Help about to break up with insecure partner, need advice.

[Bedraggledmumoftwo]

Need some advice, saw the thread on here about an insecure boyfriend and it resonated with some of my issues but I wanted to start my own thread as I am in a quandary about my current partner.

We have been together for 16 months. Both divorced and hit it off straight from the outset and were madly in love within weeks...
Talked about moving in together and I even got my coil removed on the very slim off chance we might conceive although I'm 42 and suffered premature menopause.

2 months in we had our first misunderstanding when I went on holiday
with a longstanding male travel buddy. All was fine until I made a flip comment about the naked sauna and he kicked off about it. I thought it was all my fault for the thoughtless comment and was very apologetic and worried Id killed off our budding relationship.

2 months later we went away together and ended up having our first proper row as I organised everything and was really stressed and he came along for the ride- he got on his high horse and wouldnt listen to me trying to explain to help him understand me (I'm under a lot of stress and people take advantage of the fact that I look calm on the surface but am paddling furiously underneath to keep afloat. I spent the night and next day crying as I didn't like the cold hard lecturing side of him but he later recognised he had been a dick and let me do everything and would never let that happen again.

Since then there has been a gradual deterioration and I have seen that side of him more and more despite becoming more and more fragile myself (anxiety/stress/depression
and two road traffic accidents leading to ongoing injuries and lots of work stress/bullying where I felt forced to resign and had months of stressful jobseeking).

As far as I can make out the times that he turns nasty are all because he is jealous/insecure but he reacts badly if I say that and says it is a perceived lack of commitment on my part. And he's right- I pull back when he behaves like this and said we shouldn't move in after all once we started arguing, to protect both our kids from potential fallout, have refused to book non-cancellable holidays long in
advance and even got my coil put back in, partly to help my hormones but partly because I didn't want to risk getting pregnant.
So he is right that I am not committing as I am essentially protecting myself and my kids (and his) from what has become a turbulent relationship.

When he is not being a cold,impatient, stubborn rock we get on amazingly well, I am ridiculously attracted to him and we have the best sex I've ever had. Passion is not the problem and he thinks I am silly to throw our relationship away but he has pushed me so hard I've had panic attacks and begun to have suicidal thoughts and he doesn't stop haranguing me or arguing with me until after I'm a sobbing heap saying that we are through and usually he eventually admits he was a dick and apologises and we are ok until the next time, but my trusting him with my fragile mental state reduces with each incident. He reacts to this with more pressure to commit and we end up arguing again. Apparently he and his ex wife used to argue a lot but it wasn't a problem- I'm just not built like that at the best of times let alone when I'm having mental health issues but he is physically incapable of biting his tongue or treating me with compassion.

Does anyone think there is any hope?

Hi all, thought I would update as I quoted some of the comments here to my awesome friend(of the mugs) who is sadly now getting divorced, and whose husband is just like my now exbf in many ways and I am helping her get free.

I actually realised today that I'm free of it all. I'm no longer on anti depressants, I don't have to take beta blockers to survive a supposedly loving relationship and I'm actually free. Haven't event vaguely thought about hurting myself at all, so the suicidal desperation really was about him and the toxic relationship. My counsellor has been congratulating me as I've been taking back control in all areas of my life and not standing for people ignoring my boundaries.

He (exbf) has been almost stalking me- the petulant " you block me then" meant that he was already blocked on all media so he did then create new email addresses to contact me on, emailed my work email address, joined some clubs we had been to together in my town and joined a different area group of my running club (which he always criticised as if I was putting it ahead of seeing him) so that he had an excuse to come to my group at joint things, but I have ignored him(while being as polite as I would to anyone else) valiantly. Although I do feel like he is invading my territory but not rising to it. Since he came on my own run the other week he did start emailing again (to my work email) but I have ignored him and now blocked on that too so hopefully that is it. I just feel sorry for him.

I did talk to him at one point when he resorted to turning up unannounced at my door when I'd been ignoring his emails ( and when my neighbours car had been on my drive while they have an extension so I think it was a fishing expedition to see if I had another man...) But I turned down his advances and then he instead started some lecturing me on how terribly I had failed to be available to him which is actually laughably silly since we broke up precisely because of the lecturing and ridiculous pressure he was putting on me to conform to his ideals.... But despite verging on stalking me he still wanted to tell me how wrong I was for not conforming. Luckily this just reminded me why we weren't together and broke any fantasy or halcyon reminiscing I might have had.

I feel sad that it didn't work out but now talking to my friend whose husband I compared him to I feel oh so relieved when I look back that I no longer have to feel so wound up walking on eggshells around someone that declared they loved me. He was gorgeous and the sex was great, but the lecturing and kicking me when I was down was not. Thank you all for your strength as I would not ever have realised he was bullying me without this thread and I ultimately i did find the strength to walk away partly due to the comments on here.

That’s a wonderful update, thank you for letting us know you are doing so well @Bedraggledmumoftwo .

I've got to say, that doesn't sound like 'almost stalking', that just sounds like stalking. It's been months (4 exactly) and he's still creating fake email addresses to contact you via your work email?

It's great that you're feeling so much better, and you've obviously made fantastic progress. The last thing you need is to be drawn back into his drama but I would consider going to the police about the harassment if the emails do start up again. You will presumably have to see him occasionally at the running group in the future?

See what your counsellor thinks as clearly any form of contact is toxic.

But overall well done on reclaiming your life, I hope 2023 brings you nothing but good things.

Yeah that’s a great update but I would keep a record of all his unwanted contact and consider police as well. He’s still harassing you; probably will until he finds his next victim

I hope you shut the door in his face when he started the lecturing.

He came to your door. You have a ring doorbell, so you knew who it was. You still engaged with him in more pointless waffle.

Hope it was the last time,and you are not still feeding your addiction to the drama.

Amazing update and well done OP 💪All the best for 2023 😊

I was working in the kitchen in a teams call so I didn't go and look at my phone and didn't know who it was I just answered the door. I also might need to get a better doorbell- mine is a cheap non branded one- as it doesn't ring immediately- the actual chime unit in the kitchen rings straight away but the phone app has a delay meaning it is good for speaking to delivery men when I'm not in the house but doesn't catch up in time for me to see before I answer the door.

Your long, involved explanation as to why you answered the door to the tedious twat informs me that you are still in a people pleaser mindset. Not an easy one to get out of, but well worth working on to avoid tying yourself in knots to appease yet another abuser in the future.

Good luck!

Not really, I felt attacked by your accusation that I had seen it was him and answered anyway and it wasn't true so I was defending myself with the actual facts underlying your wrong assumption!

Ok 🙂

I think the point is that when he started lecturing you as well as propositioning you, you don't seem to have said "this conversation is over, goodbye" and shut the door. Hopefully if it happens again, you will.

Next time he turns up, if you don't clock it's him & open the door to him again -
tell him to stop harassing you, & close the door in his face.

I'm so glad you updated. Congratulations, @Bedraggledmumoftwo! The fact that you no longer need all that chemical mental health support says everything about what that relationship was doing to you.

I can't believe that, three months on, he is still harassing you and telling you what a piece of shit you are for not wanting to be with him! It's puzzling how some men genuinely seem to feel that insulting their woman of choice, while ordering her to have a relationship with them, will lead to romantic harmony. But plenty of them do. I hope none of those men ever find a compliant victim and end up complaining to each other in some remote pub for lonely old bullies.

Stay cool, and do enjoy your glorious freedom!

I think you need to take some of the advice you gave him on that nonsense WhatsApp group and "stop, think"

If the delay to your phone showing who is at the door is tolerable when you're not in and there's a delivery then it is tolerable when you're in the house. When it rings in the kitchen take, what, a minute, til it comes up on your phone. You are still a total people pleaser and honestly I worry about your ability to avoid getting stuck in the same kind of toxic relationship.

Good grief. The OP comes back to give an update on how far she has come in the matter of a few months and how much better her mental health is, and some posters response is to pick up on a minor detail and use it to give her a hard time. How about encouraging someone on their progress and not picking holes in them??

She has indeed done very well to get away from him and block him etc but did need a huge amount of encouragement and straight talking from this thread to stop getting pulled back in to his nonsense - re read all what happened on her birthday. This desperate need to please i.e. can't possibly keep someone waiting at the door, can't possibly shut the door in someone's face when they are harassing you, is exactly the trait that got her stuck in relationships with a toxic ex husband and then this dumpster fire of a man. Personally if she was my friend irl I'd hope that she could be helped into recognising and understanding those aspects of herself or else she will just repeat the patten with the next idiot who comes along and wants to ignore all her boundaries.

@Natty13 I think you are being a bit hard on the op, it takes a long time to change your thinking and patterns of behaviour. She has come a long way in a short time and deserves support and encouragement.

Thanks all.

Didn't want to derail my thread with my faulty video doorbell-or apparently my faulty usage of it- I've never used it that way, it's handy that it records with the motion sensor and useful if I'm out but otherwise it's a doorbell and if I'm in I just answer the door! On the day in question I was talking to a colleague over teams and said I'll call you back and answered the door. No people pleasing, other than an inbred response to the doorbell ringing then answering it, and maybe my desire to not have to waste time going to the post office or getting parcels redelivered🤔😟

I hadn't seen exbf for months at this point so I didn't even vaguely think it might be him. I now haven't even had a spam email from him for at least a fortnight and the last one was something about him doing online dating and I completely ignored it so really don't think he will pop up again and am just glad to be out the other side! Which I am. And when I was going through my friends stbxh behaviour I was very pleased to be away from all the drama

Good! be a drama dodger! a placid life is underrated, but so good for our MH.