I'll try my best to keep a very long story short!
I met a man of 22 when I was 18, at the time I was a month or so away from turning 19. He told me he was single but fresh out of a pretty messy breakup which involved him ending a long-term relationship. He described the relationship as toxic and I had no reason to not believe this, he said he saw his chance to get rid of her when she announced she was moving 5 hours away for university. We instantly clicked in a way I never had with anyone before. I quickly fell in love with him, he told me he reciprocated my feelings and acted in a way that would suggest he really did. We had both been diagnosed with the same mental illness before either of us met so we both bonded over our mutual understanding of one another's struggles.
Fast forward 6 weeks from when we originally met and I start hearing rumours from our mutual friends that he's still involved with his ex and has been from the start, I then start receiving Facebook messages from her calling me a homewrecker etc. I obviously confront him, he claims she's unhinged and unable to move on. While I'm receiving abusive messages he's receiving messages from her in which she claims she'll kill herself if he doesn't get back together with her. She comes home from university and then goes missing, he goes looking and finds her and I more or less never hear from him again.
I was obviously heart broken and completely devastated but she then starts circulating lies about me ranging from that I lied to him about my mental illness and that I took advantage of him when he was depressed (both false) to that I always knew they were still together. I didn't and even now don't know if he was involved with us both at the same time.
She turned a lot of people against me and I lost a lot of friends, combine this with the heartbreak and I relapsed. I barely ate, slept or even left the house. I was a wreck. It's been two and a half years and I'm still dealing with the massive blow this had to my social anxiety.
Anyway, I'm completely fine now and have moved on from what happened. I'm happy and healthy and successful in my education but really recently I got in touch with an old friend who said she still talks about what happened quite regularly. This was the first time she'd even crossed my mind in over a year.
It just pisses me off to think he's obviously still lying to her after all this time and she's lapping it up, and in turn spreading lies about me. For the love of God, let it go! Apologies for the rant and hope it makes sense but this is the first time I've ever been able to express how I wasn't the bad guy and the impact his lies had on me.