To think that many women have had a ‘lucky escape’?

[Sweetlikejollof]

I’ve been thinking about this recently - have you ever broken up with someone and thought ‘that was a lucky escape’?

Years ago, I dated this guy for about a month/six weeks. Extremely wealthy, recently divorced, older (late twenties v mid thirties). He was very full on, doing what I now recognise as love bombing, but at the time was very flattering. Dozens of roses sent to my office after our first date, etc.

He was incredibly controlling, to the extent he tried to order for me at restaurants a few times (I demurred), once tried to tell me what to wear on a date (I demurred), and complained when I changed my hairstyle ‘without discussing it’.

He loved to ‘debate’ me, and would come up with the most ludicrous hypothetical arguments to bait me, then congratulate me for ‘standing up for myself’ and being ‘possibly even smarter than him’.

He wanted me to meet his five year old daughter almost immediately (I refused, point blank), and referred to his ex wife in extremely uncomplimentary terms. I once saw a picture and we were extremely similar in appearance- I was just a decade younger.

He made weird jokes about how he could track me/read my messages if he wanted (he worked in tech), but wouldn’t because he trusted me.

There’s much much more, but you get the picture! He was gorgeous and I was very flattered by him, and being swept off to dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant or tea at the Ritz is pretty fun. I felt like I was in a film.

However, even with all that, I cannot believe that I dated someone so awful for more than a month. I finally came to my senses and dumped him - and I have never felt such relief. It’s insane, but as soon as I sent the ‘we’re done, it’s not me, it’s you’ text (yes, I dumped him over text and have zero regrets), I felt like a weight had been lifted. It was only a few weeks, but he was this weird oppressive presence and - knowing what I now know about abusive behaviour - I’m extremely certain that my life would have turned out horribly if I’d stayed with him. I have no doubt that he’s honed his tactics and is currently making someone else utterly miserable.

Have any of you had similar lucky escapes?

@TokenGinger … did we date the same guy? My experience is so similar. Very well-educated, professional job, good looking, well liked… and terrifyingly manipulative.

Mine was very controlled most of the time but would have outbursts. He started lashing out in frustration. Throwing things. Breaking things. Not hitting me, never me, but my environment.

He broke up with me because he was “worried one day he’s going to hit me and if he did that he would get in so much trouble because everyone always takes the woman’s side it’s so biased towards women”.

Oh TokenGinger, that is 💖💖💖. As Sweetlikejollof says, it would make a great film!

Just to make it totally clear, I meant the ending, not your experience with the horrible controlling chap!

My first serious boyfriend at uni had - in retrospect - a controlling streak, but it never washed with me. It got very serious but we were both too young. As an example, we went out for afternoon tea and he moaned at me because I drank coffee. Not the done thing (I’ve never liked tea). I insisted on my choice of drink, and said he was the one spoiling it by making a fuss.

We went out for dinner with his best friend, also a fellow student. He moaned at his friend for having tea after dinner, as it was also ‘not the done thing’. I stuck up for his friend - honestly how the pair of us put up with him I do not know, as it seemed to me to be the opposite of good manners to adversely comment on what others were having, as the point of manners is to make others feel at ease. After a few incidents like this I broke up with him . . .

As it happened, I was very friendly with his parents, who were lovely people, and that friendship persisted until their deaths. They came to my wedding with now DH and told my parents - slightly tactlessly we felt, but we did all, DH included, have a good laugh about it - “I should have been their DIL.” And I think I had a lucky escape. I would have been forever standing my ground with him, so wearing.

Come to think of it, on my first date with DH I was struck by how he just didn’t make any comment about my food choices, which I was primed for (as I have a form of ARFID which people absolutely feel compelled to comment on). It was so refreshing I felt at home with him from the start.

It’s the first time I’ve actively thought about the difference between the two of them, so yes, in retrospect, very glad I didn’t pursue it further as it would only have got worse, and about more serious things. I wonder if he grew out of all that snobby controlling rubbish - I hope so, for his wife’s sake.

One guy I met on a night out, good looking, seemed witty and interesting. Swapped numbers, agreed to meet up. Texted back and forth a bit but I got put off by how intense he was getting over text, so I cooled it and declined his invite to meet for dinner.

He went bonkers, sending me streams of ranting texts, even sending them from a friends phone after I blocked him.

I asked around and found out he was actually married. Threatened to tell his wife. The texts stopped and I never heard from him again.

Lucky escape for me. Not so much for his wife.

I had come out of a relationship and was enjoying being young and single, living with friends in a beautiful, safe, clean city and going out after work every night.

I met a young man in a pub. He was a "settled gypsy" from a big family housed all over the city. He was very funny and good company and asked me to go out with him the next night. I went and there was something about him - like he could see right through me. He seemed to know things about me that only I knew. We went out for the next six months, after work, all the time. He had an awful lot of money. He didn't talk about his work and I didn't talk about mine One night though, he said "You don't need to do that job - I'll look after you". I just laughed.

He went everywhere by taxi - he would not walk 50 metres. I think he had a taxi to himself. I didn't understand why - he just said "It's for convenience".

One night he was due to call and take me for dinner. He never came. I never saw him again. I tried to call him - phone was always off. I went to his house and no-one would ever answer the door to me.

I was very, very upset by it all, because actually I was very attached to him - I loved him.

He had disappeared off the planet. I didn't see him in our usual places or pubs. No-one knew where he had gone.

One year later, and I read in the local paper that he was very high up in the drug trade and had been in court for two counts of attempted murder. He was found not guilty of both. Another murder occurred, that of his "best friend" and he was charged with that and found not guilty again. Then he vanished.

I found out later from a nightclub owner that he had been living with his long term partner (from another gypsy family) for 8 years - so - all the time he had been seeing me.

I think of him often still, twenty years later.
I had a lucky escape as I got away from the situation unscathed (almost).

I met a man when I was 18, he was 32, fell for him, hook line and sinker, life was like a little romantic film for today first couple of months, then he became a bit weirdly possessive, left me covered in love bites If he wouldn't see me for a few days, told me one day it was him marking me as his possession. At that point I started to realise that everyone had a point, it wasn't really funny. I'd have in excess of 10 love bites all over my neck. Then he cut my hair as we were watching TV. Just took a massive chunk out of it. All the while, he was telling me how a love like ours was special, he would never leave me, we were trying to have a baby....all far too quickly!

Then he just disappeared. This was about 7 months into our relationship.

I found out later that he got someone else pregnant and he couldn't tell me so he just left.

Lucky escape! I'd have never had any sort of life with him.

I am thinking of the lucky escape that one of my friends had.
She knew this man for a long time and they ended up getting together one night. He knew that she wanted to have a relationship with him and he kept her on standby between his other girlfriends.
My friend asked him to meet her one day and he cancelled at the last minute and gave a poor excuse.
She then found out that he had a new girlfriend via someone they both knew.
Within a few months of this his new girlfriend was pregnant and he was delighted with this.
Its a few years ago since this happened. My friend found out a few things about this man and all was not as it appeared in his life. He refused to listen to advice he was given and is now dealing with the fallout of this.
The best thing was he contacted my friend about 18 months ago and within a short period of time he wanted to get into a fwb situation. My friend declined his kind offer as he is still living with the mother of his child. She not willing to take him and a young child on.
She told me that's what happens when you rush into having a baby with a woman you barely know and the day to day reality kicks in.

@TonyThreePies having sex with you with a deliberately broken condom in order to get you pregnant is rape.What a horrible horrible man.

Bullet dodged moments ?

Absolutely!

There was the rugby player who I suspected was a closeted gay from a v religious family who claimed he didn't believe in sex before marriage as a result but I noticed he never got aroused when we were together not ever. There were some other clues too...8 months after breakup comes out as gay (and sadly ostracised by his family) he's now married to a lovely chap that a friend of mine was once engaged to!

The wealthy playboy who loved that lifestyle just a little too much - disappeared into coke addiction a few years after we'd split

The love bombing older man who proposed after three weeks! Then sulked for a week when I said it was too soon when he stopped sulking I dumped him. He married the next lass he met and she was pregnant within 2 months of them getting together. Marriage lasted 18 months and I heard she left cos he was controlling and very intense

The seemingly quiet, polite chap who when we went to the cinema for our 2nd date refused to watch anything with a black lead actor! (I actually walked away from that one then and there!)

Oh yes and the piece de resistance the again seemingly nice normal chap who I really liked and then he appeared on tv...on crimewatch! I literally threw up on that one! For a violent burglary too! (And yes I did phone the police when I recognised him they already had plenty of witnesses though, he wasn't the brightest either! He'd looked right at the cctv with no disguise of any kind on! So everyone he'd ever met was phoning in!)

I think most women (and a fair number of men) have a story or 2!

My brother caught one lass he was dating just a few weeks into their relationship poking holes in his condoms

Another tried to pass off her home as owned by her and tried to get him to lend her money due to "cash flow" problems and when she sold the house she'd pay him back - she was renting

Another had a TERRIFYING temper...

If I ever have daughters, I’m going to do my very best to make sure I raise them to be non-compliant and have zero tolerance for this sort of garbage.

My dd is 20 and I genuinely worry I've made her TOO picky! She's debating her current beau because he has a different sense of humour to her! Not offensive in anyway he just likes rather juvenile slapsticky stuff whereas she prefers more observational sarcastic style which he doesn't really get. By her account in every other way he's lovely so I've reminded her she isn't perfect either!

@Ariann a friend of mine had a similar experience though not quite as bad. The man in question married her bigamously and when she attempted to divorce him is when she discovered this. Also discovered she didn't even know his real name! He was apparently a very well known con artist with a side hustle in forging documentation! Zero indication of any of this while they were together we were all gobsmacked!

When I was younger I dating a few guys before I met my DP. I’m not sure any of them were viable. Some were pretty awful; mean, controlling etc. Others were not horrible but rubbish boyfriends who didn’t value me in any way or were dead beat. One ending up a drug addict, one went to prison for a while. One was a stoner, probably dealing with emotional issues, completely emotionally unavailable. He’s has turned his life around, has a phd now but is still commitment phobic. Ladies do not waste time on guys like that, if they are avoident, unavailable then no matter how else they are they aren’t for you.

One guy was sexy, funny and a bad boy, I was besotted with him for a while but it was a pure sexual attraction and I didn’t actually like him that much when the list subsided. He was rough and unkind, depressed and paranoid from years of drug abuse. But I wanted his baby for a hot minute.

One was abusive, I dated him for six months before getting out. Years later I met another ex of his in another country who had been with him for 7 years and he’d put her though hell. In the end she’d fled abroad to escape him. Yikes! She is well and flourishing now!

Another couple were nice guys but not right for me and after an initial attraction there was no real connection between us. One was a friend I should never have got involved with he liked me and I started dating him on a whim and I ended up really hurting him, which I regret.

It was a rough ride with those guys and I did have some dodged bullets but I do feel that my experience with men helped me recognise a good thing when I found it in DP. I’m also glad I got out when I did!

My DD started dating a guy.
One evening, they told me that he had been wrongly accused of assaulting his sister and would be in court for it some time in the future.
My DD fully believed he was innocent, especially as she'd had dinner with him & his mum - and the mum had said the sister was making a fuss about nothing.
They split up - I'm not sure of the details there.
Then a few months later there was a report in the local paper.
The guy was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman and got 2 years in jail.

After my marriage ended I tried online dating. God, what a bunch of absolute losers I had messaging me. I started seeing one good-looking man for three or four months and we had a lot of fun, but there were things that really bothered me. He was cheap, perfectly happy if I paid for meals, tickets, anything. He was also very hands-off and seemed to have phobic issues with germs and physical contact. He was less educated and uninformed about the world around him, was intelligent enough but couldn’t be bothered to learn anything. I gave up on him and decided I was done with men. I’ve since lived a very lovely single life and thoroughly enjoyed it! 😬

Yes I was head over heels for a guy I met at uni. I didnt even see the red flags before I reflected on it with my MN knowledge. We never actually started dating and with hindsight im v v glad.

My first boyfriend from 16-19. He was controlling and physically abusive. He tried to talk me into having a baby with him when he sensed he was losing me.

We're in our 30s now and he's got two children with his partner. I often see her (we both still live in close proximity) and wonder if he treats her how he treated me. I sincerely hope not.

I broke up with a long term partner before we got married and had kids for what at the time were the wrong reasons (I basically met someone else) in hindsight starting a family with him would have been a disaster. He had mental health issues, was not picking up his share of the running of the house, was terrible with money, and was just a bit of a man child really. Now I do have a child I realise how hard it would have been with him, compared to my new partner who is incredibly supportive.

It does make me think back though, 2 months into our relationship he dumped me for no good reason, I gave him another chance and admittedly he didn't cause any such drama again. But I don't think I would do that again now I'm older and wiser.

This thread is prime Daily Fail/tabloid material and I suspect that's why earlier posters have chosen not to share all the details.

@icedcoffees

This thread is prime Daily Fail/tabloid material and I suspect that's why earlier posters have chosen not to share all the details.

I don't know, not sure it's misogynistic enough.

If it helps warn other women, I don't mind if it's in the Daily Fail

My ex was a controlling arse. He was great fun/a seemingly nice guy for about 4-5 months then (once I was hooked) started criticising me and gaslighting me. Gently at first ("only joking!") but soon criticising my personality, weight, body, parenting style, thoughts.... He'd mix it up with declarations of love and compliments ("you're so good for me!"). But at least 50% of the times we went out I'd end up crying.
I broke up with him a couple of times but he persuaded me back. Finally left after two years. Not a day goes past when I don't thank my lucky stars I got out.

@icedcoffees

This thread is prime Daily Fail/tabloid material and I suspect that's why earlier posters have chosen not to share all the details.

Exactly

You only need to read the relationships board to realise that many did not have a lucky escape.

Yep. And the problem, as other posters have said already, is that we are primed to believe we are so lucky to have this attention that there has to be a really good justification for us to dump them.

Crikey, count yourself lucky you extricated yourself after only a month OP…I lasted 4 bloody years 🙈 in my defence this was after a dreadful marriage and divorce, and my radar/self esteem etc had all taken a complete thrashing. Not a good period of my life at all, but still, lessons learned I guess!