I’m a 27M and my 2 and a half year relationship ended pretty recently. We had been living together for 2 years. A big reason for the breakup was the lack of intimacy between us, but it was hard for me to be intimate and attracted to her once I began noticing major red flags.
When we first started dating, she had her own studio apartment. The state of her apartment should have been red flag number 1. Her sink was full of dirty dishes that looked like they had been there for months. Her fridge was full of completely rotten food that had been made a long time ago and had become more mold than food. She had a cat and a small dog, and the dog had issues with peeing and pooping in the apartment. She was awful about cleaning it up as it happened. There was a stench of dog pee when you were in there. There was trash strewn all around her room, her bathroom, her living room area, literally everywhere. She kept dirty dishes in her room despite the sink being less than 20 feet away. The first time we took a shower together, the tub filled up halfway because she couldn’t be bothered to snake the drain (I ended up buying a plastic plumbing snake and clearing it out for her).
I ignored all of this, thinking that she had just been dealing with mental health issues that took away her motivation.
We moved in together at the end of June 2023. It started off pretty well, I would say overall we were pretty happy. We almost never fought or argued and any disagreements were handled very maturely with a respectful conversation. However, as time went on, our shared apartment started becoming the disgusting mess that her old apartment was. I tried my best to keep up on cleaning. I was the main one washing dishes, I would always throw away her trash, and I did almost all of the laundry. She rehomed the dog, but her cat would drop hairballs or puke on the floor, and I would have to ask multiple times for her to clean it up or have to clean it up myself after enough time passed. This continued for 2 years and over time it began to wear on me. I would try to ask her to do a few things to at least make things easier on me like rinsing dirty dishes, separating her underwear from her pants when she put them in the dirty laundry, and asking her to throw her trash away. It would get slightly better for a short amount of time, and then go right back to how it was. I came to realize that she is simply a lazy and messy person. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a clean freak by any means, but at a certain point I stopped feeling like a boyfriend and felt more like a maid. One time, she decided to switch to litter robots for her cat, and after she got the litter robots, she left a traditional litter box in our bedroom, full almost to the top with cat poop. I asked multiple times over weeks if she would take care of it or throw it away, and she would say that she would take care of it but did nothing with it for weeks. You could look at both sides of our bed and immediately tell whose side was who’s based on the amount of trash, dirty dishes, and dirty clothes covering the floor next to her side.
On top of that, I began to notice bad personal hygiene. When we would get intimate, there were little shreds of toilet paper down there that made things uncomfortable for me. Then I started noticing a smell coming from down there as well; a smell I’ve never experienced with any woman. She hates wearing socks, so would go all day at work wearing shoes without socks. She would get home and take her shoes off and the most disgusting smell would fill the apartment. I bought her some Dr Scholl’s foot spray and asked that she try using it as the smell was absolutely unbearable. She never even touched the stuff.
Finally, one of the biggest red flags was her willingness to constantly interrupt and/or talk over me no matter who i was talking to. I told her more than once that I felt like more of a side character to her main character instead of an equal partner. I would be talking to MY family about something and literally mid sentence would be cut off and she would commandeer the conversation, making me sit and listen to her talk endlessly. I never mentioned this to my family, but it was so bad that once we broke up, the first thing they said was “yea we didn’t like her, she barely ever allowed you to speak for yourself”. She constantly wanted to be the center of attention and everything she said sounded like a pre-rehearsed script that she made in her head to get as many reactions or as much attention as possible. It drove me absolutely insane and it’s really hurt my self-confidence. I don’t feel like I’m interesting or have anything interesting to say anymore because whatever I had to say, was never important enough for my ex to allow me to finish.
So after over 2 years of putting up with all of this, I did get to a point where I avoided getting intimate with her. I still found her attractive physically, but having to clean up after a grown woman became such a turnoff for me. She expressed to me that she was hurt that we weren’t being intimate as often, and I was honest and told her about the constant interrupting, the constant cleaning up after her, and the toilet paper shreds that made intimacy uncomfortable. But even after expressing my concerns, nothing changed, and so we broke up about 2 weeks ago.
I feel relieved. I was bummed at first that things didn’t work out; I am ready to start a family and I thought she would be the one that I start a family with. But ultimately, the relationship should have ended far earlier or never happened at all. It sucks feeling like I wasted all this time, but now I know these red flags that would absolutely be a dealbreaker for me today.
I say all this to say, DO NOT IGNORE RED FLAGS. If something doesn’t feel right to you, or if your significant other exhibits behavior that you find unattractive, talk about it with them and if nothing changes, don’t settle for someone that makes you unhappy.
I did love her and still care about her, but I would never in a million years put myself in a relationship like this one again. Trust your instincts, don’t be like me.