I knew him for years, but this time was different. The weekend was wonderful, so much sex and happiness. He started calling me baby, darling, and by the end, “my love.” I told him later I had feelings for him, and he said he had problems maintaining relationships. I told him there was always going to be ups and downs, but not to imagine everything would be terrible before it even started. He swept me off my feet. No one has ever spoken to me so lovingly or made me feel so good. We went on a two weeks trip abroad, got tattoos together, and even tho I was depressed and sometimes not using my best judgement, he loved me so much. One day, we got into the stupidest fight and I walked out because he was calling me stupid. I tried to fix it later, but he said he’d had enough. A week or so later, he said we were fine, and I traveled to him (long distance). Several days in, he picked a fight with me. The next morning he told me my anxiety made him mad. He comforted me and made me feel safe, then a few hours later, dumped me at the airport in the cruelest possible way.
This wasn’t the person I knew.
He said he couldn’t deal with my anxiety and depression. I tried to get him back for a month. We saw each other once for a few hours and he was clearly so happy to see me. We had sex, he brought out things we’d gotten together, he told me all the things that made him miss me. But, he didn’t want to get back together. A few weeks later, I moved there for a job. He was leaving on a trip the day I showed up, so I came to take him to the airport. He was again so happy to see me. We had sex, everything was great, and we loved each other. Every day for the weeks he was gone, I got loving texts. I finally told him I couldn’t stand the idea that this wasn’t real, and he comforted me in ways that didn’t address the problem, so I went along with it. My job had been nonsense, so he offered me a place to stay as I prepared for an uncoming trip. I had made a 180 on my mental health and had been happy for weeks.
We ran into an old friend in the store and he called me his friend, then his girlfriend. We lived like a couple. We were both so happy the first few weeks, but then he started drinking and smoking so much weed. He wouldn’t do anything with me. He got me to skip something I wanted to do to go to some family thing, where he introduced me to all his old friends and family as his girlfriend. Went to his kid’s birthday. Why? “Because you’re my girlfriend.” Tried to set me up with contacts in the area, calling me his girlfriend.
I wasn’t sleeping well. He was snoring so loudly and I was grumpy in the morning. He started making snide remarks that I was just a ray of sunshine, but I just wanted to be like “get a c-pap machine.” As my trip approached and he wouldn’t do anything with just me, I finally said I didn’t think he liked spending time with me. He tried to blow it off, telling me not to open a can of worms before I left. At first, he said he wanted to see how he felt at the end of my trip, then he had a death in the family, and it went from that to “I don’t know if I ever wanted to get back together with you.”
Finally, we were both back home, and he told me I hadn’t been his girlfriend for that month. I imagined it. When I asked if all the people who met me imagined it, he changed it to that he had hoped it would work out, then finally to he didn’t want to dump me and ruin my trip. He told me this was all my fault, rewrote moments we’d shared to make it seem like I have been living in a hallucination, denied doing things that I have evidence in text for, and on and on. He treats me like I’m insane. He makes fun of me now. He brings up things I said during panic attacks to laugh about them, and mocks me for ever wanting a future with him.
And that was the person I thought in all my life loved me.
6 comments
From what I’ve gathered from your post your passionate feelings towards one another could be entirely circumstantial. I don’t know the nuances of your relationship, but I believe if he truly loved you he would have made an effort to be with you. It sounds like convenience, sex and momentary fun were the focus of your relationship, not commitment and respect that is found in the foundation of serious relationships.
If he truly loved you he would have corroborated his sweet words with actions and would have attempted to resolve issues in order to be with you, not use them as a vehicle to leave you. If he truly loved you he would treat you with respect and not a toy to cast away when the fun is done. If he truly loved you he would at least try to reasonably adjust his values and practices to make you comfortable amd happy (such as not sacrificing your comfort with his moodiness and drugs).
The ending of your post confirms it. He’s just a manipulative douche, whether it began intentionally or not. There are good men out there that you won’t feel as though you have to give them a pass for their transgressions while they tear you up for yours. Find a man who shows he loves you with more than words and sex, who goes out of his way for you and is willing to put in the effort to make you happy. Good luck.
thanks. i feel like my anxiety ruined a lot, b/c i kept panicking and i don’t think he knew what to do with it. i think it just looked like i was randomly ambushing him. though, when i sent him articles about dating someone with anxiety, he wanted to break up pretty immediately.
he wanted to be friends, but i’ve gone through a lo of weird and bad things lately (i had to move, i don’t know anyone here, i had a death in the family, my job is nonsense, etc.), and i told him i couldn’t just be his pal. i tried for a minute, but it made me feel gross, like when he’d touch me he’d also recoil. I feel so horrible about everything, and now I’m repulsive? it finally came to a head when he asked me if people posted about being suicidal on social media, because his friend (who i have never heard him talk about before) had gotten dumped by her BF and he was worried about her. i was like fucking seriously? you are worried about some acquaintance on FB, when i have told you i am at the lowest point of my life? i didn’t tell him i think about killing myself constantly. i’ve had suicidal ideation since i was a kid. i thought about it a lot very recently.
he became sloppy with his gaslighting recently, and would relate things to me that i had in text differently. i sent him a long text, telling him off and to give my stuff to my friend. he has all this stuff around his house, some of it other women’s, some of it a dead GF’s that he dated a few months before she died. he knew it always worried me, because i’ve been cheated on a lot. when he gave my friend my stuff, he tossed in some random woman’s stuff along with it on purpose. my friend told me before i got it, and i had actually worried he would do this and she wouldn’t know. he even admitted to doing it to her and me via text. what if i had gotten the mail, saw that stuff, and finally reached my breaking point? he knows i’m feeling really down, he knows i have a history of mental health issues (he doesn’t know i’ve been suicidal), and he played on my insecurities.
i keep waking up thinking “YOU RUINED EVERYTHING” and being depressed all day. he used to say it was all on him and he can’t maintain feelings for someone for very long. then i said how i thought i ruined it with my anxious outbursts and talked about how all my relationships had been abusive, and he pretty much said “yup, you drove me away” yesterday.
a few people suggested to me he has NPD and i looked up some pages and saw things i thought fit really well. so, for a few days i thought he love bombed me, realised i was flawed and started picking me apart, then left more than once. then i got paranoid i villainised him in my head and put him into a category to hate him. i don’t even know at this point. i feel like if i hadn’t been damaged by my past, everything would have been awesome and i’d be living some amazing life right now, but if i hadn’t been damaged by my past, i wouldn’t have dated him in the first place.
He’s abusing you honestly. What you are describing is gaslighting.
This guy is no good
Your “bf” (if you can call him that way) is an opportunistic abusive person. I don’t think that he really cares about you, your mental state or feelings…. all this sweet talk is to get what he wants from you like sex, emotional support and comfort. He calls you his “gf” because he probably knows that this is something you desperately long for (a steady relationship) and by sweet talking you little by little he manipulates you to stay with him as his servant to fulfill his needs. Girl, you can do so much better….
thanks, yeah. i keep thinking he is opportunistic, but it was so public. that’s really humiliating to me. he didn’t want to date, just have little fling weekends, until we had talked about going on a trip that i said i didn’t want to go on, b/c i didn’t think it was healthy for me to spend 2 ideal weeks w someone and go home knowing it wasn’t real. then he talked me into signing up for a bunch of events when we got back together. one of them i said i didn’t want to go to repeatedly, and he said people would ask him where i was. he offered to buy my tickets even. i don’t see how someone can be like this.