Okay well here it goes. It started with a relationship I had for about two years that I found out he was cheating on me with another woman for the entire relationship. He was very argumentitive towards the end and would tell this woman very personal details about our fights and even our sex life. His mistress would contact me every few weeks to inform me about the affair and say nasty things to me. The more I told him about it, the angrier he would get and always constantly tell me I was bothering him. I caught him red handed, yet he still continued his affair. I broke up the relationship and left him for someone else. This cheater was the first abuser I encountered in my relationship.

I had met Andrew while in my relationship with the cheater. When we first began texting back and forth he seemed to be the sweetest and most geniune man I had ever dated. He told me I was beautiful, amazing, and just how much he liked to be around me. We met for drinks and I was in love almost instantly with this man. The relationship issue I believe started when he mentioned I would look perfect if I lost 5 pounds. I was taken back by the comment, but he insisted he ment it only constructively. The comments however continued.

He would pick apart my diet and make snide comments. There were so many I can't even remember them all. I mentioned at one point I use to eat blue cheese a lot on my salads and he said, “Yeah, your body looks like you ate a lot of cheese, really big boned”. I was shocked by his comments, but he did something I would later learn to be called “gaslighting”. To him, I was way too sensitive and I took his comments the wrong way. I wasn't allowed to say anything that upset me without being told, “whatever if you don't like it bye”. His answer to me telling him something was bothering me would be a, “whatever, bye”. I began to question myself and wonder if I really was taking his comments too seriously and if me trying to talk to him about them was annoying.

If it wasn't weight, it was something else. We had went out to dinner with two of my friends and I had informed him about the fact that the couple had reservations hours in advance. When I showed up to his house he was highly intoxicated and faught with me about going and told me I should just go myself. I finally (and stupidly) convinced him to go with me. Throughout the entire dinner he made comments about what I should and shouldn't be eating and kept talking about how I was on a diet to my friends to the point where my friends got extremely angry. Fast forward to when I had taken him home he just randomly started telling me that my friends had their lives together and I did not. I confronted him about how hurtful that was and he didn't remember saying it and threatened to break up with me for my lies.

His gaslighting had me believing that I must have missed part of the conversation or not understood him correctly. The relationship continued on for months with me just holding on to getting to see him on the days where he was extremely charming and loving. I tried to convince myself that it was only when he drinks and if I was just a better girlfriend and stopped his drinking that I could manage him. I was wrong. He would vent about his life to me and many things that were going on but then suddenly when I would begin to speak he would get adgitated or call me dumb and tell me that , “better go get an education”, because he couldn't believe how dumb I was sounding. It got to the point that I was afraid to speak because he would always discount my opinions and I was afraid of looking stupid.

He had a prior girlfriend who was a heroin addict. She called him constantly throughout the five months we were together and he demonized her and would tell me how much more he loved me. Yet, when I would fight back from his abuses he would say I reminded him of her. It got to the point where he was saying every other day or so that I reminded him of his ex girlfriend, and he would say, “and I threw her away like the trash she was”.

Then there was our sex life. He would constantly call me more experienced than him and make comments about how he was never able to achieve an orgasm because he was not use to a girl like me. He would tell me that all I wanted was sex and imply that I was a whore constantly. It hurt me deeply and I began to lose the desire to have sex entirely because I was afraid of him saying things about me being a whore.

I stayed because I believed that I didn't deserve any better and was terrified that I would be alone. He would tell me he wanted to marry me, then the next minute go off the deep end over something that I had said or did. He would have drunken outburts and call me a bitch, whore, slut, cunt, golddigger, etc. I would try to talk to him about it but he would call me a gypsie and a liar who moves from guy to guy. He wants to marry me, but we would need to sign a prenup because I would steal everything he ever worked for. There was no trust in the relationship and he wouldn't even trust me alone in his home after five months of seeing each other almost daily.

His drunken outburts got worse, and people would notice the name calling and yelling. Someone made a comment to him and he got up and left not saying a word. I followed him down the road to a bar and out of the blue said that my cooking was horrible as soon as I sat next to him and I must tell everyone I was being beaten and it was just all my fault. He would nag me constantly over it to the point where I finally told him that he was getting so violent people were hearing him and I wasn't going around talking poorly of him... he was so mad by this he threw water in my face and left.

I finally built up the courage to leave him one day when he began sending me nasty messages. I told him they were rude and mean. He went off the deep end and turned the situation around on me and tried to get me to apologize for “hurting” him. I told him to fuck off and stood my ground.