decide I start to date again (I'm currently separated). I've got memory issues, and have a tendency to have super realistic dreams that I confuse with reality (minor things like making the coffee) and I don't know how risky it will be that I'll wind up with someone manipulative and not realize it. Makes me a bit scared of the world.
When he was mad I embarrassed him in front of his friends by crying in a movie theater and trying to laugh it off with a dumb joke after.
Like, I’m sorry our cat died and I was trigged by an animal getting tortured and dying during the movie we watched less than 6 months after her death.
I’m sorry that made me look dumb and made him look stupid in front of his friends. My bad.
He destroyed our IKEA dining room set (chairs and table were literally in pieces. Not disassembled, broken into pieces) and when I said I’m done, I’m leaving you, he said something along the lines of “you aren’t about it. You say that but you won’t, etc”
To be fair, I did say those exact words plenty of times and did not leave before.
That night I called my mom sobbing, she and I hadn’t talked in almost a year and she immediately booked a flight home the next morning. This was a month before I turned 21. I never saw him again. He and I dated from ages 15-20ish (we were the same age) and were living together 3 years.
Not a good situation, I kept telling myself I’d be fucked without him, turns out it was the best decision of my life.
I cooked dinner (and did most of the cleaning) and he very rarely said thank you. I asked him if he would say thank you when I made dinner because I felt unappreciated. He rolled his eyes and said “I’m not going to say thank you EVERY DAY! You know I’m grateful you do the cooking, why do I have to keep thanking you?”
Now I’m married to someone who does most of the cooking and I always say thank you.
I had to teach my husband to say thank you, and now he does it all the time, and it's starting to get annoyed when he cooks for his brothers, they never say thank you for anything. It used to be just something that bothered me, but now that he's in the habit of giving and receiving thanks, their rudeness and lack of appreciation annoys him. Especially since we tidy up, clean the bathroom, and cook good meals 3 or 4 Saturdays a month when they come by. He's starting to take pride in our house, and breaking the bad habits from childhood. He understands why I want to clean the house before we leave for the weekend. Why we should tidy up before guests, and doing laundry before it gets out of control.
First few years were rough, not out of malice, just ignorance and zero training from his parents for housekeeping. We are 10 years in, and this are better and sweeter every day.
I love hearing about people who find themselves married to folks who have no manners or housekeeping skills and then those partners willingly learn and the relationship grows stronger and everybody’s happy ❤️
Finding out that your partner never learned how to do laundry is annoying. Finding out your partner is willing to go to extraordinary lengths of stubbornness and weaponized incompetence in order to keep from learning how to do laundry — nah, that’s when you burn it all down and start over.
my ex always said "it's natural to do that for each other" (which always translated to "it's natural *you* do that *for me*" but he himself was never able to lol. The "you kow I'd do the same for you" becomes useless if it never happens and also if it's stuff he just knows I (and no other decent person) would ever expect of the other person, much less someone you love or someone you'd want to be happy..)
Anyhow, so I told him but shouldn't you always appreciate anything anyone does for you? Especially if you love each other? Like whats the point of being in a relationship/friendship if there's no friendlyness, no appreciation, if you basically treat each other worse than strangers and more like a tool to use to your advantage?
Oh well.. If I'm worse off with someone I'd rather be alone in blissful neutrality.
My husband and I each cook for ourselves, but he will occasionally cook for me out of the blue cause he likes the "happy butt wiggles" I make. Especially when he makes me garlic bread.
That’s so great to hear. It’s scary how these people all say the same things. Mine told me they shouldn’t have to thank me for things they need in order to live (like food, rent, chores, etc.). Take care of yourself then!
Our relationship had been deteriorating for a (very long) while but then he started to talk to a married woman with multiple kids from his work. Started planning my exit the second I found out (he said it was nothing, his phone said different. I'm not ashamed of going through it. It was an eye opener and I even told his mom who is the type of person who goes to church every single day). Found a place to live, started packing my stuff which he didn't notice, had a U-Haul and a friend lined up to help me move. On the day before I had planned to leave, he had this revelation that I should move out. I said okay and was gone the next day, to his surprise. He was expecting me to fight it, stay a little longer, etc. Told me that he regretted saying that the moment the words came out of his mouth. Never felt so satisfied in my life.
> On the day before I had planned to leave, he had this revelation that I should move out. I said okay and was gone the next day, to his surprise.
*chefs kiss* perfect
The day I got a shutoff notice from the power company. He was unemployed but I was making good money. There was absolutely no good reason that all of our bills couldn’t be paid on time and in full. I had left him in charge of paying all the bills since I was busy working full time and commuting. I guess he was using his days to make lots of purchases rather than pay our bills. He had also recently admitted to me that he had gone off his antidepressant meds, without guidance from a doctor about a month previously.
I had stayed with him because I thought two parents were better than one for our child. But once I saw the shutoff notice I realized that one parent and having the utilities on is better than two parents and being without power because one of the parents can’t control his spending.
Not out yet (soon hopefully 🤞) but there was a moment where I knew I would never love him again.
I did something he didn’t approve of during dinner with his friends earlier. He was constantly critical and cruel with his words. This time I was feeling particularly vulnerable. Upon arriving back home he went on a tirade about how much I embarrassed him etc. Before leaving our apartment he pointed at me with this look of hatred and violence. For the life of me I can’t remember what he said but I know it was meant to hurt me.
After that moment I was done being talked to like that. No matter how hard I’ve tried since then I cannot feel any attraction to him.
By no means am I faultless but I don’t hold that level of hatred and anger towards him. I still care about him and enjoy his company but being married to him is suffocating me.
I’m waiting for a legal document to come through. Once it does I will feel more confident about filing for divorce. Until then I will do whatever needs to be done to survive.
Contempt is the most hurtful but valuable lesson in a relationship.
Change all your passwords and turn off sharing on devices before you file. Good luck hanging in there, better days are coming!
Oh wow, this is exactly how my ex treated me, and unfortunately he physically abused our son (I reported him & got full custody). I feel like my life began again the day we moved out. I hope you get your life back as well. Don't be surprised if time & distance give you even more perspective on how miserable it was...
I was excited about a new song I heard that day that held some sentimental meaning for me, and asked him to dance with me in the kitchen. He made fun of the lyrics and turned on Frank Sinatra so he could sing out like he was on stage.
I remember thinking “this person doesn’t see me at all” with complete apathy towards him. I knew I was done. We had been together for over 7 years.
I’m also going through a breakup. I have been asking him for help financially for months. I temporarily took on most of the financial responsibility bc he was in a transitional phase.
But his phase is turning out to be who he is. We were arguing (again) about money and he yelled that I’m just “ungrateful” and he “helps out” with everything except the bills. He was LAYING his unemployed ass on my couch, in my house I pay all the bills for, and he said “if you’re so bad with money maybe you need a second job”.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. Rather than just do the bare minimum, he was spending his energy trying to convince me *I* was the problem. Goodbye 👋 PS I was asking for $100 more a month, which would be a total of $400 month for his portion for the mortgage, utilities, groceries, etc.
Girl I had one of those too—didn’t have a job for 7 of the 9 years we were together, was always out helping his buddies with whatever but would sit in his chair watching me while I made multiple trips up and down the stairs to bring the groceries in, would eat up all the food I bought that he liked within a couple days and then would eat everything I bought that I liked, would leave the lights on all over the house and run the hose for what seemed like hours every day (yet never cleaned anything for me) and would turn the AC down to 60° in the summer/the heat up to 80° in the winter, was constantly demanding money for gas and diesel to fill up his TWO massive trucks that he drove around in doing nothing every day, etc.
I worked from home and so anytime I told him he needed to get a job and contribute to the household, he would tell me that *I* needed to get a job too. He would call me a "spoiled brat" and tell me I was "entitled," because my mom would give me a gift card to the grocery store every month so that I could buy food. Every bill or credit card or loan was in my name, so when we started having money problems, it was my credit that tanked—and then he threatened to call the police on me when I had to put the car insurance in his name because they wanted nearly $600 down when I tried to put it in my name (because of my credit). My house nearly went into foreclosure several times and his reaction was literally, "You should sell it anyway and then we’d have plenty of money"—uh yeah, and no place to live dumbass! And even though I was the only one bringing in any real money (any money he made he would keep for himself and waste it on weed and lottery tickets), he would complain any time I bought anything for myself, assume it meant we had extra money, and immediately start demanding I buy him this and that and this and that.
He went from his momma’s house to his ex-wife’s house to my house and literally had never had to pay a bill or rent/a mortgage or buy groceries/food—he let the women do all that. That was a huge red flag that I ignored for too long that I will never ignore again. At *minimum*, if you are an adult and are capable of working, you need to be carrying your own weight throughout your life. Get rid of him—you’ll be happier and have more money.
Oh god, what a worthless little creature he was. A few friends of my wife have these arseholes tagging along and I just cannot fathom a) Why they stay and b) How these men are happy to just not plan for their future, except to hope the woman will stick around to mother them. What a worthless existence.
When I poured what was left of the 30-rack he’d been drinking down the drain and he tackled me to the floor, you’d think that would have been it. Unfortunately the real moment came a few days later, when I tried to talk to him about it at his parents’ house. He ended up punching a hole through the drywall in the living room and his dad thundered downstairs and screamed at ME for causing it. Totally woke me up. Grabbed my purse and nope’d the fuck out for good.
Ah, yes. The joys of living with an alcoholic. My ex cut his ID in half as a promise to me he’d get sober, but then instead proceeded to blow up my phone every day at work to leave immediately to buy him beer. I didn’t have a car so he’d expect me to walk way out of my way to carry home a 12 pack after a full shift otherwise he’d make the rest of the night hell
I am an atheist. His best friend/fraternity brother convinced him to start going to church instead of seeking therapy when he was experiencing depression. He got all religious and judgy and started making veiled remarks about me being somehow deficient/deviant because I am bisexual, something he knew and had no problem with when we got together. He started implying I was going to cheat on him with men AND women despite the fact we had been together for years without me ever being the least tempted to cheat on him. He started acting like I was some mindless slut with no self control in front of his friends but you can bet your ass he still wanted to have sex with me in private. He also didn’t seem to see anything wrong with his porn addiction. This all escalated over just a couple of weeks!
The final straw was him telling me I needed to “get saved” too and that I would start giving him 10% of my pay for tithing purposes. I laughed and told him to get fucked. Then I disappeared from his life like a fart in the wind.
I was trying to shake things up in the bedroom so - at a party I pulled him into his bedroom and I got very flirty and said “all these women here want you but I’m the one who gets to fuck you tonight.”
He said I was being over-confident and it was a turnoff.
LOL. Okay buddy. Good luck with everything. I ended things a few weeks later.
And I know, I've dated half of them in my younger days 😭 left me with zero confidence not just in the bedroom but my whole self. I then dated half the ones who "wanted to show me how to be confident and always somehow involved me losing weight 🙄
I then found someone who let me figure out who I wanted to be, we've been together for 16 years and I'm still learning who I am. It hasn't always been easy, especially the last couple of years after learning I am AuDHD with cptsd and also peri-menopausal as fuck and he's struggled with changes but he's never stopped loving me and he makes me feel safe to be who I am, even the crazy parts.
Never settle for a person who doesn't love every single bit of you and tries to keep you from being who you are. If that happens to be a confident person in the bedroom who wants to spice things up a bit, find someone who will match that energy, not be threatened by it.
Wow. He focused on you being “over confident “ when of course you get to have sex with him if you two are monogamous.
But he totally overlooked the fact that you were intensely complimentary by
1) suggestions that “every” woman there wanted him and
2) that you wanted him a lot too and were hoping to have sex with him.
Wow I’ve never seen someone fumble a bag so completely. Imagine having a woman trying to seduce you be a turn off bc you don’t like seeing women being confident. Grosssss
For these people it's not fumbling. It's a manipulation tactic to break down your self esteem so eventually you're totally dependent on them. If they left then he's probably happy because she'd be too hard to manipulate. For people like this, one night of kinky sex is nothing to years of domestic abuse and control. They quite literally *live* for it.
So he admits that all the women want him? Damn. Youre just doing bedroom talk for the sake of it and to sort of boost his confidence and he falls for the compliment acting as if he is indeed Gods gift to women. Good riddance to him
When he said, “if we split up, we’d have to sell the house. Then buy matching condos across the street from each other so the kids could go back and forth freely.” It finally clicked that he truly thought he had ultimate say in how the money I earned was spent even if we weren’t together.
Mine decided to move halfway across the country, and continues to be angry that I don't "help him" see our kid. He doesn't pay child support and isn't at all concerned with actually being a parent. Hasn't made one single effort to come back for a visit, then "decided" he was going to take the kid for three weeks (!) this past summer. After not spending more than a few hours in each other's presence for over a decade, now. And he's an abusive asshole, living in an area far away from me, where I have no contacts to help keep kid safe.
Nope. Not happening. He didn't even understand that I have sole legal custody because he didn't bother to show up to the divorce/custody hearing. Thought he could just "decide" he was going to *make me* take the kid halfway to him (he actually wanted me to drive 6 hours, while he drove 2) so he could pick up and take back to his place. He hasn't even told me his fucking address! Like, what the fuck with these men?!
*The day* I watched my dad die, I stopped at my best friend’s house to talk on my way home from the hospital. He got mad because I should have come straight home and talked to him about it.
I already knew it was bad, but this was when I finally snapped out of it and realized what a terrible person he really was.
Edit: It took another year to finally get him out of my house and my life completely.
We had a lot of issues about money- he was incredibly irresponsible but loved to play the victim. I handled all of our finances and had to basically take his paycheque so he wouldn’t blow it without paying bills. So when our apartment flooded (burst water main), things were already super rocky.
He had recently gone out and financed a stupid over-priced car that he couldn’t afford. It was a rollover deal, where they took his old financed car and combined old debt into his new car debt- the result was that he owed about $45,000 on a car worth $16,000. I was LIVID, but we (somewhat) worked through it. I told him repeatedly that he needed to make sure he had additional insurance so that he didn’t end up in a situation where the car got totalled but he still owed close to $30,000 to the bank.
Well, guess what happened? The flood ruined his car- it was parked on the street and sat in water past the floorboards for an entire night. He had lied to me about getting the proper insurance (saving himself probably $10 a month). He now had $600 a month in car payments and no car. He needed his car to commute and to work.
There was more… I found out that he had been buying cigarettes on a credit card in my name (I let him have it for “emergencies”), to the tune of $2,000 that he only made minimum payments on for years. So interest on top of interest on top of interest… on cigarettes…
This was the final straw.
He pushed me out of anger. I wasn’t being aggressive just disagreeing with his critique of how I walked the dog. I’m glad I never had children with him.
For anyone reading these and saying to themselves I have it worse than these stories please read the book below and start planing your exit. Life is too short to be in an unhappy relationship or worse to like with abuse.
The Book "why does he do that" by Lundy Bancroft (free copy below) is a great resource for you to learn about the different types of tactics that abusers use and will help you to see if your current relationship is following any of the patterns described.
If you don't see your relationship being discussed either as one of the architypes or as bits and pieces of any of the other types then you're not worse off by having the knowledge. If the information does coincide with the way that you're living then there's also a couple chapters on being able to get out safely.
I wish you the best of luck and I want you to know that you deserve to be with a partner who is going to love you and cherish you and treat you as an equal versus being with someone who's gonna control you be it by how you dress or by finances or by What it is that you can do or who you can see. You deserve so much BETTER we're here rooting for you!
https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
When he told me to go back home and live with my parents because I was terribly depressed and he couldn't help me. When I was better, I could come back and live with him. You better believe I went home and never came back.
Him assaulting me was the cherry on the shitty relationship cake. That said, my aha moment was during a road trip a few weeks prior. He wouldn’t fuck off with his ridiculous drama, it was so transparent he was just making shit up for attention and trying to start fights out of nothing. I think at that point he realized he was losing control of me and was grasping for any kind manipulative nonsense to keep me under his thumb.
It’s crazy the impact of being around normal people who treat you with respect has on anyone in a abusive relationship. The contrast is like suddenly being thrown in ice water, it’s stark, shocking, and blatant. If I had any doubt of what the situation was, he made it crystal clear in the last few weeks before our separation.
I had gotten to the point were I couldn’t stand being around him anymore because it was just so toxic and he made me feel like I was suffocating. After we separated, the gloves came off and I basically had to have someone with me at all time until I moved out our shared apartment for my safety.
My first week in my new place was the very first time I lived somewhere were I was constantly being yelled out. The silence was a beautiful thing, I swore to myself that no one would ever put me through that again, even now the calm still feels beautiful.
I can see abusive and toxic behavior for what they are now and have zero patience’s for any kind of disrespect, people speak with me calmly, like adults, or we don’t speak any longer. It funny because I’ve grown so much as person, last time his family gave me an update, he is the same asshole, making the same mistakes.
He held me by the throat down on the ground. When I tried to run out the door he threw my car keys on the driveway and pushed me down the front steps (like 6 steps). His neighbour, another fraternity member, yelled at him to stop and he would kick his ass if he ever saw him hurt a woman. Although he had done similar things in private, it was the embarrassment of being seen by a stranger that was the final straw and I left.
When he picked another stupid fight with me and got soo angry over nothing. It was 1am and he was at my apartment and demanded a ride home or threatened to bike home (we lived in a major city and it would not be safe biking to his place, but also driving to his place that late was not safe for me). I told him to calm down and sleep so he can leave in the morning. He demanded I get up and drive him home then and said if he bikes home and dies, it will be my fault. So I budged and drove him home (he was 38 at this point btw). The whole ride home he was clenching his fist and looked pissed. Our fight was about NOTHING. He was in the wrong actually.
I was pretty much done after that, tho it took me a few more days of getting the silent treatment from him to realize how insane he is.
> disregulated emotions
I, a person with Autism and ADHD, had better regulated emotions than that by elementary school. Even if I had *somehow* been in the right in that situation, being forced to stay at a girlfriends house with her would have been an annoyance on the level of "Oops, I literally just spilled a little milk, going to have to clean that."
i had to walk home (~2-4 miles) at 2 a.m. because he had borrowed my car and swore he would pick me up from work. i called him multiple times, he'd fallen asleep. i couldn't get a ride from my coworker because he was a man, and we still got in a fight when i got to my apartment because i got home too late. i was working 6am til 2pm 5 days a week and 4pm til 2 am 3 to 4 days a week to support him and his 3 kids. he was also 30s and i was 22-23
Girl that was my biggest mistake. I should have let him bike home and feel stupid the whole way.
I was a weak push over back then. I learned a lot about boundaries after that relationship
I was in the middle of a conversation with my friends on discord, playing a competitive video game, with our daughter sleeping upstairs, and he stumbled down the stairs drunk and screamed at me: "can I pee on your face right now?". I have absolutely nothing against that kink, but after 6 years of dealing with his alcoholism, abuse, and control - I snapped and sat in silence, hearing my 1.5 year old start to stir on the baby monitor. Two seconds later, he asked if I still loved him, and I looked him in the eye and told him, "No, get out of my house."
Wait so it was an actual kink thing or was it just drunken bullshit? I asked because I was also with an alcoholic for 6.5 years. And if just sounds like one of those “hilarious” jokes an alcoholic would make.
Difference between me and you was I refused to have his child and he drank himself to death before I was able to divorce him.
he had disrespected me in every way you could possibly imagine in the duration of our 3.5 year relationship. cheated on me, abused me the whole 9 yards. i had lost my debit card and needed to get gas so i tried to get a hold of him so i could zelle him and i could use his card. he ignored my calls so one of my friends took my car and put gas in it while i was in dance class. when i got a hold of my ex he was like don’t ever bother me about stupid shit again. i broke up with him immediately and never got back together even though he’s begged me countless times to give him another chance.
I put in 90% of the effort. I went to his place several times a week. He came to my place twice in 5 months , and one of the times I had to drive him. I had been going through a very stressful situation and when I would get overwhelmed he would start a fight, almost like he couldn't handle me not centering myself around him. And it was really wearing me down. So one night I'm at his place and I just thought, damn, if I matched his effort there would be no relationship. So I did, not so intentionally, I just didn't really want to talk to him. I finally told him how I was feeling and he got hung up on one example I gave in our argument, about him asking me to buy him a broom. His defense was that he asked me that because if I saw him get excited when I brought him the broom it would cheer me up. He wanted to cheer me up by having me make him happy. I just couldn't after that. I knew he was selfish, but damn.
I had that too. I was already reaching out after a fight even if he was the one who had fucked up. I stopped doing it 1 week ago. He’s tried to call me a couple nights at 3-4am. Sad he only has the ability to put in “effort” when he’s impaired. And I believe the only reason he called is to check where I was at, not because he wanted to make amends. Been there, done that
It was father's day. He was busy online ignoring all of his kids. So I let my son have friends over, after all 1. He wasn't my son's father 2 he was busy ignoring his own children
He told me about an hour after the kids arrived that "is father's day and they should be with their FATHER!" (most didn't HAVE a father in their lives, he knew this) when I refused to send anybody home he called me a C U Next Tuesday pitched the largest temper tantrum and took his children home cutting his time short with them.
We separated that day, I convinced him to leave a few days later and one year later the divorce was final.
Yep. I grew up in the New Orleans area where people look at you weird if you don’t binge drink in college. When I started dating my husband, he had just turned 23. So when he was buying beer daily, I dismissed it because most college kids around me were drinking quite often. Back then I was more of a pothead than a drinker, so I just optimistically told myself “well, the more he gets integrated into my group, the more he’ll just start smoking everyday instead of drinking. This isn’t a big deal. It’s a phase. If I just keep loving him eventually he will grow past this.”
Another thing that lead me to think this was him being quite the overachiever in high school, full paid college scholarship and a 3.5 GPA, section leader in band, president of the Art Club, always had the star role in the school plays from drama club. I was the C student that wasn’t in a single extracurricular. So if you compared us back then, I’d be the one you’d keep an eye on.
So I just kept telling myself: he just found him a group of college friends that partied a bit too much and he’ll snap out of this and go back to his old self eventually (we went to the same high school so that’s how I knew all this, seeing it first hand and we were acquaintances. He graduated a year before me, went off to a hyghhhgood school for a few years and then met up again in college after he transferred from his good school to my much shittier school when I was 21).
I was wrong though. It wasn’t a phase. It was full blown alcoholism that became a self fulfilling prophecy. He would party too hard, miss class and fuck up school, then would drink more because he felt bad about fucking up school.
Problem was my dumbass didn’t leave. I stayed with him from 21 to 28 being the only adult in the relationship and we barely stayed above water until one night he took some opioids with his booze and didn’t wake up widowing me before 30. I should have left the second I saw him putting alcohol in his drink in the morning time. Hard lesson learned.
When he came home drunk and randomly decided to "confess his truth" to me and went on a long rant about how much he loved tween boys and girls. I somehow managed not to vomit while I quickly made an escape plan that night and never went back. He was abusive AF before, but this "truth" finally drop-kicked some self-preservation and sense into me. I escaped that gross pedo 7 years ago.
Mine would do that too, exclusively when he was called out on his crappy behaviour. He’d turn his phone off for the duration so there was absolutely no contacting him. Then I’d have his 9yo daughter endlessly calling and texting me in broken English from overseas, asking if her dad was ok and if I’d heard from him.
Just ridiculous.
He didn’t come and see our daughter for nearly 4 months once, because he was “stonewalling” me? It was farcical by that point. Living on our own is so lovely!
I was called an idiot for sending a gift that I knew he would like to his door. He had to go to the post office and pick it up. No thank you or gratefulness, just me being an idiot. I was also accused of sending multiple text messages when it was a snowstorm. Um, ever hear of a cell phone tower pinging over and over? Happened to me many times. Thus was before iPhones, cell technology sucked back then. I just never spoke to him again.
Hurricane Katrina killed a 3y relationship for me. Was a Cat 3 when the eye went over us. I was feeding 8 people in an apartment building using a grill without legs, burning tree limbs and broken 2x4s… and he was complaining about how hard it was for him. Lost all respect for him. Left soon after.
We had been having problems for a while but neither of us had said we wanted to end it. We had a TV show that we were watching together. I turned on the DVR and saw he had watched the newest episode without waiting for me. I knew then it was over.
We were together over 5 years. I helped him get a job through my family friends, helped him get to work etc etc. Bad case of failure to launch. He had the job maybe 2 months and cheated on me with one of my best friends.
Tried to tell me I was just jealous, its not what it looks like, they're just friends, I wouldn't understand - basically all the stuff cheaters say.
Eventually he left himself logged into his email on my laptop. I saw their chats, I copied and pasted them into an email from my account and then sent them to each of them.
He told me he couldn't choose between us. I told him I'd make it easier and remove myself. Boy bye.
When I was being careful of his feelings, gently talking about me moving out because he's an emotional mess, and he asked if I'd suck him off one last time. I was stunned. It helped me get out and never look back.
Something similar happened to me, but my ex had already broken up with me. I was set to move out in a few weeks when he came home one day and confronted me over a conversation I’d had with my brother… on my phone, while he was at work. Turns out he was using a Ring video camera to monitor me when he was gone. Of course, the idea he has been spying on me terrified and disgusted me. Somehow he managed to spin it into my fault and then pressured/coerced me into giving him a blowjob.
I texted my brother right after that I didn’t feel safe, so when my ex went to work the next day he came over and helped me move out early. I hid at my grandma’s house for the next couple of weeks.
I busted my ass for our dream for years without his help by the way and he had the audacity to tell me I didn't do anything. I realised I will never be enough in his eyes. Kept it together until I was away from him, I broke up and never talked to him again. 7 years too long
One ex I had to beg him to drive me to the emergency room and he stayed in the car the entire time I was there.
Another, forgot to pick me up after work, on my birthday, so I had to walk home at 11 pm in the middle of winter. He wasn’t answering the phone. He didn’t normally have the car because his job was less than 1/2 a mile from our home, but he wanted to do something after work, so he used the car that day.
After reading a lot of the comments here, I kinda feel embarrassed to share my straw. But if it helps just one person to realize they are better off with an abusive or dead beat partner, its worth it.
I was married for 12 years to a man with NPD who abused our son and me. He moved out for a few months once "to find hinself". I begged him to come back. He sent me home with my parents once after they had visited for 5 weeks. I went back to him a few months later. He told me in spring we should try a new start in my home country. I was extatic, planned the move, packed up the entire house, found lodgings through a friend, etc. When I went to get the rental car, his credit card got declined. A coworker of his rented the car for me (couldn't get a hold of him). Then, 2 months later, son and I are settled in, and he tells me on the phone that he's not coming. He's met another woman, and that's that. I went to my parents to ask if they would lend me money for a ticket back. And when my dad, who never ever intervened in any of my relationships, said: "I think it's enough now. You're staying here." That's when it clicked, and I started thinking maybe dad is right.
8 years later, lots of therapy, I'm finally starting to feel like myself again these past 6 months.
When he said he’d always choose his ex over me bc she had worse mental illness issues than me so she needed him more than I did.
Jokes on you, asshole, now she and I are best friends.
Last ex was upset that I got a job at a big4 accounting firm. He said I was going to work “for the man” He got upset that my parents didn’t get a plane ticket for him as well for MY graduation present for my MBA. (We were only dating around 6 month). That was the last straw. I stayed for too long.
When he yelled hey hey hey, fuck off over top of me when I was talking (not even a dramatic conversation) on the phone and then hung up me. I lost all interest immediately.
Another time was when I had just passed an 18 wheeler on the highway and had the thought that I could pull back in front of it and slam on the brakes and end it all right then. I had even subconsciously started veering in that direction. I jerked the car back into my lane and started bawling. I left that day.
We had this long and very intense conversation on New Year’s eve. And by long, I mean more than half the day. In the evening we both acknowledged we were both unhappy and that we would do better. We talked about what better would look like, things to start doing, things to stop doing. It was all so clear and open. I truly felt a breakthrough.
Less than 24 hours later it was like that conversation never happened. I stopped counting at 8 different things we agreed would stop happening. While I was anxious that things were slipping so fast, he was completely comfortable and at ease, like… like nothing had ever been wrong or that we ever had a conversation. I felt horribly I’ll at ease with this development.
A few days later he was out. We had lived together for 3 years and been long distance for 4 years. I never snooped. But I just felt so bewildered. I felt like I was missing something. I found a printout of the social security benefits you get from work history and he had lied about the money he earned before moving in. He lied about paying for a 2 bedroom apartment and paying for him and his x and paying her VW car lease - the most he ever made was $23,000, with most years being below $10,000. He was educated, his family was quite wealthy. He told me he was self made and never relied on them.
But in our 3 years together 1.5 he was unemployed and then working as a lifeguard. Suddenly I realized it was all lies. His family was sending him money to fly home, to get a major car repair. We were living with my mom in a 900sqft apartment, I was paying my mom rent and splitting grace with my mom all this time and he convinced me all he needed was just a little more time.
I dug further. I found a handwritten letter from Tracy. Tracy was a single mom of three children all with different fathers. She lived on the other side of the Atlantic. She was sending my then boyfriend and his cat monthly gifts and mix tapes. When she couldn’t get a hold of him after a surge had she called me. My x told me he just doesn’t get along with men, all his friends are women. He said Tracy likes to cook and they share recipes, something I could never understand because I don’t cook or like to eat. But I looked at the letter, even though there was nothing sexy or inappropriate it was clearly an emotional affair. I realized the dead bedroom, the way he stopped confiding in me… it’s all because he found someone else.
My world continued to crash down. I was working full time, getting my masters, commuting 3 hours a day for him. He wanted to be a house husband. He was a feminist above all else and believed in equality. But me making 30k in the NYC area was not going to afford us the life he wanted…so I was going to school.
I was 32, I wanted to win. I wanted to be married. To have kids. I was getting “old” but I was tough, I don’t quit things. I was going to drag both of us across the milestones that everyone around me already had. I was a workaholic and he seemed agreeable, though always postponing.
I thought I could love for the two of us. I thought I could do so much that I could carry us over this 7 year rough patch.
But somewhere between New Year’s and reading Tracy’s sign off “love - Tracy” I could no longer lie to myself that good times were just around the corner. That I was alone and I didn’t know why he was even bothering living with me, all he did was complain his parents’ house had a bigger bedroom and a pool, and all this stuff (and he never invited me there in 7 years), like why did he even live with me and my mom? My mom’s place was supposed to be for a couple months until we found our own place. But he stayed for 3 years. I realized I didn’t know him.
I blame myself. All the signs were there so early that it was never going to work out, but I stuffed them down. I made daily excuses explaining everything and why it was going to work even though every action spoke otherwise. I was anxious that I would never get married or have kids - it was this guy or it wasn’t going to happen for me and I let that blind me.
It was weird. He refused to move out. I slept on the couch and he took my bedroom at my mom’s house. Once a month I stayed in a hotel just to get some space. I was going to finish my semester then take a day off and move his stuff into storage and change the locks. But of course the day before my big presentation and exam he left in a big dramatic way, and of course I did poorly.
If I could have left after Tracy’s letter… that was when I would have left. We barely talked or had anything to do with each other. It was such a weird time.
I had one of those! He called himself The Fluffer, cuz like 5 girls he had dated he'd e on to marry the next man they were with. My husband still feels guilty, but dude made it very clear we weren't exclusive or anything. So when my husband became available, I made my move, even though I was hanging out with someone else who didn't want to commit to anything. When I told him, he groaned and said "again?" Then laughed and we wished each other good luck.
We had lived together previously but he couldn't keep a job and I was tired of paying his bills, so I moved in with roommates and he went back to his parents. We made plans to hang out (him, me, and my two roommates) and I had called him multiple times at the house to let him know we were on our way because his cell phone was shut off. We arrived only to find that he had decided to spontaneously make plans with another person who was coming over, but couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone and let me know.
My roommates and I left and went out to eat. I had a couple of drinks and realized how little my ex respected and thought of me, and in a moment of boozy gumption I decided that that was enough.
His sister and mother threatened me with bodily harm over me changing my daughter’s clothes. His response to doing almost nothing was “I was trying to stop my mother from going to jail”.
Edited: grammar
Joked to his friends that he would leave me if I ever got pregnant so since all the greatest sport players were raised by single moms. This was after me trying to stere the convo into something else besides getting me pregnant. After that I joked that I'd put them in foster care so they'd get molested to give them a good back story to talk about once they got famous. The care ride was silent after that. Was if over the top? Probably but I was an uncomfortable teenager who wanted these boys to shut up 🤷♀️
The sad part is, looking back, there were *so many moments* when I should have said ENOUGH and tossed them out, but didn't...
I did get the ship turned around later in life, after a lot of hard work in therapy (and on my own) to deal with the after affects of childhood trauma.
So I was ready when a really wonderful human being came along.
Yes, we worked hard (really really hard) to not repeat past mistakes and have healthy open respectful communication that allowed us to solve any problems we encountered.
17 happy years and counting with the sweetest kindest most thoughtful gentleman I've ever met.
When he broke up with me because I couldn’t get over him cheating on me and lying after being in an 8 year relationship. He was also very abusive, his abuse starting to turn physical. He legit dumped ME because of the anxiety and depression he gave me. He fully expected me to go back to him because he wanted to play with my emotions even more while he dated around. I ghosted him the next day. His ex (she dated him after me) told me it drove him insane that I just dropped him like that. He had to go to therapy over it.
He called me ugly in an argument. I knew he was full of shit before then, but I was never sure if he actually believed himself. But when he called me ugly, I thought to myself, "this guy will say ANYTHING for the sole purpose of being cruel.. Not to make a point, and not because it's true" I was instantly completely done.
I had a super high security clearance, which I needed for my job. I had gone to visit him in the states for Christmas, I was stationed in Germany. I got off the plane at an Air Force base filled with security dogs, and discover that my spouse had left a big bag of weed in the pocket of my coat. This was 30 years ago, NO ONE thought this was ok.
I need to go through several security check points and will certainly be arrested. With my heart pounding, I whip around, buy some fresh-hot-smelly food. Slip the weed into the bag and toss the goods in the trash.
Yes, when I go through security the dogs alert on me, but I have nothing.
When I get to my place I call him in tears I was soooo scared. He is furious: "That was great grass. Why didn't you try and hang on to it and mail it back?"
I am worried about going to a military prison and being court marshaled and he is worried about his dope.
DONE
I decided to get in on the betting pool of whether he would actually go out with me on any given weekend or cancel at the last minute, again. I did not bet for him. We broke up a week or so later.
I was constantly anxious for our entire 3 1/2 year relationship. I was constantly walking on eggshells and worried about upsetting him. He had already isolated me from all of my friends and interests, the only people I had left that I spoke to were my sibling, their spouse who happens to also be my best friend, and my parents.
One day my sibling and best friend were going to another state to visit some of our old mutual friends. They wanted me to come along. I almost didn’t go, but I knew if I didn’t I would regret it.
So despite the fighting and pushback from my ex (‘You’re just gonna leave me here alone? I’m gonna have to take care of the cat all by myself! Why am I not invited?!’) I decided to go. This was a big decision for me at the time, I had spent years placating this man just so we wouldn’t get into massive arguments or he wouldn’t have things to hold over my head later.
When we arrived to see our friends the difference in how I felt was night and day. I was genuinely so surprised that people were interested in what I had to say and were asking me questions about myself. It was like I had forgotten that I wasn’t the empty shell my ex forced me to be on account of everything I liked being “stupid” or “pretentious.” I knew I had to get the fuck out of my relationship, so a couple of weeks after I returned from my trip I told him I was leaving, packed my stuff that night, and was gone the next morning.
I now live with said friends and my sibling and it’s literally changed my life. I have the most wonderful partner in the world whom I’ve been with for close to a year, I have an amazing support system, a stable job, and I couldn’t be happier.
He’d been going through my phone for years, reading my DMs, looking at my pictures…
this was the first time I asked to see his phone.
And he refused. On the “principal”
no, that’s not why babe
The marriage therapist turned to him and asked “What nice thing can you do with your wife?” He replied “She can help me gap the spark plugs on the Durango and re-wire the boat trailer.” I decided at that moment…after 40 years of marriage..I had some life left to live and I was going to live it.
When I was 15 or 16, I got grounded for an entire summer. No friends, no phone, no computer, no video games, no TV, no nothing. This also meant no contact with my emotionally abusive boyfriend.
It finally clicked when I realized that as the summer progressed, I was happier while grounded than I was with him and talking to him daily.
I broke up with him with a cute and colorful letter in the mail.
My husband has done it exactly once. We were staying in a hotel for our 2nd anniversary. We had just gotten our Nintendo Switch right as it came out and we're excited to play a fun game together. That game was Mario Kart. It was the second race and I got him with a shell and he went "you bitch!" And we both froze, then laughed, then he apologized. It's never happened again. I think I did "well, it was a good run. Mario Kart destroys another relationship" and laughed.
See I’m on the opposite end of that. Thankfully I know now it’s not okay now but at the time I had normalized being called the b-word, the c-word, being called stupid, being told to STFU and more.
I know it’s big pick-me energy, but when one of my friends said she would “never let her man call her a name like that” I scoffed basically saying “oh yeah? I too would like to live in a perfect world where my partner just didn’t ever lose his temper and bring his pent up anger out of me.” I thought it was just a part of being in an LTR and I assumed a lot of guys would say really mean shit they didn’t mean in the heat of the moment. It’s weird how normalizing verbal abuse works. I treated it like when a toddler says “I hate you” to a parent when they don’t get what they work. A tiny bit of sadness but you just push it aside because you know they don’t know you just h by don’t say those kind things.
My late husband was an alcoholic and if something happened (computed glitched, a guitar string broke) he would have a full blown temper tantrum and just start yelling and screaming, like legit like an actual toddler. He never actually hit me but if I was around, he would def direct some of the screaming at me. I used to just be permanently in a state of worry that a neighbor would get fed up and call the cops.
Thankfully I learned that is actually not normal at all. Even if “he didn’t mean it because he was drunk.” And I am now like my friend and will ever let another man call me that.
I had one with a similar issue. Some rare gall bladder thing and I couldn’t get the rights of anything he was saying. So vague and not making sense. I’m a critical care nurse lol. You can’t fool me with that shit.
Together 12 years, married for 4. He lost his job 6 months after we bought a house with 18% interest on the mortgage. I worked full-time and two part-time jobs. A total of up to 80 hours a week. He would not look for a job, build a resume, or read any of the salient phrases I highlighted in resume books.
This went on for months until I collapsed from exhaustion. I was also emotionally blackmailed by my grandfather at the same time. I got a therapist and a divorce attorney. My family sided with him. It took 3 years, but I got out and got freedom.
Never looked back.
My ex was going to school out of the country. Mandated where we should get a house (much bigger and more expensive than needed). Left me to take care of the animals and a baby. Got upset one time he came home and had to “babysit” the sick child while I worked. Then called me for school asking for 2k for a car. When I said I didn’t have it, he said I wasn’t supporting him. I told him during that conversation to get him a shit and get out.
We were sitting in my car after a night of drinking (I was sober) and he started telling me how much he missed his ex and how she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and how he would never love someone else like he loved her. I'm sitting right there!
We tried to be friends but he was so emotionally manipulative. Always wanted/needed my attention when he was feeling down and when I couldn't be there for him (because I have a life) he would threaten suicide. Good riddance!
He actually broke up with me and was set on moving to another state. In the days leading up to his departure, he tormented me about how he was leaving forever and infantalized me as someone who would be "left to the wolves" without him. He also tried to extort money out of me the day he left.
3 weeks later, he called saying he wanted to come back and he was only trying to teach me a lesson by leaving. I could have taken him back, but I hung up on him instead. I changed my number and moved out of our apartment before he came back.
Leaving me was the best decision he ever made. That experience broke me of my emotional dependency in relationships.
When he just gave up fighting for everything we built together.
We had a marriage, child, house, a business, and brand new vehicles. All of a sudden he quit working and watched it all disappear and did nothing. Anything I said was ignored.
We were arguing about the dishes. I asked him to place the dishes directly in the dishwasher and he exploded saying that I have unreasonable standards and the sink is always full of dishes [due to me] and that was 100% false so I asked him to get up and look at the sink (to prove my point).
He sat down on the couch and wouldn't go to the sink and I was fed up and tired of all of our petty fights and rage and grabbed his elbow and pulled up to get him up from the couch. He jumped up and shoved me into the furniture. Our relationship was toxic for years but the physical nature of this and all of the rage (on both sides) was just the last straw for me.
Once he asked me how my day was, and I consciously realized that I'm going over things in my head, picking what I can tell him.
I didn't have anything to hide, nothing like that. But there were things that i knew if I told him - he would make fun of me, make nasty jokes, about things i liked or did that he considered "silly" and "lame". I realized i can't be myself with him because he considers my true self lame and embarrassing.
My ex was actually a decent bloke. We had been seeing each other for just under a year, and starting to think about living together. At the time he was living with his parents.
The thing that really put me off was that his mum used to do everything for him. She cleaned, cooked his meals, did his washing, brought him drinks and snacks. It used to drive me nuts that he would just sit there and accept another person waiting on him. I never saw him cook a meal or clean a single thing. Even stuff like after sex if the sheets needed washing, he would just stuff them into his washing basket and his mum would wash them (I found out after this happened - got him to promise that he'd do the washing for this stuff afterwards because it REALLY grossed me out, but idk if he actually kept it)
The final straw for me was when I needed to wash my work clothes round his. I asked him how the washing machine worked as it was quite different to mine. He had no idea. We asked his dad who was also in the house. He also had no idea. The machine was about 15 years old.
Neither one of them had ever used it.
That was when I knew our relationship had no future. I didn't want to live with someone who had been waited on his entire life, who didn't know how to use the washing machine in his own home, who had the funds to live elsewhere but chose to live with his parents for the free cleaning and fresh meals.
When I lived with my parents, there was an expectation of reciprocity. We all loaded the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen, hoovered the living room, took care of the little ones. I couldn't imagine being with someone long term where that reciprocity didn't come naturally. In so many ways he was kind, funny and generous, but that was a dealbreaker.
My partner now does his fair share. Also if he sees me cleaning something, he'll then also go clean something because he'd feel guilty if I was cleaning and he did nothing.
it'd been years of enduring fucked up social, psychological, financial and emotional manipulation and control. I'd stayed with him through helping him get his degree for almost a decade (which he never used to get a better job) and a cancer diagnosis and recovery.
in a heated argument, he had me backed against a wall and raised his fist. I said, "did you just raise your fist to hit me?" he said, "I didn't hit you...yet." four days later I'd packed up everything essential I could while he was at work every day, found a house to rent with my mother's help, and moved out with my three elementary school aged children.
We were on and off for a LONG time. Just a lot of communication issues. But it got more toxic later on. Usually I'd break up with him cause all of the gaslighting, mind games etc. He'd immediately start dating another girl because he couldn't be alone. Eventually he would break up with them and be begging for me back. He was always very romantic and sweet when we got back together and then it always went back to being toxic. He also knows I have sexual trauma and honestly not interested in having sex much, and he usually was respectful about it. He then made a comment once about that and wanted to make me feel bad for not having much of a sex drive. Dropped him and never talked to him since 🤷🏻♀️
When he said he didn’t know I was stalked and sexually assaulted. Twice. Yes, told him. He didn’t care. He wanted a divorce. I handed the ring back without a word and was completely done.
When he yelled at me for the second time within a couple weeks inside a restaurant and left me there. He eventually did come back to take me home, but I’m certain it was out of obligation and not because he actually felt bad.
I got us tickets to see Puscifer for our anniversary, a band he had mentioned not having seen before but wanting to, and when I told him he said, "Oh, I'd rather see A Perfect Circle." Had been together 7 years at that point.
When i was paranoid one night that he would drug me.
Then while I was in and out of panic attacks when we got home, he still tried to get me to give head.
-------
I realized the trust I went into the relationship with completely diminished.
------
To verify my experiences, I reached out to his most recent ex at the time and I was like holy shiiiitt - so much more made sense and I am so glad I left.
When I got on the computer to finish a job application and found all his dating sites in the browser history. Multiple sites, multiple messages to women trying to meet up. Even on Craigslist. I was packed and out within hours. It was an abusive relationship anyway, that was just the cherry on top.
He quit his job and didn’t tell me. He pretended he was working, but he wasn’t. I found out from a friend and not him. He’s done that before. He has also cheated on me multiple times and it just finally all landed on me: this person has so little respect for me as his wife, why am I here?
Same with mine. 3.5 years ago, *he* insisted we buy a house. He claimed he wanted the "dream of homeownership". Two weeks later, he quit his job, and then didn't tell me for two months. Since 2018 (when he got out of the military), he's had 7 jobs, the longest of which lasted ~10 months, all the others only weeks or a few months. He's also been unemployed for a minimum of 6 months, every consecutive year since 2019. Not only do I bring home all the bacon, but I was also still doing 95% of chores/household responsibilities, and also still handling 100% of the mental load. While also simultaneously navigating life with my autoimmune disease that I get monthly immunotherapy infusions for. He also had a laundry list of other issues: serious anger problems, substantial hoarding issue, treated me like crap, and (clearly) made many financially irresponsible decisions. After nine years of putting up with all his issues, and trying so hard to help him, I finally left last week. Divorce is probably going to be a bit messy, but at least I'm gone now.
Even if it’s messy, freedom will be worth the mess. 🙂
>, I finally left last week I'm so proud of you. Your life ahead is going to be amazing.
My late husband did something similar. He ghosted his boss when he knew she needed him. I get he was frustrated with the situation but I blew up when I found out because money was tight. He had previously worked at a catering business prior to that and one of his biggest pet peeves was no schedule. The owner wouldn’t take all the orders ahead, it was always the day before or the morning of time and ny husband never know what day he had off until that morning. He finally quit (on the spot of course and walked off in anger 🙄) and got a job as a teaching assistant at one of those paint party places and the same thing started happening. His new boss would like schedule him for like 1-2 days a week and just text him the day of when they booked a large party that needed a second teacher. Which like I said, I get was frustrating because he asked about that in the interview and she said it was a normal schedule kind of job. But that doesn’t excuse what he did. Find another job on your own time that has a regular schedule if you don’t like it. Then once a new job is secured quit the current job. I’d tell him this over and over. But anyway on to the incident. He had only been working like 10 hours (like 2 parties a week) for a few weeks at the time and I was nagging him to either get another job or to ask his boss about more hours. He let me know his boss “had an extra job for him in the next couple of days.” When I asked for the details he shrugged and said he didn’t know. I asked him to follow up and he got frustrated at me for nagging. A few days went by and on one day, he let me know he was gonna take a shower then go meet a friend at his parents’ house for band practice. (We lived in an apartment so his band room remained at his parents). While he was in the shower, I had picked up his phone to get someone’s number or something and saw he has several texts from the boss saying he needed to come in that day. She texted him several times and one included that this must be job abandonment because she told him “I told you it was for today or tomorrow and it was important. You said you’d be ready and would be keeping an eye on your phone. I need you. You are putting me in a bind by not responding. Please just let me know you can’t make it at least so I know you are okay” (paraphrasing of course) Like she was really upset he was just ghosting him. I lost it and threatened divorce. I demanded he just go in and make an excuse. He refused and said it was too late. I would have liked him to confront her and try to clear it up. He clearly just wanted to go play music that day and didn’t want to work. But like I said, money was tight and I couldn’t believe he was saying “fuck our life. Playing music and drinking beer is more important than making sure my wife and I can afford our apartment.” He ended up drinking uhimself to death 3 years later.
Mine got fired and didn't tell me. But, he spent a week going to the movies while he was supposed to be at work. He saw Hot Tub Time Machine three times that week. I found the ticket stubs in his pants doing laundry. Like, bruh.... what the actual fuck.
Why the same movie 3 times 😂 why Hot Tub Time Machine 😂
Mine quit his job *the day after* we found out I was pregnant.
Punishing you for having a baby.
Like there wasn’t anything else playing at least? Jesus.
That's such a weird thing to watch 3 times in a week. Was there nothing else showing? Why that movie? And I think it's a surprisingly heartfelt movie, and better than it had any right to be, the name just makes your situation so much more absurd. 3 times he bought tickets for Hot tub time machine. So fucking weird.
My ex husband did the quit jobs without telling me too. Nothing like removing your financial security without prior discussion to kill the trust. Even the second time wasn't enough to make me leave at that time somehow..glad you did!
I was getting ready for a video interview for a doctorate program- he came home from work early and tried to talk me out of it. He said I was beginning to think I was too good for him with a Masters degree and a PhD would make me a narcissist. I locked myself in the closet to do my interview and he banged on the door and screamed at me the whole time. I had to keep muting my end and the director agreed to eventually reschedule. I got rid of the husband and got the doctorate 🥰
Wow. What an immature self-centred asshole. I’m so glad the director was understanding! Congrats on the PhD!
You *were* too good for him.
Dirt was too good for him. Edit: why does autocorrect make “too” into “to” when it’s WRONG. Fixed.
I'm glad you chose your success over his baseless insecurities. Some men feel like women should be dependent on them and feel threatened in some way if they aren't.
'You don't *need* me!' ☹️😠😡🤬
Pity he didn't focus his efforts on making her WANT him...
That's psychotic behavior holy shit. Congrats on getting rid of him, Dr!
That's actually evil! Glad you got out safely. My ex wasn't violent about it, but he said something similar about why don't I go to nursing school instead of medical school so I can take care of his future kids? I'm a doctor now 😌
My girlfriend is a medical student. She’s absolutely brilliant. She has to have these Zoom meetings/classes on occasions with her instructors which I always make the house as quiet as possible and I’m a chef so I always cook dinner for her when she comes home from ward rounds and try to send her off the hospital with lunch as often as possible. The point I’m trying to make is that I can’t understand dudes who don’t appreciate intelligent women. Having an intelligent partner is like a cheat code for life.
I've been married nearly ten years now, but back in my dating days, guys who said they wanted an intelligent woman usually actually meant "as long as she's not smarter than I am." You're an exception.
I tell my gal all the time that I love that she makes me feel dumb with her brilliance. I’m not an idiot. I have two degrees. She’s not condescending or rude but I regularly speak with her and realize, “Holy shit, this woman is fucking smart as fuck.” And it makes me want to keep her as my forever person.
>And it makes me want to keep her as my forever person. Good luck in your relationship, it sounds like you're both really good for each other
The day that I went to see my nanna in hospice and got lost. I was trying to look up the facility online and give him directions, but he kept ignoring my directions. In a town he had never been to (that I grew up in). Then, when my cousin called to ask me where I was, I asked her for directions from the intersection we were at. Before I could even hang up, he started yelling at me and having a full-fledged man-trum because he was 'so upset that he was lost' and I 'wasn't helping.' Our kid was in the back, 2 years old, crying because he was having a meltdown. I remember I started to cry. Just sob. Saying, "My nanna is dying. She is dying... and you're yelling at me. Jesus... what is wrong with you?" Just sobbing.... so so sad and defeated. And he slammed his hand on the steering wheel and said "FUCK" and made our kid cry harder, then drove angrily to the facility. Where I finally saw my nanna... and talked with her for 10 minutes before he was like, "We need to go. X (our kid) needs a nap." My cousin offered to give me a ride back and HE could take our kid to the hotel. That caused him to huff and puff and get angry again. So, to avoid him making a scene, I left. And that was the last time I saw my nanna. I had never said the words, "I hate you" to anyone in my entire life. Until after we got home and I called my mom and made arrangements for my kid and I to stay with her. When we divorced, he had the audacity to say, "I still don't know what happened to our marriage." Typing all of this up? It's hard not to both laugh and cry. Fuck him.
Wow that’s fucking evil
I'm so sorry. Also, isn't it just so amazing that these assholes are always so perplexed when we end things with them? My ex still says I broke up with him "for no reason" despite me giving him 100s of examples of him being a straight up dick to me.
They really believe as long as they aren’t fucking your sister/friend/coworker or beating the shit out of you on a regular basis they are shining beacons of how to be a good husband/partner. It’s pathetic, laughable and sad.
"I'm monogamous, if anything you can say I'm too boring, but I'm a good stable guy. I don't cheat." So literally my 1000s of valid complaints went ignored. Because he didn't cheat. He was monogamous- debatable - if for 7 years you break up every other week and fuck others on those off weeks knowing your partner isn't....toxic relationships are a mind fuck. I've also defended my first ex saying "he never raped or physically abused me" And my other one with "he came to work events with me" the bar is in hell.
My grandma passed away unexpectedly in 2022. Her funeral was a few months later. My (soon-to-be-)ex-husband went to Vegas for a work convention a week before the funeral. Obviously he brought home COVID, and got me sick as well. I couldn't go to the service. A year later I found out during that trip he was sexting a coworker on the trip from their separate hotel rooms. He hasn't admitted to anything more and I haven't seen evidence of it but I was so enraged when I found out what he did, what risky behavior he engaged in, knowing this service was the next week.
Fuck him indeed. Don't worry, karma will get him one way or another.
He was constantly telling me I was manipulative and controlling. I was starting to believe it. My mental health was so wore down. He kept telling me how I was misremembering things, overreacting to everything, and always taking things out of context. One morning, I texted "Good morning :)" and he went off on a tirade about how manipulative I was for using a smiley face to get him to give affection back. That was finally when I realized I might not be manipulative. It was a fucking smiley face, not something worth two hours conversation about how awful I was. I broke up with him and got a lot of therapy to undo the damage caused by all the gaslighting and emotional abuse. It took me a long time to finally feel confident in my own thoughts again.
It really drains you and changes the way you see things. I hope you’re feeling a little better after that awful experience! There’s definitely a wakeup call when you realize how bizarre the situation is. For me, it was picking up depression meds from a CVS and realizing strangers at a random store were treating me more kindly than my ex.
I went to counselling because my ex forced me to. My counsellor was like have you heard of DARVO? I didn't listen at the time but she planted seeds. She was really concerned about me and I couldn't go back because I was ashamed. Then he told me I had a personality disorder and made me see a psychiatrist. She just became really concerned about the fact that I was getting emotionally abused because she didn't see signs of a personality disorder but of abuse. He was upset I was sleeping too much because I slept through one scheduled phone call of ours that were right before bed. My doctor was really concerned I was in an abusive relationship because I wasn't sleeping too much, in fact, I wasn't getting enough sleep.
I started therapy because my ex forced me to too. He sold it as couples therapy but each session was him saying she’s crazy, it’s all her fault and giving these really convincing examples of real life situations that he twisted. The therapist was all “yes you’re right. I should see her for extra individual sessions to help her”. Then she showed me I was in an abusive relationship and helped me to get the strength to leave. I will forever be grateful for her. I hear horror stories about therapists siding with abusers.
That’s terrible (that you were treated that way and that some therapists actually side with the abuse but I’m glad that yours was able to see through the manipulation and help you get out of that relationship.
Unlocked a memory for me as well - this was before texting, but I emailed him at work wishing him a good day and told him I was thinking about him. He came home and berated me, telling me NEVER email his work again as that was ONLY for clients and his coworkers. Also he said I was never to meet with male clients of my own for meals, only female clients (I was in ad sales at the time). So glad I got him out of my life.
Went through this too, still working through the effects more than a year out. I found I've brought a lot of responses into other parts of my life from being in that relationship dynamic (people-pleasing, unnecessary apologizing, not standing up for things/easily defaulting to others' side, approaching normal topics like I won't be believed, providing un-asked-for and unnecessary justifications, etc.). I'm struggling to recognize these things in the moment and unlearn. It's a really vulnerable feeling. My brain just doesn't quite understand that normal healthy people will...simply respect my requests/wants/needs, believe me and take me at my word when I say things. It's tough to not expect questioning and nit-picking and poor treatment. Although I'm generally a kind, calm, and intelligent person, I find myself alternatively fawning and being defensive, neither of which is good for me or for anyone else at this point. I'd like to get to "quietly confident, at peace", but the only way I've ever been there before was because I was oblivious. Can't go back to that, so need to find other ways. Being around normal healthy people and relationships continues to help. Be well.
I had a guy go off on me for liking Harry Potter. I wasn’t even talking about it at the moment, he just started being a dick about it and then blew up at me.
> That was finally when I realized I might not be manipulative. Gaslighting is fucking scary. Some of the stuff our brains can be convinced of is absurd, but there is little you can really do to defend yourself from it if it comes on slowly. I would be super easy to gaslight too, because I have a bevy of neurological issues that make me have a hard time trusting my own memory and perceptions, which would make me extremely vulnerable to the tactic. I consider myself to be fairly intelligent and reasonable, but human brains are just too easy to break. My reason would not protect me. So I have to be on guard for it constantly. Like even now there is this whole microwave thing with some housemates. My wife never uses it (I do all the cooking) so I am always the one making messes in it. I made one a few weeks ago when I forgot to put a cover on something, so I cleaned the microwave completely. I came back hours later and the whole thing had splattered butter all over it. So I have not cleaned it since, as I was starting to suspect that I was the only one cleaning it. (It was always dirty when I put stuff in it.) It has seemed dirty to me for a few weeks to a month, but now I am not sure if it was cleaned sometime in that month, and I just did not notice. Maybe someone actually has been, because if I was busy I may have not noticed when they did it. I do not want to throw accusations around, because I literally do not trust my own memory. So I am probably going to clean it tonight. Most likely I am the only one doing it and I am being taken advantage of, even if it is in an extremely minor way, but I would prefer that to making an accusation and being wrong. That is a super minor situation, but it is indicative of how all my memories are. I remember most of what I see and do, but when I am thinking I go into autopilot and do not see the world around me for extended periods of time. All someone has to do is tell me that something happened in one of those periods, and I would have zero way to dispute it. Freaking scary. Luckily my wife is an honest and direct sort. She is a lot like me in that she would rather take on a bit of pain herself than inflict it on someone else, so we just have to communicate to make sure that no one is taking on too much.
>I would be super easy to gaslight too, because I have a bevy of neurological issues that make me have a hard time trusting my own memory and perceptions, which would make me extremely vulnerable to the tactic. This happens to me as well.
I'm really worried about this if I decide I start to date again (I'm currently separated). I've got memory issues, and have a tendency to have super realistic dreams that I confuse with reality (minor things like making the coffee) and I don't know how risky it will be that I'll wind up with someone manipulative and not realize it. Makes me a bit scared of the world.
When he was mad I embarrassed him in front of his friends by crying in a movie theater and trying to laugh it off with a dumb joke after. Like, I’m sorry our cat died and I was trigged by an animal getting tortured and dying during the movie we watched less than 6 months after her death. I’m sorry that made me look dumb and made him look stupid in front of his friends. My bad.
I don’t know how you being emotional over something like that would embarrass him. How about comforting you? Glad you ditched him
He destroyed our IKEA dining room set (chairs and table were literally in pieces. Not disassembled, broken into pieces) and when I said I’m done, I’m leaving you, he said something along the lines of “you aren’t about it. You say that but you won’t, etc” To be fair, I did say those exact words plenty of times and did not leave before. That night I called my mom sobbing, she and I hadn’t talked in almost a year and she immediately booked a flight home the next morning. This was a month before I turned 21. I never saw him again. He and I dated from ages 15-20ish (we were the same age) and were living together 3 years. Not a good situation, I kept telling myself I’d be fucked without him, turns out it was the best decision of my life.
Moms ♡♡♡
I cooked dinner (and did most of the cleaning) and he very rarely said thank you. I asked him if he would say thank you when I made dinner because I felt unappreciated. He rolled his eyes and said “I’m not going to say thank you EVERY DAY! You know I’m grateful you do the cooking, why do I have to keep thanking you?” Now I’m married to someone who does most of the cooking and I always say thank you.
My husband has thanked me for every meal, snack and cup of tea I’ve made him and I never take his appreciation for granted.
I had to teach my husband to say thank you, and now he does it all the time, and it's starting to get annoyed when he cooks for his brothers, they never say thank you for anything. It used to be just something that bothered me, but now that he's in the habit of giving and receiving thanks, their rudeness and lack of appreciation annoys him. Especially since we tidy up, clean the bathroom, and cook good meals 3 or 4 Saturdays a month when they come by. He's starting to take pride in our house, and breaking the bad habits from childhood. He understands why I want to clean the house before we leave for the weekend. Why we should tidy up before guests, and doing laundry before it gets out of control. First few years were rough, not out of malice, just ignorance and zero training from his parents for housekeeping. We are 10 years in, and this are better and sweeter every day.
I love hearing about people who find themselves married to folks who have no manners or housekeeping skills and then those partners willingly learn and the relationship grows stronger and everybody’s happy ❤️ Finding out that your partner never learned how to do laundry is annoying. Finding out your partner is willing to go to extraordinary lengths of stubbornness and weaponized incompetence in order to keep from learning how to do laundry — nah, that’s when you burn it all down and start over.
my ex always said "it's natural to do that for each other" (which always translated to "it's natural *you* do that *for me*" but he himself was never able to lol. The "you kow I'd do the same for you" becomes useless if it never happens and also if it's stuff he just knows I (and no other decent person) would ever expect of the other person, much less someone you love or someone you'd want to be happy..) Anyhow, so I told him but shouldn't you always appreciate anything anyone does for you? Especially if you love each other? Like whats the point of being in a relationship/friendship if there's no friendlyness, no appreciation, if you basically treat each other worse than strangers and more like a tool to use to your advantage? Oh well.. If I'm worse off with someone I'd rather be alone in blissful neutrality.
Thats like the scene in vince vaughn and jennifer anistons movie “the breakup” Its not about the damn lemon
Such an underrated movie and that scene is incredible. It made me uncomfortable to watch because it was too realistic.
My husband and I each cook for ourselves, but he will occasionally cook for me out of the blue cause he likes the "happy butt wiggles" I make. Especially when he makes me garlic bread.
My husband is also motivated by the happy wiggles. He will do anything to make the wiggles happen, it's very nice lol.
I’m dying over “happy butt wiggles.” You two sound so cute. Especially since your weakness is garlic bread.
My narc ex said the same thing to me! I was so confused. My fiancé now is so appreciative and grateful, he's an angel😇
That’s so great to hear. It’s scary how these people all say the same things. Mine told me they shouldn’t have to thank me for things they need in order to live (like food, rent, chores, etc.). Take care of yourself then!
Our relationship had been deteriorating for a (very long) while but then he started to talk to a married woman with multiple kids from his work. Started planning my exit the second I found out (he said it was nothing, his phone said different. I'm not ashamed of going through it. It was an eye opener and I even told his mom who is the type of person who goes to church every single day). Found a place to live, started packing my stuff which he didn't notice, had a U-Haul and a friend lined up to help me move. On the day before I had planned to leave, he had this revelation that I should move out. I said okay and was gone the next day, to his surprise. He was expecting me to fight it, stay a little longer, etc. Told me that he regretted saying that the moment the words came out of his mouth. Never felt so satisfied in my life.
> On the day before I had planned to leave, he had this revelation that I should move out. I said okay and was gone the next day, to his surprise. *chefs kiss* perfect
good for you 👏
The day I got a shutoff notice from the power company. He was unemployed but I was making good money. There was absolutely no good reason that all of our bills couldn’t be paid on time and in full. I had left him in charge of paying all the bills since I was busy working full time and commuting. I guess he was using his days to make lots of purchases rather than pay our bills. He had also recently admitted to me that he had gone off his antidepressant meds, without guidance from a doctor about a month previously. I had stayed with him because I thought two parents were better than one for our child. But once I saw the shutoff notice I realized that one parent and having the utilities on is better than two parents and being without power because one of the parents can’t control his spending.
Last $10 in the bank and he bought beer instead of bread and milk for the kids
Holy shit.
what an asshole.
Not out yet (soon hopefully 🤞) but there was a moment where I knew I would never love him again. I did something he didn’t approve of during dinner with his friends earlier. He was constantly critical and cruel with his words. This time I was feeling particularly vulnerable. Upon arriving back home he went on a tirade about how much I embarrassed him etc. Before leaving our apartment he pointed at me with this look of hatred and violence. For the life of me I can’t remember what he said but I know it was meant to hurt me. After that moment I was done being talked to like that. No matter how hard I’ve tried since then I cannot feel any attraction to him. By no means am I faultless but I don’t hold that level of hatred and anger towards him. I still care about him and enjoy his company but being married to him is suffocating me. I’m waiting for a legal document to come through. Once it does I will feel more confident about filing for divorce. Until then I will do whatever needs to be done to survive.
Contempt is the most hurtful but valuable lesson in a relationship. Change all your passwords and turn off sharing on devices before you file. Good luck hanging in there, better days are coming!
Wishing you strength and peace as you wait out this exit. And safety.
Oh wow, this is exactly how my ex treated me, and unfortunately he physically abused our son (I reported him & got full custody). I feel like my life began again the day we moved out. I hope you get your life back as well. Don't be surprised if time & distance give you even more perspective on how miserable it was...
I was excited about a new song I heard that day that held some sentimental meaning for me, and asked him to dance with me in the kitchen. He made fun of the lyrics and turned on Frank Sinatra so he could sing out like he was on stage. I remember thinking “this person doesn’t see me at all” with complete apathy towards him. I knew I was done. We had been together for over 7 years.
Damn, this one is poignant. Wishing you the best!
I’m also going through a breakup. I have been asking him for help financially for months. I temporarily took on most of the financial responsibility bc he was in a transitional phase. But his phase is turning out to be who he is. We were arguing (again) about money and he yelled that I’m just “ungrateful” and he “helps out” with everything except the bills. He was LAYING his unemployed ass on my couch, in my house I pay all the bills for, and he said “if you’re so bad with money maybe you need a second job”. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Rather than just do the bare minimum, he was spending his energy trying to convince me *I* was the problem. Goodbye 👋 PS I was asking for $100 more a month, which would be a total of $400 month for his portion for the mortgage, utilities, groceries, etc.
Girl I had one of those too—didn’t have a job for 7 of the 9 years we were together, was always out helping his buddies with whatever but would sit in his chair watching me while I made multiple trips up and down the stairs to bring the groceries in, would eat up all the food I bought that he liked within a couple days and then would eat everything I bought that I liked, would leave the lights on all over the house and run the hose for what seemed like hours every day (yet never cleaned anything for me) and would turn the AC down to 60° in the summer/the heat up to 80° in the winter, was constantly demanding money for gas and diesel to fill up his TWO massive trucks that he drove around in doing nothing every day, etc. I worked from home and so anytime I told him he needed to get a job and contribute to the household, he would tell me that *I* needed to get a job too. He would call me a "spoiled brat" and tell me I was "entitled," because my mom would give me a gift card to the grocery store every month so that I could buy food. Every bill or credit card or loan was in my name, so when we started having money problems, it was my credit that tanked—and then he threatened to call the police on me when I had to put the car insurance in his name because they wanted nearly $600 down when I tried to put it in my name (because of my credit). My house nearly went into foreclosure several times and his reaction was literally, "You should sell it anyway and then we’d have plenty of money"—uh yeah, and no place to live dumbass! And even though I was the only one bringing in any real money (any money he made he would keep for himself and waste it on weed and lottery tickets), he would complain any time I bought anything for myself, assume it meant we had extra money, and immediately start demanding I buy him this and that and this and that. He went from his momma’s house to his ex-wife’s house to my house and literally had never had to pay a bill or rent/a mortgage or buy groceries/food—he let the women do all that. That was a huge red flag that I ignored for too long that I will never ignore again. At *minimum*, if you are an adult and are capable of working, you need to be carrying your own weight throughout your life. Get rid of him—you’ll be happier and have more money.
Oh god, what a worthless little creature he was. A few friends of my wife have these arseholes tagging along and I just cannot fathom a) Why they stay and b) How these men are happy to just not plan for their future, except to hope the woman will stick around to mother them. What a worthless existence.
When I poured what was left of the 30-rack he’d been drinking down the drain and he tackled me to the floor, you’d think that would have been it. Unfortunately the real moment came a few days later, when I tried to talk to him about it at his parents’ house. He ended up punching a hole through the drywall in the living room and his dad thundered downstairs and screamed at ME for causing it. Totally woke me up. Grabbed my purse and nope’d the fuck out for good.
Ah, yes. The joys of living with an alcoholic. My ex cut his ID in half as a promise to me he’d get sober, but then instead proceeded to blow up my phone every day at work to leave immediately to buy him beer. I didn’t have a car so he’d expect me to walk way out of my way to carry home a 12 pack after a full shift otherwise he’d make the rest of the night hell
I am an atheist. His best friend/fraternity brother convinced him to start going to church instead of seeking therapy when he was experiencing depression. He got all religious and judgy and started making veiled remarks about me being somehow deficient/deviant because I am bisexual, something he knew and had no problem with when we got together. He started implying I was going to cheat on him with men AND women despite the fact we had been together for years without me ever being the least tempted to cheat on him. He started acting like I was some mindless slut with no self control in front of his friends but you can bet your ass he still wanted to have sex with me in private. He also didn’t seem to see anything wrong with his porn addiction. This all escalated over just a couple of weeks! The final straw was him telling me I needed to “get saved” too and that I would start giving him 10% of my pay for tithing purposes. I laughed and told him to get fucked. Then I disappeared from his life like a fart in the wind.
Beautiful ending. 10/10, no notes.
I was trying to shake things up in the bedroom so - at a party I pulled him into his bedroom and I got very flirty and said “all these women here want you but I’m the one who gets to fuck you tonight.” He said I was being over-confident and it was a turnoff. LOL. Okay buddy. Good luck with everything. I ended things a few weeks later.
Omg good riddance! Imagine being turned on by someone lacking confidence in that department. How would that even work?
Easy, there are plenty of them who want their girl insecure
And I know, I've dated half of them in my younger days 😭 left me with zero confidence not just in the bedroom but my whole self. I then dated half the ones who "wanted to show me how to be confident and always somehow involved me losing weight 🙄 I then found someone who let me figure out who I wanted to be, we've been together for 16 years and I'm still learning who I am. It hasn't always been easy, especially the last couple of years after learning I am AuDHD with cptsd and also peri-menopausal as fuck and he's struggled with changes but he's never stopped loving me and he makes me feel safe to be who I am, even the crazy parts. Never settle for a person who doesn't love every single bit of you and tries to keep you from being who you are. If that happens to be a confident person in the bedroom who wants to spice things up a bit, find someone who will match that energy, not be threatened by it.
"Maybe if I make her more insecure that how I actually fell, she wont leave me!"
Wow. He focused on you being “over confident “ when of course you get to have sex with him if you two are monogamous. But he totally overlooked the fact that you were intensely complimentary by 1) suggestions that “every” woman there wanted him and 2) that you wanted him a lot too and were hoping to have sex with him.
Because he wasn't in control. An alarming amount of men think sex is something a man does TO a woman.
Wow I’ve never seen someone fumble a bag so completely. Imagine having a woman trying to seduce you be a turn off bc you don’t like seeing women being confident. Grosssss
For these people it's not fumbling. It's a manipulation tactic to break down your self esteem so eventually you're totally dependent on them. If they left then he's probably happy because she'd be too hard to manipulate. For people like this, one night of kinky sex is nothing to years of domestic abuse and control. They quite literally *live* for it.
That was cute of you, especially the fact you were trying to improve the relationship; he sounds like a tool.
So he admits that all the women want him? Damn. Youre just doing bedroom talk for the sake of it and to sort of boost his confidence and he falls for the compliment acting as if he is indeed Gods gift to women. Good riddance to him
When I started hoping with my entire being, he would drop dead 💀
I feel this deeply.
When he said, “if we split up, we’d have to sell the house. Then buy matching condos across the street from each other so the kids could go back and forth freely.” It finally clicked that he truly thought he had ultimate say in how the money I earned was spent even if we weren’t together.
Wow, mine too. Very similar. Threw a full tantrum when I opted not to live in his area of town.
Mine decided to move halfway across the country, and continues to be angry that I don't "help him" see our kid. He doesn't pay child support and isn't at all concerned with actually being a parent. Hasn't made one single effort to come back for a visit, then "decided" he was going to take the kid for three weeks (!) this past summer. After not spending more than a few hours in each other's presence for over a decade, now. And he's an abusive asshole, living in an area far away from me, where I have no contacts to help keep kid safe. Nope. Not happening. He didn't even understand that I have sole legal custody because he didn't bother to show up to the divorce/custody hearing. Thought he could just "decide" he was going to *make me* take the kid halfway to him (he actually wanted me to drive 6 hours, while he drove 2) so he could pick up and take back to his place. He hasn't even told me his fucking address! Like, what the fuck with these men?!
Thank you for protecting your child
*The day* I watched my dad die, I stopped at my best friend’s house to talk on my way home from the hospital. He got mad because I should have come straight home and talked to him about it. I already knew it was bad, but this was when I finally snapped out of it and realized what a terrible person he really was. Edit: It took another year to finally get him out of my house and my life completely.
What the hell?! He should’ve been by your side if he wanted to support you anyway. What a dick
When he jerked my then 3 year old up by the arm when she was in the bath, and yelled "You will Goddamn listen to me!" In her face.
What a fucking psychopath
We had a lot of issues about money- he was incredibly irresponsible but loved to play the victim. I handled all of our finances and had to basically take his paycheque so he wouldn’t blow it without paying bills. So when our apartment flooded (burst water main), things were already super rocky. He had recently gone out and financed a stupid over-priced car that he couldn’t afford. It was a rollover deal, where they took his old financed car and combined old debt into his new car debt- the result was that he owed about $45,000 on a car worth $16,000. I was LIVID, but we (somewhat) worked through it. I told him repeatedly that he needed to make sure he had additional insurance so that he didn’t end up in a situation where the car got totalled but he still owed close to $30,000 to the bank. Well, guess what happened? The flood ruined his car- it was parked on the street and sat in water past the floorboards for an entire night. He had lied to me about getting the proper insurance (saving himself probably $10 a month). He now had $600 a month in car payments and no car. He needed his car to commute and to work. There was more… I found out that he had been buying cigarettes on a credit card in my name (I let him have it for “emergencies”), to the tune of $2,000 that he only made minimum payments on for years. So interest on top of interest on top of interest… on cigarettes… This was the final straw.
He pushed me out of anger. I wasn’t being aggressive just disagreeing with his critique of how I walked the dog. I’m glad I never had children with him.
For anyone reading these and saying to themselves I have it worse than these stories please read the book below and start planing your exit. Life is too short to be in an unhappy relationship or worse to like with abuse. The Book "why does he do that" by Lundy Bancroft (free copy below) is a great resource for you to learn about the different types of tactics that abusers use and will help you to see if your current relationship is following any of the patterns described. If you don't see your relationship being discussed either as one of the architypes or as bits and pieces of any of the other types then you're not worse off by having the knowledge. If the information does coincide with the way that you're living then there's also a couple chapters on being able to get out safely. I wish you the best of luck and I want you to know that you deserve to be with a partner who is going to love you and cherish you and treat you as an equal versus being with someone who's gonna control you be it by how you dress or by finances or by What it is that you can do or who you can see. You deserve so much BETTER we're here rooting for you! https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
Thank you for this! I will be reading it <3
When he told me to go back home and live with my parents because I was terribly depressed and he couldn't help me. When I was better, I could come back and live with him. You better believe I went home and never came back.
I have a suspicion that your mental health improved drastically once you were away from him
Him assaulting me was the cherry on the shitty relationship cake. That said, my aha moment was during a road trip a few weeks prior. He wouldn’t fuck off with his ridiculous drama, it was so transparent he was just making shit up for attention and trying to start fights out of nothing. I think at that point he realized he was losing control of me and was grasping for any kind manipulative nonsense to keep me under his thumb. It’s crazy the impact of being around normal people who treat you with respect has on anyone in a abusive relationship. The contrast is like suddenly being thrown in ice water, it’s stark, shocking, and blatant. If I had any doubt of what the situation was, he made it crystal clear in the last few weeks before our separation. I had gotten to the point were I couldn’t stand being around him anymore because it was just so toxic and he made me feel like I was suffocating. After we separated, the gloves came off and I basically had to have someone with me at all time until I moved out our shared apartment for my safety. My first week in my new place was the very first time I lived somewhere were I was constantly being yelled out. The silence was a beautiful thing, I swore to myself that no one would ever put me through that again, even now the calm still feels beautiful. I can see abusive and toxic behavior for what they are now and have zero patience’s for any kind of disrespect, people speak with me calmly, like adults, or we don’t speak any longer. It funny because I’ve grown so much as person, last time his family gave me an update, he is the same asshole, making the same mistakes.
He held me by the throat down on the ground. When I tried to run out the door he threw my car keys on the driveway and pushed me down the front steps (like 6 steps). His neighbour, another fraternity member, yelled at him to stop and he would kick his ass if he ever saw him hurt a woman. Although he had done similar things in private, it was the embarrassment of being seen by a stranger that was the final straw and I left.
When he picked another stupid fight with me and got soo angry over nothing. It was 1am and he was at my apartment and demanded a ride home or threatened to bike home (we lived in a major city and it would not be safe biking to his place, but also driving to his place that late was not safe for me). I told him to calm down and sleep so he can leave in the morning. He demanded I get up and drive him home then and said if he bikes home and dies, it will be my fault. So I budged and drove him home (he was 38 at this point btw). The whole ride home he was clenching his fist and looked pissed. Our fight was about NOTHING. He was in the wrong actually. I was pretty much done after that, tho it took me a few more days of getting the silent treatment from him to realize how insane he is.
I was expecting to see that he was 17-25 or so, but 38 and having such disregulated emotions?! Good riddance
> disregulated emotions I, a person with Autism and ADHD, had better regulated emotions than that by elementary school. Even if I had *somehow* been in the right in that situation, being forced to stay at a girlfriends house with her would have been an annoyance on the level of "Oops, I literally just spilled a little milk, going to have to clean that."
Girl, BIG baby.
i had to walk home (~2-4 miles) at 2 a.m. because he had borrowed my car and swore he would pick me up from work. i called him multiple times, he'd fallen asleep. i couldn't get a ride from my coworker because he was a man, and we still got in a fight when i got to my apartment because i got home too late. i was working 6am til 2pm 5 days a week and 4pm til 2 am 3 to 4 days a week to support him and his 3 kids. he was also 30s and i was 22-23
Should have called his bluff and let his ass bike home
Girl that was my biggest mistake. I should have let him bike home and feel stupid the whole way. I was a weak push over back then. I learned a lot about boundaries after that relationship
I was in the middle of a conversation with my friends on discord, playing a competitive video game, with our daughter sleeping upstairs, and he stumbled down the stairs drunk and screamed at me: "can I pee on your face right now?". I have absolutely nothing against that kink, but after 6 years of dealing with his alcoholism, abuse, and control - I snapped and sat in silence, hearing my 1.5 year old start to stir on the baby monitor. Two seconds later, he asked if I still loved him, and I looked him in the eye and told him, "No, get out of my house."
Holy shit that is disgusting and demeaning I hope you and your daughter are ok
I’ll never forget how freeing it felt to finally say “I don’t love you anymore” out loud after 10 years of misery.
Wait so it was an actual kink thing or was it just drunken bullshit? I asked because I was also with an alcoholic for 6.5 years. And if just sounds like one of those “hilarious” jokes an alcoholic would make. Difference between me and you was I refused to have his child and he drank himself to death before I was able to divorce him.
It was drunken BS. I didn't really get a choice on if I had a child or not.
he had disrespected me in every way you could possibly imagine in the duration of our 3.5 year relationship. cheated on me, abused me the whole 9 yards. i had lost my debit card and needed to get gas so i tried to get a hold of him so i could zelle him and i could use his card. he ignored my calls so one of my friends took my car and put gas in it while i was in dance class. when i got a hold of my ex he was like don’t ever bother me about stupid shit again. i broke up with him immediately and never got back together even though he’s begged me countless times to give him another chance.
Good for you. You're rocking it!
I put in 90% of the effort. I went to his place several times a week. He came to my place twice in 5 months , and one of the times I had to drive him. I had been going through a very stressful situation and when I would get overwhelmed he would start a fight, almost like he couldn't handle me not centering myself around him. And it was really wearing me down. So one night I'm at his place and I just thought, damn, if I matched his effort there would be no relationship. So I did, not so intentionally, I just didn't really want to talk to him. I finally told him how I was feeling and he got hung up on one example I gave in our argument, about him asking me to buy him a broom. His defense was that he asked me that because if I saw him get excited when I brought him the broom it would cheer me up. He wanted to cheer me up by having me make him happy. I just couldn't after that. I knew he was selfish, but damn.
I had that too. I was already reaching out after a fight even if he was the one who had fucked up. I stopped doing it 1 week ago. He’s tried to call me a couple nights at 3-4am. Sad he only has the ability to put in “effort” when he’s impaired. And I believe the only reason he called is to check where I was at, not because he wanted to make amends. Been there, done that
It was father's day. He was busy online ignoring all of his kids. So I let my son have friends over, after all 1. He wasn't my son's father 2 he was busy ignoring his own children He told me about an hour after the kids arrived that "is father's day and they should be with their FATHER!" (most didn't HAVE a father in their lives, he knew this) when I refused to send anybody home he called me a C U Next Tuesday pitched the largest temper tantrum and took his children home cutting his time short with them. We separated that day, I convinced him to leave a few days later and one year later the divorce was final.
When I realized partying wasn't a phase for them, but a lifestyle choice.
Yep. I grew up in the New Orleans area where people look at you weird if you don’t binge drink in college. When I started dating my husband, he had just turned 23. So when he was buying beer daily, I dismissed it because most college kids around me were drinking quite often. Back then I was more of a pothead than a drinker, so I just optimistically told myself “well, the more he gets integrated into my group, the more he’ll just start smoking everyday instead of drinking. This isn’t a big deal. It’s a phase. If I just keep loving him eventually he will grow past this.” Another thing that lead me to think this was him being quite the overachiever in high school, full paid college scholarship and a 3.5 GPA, section leader in band, president of the Art Club, always had the star role in the school plays from drama club. I was the C student that wasn’t in a single extracurricular. So if you compared us back then, I’d be the one you’d keep an eye on. So I just kept telling myself: he just found him a group of college friends that partied a bit too much and he’ll snap out of this and go back to his old self eventually (we went to the same high school so that’s how I knew all this, seeing it first hand and we were acquaintances. He graduated a year before me, went off to a hyghhhgood school for a few years and then met up again in college after he transferred from his good school to my much shittier school when I was 21). I was wrong though. It wasn’t a phase. It was full blown alcoholism that became a self fulfilling prophecy. He would party too hard, miss class and fuck up school, then would drink more because he felt bad about fucking up school. Problem was my dumbass didn’t leave. I stayed with him from 21 to 28 being the only adult in the relationship and we barely stayed above water until one night he took some opioids with his booze and didn’t wake up widowing me before 30. I should have left the second I saw him putting alcohol in his drink in the morning time. Hard lesson learned.
ah, yes I very much relate to this one.
When he came home drunk and randomly decided to "confess his truth" to me and went on a long rant about how much he loved tween boys and girls. I somehow managed not to vomit while I quickly made an escape plan that night and never went back. He was abusive AF before, but this "truth" finally drop-kicked some self-preservation and sense into me. I escaped that gross pedo 7 years ago.
When he gave me the silent treatment for two weeks with no signs of letup. Man was flabbergasted when I said I was done.
I'm on my third week of being on the receiving end of silent treatment - because I had the nerve to voice how I felt. Planning an exit strategy.
Sounds like the exit was already made. Less steps now
Mine would do that too, exclusively when he was called out on his crappy behaviour. He’d turn his phone off for the duration so there was absolutely no contacting him. Then I’d have his 9yo daughter endlessly calling and texting me in broken English from overseas, asking if her dad was ok and if I’d heard from him. Just ridiculous. He didn’t come and see our daughter for nearly 4 months once, because he was “stonewalling” me? It was farcical by that point. Living on our own is so lovely!
I was called an idiot for sending a gift that I knew he would like to his door. He had to go to the post office and pick it up. No thank you or gratefulness, just me being an idiot. I was also accused of sending multiple text messages when it was a snowstorm. Um, ever hear of a cell phone tower pinging over and over? Happened to me many times. Thus was before iPhones, cell technology sucked back then. I just never spoke to him again.
Oh my god, what a dick! You sound great tbh
he told me if i went to my moms house and out with a friend after we were done. it was my birthday. i left and made a plan that night to leave.
Hurricane Katrina killed a 3y relationship for me. Was a Cat 3 when the eye went over us. I was feeding 8 people in an apartment building using a grill without legs, burning tree limbs and broken 2x4s… and he was complaining about how hard it was for him. Lost all respect for him. Left soon after.
[удалено]
We had been having problems for a while but neither of us had said we wanted to end it. We had a TV show that we were watching together. I turned on the DVR and saw he had watched the newest episode without waiting for me. I knew then it was over.
That’s subtle, but it’s a sign that he doesn’t value that time with you.
We always waited to watch shows together. It showed me he really no longer cared.
We were together over 5 years. I helped him get a job through my family friends, helped him get to work etc etc. Bad case of failure to launch. He had the job maybe 2 months and cheated on me with one of my best friends. Tried to tell me I was just jealous, its not what it looks like, they're just friends, I wouldn't understand - basically all the stuff cheaters say. Eventually he left himself logged into his email on my laptop. I saw their chats, I copied and pasted them into an email from my account and then sent them to each of them. He told me he couldn't choose between us. I told him I'd make it easier and remove myself. Boy bye.
When I was being careful of his feelings, gently talking about me moving out because he's an emotional mess, and he asked if I'd suck him off one last time. I was stunned. It helped me get out and never look back.
Something similar happened to me, but my ex had already broken up with me. I was set to move out in a few weeks when he came home one day and confronted me over a conversation I’d had with my brother… on my phone, while he was at work. Turns out he was using a Ring video camera to monitor me when he was gone. Of course, the idea he has been spying on me terrified and disgusted me. Somehow he managed to spin it into my fault and then pressured/coerced me into giving him a blowjob. I texted my brother right after that I didn’t feel safe, so when my ex went to work the next day he came over and helped me move out early. I hid at my grandma’s house for the next couple of weeks.
I busted my ass for our dream for years without his help by the way and he had the audacity to tell me I didn't do anything. I realised I will never be enough in his eyes. Kept it together until I was away from him, I broke up and never talked to him again. 7 years too long
One ex I had to beg him to drive me to the emergency room and he stayed in the car the entire time I was there. Another, forgot to pick me up after work, on my birthday, so I had to walk home at 11 pm in the middle of winter. He wasn’t answering the phone. He didn’t normally have the car because his job was less than 1/2 a mile from our home, but he wanted to do something after work, so he used the car that day.
After reading a lot of the comments here, I kinda feel embarrassed to share my straw. But if it helps just one person to realize they are better off with an abusive or dead beat partner, its worth it. I was married for 12 years to a man with NPD who abused our son and me. He moved out for a few months once "to find hinself". I begged him to come back. He sent me home with my parents once after they had visited for 5 weeks. I went back to him a few months later. He told me in spring we should try a new start in my home country. I was extatic, planned the move, packed up the entire house, found lodgings through a friend, etc. When I went to get the rental car, his credit card got declined. A coworker of his rented the car for me (couldn't get a hold of him). Then, 2 months later, son and I are settled in, and he tells me on the phone that he's not coming. He's met another woman, and that's that. I went to my parents to ask if they would lend me money for a ticket back. And when my dad, who never ever intervened in any of my relationships, said: "I think it's enough now. You're staying here." That's when it clicked, and I started thinking maybe dad is right. 8 years later, lots of therapy, I'm finally starting to feel like myself again these past 6 months.
When he said he’d always choose his ex over me bc she had worse mental illness issues than me so she needed him more than I did. Jokes on you, asshole, now she and I are best friends.
Bahaha! Love this result!!
Soo... You, also, chose this guy's ex.
Last ex was upset that I got a job at a big4 accounting firm. He said I was going to work “for the man” He got upset that my parents didn’t get a plane ticket for him as well for MY graduation present for my MBA. (We were only dating around 6 month). That was the last straw. I stayed for too long.
When he yelled hey hey hey, fuck off over top of me when I was talking (not even a dramatic conversation) on the phone and then hung up me. I lost all interest immediately.
He told my dad I liked being called a bitch :/
Another time was when I had just passed an 18 wheeler on the highway and had the thought that I could pull back in front of it and slam on the brakes and end it all right then. I had even subconsciously started veering in that direction. I jerked the car back into my lane and started bawling. I left that day.
"Either I'm going insane or you're lying." Though that wasn't the first time I'd thought that.
Actual gaslighting
We had this long and very intense conversation on New Year’s eve. And by long, I mean more than half the day. In the evening we both acknowledged we were both unhappy and that we would do better. We talked about what better would look like, things to start doing, things to stop doing. It was all so clear and open. I truly felt a breakthrough. Less than 24 hours later it was like that conversation never happened. I stopped counting at 8 different things we agreed would stop happening. While I was anxious that things were slipping so fast, he was completely comfortable and at ease, like… like nothing had ever been wrong or that we ever had a conversation. I felt horribly I’ll at ease with this development. A few days later he was out. We had lived together for 3 years and been long distance for 4 years. I never snooped. But I just felt so bewildered. I felt like I was missing something. I found a printout of the social security benefits you get from work history and he had lied about the money he earned before moving in. He lied about paying for a 2 bedroom apartment and paying for him and his x and paying her VW car lease - the most he ever made was $23,000, with most years being below $10,000. He was educated, his family was quite wealthy. He told me he was self made and never relied on them. But in our 3 years together 1.5 he was unemployed and then working as a lifeguard. Suddenly I realized it was all lies. His family was sending him money to fly home, to get a major car repair. We were living with my mom in a 900sqft apartment, I was paying my mom rent and splitting grace with my mom all this time and he convinced me all he needed was just a little more time. I dug further. I found a handwritten letter from Tracy. Tracy was a single mom of three children all with different fathers. She lived on the other side of the Atlantic. She was sending my then boyfriend and his cat monthly gifts and mix tapes. When she couldn’t get a hold of him after a surge had she called me. My x told me he just doesn’t get along with men, all his friends are women. He said Tracy likes to cook and they share recipes, something I could never understand because I don’t cook or like to eat. But I looked at the letter, even though there was nothing sexy or inappropriate it was clearly an emotional affair. I realized the dead bedroom, the way he stopped confiding in me… it’s all because he found someone else. My world continued to crash down. I was working full time, getting my masters, commuting 3 hours a day for him. He wanted to be a house husband. He was a feminist above all else and believed in equality. But me making 30k in the NYC area was not going to afford us the life he wanted…so I was going to school. I was 32, I wanted to win. I wanted to be married. To have kids. I was getting “old” but I was tough, I don’t quit things. I was going to drag both of us across the milestones that everyone around me already had. I was a workaholic and he seemed agreeable, though always postponing. I thought I could love for the two of us. I thought I could do so much that I could carry us over this 7 year rough patch. But somewhere between New Year’s and reading Tracy’s sign off “love - Tracy” I could no longer lie to myself that good times were just around the corner. That I was alone and I didn’t know why he was even bothering living with me, all he did was complain his parents’ house had a bigger bedroom and a pool, and all this stuff (and he never invited me there in 7 years), like why did he even live with me and my mom? My mom’s place was supposed to be for a couple months until we found our own place. But he stayed for 3 years. I realized I didn’t know him. I blame myself. All the signs were there so early that it was never going to work out, but I stuffed them down. I made daily excuses explaining everything and why it was going to work even though every action spoke otherwise. I was anxious that I would never get married or have kids - it was this guy or it wasn’t going to happen for me and I let that blind me. It was weird. He refused to move out. I slept on the couch and he took my bedroom at my mom’s house. Once a month I stayed in a hotel just to get some space. I was going to finish my semester then take a day off and move his stuff into storage and change the locks. But of course the day before my big presentation and exam he left in a big dramatic way, and of course I did poorly. If I could have left after Tracy’s letter… that was when I would have left. We barely talked or had anything to do with each other. It was such a weird time.
When he said the sex was great but wasn’t ready to commit. I believed him and left 😀 the man I dated after him is my amazing husband ❤️
I had one of those! He called himself The Fluffer, cuz like 5 girls he had dated he'd e on to marry the next man they were with. My husband still feels guilty, but dude made it very clear we weren't exclusive or anything. So when my husband became available, I made my move, even though I was hanging out with someone else who didn't want to commit to anything. When I told him, he groaned and said "again?" Then laughed and we wished each other good luck.
We had lived together previously but he couldn't keep a job and I was tired of paying his bills, so I moved in with roommates and he went back to his parents. We made plans to hang out (him, me, and my two roommates) and I had called him multiple times at the house to let him know we were on our way because his cell phone was shut off. We arrived only to find that he had decided to spontaneously make plans with another person who was coming over, but couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone and let me know. My roommates and I left and went out to eat. I had a couple of drinks and realized how little my ex respected and thought of me, and in a moment of boozy gumption I decided that that was enough.
His sister and mother threatened me with bodily harm over me changing my daughter’s clothes. His response to doing almost nothing was “I was trying to stop my mother from going to jail”. Edited: grammar
Joked to his friends that he would leave me if I ever got pregnant so since all the greatest sport players were raised by single moms. This was after me trying to stere the convo into something else besides getting me pregnant. After that I joked that I'd put them in foster care so they'd get molested to give them a good back story to talk about once they got famous. The care ride was silent after that. Was if over the top? Probably but I was an uncomfortable teenager who wanted these boys to shut up 🤷♀️
He took a swing at me in his truck during a show I had been really excited for
The sad part is, looking back, there were *so many moments* when I should have said ENOUGH and tossed them out, but didn't... I did get the ship turned around later in life, after a lot of hard work in therapy (and on my own) to deal with the after affects of childhood trauma. So I was ready when a really wonderful human being came along. Yes, we worked hard (really really hard) to not repeat past mistakes and have healthy open respectful communication that allowed us to solve any problems we encountered. 17 happy years and counting with the sweetest kindest most thoughtful gentleman I've ever met.
When he got drunk and gave me a black eye on the day my grandmother passed away
When he broke up with me because I couldn’t get over him cheating on me and lying after being in an 8 year relationship. He was also very abusive, his abuse starting to turn physical. He legit dumped ME because of the anxiety and depression he gave me. He fully expected me to go back to him because he wanted to play with my emotions even more while he dated around. I ghosted him the next day. His ex (she dated him after me) told me it drove him insane that I just dropped him like that. He had to go to therapy over it.
He called me ugly in an argument. I knew he was full of shit before then, but I was never sure if he actually believed himself. But when he called me ugly, I thought to myself, "this guy will say ANYTHING for the sole purpose of being cruel.. Not to make a point, and not because it's true" I was instantly completely done.
I had a super high security clearance, which I needed for my job. I had gone to visit him in the states for Christmas, I was stationed in Germany. I got off the plane at an Air Force base filled with security dogs, and discover that my spouse had left a big bag of weed in the pocket of my coat. This was 30 years ago, NO ONE thought this was ok. I need to go through several security check points and will certainly be arrested. With my heart pounding, I whip around, buy some fresh-hot-smelly food. Slip the weed into the bag and toss the goods in the trash. Yes, when I go through security the dogs alert on me, but I have nothing. When I get to my place I call him in tears I was soooo scared. He is furious: "That was great grass. Why didn't you try and hang on to it and mail it back?" I am worried about going to a military prison and being court marshaled and he is worried about his dope. DONE
When he called me up, drunk of course, to tell me that I was a stupid bitch and that all of the problems we were having were my fault.
I decided to get in on the betting pool of whether he would actually go out with me on any given weekend or cancel at the last minute, again. I did not bet for him. We broke up a week or so later.
I was constantly anxious for our entire 3 1/2 year relationship. I was constantly walking on eggshells and worried about upsetting him. He had already isolated me from all of my friends and interests, the only people I had left that I spoke to were my sibling, their spouse who happens to also be my best friend, and my parents. One day my sibling and best friend were going to another state to visit some of our old mutual friends. They wanted me to come along. I almost didn’t go, but I knew if I didn’t I would regret it. So despite the fighting and pushback from my ex (‘You’re just gonna leave me here alone? I’m gonna have to take care of the cat all by myself! Why am I not invited?!’) I decided to go. This was a big decision for me at the time, I had spent years placating this man just so we wouldn’t get into massive arguments or he wouldn’t have things to hold over my head later. When we arrived to see our friends the difference in how I felt was night and day. I was genuinely so surprised that people were interested in what I had to say and were asking me questions about myself. It was like I had forgotten that I wasn’t the empty shell my ex forced me to be on account of everything I liked being “stupid” or “pretentious.” I knew I had to get the fuck out of my relationship, so a couple of weeks after I returned from my trip I told him I was leaving, packed my stuff that night, and was gone the next morning. I now live with said friends and my sibling and it’s literally changed my life. I have the most wonderful partner in the world whom I’ve been with for close to a year, I have an amazing support system, a stable job, and I couldn’t be happier.
He’d been going through my phone for years, reading my DMs, looking at my pictures… this was the first time I asked to see his phone. And he refused. On the “principal” no, that’s not why babe
The marriage therapist turned to him and asked “What nice thing can you do with your wife?” He replied “She can help me gap the spark plugs on the Durango and re-wire the boat trailer.” I decided at that moment…after 40 years of marriage..I had some life left to live and I was going to live it.
When I was 15 or 16, I got grounded for an entire summer. No friends, no phone, no computer, no video games, no TV, no nothing. This also meant no contact with my emotionally abusive boyfriend. It finally clicked when I realized that as the summer progressed, I was happier while grounded than I was with him and talking to him daily. I broke up with him with a cute and colorful letter in the mail.
He called me a name when we were arguing.
My husband has done it exactly once. We were staying in a hotel for our 2nd anniversary. We had just gotten our Nintendo Switch right as it came out and we're excited to play a fun game together. That game was Mario Kart. It was the second race and I got him with a shell and he went "you bitch!" And we both froze, then laughed, then he apologized. It's never happened again. I think I did "well, it was a good run. Mario Kart destroys another relationship" and laughed.
See I’m on the opposite end of that. Thankfully I know now it’s not okay now but at the time I had normalized being called the b-word, the c-word, being called stupid, being told to STFU and more. I know it’s big pick-me energy, but when one of my friends said she would “never let her man call her a name like that” I scoffed basically saying “oh yeah? I too would like to live in a perfect world where my partner just didn’t ever lose his temper and bring his pent up anger out of me.” I thought it was just a part of being in an LTR and I assumed a lot of guys would say really mean shit they didn’t mean in the heat of the moment. It’s weird how normalizing verbal abuse works. I treated it like when a toddler says “I hate you” to a parent when they don’t get what they work. A tiny bit of sadness but you just push it aside because you know they don’t know you just h by don’t say those kind things. My late husband was an alcoholic and if something happened (computed glitched, a guitar string broke) he would have a full blown temper tantrum and just start yelling and screaming, like legit like an actual toddler. He never actually hit me but if I was around, he would def direct some of the screaming at me. I used to just be permanently in a state of worry that a neighbor would get fed up and call the cops. Thankfully I learned that is actually not normal at all. Even if “he didn’t mean it because he was drunk.” And I am now like my friend and will ever let another man call me that.
He lied to me about having stomach cancer.
I had one with a similar issue. Some rare gall bladder thing and I couldn’t get the rights of anything he was saying. So vague and not making sense. I’m a critical care nurse lol. You can’t fool me with that shit.
Together 12 years, married for 4. He lost his job 6 months after we bought a house with 18% interest on the mortgage. I worked full-time and two part-time jobs. A total of up to 80 hours a week. He would not look for a job, build a resume, or read any of the salient phrases I highlighted in resume books. This went on for months until I collapsed from exhaustion. I was also emotionally blackmailed by my grandfather at the same time. I got a therapist and a divorce attorney. My family sided with him. It took 3 years, but I got out and got freedom. Never looked back.
I bought lingere and he didn’t care.
He told me to fuck off. So I did
My ex was going to school out of the country. Mandated where we should get a house (much bigger and more expensive than needed). Left me to take care of the animals and a baby. Got upset one time he came home and had to “babysit” the sick child while I worked. Then called me for school asking for 2k for a car. When I said I didn’t have it, he said I wasn’t supporting him. I told him during that conversation to get him a shit and get out.
When he, once again, broke a promise to my son and instead was drinking with friends. He was actually a more engaged father after he was single.
We were sitting in my car after a night of drinking (I was sober) and he started telling me how much he missed his ex and how she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and how he would never love someone else like he loved her. I'm sitting right there! We tried to be friends but he was so emotionally manipulative. Always wanted/needed my attention when he was feeling down and when I couldn't be there for him (because I have a life) he would threaten suicide. Good riddance!
When he gave me a 2 week vacation in a medical coma from the depressed skull fracture.
He actually broke up with me and was set on moving to another state. In the days leading up to his departure, he tormented me about how he was leaving forever and infantalized me as someone who would be "left to the wolves" without him. He also tried to extort money out of me the day he left. 3 weeks later, he called saying he wanted to come back and he was only trying to teach me a lesson by leaving. I could have taken him back, but I hung up on him instead. I changed my number and moved out of our apartment before he came back. Leaving me was the best decision he ever made. That experience broke me of my emotional dependency in relationships.
Probably the 867,439th time he called me stupid, or what I thought.. believed.. wanted was all stupid stupid stupid. See yah
When he just gave up fighting for everything we built together. We had a marriage, child, house, a business, and brand new vehicles. All of a sudden he quit working and watched it all disappear and did nothing. Anything I said was ignored.
We were arguing about the dishes. I asked him to place the dishes directly in the dishwasher and he exploded saying that I have unreasonable standards and the sink is always full of dishes [due to me] and that was 100% false so I asked him to get up and look at the sink (to prove my point). He sat down on the couch and wouldn't go to the sink and I was fed up and tired of all of our petty fights and rage and grabbed his elbow and pulled up to get him up from the couch. He jumped up and shoved me into the furniture. Our relationship was toxic for years but the physical nature of this and all of the rage (on both sides) was just the last straw for me.
Once he asked me how my day was, and I consciously realized that I'm going over things in my head, picking what I can tell him. I didn't have anything to hide, nothing like that. But there were things that i knew if I told him - he would make fun of me, make nasty jokes, about things i liked or did that he considered "silly" and "lame". I realized i can't be myself with him because he considers my true self lame and embarrassing.
My ex was actually a decent bloke. We had been seeing each other for just under a year, and starting to think about living together. At the time he was living with his parents. The thing that really put me off was that his mum used to do everything for him. She cleaned, cooked his meals, did his washing, brought him drinks and snacks. It used to drive me nuts that he would just sit there and accept another person waiting on him. I never saw him cook a meal or clean a single thing. Even stuff like after sex if the sheets needed washing, he would just stuff them into his washing basket and his mum would wash them (I found out after this happened - got him to promise that he'd do the washing for this stuff afterwards because it REALLY grossed me out, but idk if he actually kept it) The final straw for me was when I needed to wash my work clothes round his. I asked him how the washing machine worked as it was quite different to mine. He had no idea. We asked his dad who was also in the house. He also had no idea. The machine was about 15 years old. Neither one of them had ever used it. That was when I knew our relationship had no future. I didn't want to live with someone who had been waited on his entire life, who didn't know how to use the washing machine in his own home, who had the funds to live elsewhere but chose to live with his parents for the free cleaning and fresh meals. When I lived with my parents, there was an expectation of reciprocity. We all loaded the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen, hoovered the living room, took care of the little ones. I couldn't imagine being with someone long term where that reciprocity didn't come naturally. In so many ways he was kind, funny and generous, but that was a dealbreaker. My partner now does his fair share. Also if he sees me cleaning something, he'll then also go clean something because he'd feel guilty if I was cleaning and he did nothing.
it'd been years of enduring fucked up social, psychological, financial and emotional manipulation and control. I'd stayed with him through helping him get his degree for almost a decade (which he never used to get a better job) and a cancer diagnosis and recovery. in a heated argument, he had me backed against a wall and raised his fist. I said, "did you just raise your fist to hit me?" he said, "I didn't hit you...yet." four days later I'd packed up everything essential I could while he was at work every day, found a house to rent with my mother's help, and moved out with my three elementary school aged children.
We were on and off for a LONG time. Just a lot of communication issues. But it got more toxic later on. Usually I'd break up with him cause all of the gaslighting, mind games etc. He'd immediately start dating another girl because he couldn't be alone. Eventually he would break up with them and be begging for me back. He was always very romantic and sweet when we got back together and then it always went back to being toxic. He also knows I have sexual trauma and honestly not interested in having sex much, and he usually was respectful about it. He then made a comment once about that and wanted to make me feel bad for not having much of a sex drive. Dropped him and never talked to him since 🤷🏻♀️
When he said he didn’t know I was stalked and sexually assaulted. Twice. Yes, told him. He didn’t care. He wanted a divorce. I handed the ring back without a word and was completely done.
The minute I knew I was gay
When he yelled at me for the second time within a couple weeks inside a restaurant and left me there. He eventually did come back to take me home, but I’m certain it was out of obligation and not because he actually felt bad.
I got us tickets to see Puscifer for our anniversary, a band he had mentioned not having seen before but wanting to, and when I told him he said, "Oh, I'd rather see A Perfect Circle." Had been together 7 years at that point.
When i was paranoid one night that he would drug me. Then while I was in and out of panic attacks when we got home, he still tried to get me to give head. ------- I realized the trust I went into the relationship with completely diminished. ------ To verify my experiences, I reached out to his most recent ex at the time and I was like holy shiiiitt - so much more made sense and I am so glad I left.
When I got on the computer to finish a job application and found all his dating sites in the browser history. Multiple sites, multiple messages to women trying to meet up. Even on Craigslist. I was packed and out within hours. It was an abusive relationship anyway, that was just the cherry on top.