For context, I made a post in the beginning of the year asking for advice because my boyfriend would get this weird hollow look in his eyes whenever we would argue. If you're curious, look up false killer whale stares, and that's the best comparison I can make.
Regardless, the post got a lot more attention than I was expecting (a fairly popular youtuber even reacted to it, that was wild). I was super overwhelmed with all the comments and DMs telling me different things, so I chose to just forget I ever made the post in the first place and just move on. After all, my boyfriend and I were in a totally super healthy relationship, right? Right?
It's so funny looking back at my original post because I insisted so hard that we had a healthy relationship, when really something was always off in hindsight. But since there was no textbook abuse, I just ignored it in the beginning. But after I made that post, I started being more critical of the way he treated me and noticing things that I hadn't before.
Now I'm not sure if that new awareness is what caused more arguments to start happening, or if it was because we stopped being long-distance and started to live together, but we started fighting daily.
Turns out he was pretty controlling from the beginning — discreetly making me feel bad about hanging out with friends/family instead of him, insisting I not go out for "safety reasons." After a while, this turned into him getting angry if I gave literally anyone else attention, even my brothers. He would get mad if I didn't approve plans (either with friends or family) with him ahead of time, but I wouldn't have to approve his plans. Always checking my phone, but he'd get mad and snatch his phone if I ever looked through his. You get the picture. All the while, he was free to have his own social life and do whatever he wanted, and if I ever complained about any of it, he'd call me dramatic. There were soooo many other rules that I had to live by or else I'd get ghosted.
I was a pretty calm person before getting into this relationship, but I would often find myself exploding out of frustration of being isolated, not heard, and humiliated. For example, once I was crying because we were arguing for so long and I just wanted to go to sleep but he wouldn't let me, and he started laughing/imitating my crying face. I genuinely exploded and started yelling, and he didn't apologize but rather said that he was just trying to lighten the mood. I don't know why I believed it, but I felt so bad for yelling that I spent the next TWO DAYS pacifying him so he could forgive me.
You might be asking, OP, he was an immature control freak — why didn't you dump? Good question!
1.) For the longest time, I genuinely felt like the bad guy in our arguments because he would never yell, but I would. And I'm not saying I'm perfect; there were definitely mistakes I made, and I should have handled myself better. But in our arguments, they would last hours because he would drag them on by connecting every mistake to something bigger (if I "let" my phone die while on call with him, that meant I didn't love/respect/care about him). I would get overwhelmed and ask for a break or to go to sleep and he would refuse and continue on and on and drop in hurtful comments and jokes, until finally I would snap. And the second I snapped and yelled, I became the villain in my mind and I'd feel terrible.
2.) There were many moments I wanted to leave, but I felt like I couldn't leave because of the mental games he'd play. He had this thing where he'd love to punish me and give me consequences for my "bad behavior." These consequences could be three days without speaking, it could be me having to cancel a hangout I was looking forward to, etc. But after any consequence, he would follow it up with a stubborn showering of what felt like genuine affection, love, and comfort. I would be angry and push him away, and he'd persist until I wasn't angry anymore. The way he'd act after I'd been isolated made me feel like nobody has ever loved or will love me like that.
He admitted to me once that he'd do similar things to his dog when he was a kid. He'd beat/pinch his pets growing up just so that when they would cry or yelp, he could hug/kiss them. Before we started dating, he told me he liked to comfort people. I didn't think that meant he would take it upon himself to provide both the suffering and then the subsequent comfort… is that not insane???
I can't make this shit up. The dude was a nut. And what's even more mind boggling is that everyone thinks he's the sweetest, most respectful guy out there. Hell, I was good friends with him before we dated, and I thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Whenever I finally had the balls to break up with him, our mutual friends were shocked to find out that I ended it because he's just the nicest guy and oh, OP he was husband material. ugh.
Sorry for the rambling. Even though we broke up two months ago now it's honestly still pretty confusing to get my mind around. Anyway, we're done now and I'm never planning on speaking to him again. I definitely wasted a lot of time with him, but oh well. Better than wasting a lifetime I guess. Moral of the story: listen to your gut, or at least some type of common sense 🙂
TLDR: my boyfriend's stare creeped me out, i ignored my gut, he turned out to be nuts, we were in a toxic relationship, i finally broke up with him, yay