End of relationship that seemed to be becoming abusive

[Puxxled2]

Please help. My mind is a mess. Started dating someone in January. I have DC and could only meet alternate weekends and Wednesday nights, when DC are with their dad's. He lives in London and I live just outside.
Started off fine. Then a few red flags appeared; he seemed to be quite controlling. He said a few unkind things about my appearance and cancelled plans to meet at the last minute three times.
He ended things by text last weekend but then sort of un-ended things and said he was angry with how I had said i couldn't meet him (I was with DC in another part of London visiting family). And that was why he ended things. We were meant to meet this weekend as I was in London meeting people anyway but he cancelled at 9pm, saying he was ill. He'd gone out the night before and had got absolutely slaughtered and when he got in he called me and started an argument with me over nothing. I didn't message him yesterday and then he sent me a text saying I didn't care for him. I spent ages on chat gpt trying to write a message saying I was upset and confused by the past week but before I could send it he sent me another message saying he didn't understand me and then blocked me on whatsapp.

I guess I just want advice on how you get over a relationship which you know was getting increasingly damaging but also where you really like the person.

Do you actually need a relationship at all? Surely if you have friends, it should be enough? I speak from experience and having a bloke is not all it's made out to be

Jesus Christ this guy flew more red flags than Mao’s 100th birthday party.

Let me tell you a sure fire way to separate the gold from the dross when dating. Never accept any of this treatment. Any.Of.It.

Him “you look like a slag with all that makeup. I love a pure clean look.”
You: “fuck off.”

Him: “I can’t keep our plans why don’t you do x, y, z to please me?”

You: “fuck off.”

Him “you pay more attention to your kids than me.”

You: “Fuck off.”

Don’t be accommodating, don’t be understanding, don’t ever be uncomfortable, don’t tolerate snide comments. K ow your worth!

Predators and game players will avoid you.

Read The Gift of Fear by Gavin deBecker and Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft to gain insight into the mind of this kind of man. Then you will be able to safely reenter the dating pool.

Get over him by imagining how his behaviour would have eventually destroyed your children and their self esteem as a minimum.
My stepfather was so aggressive and angry with me I ended up with Complex PTSD at only 15 years old.
Always put your children first.

Well that's a small mercy

What did you learn about relationships when you were growing up?. What sort of an example did your parents show you?.

Your boundaries here, already damaged by previous abuse, have been further got at by this predatory individual now. I get the feeling that you would have persisted with him if he had not already decided to discard you. Such men isolate, devalue and discard their chosen targets. He targeted you and deliberately so in order to abuse you. He was testing you from the get go to see how weak your boundaries were. You told him that you had been abused previously.

I would also find another therapist to work with; your current therapist does not seem to understand abusive relationships at all. Do enrol yourself onto the Freedom Programme and contact Women's Aid; they will be of great help to you. Do not enter into another relationship until your boundaries are a lot healthier than they currently are (at least a year); you remain very vulnerable to such approaches. Do that for your children as well as you; they've seen and heard more than enough in their young lives already. What do you want to teach them about relationships?.

True and I know if a friend told me that someone had made a joke about raping her, I would tell her to run for the hills!

I am definitely going to stay single for a while. I had been single for ages - 3 years after ExH left and then had a fling which turned into me being breadcrummed for about 6 months which kind of just fizzled out. Then there was this guy.

It sounds ridiculous but I woke up and missed the 'good morning' text from him.

Block him and do it right now! This is not someone to be involved with and I pity any other woman who goes there! You've done nothing wrong and he's (lucky for you) shown who he is pretty early on! Heed his warning, tell him you don't want to see him again and block him. Good luck!!

Because OP he doesn’t see you as a partner. You’re someone to fuck and humiliate - nothing more. He won’t waste and money on someone he sees as worthless

Every time you've allowed this vile abuser to treat you like shit and gone back for more degradation, you’ve given him the green light (in his eyes) to continue the abuse.

Sorry if it sounds harsh but maybe this thread is a wake up call that you’re really not in the right place to be dating until you’ve improved your self esteem and raised your bar so scum like this don’t get a look in

I am very lucky in that I have a close family, lovely DC, and some amazing friends. But I still feel lonely sometimes and all my siblings, cousins, and friends are married or in commited long term partnships. As are all my friends.

I missed having sex, and i didn't want to have one-night stands, I wanted to be doing it with the same person each time!!

I wasn't looking for anything serious though, rather I was looking for someone to see when DC are away. A FWB but maybe a bit more coupley? Like as well as sex, someone to go to gigs with and cinema, nice meals etc.
Wasn't looking to blend families or anything like that.

It sounds ridiculous but I woke up and missed the 'good morning' text from him.

That's just habit. Remind yourself you're not missing the headfuck and humilation and message friends who care about you instead. Or set some nice app to message you in the morning with wiser vibes - some kind of lucky escape alarm to wake you up from the crappy trance he got you in.

No, I think it's harsh but fair, albeit a pretty horrible pill to have to swallow! One of my dear John letters I wrote but didn't send referenced me feeling like a fuck toy.

He really, really wanted to make a video to upload to some adult site and every time I said I was bored or stressed about work he'd be like (half joking) "well i have told you how else you can make money!"

He put a lot of pressure on me to try anal sex (not something I had done before) and then the last time I saw him he disclosed that he had a foot fetish, too.

From what you have described:

• He wants to own and control you completely, even your 10 year old child getting some of your emotional energy is a trigger point for him. Ideally he would like to cut you off from your relationship with your children (and everyone else)

• He enjoys your pain, fear and humiliation. He actually would like to rape you and he plans to do it one day, when you're worn down enough that he can get away with it. He says things like that "I can make you feel horrible" because he wants you to exist in a state of discomfort and fear. It advantages him and he enjoys it.

• In time he will destroy you, make you into a wreck who doesn't even know where her thoughts end and his begin. Not by accident but by design.

In short, he's a bullet dodged. Honestly, if there was some of failsafe test for men like this, I'd have them humanely put down. Like dangerous dogs. He's a menace to all women. He might kill a woman one day. You're only 6 months in, get out before he beats, rapes and strangles you because "you made him angry".

Maybe you needed to write those dear John letter but for god’s sake never, ever, explain yourself to your abuser. You are just giving him the key to controlling you. “You made me feel like shit” is catnip to these men. That’s why they do what they do.

Holy jumped up bug juice!

Reread @AttilaTheMeerkat ’s pists and definitely do the freedom program. You should have run at the first crude “joke” these were all out in the open threats.

@Puxxled2 this tells me all I need to know about him.

he was ending it in order to distress you and get a reaction. He wanted you to come running back begging him to stay. The fact that you didn’t respond threw him, Hence his asking you if you had anything to say. If you’re ending a relationship, why would you want to know if the other person had anything to say? Most of us would just be glad to have managed to do it as clean as possible. And then the SOS… My ex used to do this. If he didn’t get his own way, he would be very cryptic about hurting himself. Psychotic. It took me five years to get rid: be glad you’ve managed to get rid in five months.

The most worrying part of this for me is that you have children. If you did continue a relationship with this person, I really believe that your children will suffer. He would not take kindly to them taking your attention, your love, you putting them first… He would make their lives miserable.

Be thankfully, he doesn’t know where you live, and block him. Don’t look back. There are plenty of decent men in the world.

Christ! And you're missing his 'good morning' texts?? I'm looking at the thread title now - 'seemed to be becoming abusive'. It's scary that you weren't even sure and got so swept up that you're in a 'Dear John letter' headspace and so messed up after such a short and quite horrible relationship (albeit with nicer bits because that's how abusers operate). Run a fucking mile from guys like this and don't expect them to give two shits about treating you like a 'fuckboy'. They do not care about you. You deserve better and you need to hold out for that.

And you know, if a guy ever says he wants to make a porn video with you to upload to a site, don't say you're tired/stressed with work. Say fuck off out of here. Same with the anal if you don't want it. You're not a piece of meat and if they treat you like one, they're gone, no matter how many nice texts they send.

So to summarize, he criticized your appearance from the very beginning, carried on talking about your belly despite knowing you don’t like it, is controlling, has cancelled on you last minute, has a bit of a temper if you can’t meet him and likes to manipulate you by blocking you then reappearing again.

He is bad news, im glad you can see it.

To get over him, take one day at a time. Emotions run high in the beginning, naturally. You like(d) him, you keep wondering if you’re doing the right thing, if this can work somehow despite it all. All that is normal. With each passing day these feelings will subside. What you have to do is - nothing. No action, no getting back in contact, no responding to his messages. Tidy up the house, read a book, watch a film, cry a little if you have to. Meet friends. 2 weeks later you will be feeling much better and calmer about the split, i guarrantee that.

I think that it absolutely was a trance!
It was crazy as he'd say i had the most beautiful body he'd ever seen (which is ridiculous; I have had 3 kids and am overweight, it is not an exceptional body) and would also always go on about how lovely and pale my skin was. He was obsessed by skin-tone. He even asked me if I tanned much in the summer.

Thank you for this.

I felt really triggered in the week by his messages where he said sorry for splitting up with me but in a very un-meaningful way (I said to my friend it is like when you get a child to say sorry so they do, but they don't really mean it) then sent a few mean texts about how I always have to be right. It just reminded me so much of my ex, the way he was communicating very churlishly (that ex actually did strangle me and assault me multiple times). He said something like "I'm so sorry for my ignorance and bad behaviour" and I replied saying "I can't tell if you're being sarcastic" and he said "I am saying this because you always have always got to be right" 🫤

What a horrible horrible man. It doesn't have to be this way and leaving this relationship doesn't mean you can't have another (one day). There are actually so many wonderful men. But I urge you to do the freedom programme before dating again. Be really conscious in who you choose to date in future, and be comfortable with cutting it off early if there is even one red flag. You don't have to be fair, to give anyone a chance or even be very sure that someone is a wrong'un to protect yourself by cutting them off. If your instincts are setting you up for failure (because of past trauma etc) then the men you should be giving more of your attention/time to are probably those with whom you don't feel immediate chemistry. But get yourself in the right headspace first.

The DC were one of the reasons I was thinking about ending it with him.
I had never wanted him to meet them (which I guess is its own thing) but I felt like last week he was taking up head-space that I could have used to be more present around them, when they were with me.

I wanted a relationship / FWB / whatever it's called where when I was with the DC I didn't have to worry about him. A couple of nice texts on the days we didn't see each other. But initially he would call me multiple times at bedtime which I'd not answer but it was quite annoying. This did stop eventually but then it meant we would have to talk late at night because bedtimes take a long time (one of my DC has additional needs) and then he'd not answer and say he had gone to bed.

He would say he goes to bed early but then sometimes I'd wake up and he'd have called me at 1am, 2am, 6am etc. (I sleep really heavily so I wasn't woken by these calls). It was like a total disconnect between what he did and what he said he did.

Also exactly - that was why I didn't answer- because he'd dumped me!! Makes no sense why would you call multiple times if you have just ended things?!
He hasn't called me today though, so I think it is over now.
It is frustrating that he just wished me good luck and blocked me. So many things I wanted to say to him.

I'm really sorry to read about what happened with your ex and glad it's behind you now xxxx 💐

Thank you xx
I feel really daft writing all the horrible stuff he did down as it's so obvious that he is an awful and chaotic person. But he was really nice some of the time and that is what i am missing.
I really dont think he will message me again, I did call him last night but he didn't call back and not heard from him today.
I think it will take a bit of time to get over him but yeah hopefully in a fortnight I will be feeling stronger.
Have made plans to see friends this weekend. Who will commiserate with me!

Thanks for this. I do seem to be drawn to the same type of man every time.

I have found it surprisingly hard to meet any men on the apps who aren't totally weird (telling me about their cuckold fantasies, or sending dick pics, all the usual). I would have thought a lot of men my age (early 40's) would also have job / kids etc. that would mean they would be happy meeting up for some weekeends and the odd week night only. But everyone seems to be looking for something more like a partner OR they are just looking for sex.

That was why I was happy I met this one - in the beginning anyway. As he said he'd be happy to meet me when I was free.

Then it went to him going on about how he understood that he'd always come second to my kids and that was something he has come to realise at his age he would never be the priority. Sort of guilt-trippy.

But yeah, definitely not going to be dating for a while now.