I am hoping someone can help me. I was in a same-sex relationship for almost two years and despite it ending some time ago, I am struggling to discover whether I was the abuser or the abused. Am I in denial and is she right that I was the abuser? Or is she calling me the abuser because she was?
When we began dating, she was attentive, positive and we shared similar interests. She complimented me often and made me feel like I was different to the others. I knew she had a history of cheating before a relationship ended. She told me that she didn’t want to do that anymore and only had because she was scared and felt the need to escape when things weren’t going right.
About a month later I was completely hooked on her. We became inseparable and it wasn’t long before we were in love. That’s when everything changed. She started to complain a lot, most our conversations were about negative subjects, she would randomly send me messages saying things like ‘are you being truthful with me?’ And when I would reassure her and then ask if I had done something to make her question my intentions she would get angry and argue with me.
The arguments began to get worse. She would call me pathetic, a liar, a whole host of swear words and then tell me she was suicidal. When she communicated her feelings, she would then say ‘I’m done with this conversation now’ and I would be left frustrated with my feelings trapped inside my head.
After 5 months of constant arguing, I called things off. I told her I would always be there for her but that I couldn’t go through this anymore. She begged and begged for me to change my mind and when I did, she broke up with me the next day.
We got back together after some time, I know it was a mistake but I loved her and she kept telling me it was her own mental health and that she would get help.
When lockdown hit, my health took a turn for the worst. I told her about my diagnosis and she didn’t ask a single question about it. I continued working throughout treatment but I was exhausted a lot of the time. She never understood this because she didn’t seem too bothered by what I was going through. She wasn’t working and it caused a lot of arguments that I had committed to work five days per week as I needed the income to pay rent and my bills. I also have quite a bit of money to her.
On one particular night, I ended things. I told her I could not go on like this when I had so many health problems and she was refusing to seek help. I drove home and got a phone call from her to tell me she was going to commit suicide. Obviously, I drove back to get her and sat with her until the morning. She calmed down and told me that I meant too much to her to lose me and that she would go to the doctors on Monday if I didn’t leave her.
Each time we would break up for a few days, I would discover she was online dating. She swore that she wasn’t talking to anyone, just downloaded the apps/signed up to the websites to make herself feel better. I trusted her, despite her past.
She didn’t go get help. I bought her a laptop so she could apply for jobs as she said a job would help her more than her doctor would. I hoped this would help.
Towards the end of October, we were ‘separated’ but still speaking every second of the day. One night she began to tell me she missed being with me (intimately) and we exchanged pictures, videos and voice messages, followed by messages of how much we still loved each other.
The next day, she was cold with me. I questioned her as to why she was being this way after the night before and she said “I’m not going to be spending my time speaking to you”. I was completely devastated, I felt humiliated that I had trusted her with myself again and felt extremely exposed. I asked her to delete the messages from the previous night.
At this point, my confidence was at rock bottom. I was confused and couldn’t understand why she had used me that night. As the days went on, I would send messages and get no response. She would reply at 10pm and then tell me she was going to bed.
The issue was that she had demanded to see me every spare second I had so I had lost the relationships with my friends and family. She was all I had left.
I asked her to meet me as I was feeling extremely confused. She shouted and screamed at me for asking but then agreed. She told me ‘maybe someday we will find each other again’ but seemed extremely cold and removed.
Exactly one week later, a friend messaged to tell me that a girl she knew was in a hotel with her. My friend pressed the girl about how she knew her and she said ‘she’s my girlfriend’. At this point I knew that whilst she was exchanging sexual messages with me, she was also setting up her next relationship. I tried to look the girl up (bad decision I know) and discovered she had blocked me on all social media, obviously so I wouldn’t find them out.
My ex blocked me and I’ve never heard from her again but last weekend, I bumped into a mutual friend who told me that she tells people I was abusive, manipulative and treated her poorly.
I was left extremely vulnerable from the ending of this relationship and my confidence has taken a massive hit.
I know what I did do… running to her at 4am when she was in a dark place, taking her to the places she wanted to go, sacrificing my friends and family because she needed me, putting my own health at risk to care for hers, buying her a laptop to help with her job search only to find out she had used it to find the girl she was cheating on me with, supporting her and loving her no matter how nasty she was.
I am baffled as to how she can now say these things about me? But I am more baffled at the fact that it is months later and she’s still the last person I think about before I sleep and my first thought in the morning. No matter what I’m doing, I think it would be better if she were there. I hope and pray that she will message me or I’ll bump into her and I get annoyed when people say negative things about her.
Does this mean I am the abuser? I have read online that the person that finds it most difficult to get over someone is normally the one to blame.