What is going on here

[Bunkbed80]

I have been with my BF for about 9m now. Both in our 40’s. I usually stay over at his for a few days a week and recently he gave me a spare key and I brought clothes round and he cleared me a space on his wardrobe.

Generally things have been going well, supposedly in love and everyone I meet around him tells me he seems a lot happier than he used to be, and he’s said he’s happy.

It’s become a regular thing that he wants to go out drinking locally, and when we do, we often get into some kind of disagreement. This is always about something I have said or done that’s apparently embarrassed him when he says I’m drunk.

A few times I’ve apologised for whatever it is I’ve allegedly done, and a few times he’s apologised for me for being unreasonable and we have let it go.

I’ve had a few acne spots lately and when I do, he will keep asking me why I have a spot and asking me if I’ve picked the spot and will keep pointing out the spot until it goes away. I’ve explained they are hormonal and they make me feel a bit self conscious. Last weekend I picked him up from the pub (I was sober) and I had a spot on my face. He kept pressing the spot and laughing. I asked him to stop and got visibly irritated and the next day he said I was beautiful even with spots and hadn’t mentioned it again.

We had a good day together yesterday after a bit of a shit week where we have both felt unwell. He wanted to go out to the pub so we popped out for a few drinks yesterday.

He likes to go to a bit of an old man type pub, the football was on and other old men at the bar so it’s not exactly fun all the time. A guy in the pub sitting behind us had a big dog with him - I love dogs - so I got chatting to him and ended up stroking the dog. The dog wanted to play fight, it was gentle and fun, so I crouched with the dog for 5 mins or so, play fighting, dog rolled over and I tickled their belly etc, and BF turned round from the bar and said ‘ok get up now’. I got up and went back to the bar and he snatched my vape out of my hand and said ‘you vape too much’.

At this point if felt irritated but didn’t want to cause a scene so I went a bit quiet and he said look let’s not fall out and gave me a hug and a kiss.

We walk home and get food and get a bit amorous iykwim, and then later he asks me why I got irritated earlier. I said look sometimes you can pick on me a bit and sometimes it hurts my feelings.

This suddenly escalated wildly. He told me that he was going to get the CCTV from the pub as basically everyone in the pub was tutting and staring at me when I was ‘basically shagging the dog on the floor’ and it was embarrassing which is why he asked me to get up. He then did an impression of me which I can only liken to someone with cerebral palsy, and when got upset about this he called me a ‘spastic’ and Harvey Price and told me to get out of his house and our relationship was over. I wasn’t able to drive at that point so I went to the spare room.

He came to bed and slammed his door so I went in to try to talk to him and make peace, this made it all worse he asked if I was ‘bipolar’ as I had ruined his lovely day and was always ruining things, said he wasn’t coming on our planned weekend away (to meet my family for the first time) and told me to get all my stuff out. He said he had asked for space and I hadn’t given it to him and we should talk about it tomorrow.

I packed my bags with all my stuff from his room while we kind of shouted at each other, me saying I didn’t understand why he was being so mean, and him saying he didn’t tolerate ‘this kind of thing’. I said I should be able to raise an issue without getting shouted down and he said he didn’t want an embarrassing girlfriend, I said he seems to care more about everyone else but me.

I went to the spare room and I am here alone now until morning when I will get ready for work and take my stuff and leave as I don’t think I have much other choice? I’ve had a few glasses of wine so can’t drive, but I don’t believe was particularly drunk. I’ve seen him absolutely paralytic before and it wasn’t a nice sight. I’m not sure even with drink this behaviour is forgivable, and I would make myself look desperate to try to talk this through with him tomorrow.

I feel so sad it’s come to this ☹️

Earlier she posted she's taken the day off

I did take the day off. I was unwell on the weekend and he knew this but I felt like I had to go out with him as he was so keen and would have been disappointed, he was so excited (like a child) for his kids to get collected to go to the pub he talked about it all day.

I could have stayed behind but he wouldn’t have let me, he would have sulked I wasn’t joining him and not being fun because he didn’t have anyone else to go with. Like when I’ve been out but wanted to go home, he refused to give me his key so I would be stuck with him until he decided to leave.

There are so many incidents over time, I used to dread going to that one pub, for some reason he rarely got in a mood in other pubs just that one, because it felt like it was his special pub and ‘ladies don’t show themselves up in this type of place’ but I didn’t really ever want to go, so don’t know why he kept taking me? When we first met the walk home was always so romantic he would hold my hand and then the last few months I dread the walk home as he will always be in a mood and I got a lecture the whole way back

Yep.

Time to leave and don't look back.

You can do so much better.

X

He sounds exactly like my ex whose name also begun with a D. He doesn’t by any chance have a dog with a name beginning with Q by any chance?

You are so much better off without him OP! What I will say is while you don’t think you’ll hear from him again, I suspect you will. My bets would be after his working away period. At the moment I imagine his nastiness was very much driven by wanting to be single and able to do what he wants while away. When he gets back the loneliness and sex on tap will hit him and you’re at risk of him trying to reel you back in. I know it’s hard but I would advise blocking him. It’s too easy to fall for the begging attempts that may happen otherwise.

He couldn't even keep up acting nice for a matter of months. Lectures, being cross if you don't go to the pub, cross if you did go to the pub. You were always going to be in the wrong, OP.

Please, please protect yourself in the future, it's great that you told a good friend what he was really like. Keep talking and don't let this lesser species back in your life.

I think they want us to go everywhere with them because it stops them looking like a sad lonely bastard out in the pub on their own.

My ex would say I was a 'good look'. I only realised later the meaning to this. He meant he could basically get away with all kinds of behaviour because having a girlfriend somehow legitimized him.

'He surely can't be that bad if he's got a girlfriend and she seems nice so he must have some good to him for her to stick around'.

I was literally just a 'good look'.

I'd be so disgusted by a grown man that would even consider mocking disabled people that i would end the relationship, even if there wasn't all the other appalling aspects to his behaviour.

That’s the spirit OP!

Every morning and evening when you look in the bathroom mirror, tell yourself:

• You’re kind (to people, children and animals)
• You’re intelligent
• You’re independent
• You’re successful
• You’re beautiful inside and out
• You’re your own best friend
• You’re happy in your own company
• You don’t need a man
• You’re a queen who holds her head high
• You have boundaries
• You don’t take shit from anyone
• You have an army of mums-netters cheering you on
• You’re going to be OK.

💐💐

Every post he just sounds worse and worse.
You so need to take a break and really look hard at your boundaries.
Better to be alone, than be abused.
You were being abused in so many ways.

He's a horror of an excuse of a man.

If you hadn’t said his name began with a D and his mum was alive I would have bet my house you’d been talking about my ex! The similarities are uncanny. He love bombed me. Made me feel amazing. Showered me with compliments and weekends away, future planning, being so attentive if I was sad or unwell. He also has issues with alcohol and drinks in his local pub with the other lone men. Any excuse to go to the pub. Also had ED issues (which he blamed on me!). Pointing out my spots, telling me off for picking them, for drinking Diet Coke, getting insecure if I got attention (although some of the time he really liked if I got attention! Other times he would tell me I was inviting it and trying to “impress the boys”. He sounded about 17!) He would explode for no reason at things I could never predict, usually always when he’d been drinking. Just turn nasty and have a go at me for the weirdest things. If I tried to repair and talk he would say I was “pursuing” him and he wanted to be left alone and I wasn’t respecting his wishes. And then he would give me the silent treatment and I’d be apologising and desperate for things to go back the way they were but not really understanding what I was supposed to have done. He of course slagged off his ex no end and I believed it until I realised that she was probably in the same boat I found myself in. Trying to appease an angry man who felt insecure on the inside but seemed to be the life and soul on the outside. Only he stopped being like that with me. He found numerous ways to criticise me and pick on me. And yet he would always accuse me of criticising him and say he’d never know another woman like it! He accused me of cheating and told all his friends I had (I hadn’t), then he started up with someone else about 9 months ago. I found out through a mutual friend he had started seeing someone else. He didn’t even bother to hide it.
I begged him to try again for some weird reason. I don’t know why. Not everything was bad. He could be lovely when he wanted to be. But the day to day misery of him and his fragile ego, the nit picking, the fault finding, the hypocrisy, the eggshells, the rages, the drinking….. Christ I don’t miss any of that.
It took me years to get away from him. I’m so glad you’ve gathered up your self respect and got the fuck out of there. You have saved your future self from years of heartbreak, self doubt, misery and confusion.
You can do soooo much better!

Load of tosh !
I’ve given sound advice on the information in OP’s posts having read them carefully.

He sounds like an absolute horror show of a man. Thank your lucky stars he’s out of your life now.

run for the hills and don’t look back even if he’s says sorry. He won’t change. X

Do you not think this is deliberate on his part? He knows what he can say to cause you the most hurt. Don't fall for it.

day 1 of no further contact is completed and submitted!

Well done OP! He can get in the bin where he belongs

I think you’ve had some fantastic comments on here . Nobody has said go back and give it another go . Well done Queen ! fix your crown that he tried to knock off with his abuse, gaslighting , control ( stopping you going to gym !!!! ) and plain nastiness . Even if he wanted the relationship over he could have done in a more mature way . IMO he didn’t want a women to love he wanted a woman to take his anger out on and use as a verbal punchbag . I work for woman’s aid and see this all the time , woman thinking it’s their fault that their partner isn’t happy . It is abuse , everything you wrote is abuse . And he’s made you doubt yourself , made you think that it’s your fault because he thinks whatever about you .
now please move on , he’s shown you off to his family and friends to validate himself , but he doesn’t value you . He’s shown you his true personality and you don’t like it . He can offer you absolutely nothing . You owe it to yourself to get so much more x

Following. You had a traumatic experience, but a lucky escape. I’m
sorry he turned out to be such a disappointment, op.

Well done..keep it up

I’ve been having a lot of intrusive pop ups about contact with him - if he’s contacted me, which he hasn’t, and I knew he wouldn’t, but they aren’t thoughts that I want him to contact me, just anxiety and what if’s

I am tired but can’t sleep deeply just on and off but I don’t feel as bad as I did

Yo've done the right thing. It's horrible when people treat us badly and we cannot even get an apology, but try to keep yourself distracted and busy and try not to dwell on it too much. Wishing you the best.

A psychologist long ago told me that the reason my brain would throw up sudden memories at me, just out of the blue, was because I had sent it on a quest, long ago, to try to figure out why bad stuff happened to me.

We want to know the whys because then we can hopefully protect ourselves and avoid it again in the future. But unfortunately, the people who hurt us are unlikely to tell us the truth, and might not even know why themselves beyond they wanted to.

It would often happen if I was relaxing, or doing a humdrum task, like filing or housework, or just wandering through the supermarket. Things your brain doesn't really have to think much about. You know how if you try to remember a word, or something you forgot to do, and then you give up thinking about it, it will suddenly pop into your head an hour later?

It's like that. Underneath, all the time, the program is still running to try to figure out how to protect yourself, or fix this problem - the quest to figure out the whys.

And so your brain tries to help you by throwing up another thought or memory to try to fix things or figure it out so it doesn't happen again.

One of the techniques that helped for me with childhood trauma (and it did take a bit of time) was not to push the thought away - that's the natural reaction. You put your hand on a hot stove, you pull it away, or if you see a tree branch about to hit your face you swat it out of the way.

I know this is not childhood trauma, but it's still suffering caused by someone else that you want to understand, but can't.

So instead of swatting it away, take the thought and say to your brain "Listen, brain, we don't need to think about this person anymore. It's not helping. We can't figure it out, so just let it go" or something similar. I used to also take a photo in my head, like a little kodak picture of that moment and visualise myself throwing the photo into a bin, or burning it, or chucking it out a window.

Distraction is great too, being busy, out and about if you can be, sunshine on your face, a busy supermarket, it's all helpful.

Visualisations can be helpful. Deep breathing, box breathing, and listening to something really soothing really helps me when I'm stressed, can't sleep or starting to fixate on something bad that once happened.

Good luck. You deserve kindness.

Thanks for sharing with me I really appreciate all the responses

I am not feeling well today, feels like sinus pain it’s horrible.

My brain is still flipping over so many things, it’s looking for the change point where he lost respect for me, it can’t find it, but it keeps replaying other incidents where I was unsure of his intentions with doubts creeping in, and he went out of his way to fill my head with future plans and romance, only to pull back later on. I think he just lives in the moment, so he will just say whatever the moment feels like.

On holiday he spent the whole time soooooo in love with me and sooooo happy and I got a bit more secure in myself you know? I took this as a sign we were even more of a solid couple now who could get through everything. BUT the first night of our holiday, he got drunk and I called over a local cat and he went mental and kicked right off and caused a horrible row and I cried, So he had to repair with me due to the holiday being ongoing but generally he was drunk or a sleep an awful lot, and he had rough sex with me then as well.

Replaying the dog stroking night, you know what, I think actually I had got a little bit too secure and a little bit too confident in myself (how dare I).

I had turned up at his house with a big bag of food, did a load of cooking and laundry and basically made myself way too ‘at home’ during which time he offered me a spare key and said ‘I want you to feel at home’. So he’s giving me completely mixed signals because he doesn’t want me. He doesn’t really want to have sex with me or kiss me, but he’s happy to eat the food I make. I am thinking well if I show him I am a good team mate he will respect and appreciate me a lot more. wtf is this about!

Before we get to the old man pub, we are in a different pub and he tells me I am being too loud when I am speaking. I challenge him on this and say I didn’t think I was, he said, well you are. I don’t continue the argument but at the next pub, I’m already irritated by him for some of the negging which carries on in the shop we stop at. There are literally only 3 other people in the old man pub and I start making conversation with them, and I am kind of ignoring him. You see I’m not allowed to hug or kiss him when we are out so he’s sitting next to me, drinking and I’m chatting away then I go see the dog, then when he tells me to get up and snatches my vape, I go quiet because it was very rude, and pick up my phone instead, and then he tries to see what’s on my phone and he can see from my face I am annoyed, so he laughs at me and teases me but then gives me a kiss and a hug to save the situation in front of other people, but I call him irritating. So I can see how this unfolded as I have a lot of resentment and irritation about his behaviour and he’s watching my every move.

He waits till we get home and he is clearly seething about everything and has horrible sex with me (this is stuck in my mind so badly I think ultimately it’s my saving grace to never go back), but he really wants to eat the pie I made, so he managed to hold out his nasty behaviour until he’s eaten, then he basically tries to take me down a peg or 2, but I defend myself and it escalates.

I have a lot of work to do on my boundaries I’m aware, and what I will put up with, however I do think he didn’t manage to get me that low that I wasn’t able to stand up for myself at all. A lot of this could have been avoided had I had had lower tolerance for his behaviour and separated the words from his actions. I know I missed a lot of things along the way but honestly, when I met him he wasn’t like this, so it was very confusing when you are trying to get back to the original person you met. There are times I probably reverted to childish behaviour because I didn’t have the tools of how to deal with the situations, and I would try way too hard to make up to avoid conflict,

’ I know I missed a lot of things along the way but honestly, when I met him he wasn’t like this, so it was very confusing when you are trying to get back to the original person you met. ‘

Come on (I mean this really kindly) stop being silly. It’s crystal clear why an absuser doesn’t show abusive behaviour straight off. They draw you in by love bombing and then start slowly training you into what to accept. Would you have stayed with him if he’d made it very clear AT THE START your love of petting animals was disgusting to him, or you spoke to loudly etc etc?

Read up on the boiling frog analogy with abuse. You shouldn’t be spending your time questioning his revolting actions but why you put up with so many micro aggressions, you need to keep yourself safe. And he was not a safe person for you.

I have been there. I’ve been love bombed, been a victim of micro aggressions, which made me question my own worth, been the person at the end wondering what on earth I was thinking. You will be ok, and you deserve better.

This is not him working out how he feels about you this is controlling behaviour. Giving a bit then snatching it back. He’s trying to make you feel small because he’s jealous of you. He’s showing you who he is by the complete disrespect he is showing you. There is nothing you could have done it’s all him. One day you will look back and think - thank fuck I got away .