Everyone’s dated someone who wasn’t quite…normal. Whether they exhibited the most unhinged behavior during the relationship or saved it for the break-up, it’s always a wild ride—but these Redditors had it worse than most. They shared the stories of relationships and splits gone horribly wrong, and they’ll make even your craziest ex look boring.
1. Hunk Of Burning Love
So, in short, I broke up with my ex for a few reasons: I needed to focus on school and he was a distraction. We were not compatible in the long run. And, perhaps most importantly, he clearly loved me and I didn't feel like I could ever actually love him. I did like him but just didn't fall in love. So I broke up with him in the nicest way possible.
I tried to do it gently because he didn't anything wrong during the relationship, but he went kind of crazy. He wouldn't leave me alone and couldn't understand why I didn't think we were a good match. He wanted to work through our differences but I said I didn't want to change my core beliefs and my life goals. Then he said he would change, but I didn't entertain that idea as I feel no one should change core values for someone else.
He also couldn't accept that I just didn't love him. Mind you I never said “I love you” and repeatedly said we were not serious—we didn't date very long—but I guess he grew very attached. Anyway, a few months pass and he texts me asking if we could talk and see why we broke up. At this point, I tell him fine and I think he's just getting closure. I really should have known better.
A few hours later, he sent me a terrifying message: “Just so you know, I would set myself on fire for you”. It's safe to say I didn't have a chat with him after that.
2. Imposter Syndrome
Back when my ex and I were still freshly in a relationship almost three years ago now, this random Instagram account popped up. I won’t share the name of the IG because it was my brother’s name. The account messaged me saying “Hey __! It’s me. I’m back”. I was shocked, happy, and filled with so much hope. My brother and best friend were back after years of being gone.
We talked every day and it was the best part of my life. I really missed him. I told my ex about it too. Most of the conversations we had I shared back with him. My brother was such an important person in my life and all I wanted to do was share his love with the other people in my life. But I started to notice things were a bit off.
My brother had a childhood nickname for me. And he only ever called me this name. He never called me by my birth name. But, when we spoke through this Instagram account, he rarely called me that nickname. He also wouldn’t exactly remember how core memories between us happened. Like the firework story or the comics we wrote.
It almost felt like one of those stories where a catfish is pretending to be your loved one over the phone. The person behind this account didn’t ever ask anything of me. No money, no help, nothing. And I know it was kinda naive of me to believe this was him. No pictures, no proof, just a “hey __! It’s me” type of message. To be fair, the name he called me in the original message was my childhood nickname.
At the time, I had only recently started talking about my brother again. When I still lived at home it was hard to and for the longest time, I didn’t understand why my mom was so against talking about him. I understand now sadly. Besides, I was miserable without him. My brother was my best friend. My hero. I just wanted to see him again.
After noticing so many weird things with this account I kinda got fed up. I asked if this was really my brother—and the response I got was devastating. It said: “I’m so sorry, he loves you so much”. And then the account was deleted. My heart broke. My ex helped me through that feeling of losing my brother again. But now I had hope he was alive and out there somewhere.
Fast forward a few years, my ex sits me down and says we need to talk. I say okay and he informs me that he had hired a private investigator (behind my back) to look for my brother. He just wanted to reunite us. We had a surprise vacation planned and were set to leave in three days, so the first thing I thought was “Oh my god, you found my brother. That’s where we’re going”! So as I was jumping around excited to see him again, he brought me back down to earth—and what he told me was utterly shattering.
He said: "I regret to inform you, but a reunion in this existence won't be possible..." He then continued by presenting the official document confirming my brother's passing to me. My brother had taken his own life in 2016. But the nightmare didn’t end there. Right after our vacation, he broke up with me. Months have passed since the breakup and I’m so much better off. This ex managed to lock me in a hospital for grieving the loss of my brother, hurt my cat, and was extremely mentally abusive.
A few days ago I was sitting in my kitchen with my best friend and we were talking about my brother’s upcoming funeral. She asked me when he passed since I never really talked about that. I told her 2016. She said that isn’t possible because she got texts from the Instagram account a few years back. She even showed me the messages.
I looked at them and the messages consisted of him telling her to stay out of my life. To back off, etc. I reached out to some people I had lost contact with around the time that IG account popped up and they all had similar messages from him. They knew how much he meant to me, so they just backed off. We connected the dots.
I looked back on some other shady stuff and made a horrifying realization. My ex was behind the account. He faked being my brother for what? He ruined my friendships with good people in my life. And I still don’t know why nor will I ever. I never want to see his face again. I should also mention that I never wanted to hire a PI and he knew this.
I always had a feeling he was gone but I wanted to hold onto false hope. It was comforting. I mean, we were so close growing up and yet once I was an adult he never found a way to reach out to me and I tried finding him myself at one point. But there was no social media of his. So I just imagined he was living this happy life. And my ex took that from me.
He went behind my back knowing I didn’t want a PI and hired one anyways. After I found out about my brother I spiraled and barely ate, barely slept, I called off work more times than I can count. I’m surprised they didn’t fire me. I 100% believe he was behind the account because when we broke up he was accusing me of making fake profiles all over to stalk him.
Usually I only see people accuse others of crazy stuff like that if they’re guilty of said thing. I also found it odd that whenever I’d talk to my “brother” about things between me and my ex he would just say “that sucks” or blame me for our issues or say I should just forgive him. My brother also wasn’t aggressive ever. He was protective but he would never ever message someone telling them to just stay away nor would he ever tell me to just apologize to keep the peace or make it all my fault.
He was my biggest supporter. And whenever I’d tell him (my brother) about these things, my ex would start to act weird and cold. And yes, even though my brother passed in 2016 I plan to hold a funeral for him this year. I was never at his original funeral nor do I know if he actually got one. I swear I could write a whole book about the horrible things my ex did to me and the way he lived.
It was disgusting and yes, I 100% plan on taking action for what he did to my cat and to my mental state. It’s so hard for me to trust people now and I get scared telling people stories of my brother. I miss him so much and I have to work today but all I wanna do is lay in bed and cry.
3. Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody’s Coming To Get Me
I dated a guy from the ages of 16 to 21 who was awful to me. I haven't seen or spoken to him in 14 years. He left me high and dry for bills and rent so he could move across the country. He said he was tired of me "ruining" his life. After he left, I managed to pull myself out of the bad situation I was in. I had no family or friends to turn to because he isolated me from them.
I also had to drop out of high school to support both of us. Fast forward 14 years and I'm now happily married to a wonderful man and a few years away from finishing my doctorate. But unfortunately, I’ve still had to deal with my ex. Over the years, this guy has reached out to be friends again and once even apologized to me. I've ignored him.
The first time he contacted me after the breakup, I told him I would never speak to him again and to leave me alone. Instead, he resorted to unspeakable behavior. He ended up stalking me online and at work for a year after that. After the stalking, I've occasionally checked in on his social media out of safety concerns for myself. What I've come to learn is that he never got his life together.
In fact, things have gotten much worse for him. When we were dating, he had some odd behaviors that I didn't recognize as red flags because I was mentally and emotionally beaten down. He was convinced that I would poison his food. He would often make me switch plates numerous times with him before he would eat. If he felt "weird" after, he would become aggressive.
He also had this preoccupation with his IQ. He would constantly take online IQ tests then make me take them, just to tell me he was smarter than me and most other people. I now recognize these behaviors as early symptoms of paranoia and narcissism. These behaviors have now turned into what I believe is a persecutory delusional disorder.
He is convinced that a cartel is after him and dosing his food and smokes. He believes his mom was kidnapped and replaced with a body double. He wrote her off after she refused to take a DNA test to satisfy him. He also thinks he has a "doppelganger" in a cartel who is trying to take his identity. He just spent the last year or so homeless trying to run away from this supposed cartel and prove that they exist. The creepiest part?
My name has popped up from time to time on his social media posts. I've chalked that up to him wanting to relive a part of his life before it took a steep downturn. According to his posts, he sees what happened in our relationship as much different than it was (i.e., he never wanted to break up, only tried to help me, etc.). None of that is true.
Seeing my name in his posts used to bother me, but I remind myself that he isn't well and to just keep an eye out. Well, then he took it up a notch. Last night, I saw something in one of his posts that I didn't expect, my husband's name. I met my husband 6-7 years after him. They never met. He has now created this narrative that my husband is his look-alike in the cartel and that I'm the one behind everything happening to him.
He thinks that the only reason I'm with my husband is because he looks like him. They look nothing alike. They're also different ethnicities. To me, this sounds further delusional and even narcissistic. Honestly, I'm a bit disturbed now. Thankfully, I moved out-of-state a few years ago, so I feel safer than I would back in my home state.
4. Overselling The Story
I broke up with my ex about six months ago. I broke up with him because he lied all the time to the point where he couldn’t even tell the truth about his drive home from work. He even lied to be about being discharged from the army. That was the last straw. I met a new guy after we broke up and we got together about a month after I broke up with my ex.
My ex was thoroughly convinced I'd cheated on him and started spreading rumors about how I cheated on him and our two-year relationship was a lie. About three months later, my ex texts me about how he’s so lonely and he hasn’t met anyone etc., he started talking about how he’s going to school and doing a lot better in life. I congratulated him and went on my way.
About five months after the break-up he texted me again—and what he said was shocking. He told me how he has a kid. A kid? Yes, a kid, crazy. I asked who he knocked up and he said no one. He’s going to be a step dad. I was very confused. He goes on to tell me he’s engaged. It’s just five months after we broke up. I thought he was on something but I was like congrats, whatever.
He proceeded to randomly text me about how happy he was with this girl. However he never had her on any of his social media and none of our mutual friends knew about her. Flash forward to six months later, and his “fiancé” texts me. Why, I have no idea, but I was guessing to see if I was perceived as some sort of concern. So I played along and played nice.
She was telling me about how her baby daddy is crazy and she was on probation because of him, he hacked all of her online accounts, and then how my ex was the best thing that came into her life. I responded acting like I cared and went on my way with my day. A few days later a few mutual friends and my ex hung out. He called them after having a few drinks asking if they wanted to go to Target.
They were in town for a couple days and wanted to see him so they said sure. That’s when things took a disturbing turn. My ex was excessively touchy with my female friend, behaving inappropriately and vocalizing his desire for a threesome.In the end he ended up getting punched in Target by my male friend and they took him home. But he forgot his phone in the back seat of their car.
He called from his “fiancés” phone, and the contact wasn’t even saved in his phone, which we all thought was a little weird. My friends dropped him phone off outside the building at his truck and asked me to text his “fiancé” to tell her the phone was there. So I did. She asked what happened and I started telling her what my friends said.
While explaining I said something along the lines of “I would be mad if my fiancé was grabbing on another girl”. She responded with “Fiancé? Do you see a ring on this finger”? I sent her the screenshots of him saying they were engaged. The reaction said it all. They both blocked me. She didn’t even know that she was “engaged” to him!
I come to find out he’s not in school and still has the same minimum wage job he had when we were together. Biggest Liar Ever!
5. Beaten To The Punch
Years ago I dated a girl. She would be the absolute ruin of my life. When we first started dating in my senior year, I had never dated anyone before, first love, first partner, first true connection—or so I thought. I didn’t heed the warnings from my then-friends, or even the warning signs I noticed. She’d flirt with guys in front of me and she’d use the physical side of our relationship as a bargaining chip.
She’d mock me—and I am not exaggerating when I say this—she’d yell at me if I said ANYTHING, if I didn’t immediately apologize right after. I had to train not to apologize after every sentence after we split. I’m not acting like I’m some saint, either. I’ve had anger issues all my life, I inherited it from my father, so I’d snap and say some pretty terrible things, some I still regret.
But one day, I had enough. I can’t remember what it was, or when, but it was over. We’d “split” before, but this felt final. Or so I thought. Two days later, she shows up on my doorstep, “wants her things” she says. So I invite her in. She sits on my couch in my room and tells me she slept with my old wrestling partner, the guy who taught me everything.
I was furious, but it created a new link. I became the crazy ex. Fake Facebooks, went to her house once. I regret it all. I was depressed, and had extreme anxiety. Not an excuse, but it’s what happened. I’m better now, I promise. She had built my entire self-worth on what she thought of me, that I couldn’t NOT have her approval. It was terrible.
Cut to a year later. I’m dating a new girl. She’s my world. I get a new job. That’s when I get the absolute worst surprise. My boss is my ex’s dad. She isn’t close to him so hopefully I can just avoid her. One day my girlfriend tells me my ex texted her. I ask what she sent, and it was fake texts of me and ex. Obviously fake. Made minutes before the screenshot, same day, etc.
Sadly, my girlfriend at the time doesn’t believe me—and does the unthinkable. She goes to a birthday party, gets hammered, and makes out with another guy. I end up losing my job. Later that month my best friend suggests getting a restraining order against my ex due to the text fiasco. I agree. Well, I wasn’t the only one with that idea. Guess who’s there? My ex.
She’s acting like I’m gonna attack her right there, but we just wait for our papers, and leave. I get served a week or so later, and a law advice place tells me to just drop my order. So I do. Long story short, I lose the order. She gets a year restraining order on me, but the judge is nice enough to keep it off my record. Nice.
It’s been over a year now, and my last girlfriend and I never recovered, I could never find another job, and I’m still afraid of seeing her again. My life was ruined by her, but I can never talk about it, because it’s old news.
6. God Complex
I wanted to share my "Crazy Ex" story now that the initial shock is over and I'm happily in a long-term relationship. All of this took place from when I was 19-23, and my current age is 26. My crazy ex is four years older, so that would make him 24-28 during the events of this story. Additionally, when we started dating, I was attending a small Christian Bible College, identifying as a Mennonite, Protestant Christian.
I attended this college for three semesters and then transferred to a large university, where I obtained a degree in my current field. During my time at Bible School I was actively questioning my faith, and by the time I was out of Bible School for a year I identified as an agnostic—which was also a couple of months after my breakup with my ex.
I would say the break-up contributed to the deconversion, but was not the entire reason and I'm sure would've happened anyways if I had never had this relationship. I also want to point out that I don't want anybody to think this story is an attack on Christians. It is about my crazy ex. We met at a fitness class, I was 19 and had never been in a relationship before.
After admiring him from afar for a while, I mustered up the courage and displayed interest in him—he asked me out and it did not take long for us to begin dating. He was inexperienced himself and had never had a girlfriend. In retrospect, I really did not know him that well. I think I was just young and excited and wanted to have a boyfriend.
At first it was great. I always had somebody to hang out with, he had an off-campus house, we would go on walks, play videos games, watch movies, and other fitness things like kickboxing and running. I later introduced him to my friend group at the time and we had a weekly board game night at his house. Honestly there are a lot of great memories.
During our walks we often talked about what being a couple meant, and what roles men and women should have in a relationship. During this time, I learned something shocking about him. My ex wanted to save his first kiss for the wedding altar. Even though I was religious at the time I thought this was extreme, but I tried to respect that.
Additionally my ex told me that he believed in a biblical marriage, which he described as that the man is the leader and since he loves his wife he will take everything into account. I remember aggressively agreeing to that statement and being so happy that I had found myself a man that could provide. However, he soon proved that his actions were not the same as his words.
We quickly became physical and lost our virginities to one another. He would make me feel guilty about it (and I already felt SO GUILTY on my own, for I had wanted to wait until marriage) and blamed me, even though we both consented to it. Also his idea of being a leader was to boss me around without questioning, not let me pay for anything to the point where he would cancel outings.
He’d also not pay the internet bill at his house and ask for money from his parents, all while bragging about how much he worked and how much his job payed him. He pushed marriage on me constantly, even though I shared with him many times I did not want to marry at age 20. Also I would ask him to do Bible studies and pray with me, but he wouldn't let me instigate it, as it was "the man's job to be spiritual leader" and I wasn't allowed to.
Also, I began to notice some other red flags. All of his friendships were people that I had introduced him to, he admitted to thinking he was smarter than me because he was older and a man. We had many other issues, and once I moved away to start university the problems were only exacerbated from being long distance. A mutual friend of ours described him as having a superiority complex—which I think is accurate.
After 13 months, I finally realized that I deserved better and I dumped him. He pleaded with me to wait until the semester was over so he could take me on a trip and "prove that he was worthy". I said no and we broke up for good. About two months later, I was working a summer job in a National Park and was very lonely and messaged him to meet up—which he declined. Thanks heavens, I was so stupid.
After that, all communication stopped. It was around this time that I stepped away from my Christian life and began to experiment with partying, boys, other belief systems, etc. My ex and I stayed friends on Facebook. A year after we broke up, my crazy ex messages me out of the blue asking to meet up. I say no. A two months (in the month of July) later I post on Facebook that I am in a new relationship. I get a surprising response.
My ex sends me a message congratulating me. I think this is really weird and I ignore him. A month later (August), he posts on Facebook that he is in a new relationship. I was surprised as he had literally been messaging me a month prior but whatever. His new girlfriend is a social media over-sharer and tagged my ex in everything so I was able to get all the details.
By October, they are engaged, co-own a pet, and have a wedding date set for December. So in the span of less than six months my ex (presumably anyways) met somebody and married them. In early November, I get a Facebook message from his fiancée. She is young, a college freshman. Her message was seriously infuriating. She explained who she was, and then asked me if we had ever gone all the way.
Her reasoning was, "There are rumors that you guys did it and people think I am a harlot because of it”. I was pretty upset to get this message for numerous reasons. It's pretty bold to ask a stranger if they had ever did it with their current fiancé, also it showed that my ex was still terrible and lying to his fiancé like he did to me.
Also in what universe are you a sinner because your fiancé may or may not have done it with a former partner?! I responded that my personal life was none of her business and that if she wanted to know she could ask my ex. Her response was "But he won't tell me”! This made me feel very bad for her—for I was in her exact situation two years prior.
One week before their December wedding, my ex messages me, with a simple "Hey". I immediately know something is up, and I ask him what he wants. He proceeds to apologize for taking my virginity, breaking up with me unexpectedly, and then never talking to me again. At this point I was mad. I admit the conversation we had was not my finest moment, but I had enough of this guy.
I reminded him that I broke up with him, that losing my virginity is a dated social construct and that I don't regret losing it to him, because at the time I thought I loved him. He told me that he is actively in a relationship with Jesus and that Jesus was pointing out his wrongs to him. I told my ex that I didn't care about his relationship with Jesus.
He then responds, "Well if you don't feel bad doing it, we should just do it again”! This of course, made me angry, and I responded, "Does this have anything to do with your fiancée messaging me”?! and he responds, “I actually broke up with her yesterday—she has a personality disorder that I did not know about”. This made me rage even more.
Who would be so thoughtless as to end their engagement a week before the wedding, placing the blame on her mental health? I responded to him that he needs to respect women because he clearly did not respect her and that he did not respect me during our relationship. He told me he prayed to God every day to help him treat women with respect.
I responded that he was a disgusting human being because he has to pray to a god to give women respect, not because he sees them as individual human beings. He agreed with me that he was despicable but that he had found redemption through Christ and that he would pray for me every day until the end. I told him I don't care if he wastes his time praying for me.
After this he deleted me off of social media, and we have not talked since. However, I would still periodically creep his socials, and I was still Facebook friends with some of his family members. At this point, I found his behavior entertaining and he descended further and further into a couch theologian with fundamentalist, narrow-minded views. But it didn’t end there.
After his called-off wedding in December, he announced on Facebook the following August that he was engaged, AGAIN! Thrilled that there was more drama to be had, I went into instant creeping mode. His new fiancée was older than him, a widowed housewife with two young children, whom she homeschools.
I immediately question the union—here is a woman I assume is desperate, widowed with no formal education or skills to support her family. I fear for her, but can only hope for the best. They get married, and shortly after the marriage announce a pregnancy. The child is born, a girl and all of my ex's photos on Facebook are of him with his baby.
I fear for what kind of stepfather he is to the other children. I was creeping and discovered that his wife wrote blog posts about her previous late husband's journey with cancer, and eventual passing. She continued on with the blog posts after he was gone, and there were several posts outlining her faith and courtship with my ex.
I was impressed with how articulate and intelligent this woman appeared through her blog posts and how somebody like her could end up with such a dud like my ex. One thing the blog clarified for me was that she and my ex matched in January—approx. six weeks after our Facebook fight and a month after his supposed wedding with this other girl.
They got married the following August. The blog post also confirmed my suspicions about her being desperate—having to sell her old house, move in with her mom, and the struggles she had being a young widow. One of the blog posts was written by my ex—and he mostly talked about theology and how her theology matched his, etc.
Unless my ex has drastically changed, which I doubt, I think it is all lies and was just the "honeymoon stage" like we had in our relationship. That’s not even the craziest part. To make matters more interesting, I reconnected into an old friend who also knew my ex back from the Bible School days. She informed me that my ex (in between our relationship and his first engagement) fell for a dating scam and ended up sending money to a fake girlfriend that lived overseas.
She said it got so bad that he had to sell his motorbike and his house (which now that she mentioned it, I remembered that he had abruptly sold his house to his sister and sold his bike). His current wife hasn't posted on the blog in over a year. Both their socials have gone silent, either from little use or increased privacy settings.
7. Makin’ Believe
So, three years ago, I made the dire mistake of going on Tinder. I matched with this guy from Canada, and we both were in med school. He was 33 years old. He was the one initiating conversation irregularly—like once every 3-4 weeks. He used kissing emojis and I sometimes answered with kissing emojis as you know, I thought that kissing emojis are not that important, I use them all the time and in majority of times it means nothing to me.
We went on like three dates in a period of two years and we kissed on the lips once. Now, some time ago, I got into a wonderful relationship. I posted a question about something on my Reddit account and I mentioned my boyfriend. I never could’ve predicted the chaos this would create. This nutjob stalked all my social networks and found the article and started to bombard me with questions.
He was asking me why I cheated on him on him and so on. I was like what? Didn't know we were in relationship but okay, sorry if I hurt you! That’s when the fun stuff started to happen. He was following me on Instagram and started to bombard all the guys I followed on to see which one was my boyfriend! Almost a year has passed and he still does it.
He makes a lot of new accounts and tries to "learn the truth". Recently, he started to just send me e-mails where he tells me how he has thought about me for 10,000 hours, how he had to leave medicine because of me. He says that I completely ruined his life. I really couldn't imagine a 33-year-old would use kissing emojis without actual meeting and having physical contact (not counting that one kiss in person).
Even worse, I recently learned he is one of the "Proud Boys”—which, as I understand it is some kind of strange group of males with interesting views. I hate the thought of having hurt anyone, but I am not 100% sure everything he tells me is true. It always feels like he’s trying to get a rise out of me.
8. Baby Wars
My boyfriend and I have been together for six years, since I was 13. He and his ex dated before that—he was 14 and she was 16. They dated for four months and that was it apart from them talking during our on-again-off-again stuff a few years ago. I am currently pregnant with our first child and it's been hard with family drama and living situations but overall, we’re thrilled.
She's also pregnant at the moment. Her and her current boyfriend were pregnant once before but he was stillborn so this is a big deal for her, which I completely respect. She's done a lot of terrible things over the years but I was genuinely happy for her. However, we’re literally due like a week apart—and it’s driving her off the deep end. She goes so out of her way to out-do anything having to do with pregnancy.
It's petty and stupid but it’s making me crazy. I never really post or talk about my pregnancy I just don't feel the need. She, on the other hand, posts daily which I understand. She's excited and wants to share that. The problem is the few things I have posted have been followed up by her posting nearly the exact same posts or posts that are very clearly directed at me.
We have basically the same friend group so it's a little frustrating that she can't share the spotlight even a little and especially that she's making passive-aggressive cryptic posts when I've done nothing but wish her well and try to be understanding because of the loss she went through. But that’s not the most infuriating part.
On top of that, mutual friends have told me she's still telling people how she's in love with my boyfriend and wants him back which is just uncomfortable given everything going on. I just don't understand how she can be so obsessed with him when they dated for such a short time as children or why she's so determined to undermine my pregnancy when I've hardly ever spoken to her let alone done something to deserve her being hateful towards me.
I mean I get that she wants the spotlight since this is so important to her but it's my first baby and I've had a lot of drama and pain during my pregnancy so I'd like to have a little positivity when it comes to sharing it with friends and family.
9. Do You Do Voodoo?
I had been with my ex for five years. Last summer we broke up, mostly because of her lies, infidelity and her drinking problem. Still, I tried to be the good guy for her again after the breakup, like visiting so her kids don't take it too hard. About 6-7 months ago, she started to date a friend who wanted her for the last few years. I thought it would get her out of my hair—instead, it set her off.
She sent me tons and tons of hate messages, warnings, etc. Then, she said that she was cursing me to an eternity of pain. Never spoke to her again and stayed the heck away. The thing is, even many months later, she still sends me hate messages and all. Yesterday she sent me a picture of an altar in her room with a picture of me, candles and stuff like that.
She just said that I am doomed and that she still curses me. Imagine her boyfriend in all that? She still spends that much energy to try to get to me, for no reason, after breaking my heart. All of that without him knowing, I would guess.
10. Let’s Split The Bill
I dated this girl, we will call her Candy. I should have known she was a nut job from the get-go but I was young and dumb. When I split with her I started dating the future mother of my daughter—let’s call her Cassie. To say that Candy didn’t take this well would be an understatement. She started telling Cassie to not get to comfortable dating me and that I’m only with her to make her jealous.
She went as far as to tell Cassie that even though he is spending time with you and making you think he loves you, he comes to see me at night and that I text her all the time. After all the reassuring and proving that it was all lies, this chick decided to go off the rail and scratch designs into Cassie's car. But there was something she didn’t think of.
She did it in a Walmart parking lot, and there were cameras so it was all caught on tape. After going through the hassle with security and management, I take Cassie back to her car since she is going home for the day. A few days later, she gets the estimate on what the cost would be for the repair and tells me and asks me to hand it off to the nutjob.
I hand Candy the estimate. She turns to me and says well this wouldn’t have happened if you had just stayed with me instead of going out with her. She then proceeded to tell me, "Look, I’m sorry, and tell Cassie that I’m sorry". I don’t know how she wants to take care of this—so she says I can pay, she can pay, or we can go halfsies on the repair.
She says that’s what I want to do—and her reasoning was totally unhinged. She says, "If I’m being honest with you, you should pay my part since I did this over you". I looked at her shocked and walked away.
11. A Not-So-Merry Christmas
I was in a VERY long-term relationship with a lovely lady. What she wanted in life changed over time, and thus we ended up with mutually-exclusive aims for our relationship. Recognizing this, we broke up, in spite of our wanting to be together. We stayed good friends. At the time of this story, I was in the final stages of buying her out of the house we had bought together, but this was taking a while because of banks and solicitors.
I’d been single over a year, and decided to look at online dating. I got pretty much nowhere, since I’m childfree, a nerd/geek, and still very into my rock music in spite of pushing 40 at the time. It’s 4am on the 1st December, and I’ve come home from dancing down at the rock club. While putting a brush through my hair, I’m browsing a dating site.
I happen upon a gorgeous childfree rock chick, who paints herself as a self-sufficient, independent, confident lady. In other words, my dream date! I couldn’t have known just how much this moment was what took my life from okay to a living nightmare. I muster all of my art and craft an intro message to send to her. I fire it off, and go to bed, expecting to never hear back, since she’s so far out of my league, she’s actually playing a different sport.
When I wake up in there’s a message from this lady. She claims that’s the best message any guy has ever sent her on such a site. She asks what the catch is since my profile makes me seem too good to be true. We end up chatting through the site. After a few hours, we move over to Facebook, and chat a lot more on messenger. On the Sunday, we have a video chat, and then more text chat through the day.
More text chat Monday and Tuesday. She’d just moved to my country, where she’d always wanted to live, starting a job in the new year, and was in a hotel for a couple of weeks while she got settled. She’s saved up six months of funds, to make sure she as enough to last to her first paycheque. Respect. Tuesday night, she’s on her own, hungry, but is feeling down that she has to eat alone.
I offer to hang out via vid chat while she eats. Apparently, she finds this incredibly sweet. Wednesday, since I have Friday off, works for plans that have fallen through, and she is also available. I ask for and we arrange for a date that Friday. We chat more, and then more on Thursday. During Thursday’s chats we’re both bricking it.
So I point out that this could be a “mate date” to start with, and I promise to not even try for a kiss. She loves this idea. Friday comes. I drive two hours to see her. I’ve brought freshly made sugary treats for her. She is even more stunning in the flesh. It becomes apparent that while I’m thinking “why would someone this hot & amazing be into me”, she has parallel thoughts.
We then spend several hours hanging around town near her place, going to shops, looking at touristy stuff, having a meal, etc. I have had a brilliant time with her. By the end there are a lot of hugs, and I depart for home. I get home to messages from her, we vid chat more. She’s posting for all to see how she’s had a brilliant time with the best guy ever.
We start chatting & vid-chatting every day. She makes references to me as being things such as her “wish-he-was-my-boyfriend”. She is very sweet towards me. On the Tuesday, she asks for a second date. We arrange Saturday. I end up being ill and we push back to Sunday. Sunday, the weather is going to be terrible, so our plans for our date are not going to work.
I arrange an “indoor picnic” for us, which she loves. She kisses me, and tells me she wants us to be a couple. I’m over the moon. We kiss and hung and chat a lot. During that time, she receives a call. It’s the friend she was going to be staying with over Christmas while between homes for a few days. She cannot stay after all, she’s going to be homeless during Christmas week.
As I was already planning on inviting her up for a few days in that time for my birthday, I offer to let her stay a little longer so she isn’t homeless. She’s thrilled. During our chats in the week, we arrange for her to come down to mine on the Thursday evening. Thursday evening, her journey was unusually quick, and she gets too my house a minute before I get home from work.
She loves my place, and loves the fact that I’ve fixed most of it up myself. She finds it super-comfortable. I cook for her, and she loves my food. I take her to bed that night, what we do in bed I leave up to her. Not giving any details here, but she seemed super-happy, though worried that I’d not had enough fun. I told her that I definitely had no complaints beyond exhaustion.
I have a short work-shift Friday morning, we spend Friday afternoon and evening together. She freaks out a little on Friday night over how I expressed something and my history with my ex. It was a red flag, but I ignored it. I was too into her. But I calm her down, and we end up very close. Saturday, we spend all day and all evening together. It’s a lot of fun no matter what we’re doing.
We verbally express our love for the first time. She explains that her dream guy was [my general physical description] from [my county], ever since she was young (in hindsight, another red flag, but I’d never dealt with a narcissist before). She tells me she’s never actually been with anyone she’s fallen for like this before (again, another red flag I’d not the experience to see at the time). She continues being incredibly sweet to me.
And now we get to Sunday 23rd December. This is the day it all turns around in the most horrifying way. We get up in the morning, spend some time together before some friends turn up for a nerdy game. This game is an annual tradition, and will include my ex, who I’m still fiends with. I’ve been super up-front about this.
I did forget that a mate of mine was turning up a little early to help me with some technical questions for a job application, and she lets him in while I’m in the shower. I apologize and she’s OK. Next to arrive is my ex. Who has her own key, as she still owns half the place, and a load of her stuff is still there. My girlfriend is a little freaked out by this.
My ex and my girlfriend have similar figures & looks (I have a type), and my girlfriend freaks out about this. My friends all head to the kitchen for drinks and snacks on their own, as the house is the local geek-central, and they’re used to doing this. This also freaks my girlfriend out. I try to calm her down, but she just shouts at me to go and play the game with my guests.
I leave her to it. After a while, she calls to me, and I go to check on her. She’s OK, has some questions about the local area, and sends me back to carry on with the game. OK. The game ends. I win. My ex jokes that it’s an early birthday present from them all. My ex and I also exchange (wrapped) Christmas gifts (as I said, still friends) for Christmas day.
My friends leave, and I go through to my girlfriend. She’s stumbling around the place as if she’s been drinking, and is struggling to put her shoes on, but determined to go out for a smoke. I realize I shouldn’t leave her on her own. While she’s getting ready, I make a disturbing discovery. I happen upon four empty sleeves of what turn out to be sleeping pills. Also, a glass that smells of something strong.
I’m worried. I follow her out of the house and she punches me in the torso and screams at me to leave her alone. I’m twice her size, so the punches don’t bother me. I follow her at a distance to make sure she’s safe. Every few hundred meters, she runs back to punch me (getting more serious as time goes on, until I had to block the blows with my arm) and screaming at me to get back together with my ex! And she’s saying I should throw my ex and all her stuff out of my house.
As she storms around the area near my house, I call the emergency services, as I’m worried sick about her. She hears me talking and so that she cannot be found from my description, sits down and removes here shoes and jeans before carrying on. I eventually manage to kite her back to my house, where she strips to her underwear, crawls into the (empty) bath, and starts banging her head against the side.
Thankfully, this is when the paramedics showed up! I gave the packets of sleeping pills over to them, and explained what was happening. They got her out the bath, dressed, and into the ambulance, and I came along with them. As we were dropped off at the hospital, one of the paramedics took me aside. What he said made my blood run cold.
He advised me to get out of the relationship ASAP. Another red flag, but hey, I was in love, how could I walk away? The hospital was quiet and my girlfriend fell asleep. She would occasionally be woken up for vitals, blood tests, etc., and when she came around, she was calling out for me, wanting to hold my hand, etc. After six hours, they thought she was OK, but should be kept in overnight, and I should go home and eat something.
However, my girlfriend just wanted to go back to mine, and was being her usual self, being sweet to me, etc. With my girlfriend having discharged herself, we walked home, since I don’t live far away. On the walk, she became increasingly upset at me, started hitting me again, blaming me for things like her lighter being in her other jeans, or having lost a stone from her ring while punching me.
She keeps insisting I should get back with my ex. She said she was leaving the following day. At this point, I realize I can’t make her happy for whatever reason, and just go with this. It doesn’t help that I’m on the autistic spectrum and don’t react well to this kind of confrontation. On getting home, I try to help her pack her bags, but this just freaks her out.
When she calms a little, she asks how my game went anyway. I think she's coming back around. I tell her I won, but my ex said she let me win as a birthday present. This leads to "She got you a birthday present?!”? and an explosion of fists! It ends up that I’m sat on the floor with her standing over me. She’s gripping my arms with her fingers, nails sinking into my flesh full-pelt, screaming at me that she wants my ex’s address so she can go and take her life, and would then happily get taken in by authorities!
I kite my girlfriend out the house, lock us both out and call 9-1-1. They turn up with an ambulance in tow. I’m told to stay in the other room, even if she shouts for me. There’s one officer and one paramedic in each room. We both give our stories. The paramedics are worried about my obvious injuries, I’m more worried about my girlfriend.
The officers and paramedics elect to take her to the local psychiatric unit for assessment. She’d screaming for me as they take here away. I’m curled-up, sobbing in tears as this breaks my heart. I have a very quick bite to eat and catch a few hours of sleep. I wake up early, Christmas eve, unable to sleep. I message two close friends for want of a shoulder to cry on, and shower and have breakfast.
I’ve given my number to the officer and paramedics, so am expecting to need to go and collect my girlfriend at some point. My two friends both phone me. I fill them in. One advises me that the girlfriend has crossed the line and I need to take a stand on this. The other pops around to give me a hug. Around dinner time, my girlfriend shows up at my door.
I’m expecting she will apologize—but I was so, so wrong. She’d taken too much/little of something. Instead, she’s angry at me. To her, we had a fight, so I called the authorities, and got her thrown in a One-Flew-Over-the-cuckoo’s-Nest-style hospital. She has with her a needle she snagged at the hospital, and she’s going to use it to take her own life in my bed.
I managed to wrest the needle from her. I apologize for upsetting her, but not for anything I’ve done as I still don’t know what I actually did wrong! I text my mum to let her now that I’ll be late or absent for Christmas. My girlfriend asks to text my mum, and I let her. My mum calls me, speaks to my girlfriend, and my mum decides we should just head on down to see them as planned.
My girlfriend and I get ready. She changes into the most gorgeous outfit, but is still angry at me over nothing I’ve done wrong, and has yet to apologize for her behavior, so I say nothing. She hadn’t packed any other clothes, and I check with her, but she tells me to stop complaining and just go. I drive us down to my parents’ place. She’s nice to them but still sniping at me.
My dad takes her out for a walk to see some local Christmas lights, while my mum and I talk. She explains that their plan is to let whatever is in my girlfriend’s system clear tonight, and we can have a nice Christmas the following day. My dad and girlfriend get back. We all settle in front of the TV. My girlfriend complains I’m not even holding her hand or sitting next to her.
I sit with her and she cuddles up to me, before falling asleep. I carry her to bed. She wakes up a little later, undresses, and cuddles up to me in bed. I thought my nightmare might be over—but I was so wrong. The following morning, she’s confused. She doesn’t remember coming to bed or undressing, and thinks I’ve done something to her. She has no change of clothes.
I didn’t even comment on her outfit. She’s still convinced that it’s all my fault. I don’t really love her, I’m just using her for my own kicks. I’m still waiting for her to apologize and/or tell me what I actually did wrong. We fight through the morning, I drag her outside to get her away from my nephews, when my sister comes up. She’s nice to my family, nasty to me.
I arrange to take her back to mine, and deal there. My dad arranges to follow me, and we will then get her into a hotel where she can chill and calm down. On the way home, she continually implies that she might harm herself. She says that when I return to work, she will do it in my bed. We return home, I allow her inside, and promptly contact the emergency services, as she's expressing intentions of self-harm.
Paramedics show up just after my dad. My girlfriend and I are in with the paramedics while my dad arranges a near-ish hotel. Paramedics talk to her on her own. She admits this was all an act to get me to be sweet to her again. Unfortunately for her, her behavior interacted with my autistic spectrum to shut me down to a coldly logical position.
I point out that she had completely messed with my head, and that if we’re to have a chance, I need a few hours without her. We’ll put her in a hotel for the next two nights. I’ll come and see her tomorrow. We pack all her stuff, and take her to the hotel. It’s a cheap basic place. I have to assure the staff that it’s me she’s upset at, and I’m not staying.
I head back to my house. Her friends have contacted me on Facebook to see what’s happening as she’s upset. I fill them in. That’s when they reveal the dark truth. It turns out she’s pulled this stuff before. They think I’m a stand-up guy for how I handled it. I get back to my parents’ house. Finally get to eat. It’s now about ten at night.
My sister stays up late with me, we talk things through. My sister is awesome. The following morning, I wake up refreshed. I’m off the roller-coaster and know what I need to do. I arrange to meet some friends to back me up, so I can go and break things off with her. I promised her that I’d never lie to her, cheat on her, harm her, hurt her, etc., and she’s done all these things to me.
I realize I may not be able to say this stuff, so I write it all in a letter I can hand over in case. I let her know the exact time and place to meet, then unfriend her on Facebook. My friends meet me an hour before. I explain, and they are horrified. My girlfriend doesn’t show up. I’m relieved, as I have now kept all my promises. I get home, I have a message from my now ex-girlfriend, claiming she wasn’t even at the hotel.
I paste the contents of the letter into Messenger, ask her not to contact me again, and block her on messenger. It’s now the 26th of December. But there’s been some devastating aftermath. For the next few days, I suffered panic attacks and mental exhaustion. My friends have to come and take care of me, and I can’t leave the house on my own.
My many friends rally around to help me rehabilitate over the coming weeks. I’m lucky to have awesome friends and family. It takes five weeks for most of the physical damage to heal. I’m still having physiotherapy on my arm now, over a year later. Physiologically, I’m messed up badly for a couple of months, and a little bit for a good six months after that.
I’m still a little paranoid about relationships at this point. Three months later, I found messages she’d sent after I blocked her. Being mean to me in some very hurtful ways. I don’t know what it is that is wrong with her. I just hope that she can get the help and support she obviously needs, and nobody else has to go through what I did.
12. Discomfort Food
I had been dating this woman for about six months. Generally, things were pretty sweet, but she did have one negative aspect to her nature: she was rather overly fond of the bottle, and she was one of those individuals who, when indulging in her favorite tipple, would instantly flip from being perfectly rational to going crazy once she’d hit a certain level of consumption.
Of course, love being blind, I tolerated this particular foible—until one day she went way too far. Some exposition: it all started when I got a phone call one day from the husband of a very dear friend of mine, a friend who I’d known for over 25 years and who was, for all intents and purposes, my sister. She had just been rushed into hospital with a suspected brain tumor.
I promptly called some mutual friends and asked if I might crash at their place for a few days while I came down to visit her. Arrangements made, I drove down on my bike to London from the West Country that day—this was on a Wednesday in late December. As it happened, I ended up not being allowed to see my friend until the Friday afternoon, as she’d had to undergo major surgery.
I was able to visit her for a few hours but for reasons that are not important to this story, I was obliged to be back home for the Saturday morning. Late Friday afternoon, I drove home. About two-thirds of the way home, I felt my phone go off, so I pulled into a convenient lay-by to check what I knew to be an important message. I replied, and then resumed my journey.
As I pulled into the lay-by in the pitch darkness, I felt the back wheel step out on me: as an experienced biker, I knew this to be down to a patch of diesel, the bête-noir of any biker. The back wheel hit the curb separating the lay-by from the main carriageway and promptly flipped me sideways into the active lane 1. At this juncture, this was more of an annoyance than anything serious.
Every biker I know has encountered diesel, which for us is more slippery than ice. I knew that I had not pulled out of the lay-by in front of any other vehicle—the road behind was straight for at least 1,000 yards, and there were no other vehicles, even in lane two to remotely impede my departure. Bikers are generally very cautious people, and bear in mind that I’m wearing full leathers, Kevlar-armored boots and spine-guard, and a metric ton of reflective hi-vis overalls.
Cursing up a storm at the inconvenience, I go to pick up my bike. That’s when it happens. Jump cut…suddenly I find myself flat on my back with a coterie of ambulance and medical personnel in my face—WTH?? Turns out that, despite all my hi-vis gear, some woman had driven over me at high speed, causing me to crash through her windscreen and ricochet back out again.
I was carted off in the ambulance to the local hospital suffering from two broken legs and a completely wrecked shoulder. Long story short: I spent two months in hospital over Christmas and New Year enduring surgery on one of my legs and my shoulder, during which time my ex visited me many times. Now we get to the dramatic part of the tale.
On the day of my release, still with both legs in plaster and in a wheelchair, I call my ex and tell her that I’m coming home but not to come over until the following day as I just wanted to chill out and get my bearings. Another friend had kindly rearranged the furniture in my house to make it easier to negotiate my way around in my chariot.
She was insistent about coming over so, despite my misgivings, I said fine: come over. As you might imagine, getting home was a joy, despite the encumbrance of the wheelchair. A few hours later, my ex turns up and I can already see that she’s well plastered. Within moments, all kinds of alarm bells were going off. She was trying to get me to do things I'd already figured out how to do, and doing so in a very passive-aggressive manner.
Normally, I could handle her attitude but in my still-fragile state, I started to panic. Things came to a head when she insisted on cooking me dinner, despite my intention to order a take-away from my favorite Indian restaurant as a treat for my time enduring hospital food. I’m in no position to restrain her as she trots off to the local supermarket.
She comes back and starts to prepare dinner—and promptly overcooks things to the point of burning things to a cinder and setting off all the smoke alarms. Now I’m in full-Monty panic mode: I call a friend, who knew of my accident, and asked her if she would come over and try and rein her in. She comes over within a few minutes and is appalled at the way my ex is behaving.
For reasons that are still unclear to me, my ex’s reaction was seriously deranged. She starts berating me for the accident, and begins to hit me about the head. Now into nuclear-grade panic: I wheel myself next to the stairs and proceed to bum-shuffle my way upstairs to the bathroom, where I promptly lock myself in and proceed to have a complete meltdown.
I can recall hearing my friend and my ex having a major shouting match downstairs, but the next thing I remember is hearing a knock on the door announcing the presence of two officers: my friend (bless her) had called the constabulary, so concerned was she for my well-being. Such was my state of utter panic I refused to open the door to them until my ex had been removed from my house.
They called out for another squad car to take her away, but even then, it took another twenty minutes before I felt safe enough to emerge. And that’s how I split up with my ex!
13. A Match Made In Heaven
For some context, my ex-boyfriend and I were together for seven years. Last August, I made the decision to move in to help my mother as she was needing some help recovering from a medical procedure. So I moved out of my boyfriend’s house and moved into my mother’s. Near the end of November, I moved back in with my boyfriend.
I'm assuming that while I was gone, he was seeing another woman, because she kept texting him. I told my boyfriend that he needed to tell her that we were trying to work things out but he continued to tell me that he just was not going to respond so I reached out to her myself. I texted her and just said something along the lines of, “Hi, I know you don't know who I am but me and (ex-boyfriend) have been on and off for about seven years. I'd like to speak with you, could you give me a call”.
She almost immediately responded and said that she would call me. So she calls me, and boy was I in for a surprise. She began ranting about how all of her problems began when Joe Biden became president, she asked me if I was a witch and about all of the lies that she caught (ex-boyfriend) in. I stop and ask her, "Where did you and (ex-boyfriend) meet”?
And you know what she tells me? "In heaven, where he kidnapped me. We have the same markings on our left hand, I don't think you understand”. I thought to myself, "She is being serious...this is insane”. I mention something about the front end of my car needing repair as my ex had rear-ended someone and never got it fixed.
She says, "You mean, (ex-boyfriend)'s car”? I was puzzled and told her that he didn't own a car. She proceeds to tell me that he picked her up in a silver SUV, which was my car. I was pretty upset to say the least. Then my ex-boyfriend walks in and asks who I'm talking to, then she asked me if he knew that she was on the phone and I told her no.
Her response made my heart jump in my chest. She told me, "Good, I'm on my way”. I get off the phone and my boyfriend at the time continued to ask me who I was on the phone with. I told him and then told him that she was on her way. He began freaking out and telling me that we had to leave. So he talks me into leaving (which I didn't agree with, I thought she had a right to say her piece).
We go to the next town over to a hotel. This hotel had no rooms available so we go to another hotel down the road and right as I'm about to get out of my car, this woman opens my car door. I was shocked. How did she know where we were at? So, my first reaction was to shut my door, like no, we are not about to do this today, and I drive off. And she follows—but that’s not the craziest part.
She follows me for two freaking hours. It was 2 am and I stopped my car and told my ex-boyfriend to get out. He gets out of the car and starts running. I can see her car in my rear-view mirror and she puts her car in park, gets out, and begins chasing after him. About 15 minutes later, my ex calls me and tells me where to come get him.
She later sends me a long, rambling letter. What a piece of work.
14. Lovesick
One day my friend’s ex-girlfriend texts me saying “You look good”. I was just shocked at first because no girl has genuinely ever said that to me. So we started talking a lot. Well, that was my first mistake. Fast forward a month or two. We are basically in the talking stage and she tells me she has stage three cancer. That crushed me because I really liked her a lot and I felt really bad.
Now she would always be at the hospital and I would stay up and talk her through it because she was scared. Fast forward a couple of weeks. We are hanging out at a strip mall and all of a sudden, her “scans” come back showing her cancer was stage four and her life expectancy was two weeks. I was devastated. I didn’t know how much longer I had left with her so I went ahead and asked her out.
A couple of days later my parents start to get skeptical of her. They have a friend that had stage four cancer (and survived) who goes to get her chemo at the same place this girl claimed she went to. And that place doesn’t give chemo to people under the age of 18. So we basically caught her lying. Then, I confronted her about it. Keep in mind I’m only 16 and this is happening to me.
So yeah, I dumped her. My friend who dated her told me that she would tell these crazy lies to him. In fact, he told me this before we dated. So yeah, I probably shouldn’t have dated her, but oh well. She still texts me and says that she loves me and we only dated for like three days. I did say it first—but because of the “cancer”, I thought it was the last time I would be able to say it to her.
15. Suffered a few defeats but achieved the ultimate victory.
I met my boyfriend in 2017 and we became a couple in 2018. When I first met him, I was made aware that he possibly had a girlfriend and so, despite being attracted to him, I cut off all communication as to not interfere with their relationship. Fast forward three months and I get a message from him asking me out for coffee. I politely declined for two reasons.
First, I wasn't sure if he was still with his girlfriend and second, he ended up becoming a client of mine. I worked as a consultant for a rather large company and my work contract specifically stated that relationships with clients had to be kept professional. Anyway, about two months later, we casually began seeing each other. In January 2018, when we made the relationship official, which was when his contract as a client with the company ended. That’s when the trouble with his ex began.
The very morning after we made our relationship official, I awoke at 6 am to my phone vibrating. It was an Instagram follow request notification. I checked it out and noticed it was a young woman requesting to follow me. Not knowing who she was, I ignored the request and went back to sleep. A few minutes later, the same notification came through to my phone again so this time I decided to check her out.
I scrolled through her account and spotted nothing with which I could identify her until I saw the photos. Halfway through scrolling, I noticed photos of her with my boyfriend. I then instantly realized that this was my boyfriend’s ex. Naturally, I did not say anything to him because I thought maybe she was just a curious ex who wanted to know who his new girlfriend was.
I did not give her access to my Instagram account but decided to respect her and not say anything to my boyfriend. I know it's only natural for some women or men to be curious of their ex's new partner. She removed her follow request a week later so I thought that that was the end of it. I went on with my life thinking nothing more of her—until strange things began happening.
My boyfriend came over to my apartment one night and asked me if I wanted to go on a short weekend trip with him before he went to visit his family. I agreed and off we went on a really wonderful weekend getaway. It was during this weekend trip that I found out that the place we were visiting was his ex's hometown. A very beautiful town with a lot of scenic routes but just knowing it was her hometown put me on edge a little bit but I decided not to inquire about it.
I thought it was a little strange for him to take me somewhere where they may have shared a lot of memories together. As soon as we got home that Sunday, he left to go visit his family for two weeks. During that time that he was away was when his ex started with her nonsense. At this point in time, I had made my Instagram account public, blissfully unaware that she was going to start trouble.
I awoke the next morning to numerous likes from her where she liked every single photo of my boyfriend and I together and every single photo I had taken of the scenic routes in her hometown. She wasn't even ashamed of it, which made me suspicious. Was she an angry ex? I thought their relationship ended respectfully? Why was she mad at me?
I decided not to say anything about it to my boyfriend while he was away but would bring it up when he returned. I ended up making my Instagram account private again, but it was too late. The damage had already been done. Numerous fake accounts began trying to follow me, each account having a typical fake name such as "Patricia Smith". It was obviously her.
Then when she realized I was ignoring her, she went for a seriously unhinged tactic. She began tagging me in posts on her Instagram account and would remain online until she was sure I had seen it and then remove the tags. She wanted to make sure I saw her photos. Why? Because she was editing them to make it look like she was spending time with my boyfriend.
She began posting videos of her face and a guy standing behind her with his head turned away that looked exactly like my boyfriend. She began editing photos with hands that looked exactly like his hands into photos. She also began asking my boyfriend what he was doing and then after he left a certain place, she would go to that exact place, take photos, and post them online to make me think that they were there together that day.
But then she took it up a notch. She even physically followed us and had one of her friends find out where I lived. I knew that this was just all an act and that it was all fake because I knew she was trying to play mind games with me. So, I decided to not give her what she wanted. I instead remained quiet, never said anything at all to my boyfriend, and never confronted her.
I let her waste her time trying to destroy me. But, then March rolled around and I began to wonder how she even knew we were in a relationship the day after we made it official because we never announced it to anyone. Or was it just a coincidence that she tried to add me on Instagram the day after? I kept that thought in my mind but didn't think too much of it until April.
In April, my boyfriend began noticing that someone was trying to hack one of his social media accounts because he kept getting text messages of someone trying to request access to his account. I asked him if he knew who it could be, but he just had this far-off look and then shook his head and said no. I instantly knew he was lying but decided to ignore it.
Soon after, the same thing began happening to my account. For this to happen means the person must have either had my ID or phone number and the only place such information could have been gotten was through my boyfriend. That same question came into my mind again: How is she getting all this information? That is when I began wondering whether they are living together behind my back.
For one, I hadn't yet seen my boyfriend's place. The only way she could have gotten such information is if she was left alone with his phone. I didn't question him because I decided to investigate it for myself. That’s when I discovered the devastating truth. It didn't take long for me to find out that they had lived together while my boyfriend and I were official.
She would not move out of his place. It took him two months before he managed to kick her out. Safe to say I was extremely mad because he never told me and she was using this opportunity to make things difficult for us. I forgave him and we moved on with our relationship thinking that all her nonsense was behind us. But no, she would not give up.
She began secretly sending her friends to my company to spy on me, she began trying to find other ways to hack my social media accounts, and she began editing photos more and more to make it look like she was with my boyfriend. She also began sending roses to herself to make it look like my boyfriend sent them to her. It was so deranged.
Furthermore, she and my boyfriend shared the same birthday, so every birthday, she would send herself flowers and post romantic messages about how he promised he would go back to her one day when he was done using me to help him advance in his career. That last part hit me hard. I began questioning him about whether he was using me and my trust levels in him dropped considerably.
For months, our relationship was not okay and we came extremely close to breaking up. And then 2019 rolled around and something changed in us both. Things became better again and I decided to ignore everything she said and keep it in the past because she was just trying to play mind games. My boyfriend and I enjoyed our time together a lot in 2019 and traveled quite a bit as well. We couldn't have been happier. Then I got a disturbing text message.
It was my roommate informing me that his ex was keeping social media accounts where she posted hateful messages about me and my boyfriend. She had three different social media accounts where she extensively posted about how much she missed him one day and then hated him the next. She posted pretty personal information about him as well, which included snippets of their intimate life, how he left her a fridge when she moved out, etc.
All three of her social media accounts were jammed with information about us and photos that she had stolen from my Instagram account in 2018. A lot of people had read this and it was humiliating. I also found out that she was trying to send my boyfriend inappropriate photos and he never said anything about it to me. At this point, I had had enough, so my boyfriend and I got into a major fight about it.
It was at this point that it was stipulated that he had to cut her out of his life and not talk to her, which is exactly what he did. It drove her crazy for months. Her stalking became relentless and she began stalking his coworkers and friends. She also began adding some of his coworkers and friends on various social media accounts just to stalk them.
She began talking to some of his friends and kept close contact with them. It drove her insane to not know what was going on in his life. But eventually, after a few months, she stopped and her social media posts became more and more depressive. It was at this point that I realized that this girl had a mental health problem and I began feeling very sorry for her. But then there was the final nail in the coffin.
That was when I went to his place one day and noticed stuffed toys in his room that actually belonged to her. They had not slept together, but she had snuck into his place and placed those items there to make me think that they were sleeping together. I lost it that day. It was this day that I decided that if she was going to play this game then I could play it ten times better because the advantage I had over her is that she had no idea that I knew what she was doing.
She thought she was being clever and sneaky. So I began playing the game back. Long story short, I won and she lost and after three years of this garbage, she has finally stopped. She deleted all photos of them together and her social media accounts containing the posts about us.
16. Rosemary’s Hoodie
So last August after a destructive relationship overall, I was cheated on and henceforth ended a relationship with a girl. Let's call her J. I had just gotten out of a relationship when I spoke to J for the first time even though we worked together for so long. I was in college and lived in a house with a bunch of guys who all talked about how attractive the cashier at this restaurant was and all their stories about how they individually asked her out and got turned down.
That cashier was J. And she got information from my close friends to tell me exactly what I needed to hear concerning the outside emotional trauma I was dealing with. And she won my heart doing it. She actually gave me a lot of confidence too, being able to bring her around to this house full of my friends she rejected harshly before. We dated for a few months.
Like I said, I found out she never broke up with her ex. But I was leaving school anyway so I just let her ex know what was going on and left. The story was over—until her mother texted me. I never met this woman but based on her Facebook profile she was religious and sweet. And she wanted me to talk about J and what happened between us because it looked like J was swinging back into all this bad stuff she had gotten herself into.
And I was honest about the whole situation. I talked about how bad she'd hurt me and what she put me through. Her mother told me her terrifying backstory. She told me that she is happy that I ended the relationship with J. She said I seemed like a "good Christian boy". I had a cross as my cover photo. J had been giving her parents trouble.
They adopted her and didn’t have much background to go on. Since she was 13 and went to church, there had been episodes. She goes to one of those churches that speak in tongues and run around and stuff like that. And without fail, one woman who did the tongues a lot constantly got freaked out by J. She’d tell the parents: "She’s got Satan in her eyes".
And it’s crazy, but I looked at her after I heard this story and there’s something to it. Like there is something wrong in her eyes. Apparently, J also keeps a collection of all her exes’ hoodies. All of them. One from each. And her mother described on constant occasions she would walk in and J would be sitting on her bed staring at the wall humming in one of the sweatshirts randomly completely zoned out.
When I have really bad days in life sometimes I have this nightmarish daydream that it's J casting some ritual using my hoodie. I'm part of her collection now. What exactly she’s doing with them? I have no idea. I haven’t talked to her since August. From what I see now, she’s pregnant—not mine, thank God for that. So keep your eye out.
Because if that woman from her church was right and she really is doing some weird magic with these hoodies, the Antichrist is about to be born.
17. Now That’s A Wake-Up Call
I was seeing a girl. We had similar taste in weird horror movies and humor. She had her problems, but hey I got mine too, right? Wrong. One day, we were watching a movie and she's really into the villain. Way too into it, saying what he's doing is right and stuff. Then after the guy ends the girl's life, she says, "I dream of departing in such a passionate way". Umm, nope.
It took a while after that for me to realize how crazy she was—but that was the first sign, and I should’ve listened to it.
18. The Pot Calling The Kettle Black
I just found out about this thing my ex did, and I’m stuck somewhere between confused and amused. When I was a couple of weeks away from turning 18, I started dating a friend’s soon-to-be brother-in-law. I’ll call him “S”. He was 23 and lived in the next town over. There was no funny business until I turned 18. When I finally turned 18 I made an overnight trip out to see him.
Yadda yadda yadda…he got what he wanted and breaks up with me. I was very naive to this kind of thing, and was genuinely crushed. I tried to talk to S, find a reason why, or what was wrong with me. His excuse blew my mind. He told me that he was a furry, and didn’t think I could understand him, or whatever. Spent a couple weeks moping around before he texted me and wanted to get back together. Great!
Well, we hooked up and he broke up with me again. I was stupid and reckless, and started sleeping around with friends. It was my first heartbreak, and I admit I didn’t handle it well, though I never bothered him again. I ended up moving with family a state away. Six months later I had a house of my own, and I’m starting a traveling job.
He texts me the night before I left for a trip saying stuff like “I miss you”, “I’ve seen the error of my ways, and I’m changed, and much wiser man now”, and the best thing? “I do parkour”. I just said I wasn’t interested, and laughed it off. He told me if I changed my mind, or if I needed a friend or ever needed help, all I had to do was call.
Not even two weeks later, I found myself in a scary situation, at least for me at the time. I traveled and lived with my co-workers. Had lots of friends out there, and a new boyfriend. One of my male “friends” got jealous that I started seeing my boyfriend instead of him, when I had showed no interest whatsoever. He came at my boyfriend, and they beat each other to a bloody pulp. A puddle of blood, swollen faces, and super glue for stitches.
I had enough. I was scared, and I wanted to go home. It was 2 am, and I didn’t want to admit to my family what had happened, and didn’t want them to worry about me. None of my friends from home would be awake. I knew S would be the only one awake. He said he would be there for me, so I gave him a call. His reaction was terrifying.
He blocked my call, called me back five minutes later, screaming and cursing me out because his girlfriend was jealous he was getting calls from some random girl at 2 am. A girlfriend. When did this happen? He was just trying to get back with me! All I could do at the time was let it go, maybe have a couple of drinks. I knew after this he was going to explain me away like a psycho ex.
I finally grew some balls that night. I stayed at that job for three years, and have seen much worse than that petty fight. I would be a much weaker person now if he had actually been there for me— for however long it would have taken for him to engage in intimate relations at least. Months later when I was visiting my friend L—the one who married S’s brother—she said he eventually married the girlfriend. Good for him, I guess.
Seven years later, I have moved back to my original town, have a much nicer house, got married, and have a kid. S was just fling in the past. L is still one of my closest friends. She’s been having serious relationship issues, but seems to have things figured out, at least for now. We were talking last night, and she said a couple of months back, she had run out of gas in the town S lived, and he had to come to her rescue.
To thank him, she invited him to lunch. In her mind, he’s family at this point, so why not? S asked her if she still hangs out with me. Somehow, he knew I moved back and married a mutual acquaintance. L and I still hang out, so she awkwardly confirms. He went on a rant about how I was psycho and what I did to him. For whatever reason, he probably assumed I still talk about him?
He’s coming off as kind of crazy to her, so she shuts him up, they finish the awkward lunch and go their separate ways. When she told me this, she went on to say the wife divorced him for someone else a couple years back, so he’s been single for a while. Since the lunch, S has been hitting on L like crazy. He moved into town and is living with his parents.
L had been taking the kids over there all the time to see their grandparents. When she started having issues in her relationship with his brother, S was getting increasingly creepy. He even went so far as to stare at her chest and "casually" touch her shirt once when he encountered her at the store—right in front of the kids. She’s really uneasy around him now, and has started taking the kids to the lake instead of their grandparents.
To combat this, he has bought an above-ground pool so everyone pressures her into bringing the kids over there instead. Basically, he’s crazy, and a creep. I hope L can get out of that situation soon, both with her husband and his psycho family. At the same time, I can’t believe he’s still telling people I’M the psycho for the last seven years, after his behavior, and me pretty much forgetting about him.
Maybe it’s guilt for using me? Or he’s trying too hard to come off as innocent if he was hitting on my friend? Not really sure. Regardless, it actually makes me happy. Glad I made a lasting impression.
19. The Cold Shoulder
My ex-girlfriend and I met on Tinder. When we first started talking she actually was right about to leave to go on this trip to go see a friend for a while, so we texted and face-timed constantly. Her trip ended up sucking big time and she just wanted to go home, but still had days left until her flight home. So me, being the dummy that I am, said, let me buy you a ticket home for the next day and I’ll even come to pick you up.
She lives an hour from my house, but from my job, it’s an hour and a half. Basically, I told my mom I was working, went and picked her up from the airport, and then took her to her older sister’s, and out to eat, and then her dad’s. Then she took me and her sisters in her dad’s car to the park and we literally just played tag. It was a great first date actually.
It was amazing how immediately comfortable I felt with her, I couldn’t wait to see where we went. Basically, any chance I was able to make a plan to go and drive the hour to see her, I did. She didn’t have a car so it was always up to me to make anything happen. Eventually, she made it official with me on Valentine’s day. She specifically made me wait until then to be cute.
At that point, I was so unbelievably happy and really thought, wow, I could fall for this girl. She really had me blinded. I’ll never forget the last date I took her on, I made the back of my car all cute with blankets and pillows, took her to get Chick-fil-a, and pulled up on this spot by the beach and I opened my trunk and we just played music and cuddled and ate while we looked at the water and it rained a little which made it nicer.
I remember when I left her house, as I walked to my car she said, "Hey," and I looked at her and she said, "I love you," and I said it back and headed home. She was so good to me, she made me feel happy and loved, and it was perfect—or so I thought. This is where things just went haywire. The next night, literally like 24 hours after I left her house, she calls me on the phone in tears breaking up with me.
She says she’s unhappy with herself and wants to better herself so she can be better for me. Never before did I ever even think she’d break up with me. I was so confident in our relationship and we never fought or had issues. So I took that as I should wait around and help her in any way I could to show her I was still there. I was so wrong.
She flat out ignored me, left me on read, and did not talk to me for two weeks basically. yet she was always posting on snap and Instagram and in all her pictures she wore things that I bought her. It was really awful how much she left me in the dark with not a freaking reason as to why. Then one day out of the blue she texts me, hey, can we hang out?? I said yep and I was on my way within the hour.
I got to her house right, and she can’t keep her hands off me. She was all sit by me, put your leg on me, calling me babe and baby, it was insane. I couldn’t even get her to talk about us if my life depended on it. She was so focused on seeing what she could get out of me one last time. At that point, I realized it really was over but I liked the attention that I still got because it was something at least.
So I was like maybeeeee we could work out something. Well, I’m an idiot. She kisses me goodbye and says text me when you get home, so I texted her when I got home. She didn’t text me for days, again. Then she blocked my snapchat and my Instagram on both of her accounts, and so I decided okay, I don’t deserve to feel like garbage anymore.
I get the message, so I blocked her back on everything and more. She no longer existed in my phone basically. Then I’m scrolling through IG, and I see a picture of her. She’s in the pic of this girl that I vaguely remember who hit me up on Tinder before my ex came along, but we never hit it off. All I did was add her to Insta and snap. I go back and I look at the caption and it says something like “you have my heart”.
At that point oh I was pretty angry, I was hurt, confused, felt like trash. I texted the girl because I wanted to be nice and let her know like hey, I don’t know how long you and her have been talking but recently I saw her and we kind of did some things but not everything. I meant nothing more than to make sure she wasn’t getting played too, and was at least aware of me and that was it.
She didn’t even have to respond really. Her response was seriously disturbing. She wrote me back ready to fight, saying let’s meet up. I didn’t think that anything I said would have gotten the response it did, but it sure did. I blocked her but she found me on snap so I blocked her again. Then my ex’s best friend, who I hung with and got to know multiple times, adds me on snap too.
I’m like wow, maybe she’s going to come to my rescue. Haha, nope. She was in on it and said she wanted my address so I blocked her too. They made another snap just to message me and I blocked that too. Thankfully it ended there, because I was really done at that point. It really just showed me how I never meant a thing to my ex. She never could’ve possibly cared.
She just completely dropped me and it was like I no longer existed. She was so ready to send her new girlfriend and her best friend to come attack me while she watched or possibly joined in—I don’t even know.
20. The Greatest Hits
When I was 13, I started dating a guy who was two years older than me. Not a great decision on my part but I was a dumb teenager. The worst thing is that I spent five years of my life with him. Here’s what dating him was like: He told me that if I touched myself, he would consider that cheating. He once got mad at me because I said to him that zombies weren't real.
He got jealous if I so much as talked to other boys. In fact, he alienated me from my best friend because he was jealous of her. When I was about 16 (and he was 18) he would tell me that he missed what I was like when I was 13. Yikes. At his sister's graduation party, he wanted to go into his room for a make-out sesh with his entire family on the other side of the door and when he found out I was on my period he got so mad that he literally kicked me off the bed.
When I told him I wanted to get a paper route he said "but you hate getting up in the morning", I replied that while that's true, I would do it for money. His response was "sometimes you're so stupid I just wanna—" and then he did a strangling motion with his hands. So when I was 18 and he was about to turn 20, he went abroad for a week and it felt like I had been given complete freedom.
This was the point when I decided to break up with him. Shortly after he came home, I did. He didn't really say much other than "It was so hard getting you as a girlfriend, how am I ever going to find someone else”? and "Are you breaking up with me because you think I'm fat”?
21. No Receipts, No Chance
I’ve been with my boyfriend for a year and a half. I didn’t know he was fresh going through a breakup when I met him, but we didn’t go on a first date until the ex has moved away and the relationship was over. We started dating and went through a lot of turmoil the first six months because he was with her for two years and she just wouldn’t go away even after she moved back home to another state.
She constantly calls and leaves voicemails and texts about how he will never find another girl better than her. He blocked her on everything. Fast forward a year and a half, he gets a new phone and couldn’t remember her number to block her again—she calls his phone two nights ago. I answered. She said he’s been contacting her, I told her I don’t believe her.
She said she has all the texts, I asked her to send screenshots. Crickets. I asked her to please just leave him alone, that she’s a sad pathetic girl and I hope she gets through whatever she’s going through. She said she wants closure and that “you and I both know you begged for me to take you back and that you’ll move to Florida for me”.
My boyfriend denies all of this and he told her to send proof (screenshots), again nothing. How do we make this sad girl just go away and move on? I almost feel bad for her.
22. Swimming With The Shark
I met him at a carnival he worked at in 2010 and we ended up hanging out after the carnival was done. My friend "V" was into his brother, who also worked at the carnival, and V really wanted to get to know the guy she liked. The guys asked us if we wanted to go hang out at their next stop because they would give us free wristbands to ride for free.
Their next stop was 112 miles away, V believed she was in love with this guy she’s only known for six hours, and I was the one with a car. V gave me $50 in gas money to go with her, so we went. The carnival was fun and out of boredom, me and the guy, and V and her guy, ended the day by hooking up (not all together, in separate areas of the carnival).
We went home thinking that was the last we would hear from them. Two days later, the guy I ended up with (I'll call him Shark, because the nickname I used to call him was German for Shark) was knocking on my apartment door. I asked what he was doing there and he said he missed me, so Shark hitched a ride from over 100 miles away and ended up at my doorstep.
V lived in the apartment next to mine, so when she saw Shark she came over asking where his brother was and why he didn’t come with Shark to see her. Shark broke the news that his brother was only 17 and was back at home with their mom. V and I were 20 at this time, so she immediately dropped the subject of her being in love with this guy.
I was flattered that this guy hitched his way to see me so I let him stay the night on the couch and told him I'd give him a ride back to his house after I got off work the next day. Well, he ended up staying for longer (mostly because I was always broke and didn’t have the money for gas to drive 200 miles). A day turned into a week, and a week faded into two months.
During this time, his friends would drive down while I was at work and bring him some of his things and would conveniently leave before I got home so I couldn’t ask him to get out. I also found out that he had his own vehicle at his mom’s house but claimed it didn’t run (important for later). I finally had enough of the guy living off me like a parasite and as I was leaving for work, I told him to have his things packed and ready to go because I would be taking him back to his mother’s house.
He immediately got angry and started punching the door of my apartment (the knuckle imprints are still on that apartment door). I got scared to go home—but I had something Shark didn’t. Thankfully the scariest person I know also works where I worked; my mom. Shark was terrified of my mom. Everyone I know is afraid of my mom. She’s 5'2” tall, and used to be a bodybuilder.
She likes to fight and she was excited about the prospect of getting to fight Shark. She wasn’t a fan of his. As I'm telling my mom about the situation my boss happened to be in the office next to hers, and he heard every word. My mom and I jump in my car and drive to the apartment. My mom confronts Shark, who had stormed out of my apartment ready to fight me until he saw my mom.
She tells him that he WILL be ready to go at 5:15 pm, and she will be coming with us to take him home. Shark was already close to tears, when a big white truck pulls up to my apartment full of the biggest and meanest looking farmers and cowboys that I've known since I was six years old. My mom’s boss rounded up all of the other large bosses that were at the office that day and came to make sure there wasn’t any trouble.
Thankfully, seeing all of these people rally around me made Shark very calm and understanding as to why he needed to leave my apartment. At 5:15 my mom and I came to pick Shark up and get him the heck out of my life. He had his things on the stoop and I didn’t think to check my apartment to make sure all of his stuff was gone (I was very stupid at this time and made a lot of poor decisions).
We drove three hours in silence, and we dropped him at his mother’s house. Shark cried and begged me to give him another chance and I said I had had enough. I didn’t want to see him again and told him not to contact me anymore before my mom and I left. When I got home later that night, I saw that he had hidden some of his things in my closet, so I called and asked him what his stuff was doing there.
He said he couldn’t pack it all up by the time he needed to and said he would have one of his friends pick it up. I was planning to throw it away, but he was pleading from the other end of the phone, begging me not to dispose of his items. I felt bad for being the one to end things and leaving him in distress. I lived in bliss for two days without him in my apartment.
V had found a new boyfriend at the carnival we drove to and let him and his cousin move in with her. Since Shark and this guy were pals they were mad at me for making him leave but I didn’t care. I was free and happy—but my nightmare wasn’t over yet. Shark showed up in his big ol' 1970s Jeep that apparently DID work on a Saturday. He’s messed up already and said he started drinking while on his way down.
He said he wanted to "win" me back. I tell him to sleep it off and he can get the rest of his trash and get out of my life. A few hours pass. Shark is over at V's crying because I won’t let him into my life or my apartment. V, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s cousin all rile him up and tell him he should "break down the doors" to my life and heart and prove that I'm the only one that matters to him.
One of my other friends, JD, agreed to stay the night with me because he was afraid of what Shark would do. He said he had a really bad feeling and he just wanted to make sure someone was with me if Shark tried to do anything. Well, Shark did do something. He started by punching my door and yelling at me to let him in. I told him to go away and that he wasn’t welcome in my home anymore.
He sat outside banging on the door for 15 minutes before JD had enough and told him if he didn’t leave he would call the authorities. Shark didn’t like JD, and being confronted by JD made him really angry. He got in his very sturdy and bulky Jeep, and proceeded to ram his Jeep into my cinder block apartment six times. I was on the phone with the dispatcher trying to tell them where I lived.
It took the officers 20 minutes to find my apartment, and at this time, Shark was getting ready to give my apartment a drive-through. They pull him out of his Jeep, and cuff him on the lawn. Unfortunately, this was a small town of 500 people, and law enforcement always sided with men. It didn’t matter what it was, the woman was always at fault, and the men did nothing wrong.
The officer came in and asked me what was going on and I explained everything to him. I told him I just wanted this guy out of my life, and I wanted to press charges against him for stalking and harassment. The cop told me to "cool the jets" for a moment while he went and got Shark’s side of the story. The cop did, and when he came back, what he told me was infuriating.
He said if he detained Shark he would take me in too, for "disturbing the peace". I was appalled and asked about the damage he did to the apartment. He said he didn’t see the Jeep actively driving into my apartment door and that the damage could have always been there—even though there were tire tracks in the dirt and on my single-step stoop.
I inquired if the officer could just place Shark in the detoxification center, but the sheriff denied this request. He stated that Shark had been advised to sober up and he wasn't allowed to come within a quarter-mile radius of the apartments. He allowed V's boyfriend to drive Shark to the fire station to sleep it off, and followed them away from the apartment.
JD and I stayed up in disbelief of the events that had happened and Vs boyfriend’s cousin came in my apartment about two hours after the Sherriff left, absolutely trashed, and accused me of making Shark crazy. He started saying that women who did that "back home" were lucky if their men allowed them to live and that I should be lucky that we weren't from his hometown because I would be gone already.
JD was frightened by this individual and had clutched my baseball bat, warning him he would face a beating if he didn't depart. He uttered a few more intimidating words before finally departing. JD and I didn’t sleep a wink, and we just sat up all night waiting for the sun to come up. I called my supervisor at daybreak and relayed all of the information to her, and she let me take the day off, filling in for me herself.
I grabbed all of Sharks things and piled them into the dirt outside, thoroughly dousing them in lighter fluid, and set them ablaze. As JD and I were joking and watching the fire, V's apartment door opened, and Shark came out. He saw his stuff burning and walked away down the road not making eye contact with me at all. But it didn’t end there.
Over the next month, I started getting texts from my girlfriends who said that Shark had been texting them and they didn’t know how he got their number. It turned out that Shark had copied all of the phone numbers of my female contacts from my phone into his one night while I was sleeping. I still don’t know why he did this.
I didn’t hear from Shark again until my 21st birthday when he sent me a happy birthday text (I had changed number at that point, meaning V gave him my phone number) and I blocked him. That was the last I heard from him. I met my husband later that year, and all things have improved.
23. Scared Of A Feeling
I’m at a complete loss. My ex and I broke up in September and I moved out in October. Around the same time we broke up, I got the news my brother had passed. I spiraled and ended up in inpatient for the first time in my life. I was supposed to be there for three days but it turned into 10—and the reason why is seriously disturbing.
My ex called them and lied about me to get me to stay longer. I was devastated. Since we lived together at the time, he was supposed to take care of my cat while I was in the hospital. I couldn’t afford boarding and no one else could take her. He didn’t take proper care of her and a few months later, her organs failed. I was miserable. I never thought he’d be capable of something like that.
He contacted me the day after she passed, asking for his Xbox games…which I did not have. I confronted him about my cat’s health and how it correlates to when he was watching her. He refused to give me any form of peace of mind that he was taking care of her and instead told me to have a good life. I blocked him on EVERYTHING. No contact, nothing.
I refuse to even go to the same town he works in. I avoid his street, pictures of him, anything and everything. I refuse to have any form of contact with him. Here’s where the crazy part comes in. He is now going on social media and lying about how I am stalking him and he is fearing for his safety and his pet’s safety.
He’s crying to all his friends saying he needs an order of protection against me. He is even going so far as to say I used my trip to the hospital as a way to guilt him into supporting me financially. Again, couldn’t be farther from the truth. Keep in mind too, I’m 5’4” tall and 90 lbs. There’s literally no reason for him to be “fearing for his safety”.
When people have asked him what I’ve done to make him feel the need for this order of protection, he responds with “I have a feeling she’s going to do something”. That’s all he has. No proof, nothing to back it up, just a feeling. I talked to one of his exes and she had very similar stories to mine. He plays this “I need protection they’re crazy”! card every time. And for some reason, they always believe him.
24. Some People Never Grow Up
This all has been a roller coaster for my mom and I. My mom, who is in her 60s, recently broke up with her boyfriend. He did not take it well at all. She broke up with him because he appeared to have a tracking app on her phone. He assumed she was cheating anytime she even took an alternate route home or came to see me.
She couldn't take the accusations anymore and told him to get out of her house. She owned the house prior to even knowing him. He refused to leave, saying they were in a common-law marriage—even though we do not live in a state that recognizes common-law marriage. He has an unpleasant demeanor. At this point, my mom is afraid so she comes to stay with me until he moves out.
Then he got even worse. We found a tracking device on her car. He tried to rent her house without her permission. Called her names. Wrote fraudulent checks in her name, and painted graffiti on the house inside and out. He refuses to leave unless we pay him $7K. We say absolutely not. He says that she abandoned the house so it's his to do whatever he wants to.
My mom stays away and ends up having to change her number three times during this. He continues this behavior by dropping off used rubbers at her work. Having his adult daughter pretend to be a court clerk to drop off paperwork. My mom finally gives up and files a restraining order. He gets served and instructed to leave but he doesn't and my mom catches him.
The authorities detain him and he spends the night behind bars. I instruct my mom not to go back to the house until we know for sure he is gone and cameras are up. Sometime during those five days, he grabs his stuff. No big deal, right? Well, he claims we took his stuff. He also took her mail and opened credit card accounts, and wrote bad checks off my mom’s account.
He claimed that I was lying about where I lived which proved (in his mind) that my mom was cheating. The funniest part? He looked up the wrong person. He still stalks my mom i.e. drives by the house all the time, throws nails, and garbage in the driveway. After all this, he is suing us for the tools that he thinks we took. But the craziest part of all? This guy is 63 years old and acting like this.
25. Get Over It
So about a year ago, my ex cheated on me and threw me out of the house while also moving this girl in. Now I've moved on, big time. I got married and share an apartment with my husband and our cat that we accidentally adopted. But for some reason, I think my ex’s girl is obsessed with me or something. After the breakup, she's come to my job and just walks around or follows me.
I had enough of it and told my ex to keep her away from my job while I was working because it was starting to get ridiculous. Then she messaged me on Facebook, claiming that I called my ex's son’s school (which I didn't) and started sending pictures of her engagement ring and her ultrasound because he had knocked her up, trying to rub it in my face.
At this point, I was already dating my husband so I was just like whatever, good for you dude. Congrats. Again, I contacted my ex asking him to have her leave me alone. She got mad at that. I was left alone for a while but then I started getting friend requests and follow requests on ALL social media, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and even Tiktok.
All the requests came from very obvious fake accounts and they were all brand new. And I know it's her because she always uses her first name in her profile. She's not messaging me or harassing me, it's just kind of ridiculous because her and my ex are now married and have a baby. I am now married and happily moved on.
I can't discern if she still perceives me as dangerous, or if she's just slightly infatuated. Either way ridiculous and I wish it would stop.
26. Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds
It's been about two and a half years since I dumped her, and she STILL slanders my name all over the internet. It's really quite frustrating too, as most of the people I used to talk to all the time no longer speak to me because she is an incredibly convincing liar, manipulator, and embellisher of stories. I met her when I was in middle school in 7th grade because we have the same name and most classes sat students alphabetically.
We were friends until ninth grade. I had for contemplated for months about my sexuality and then got involved with her. Things went smooth at first, but slowly, one by one, most of the people I had hung around had been rude or mean to my ex when I wasn't around, and although I found it odd that they would be rude, I just assumed they were a little prejudiced, considering most of the students in my school of in the middle of the country are a bit…rude.
So I wanted to believe her and support her, and try to be a good girlfriend since she said her last relationships were absolute disasters, and I wanted to be fantastic for her. We were practically attached at the hip. 1,000+ texts a day, after being out of school. I started to spend the night all the time and going to school with her the next morning.
Some people thought we looked similar, both had long brown hair, pale skin, skinny but with a chest, though mine was bigger and she always seemed to be uncomfortable about that. We were, of course, the edgy kids in school, so we dressed in band tees and torn jeans with dyed hair. She would insist that I wear her clothes and that she wore mine.
I didn’t think of it being weird at first, since I liked her clothes, but when I wanted to wear my own clothes she would have a meltdown until I gave in and wore them. Then I had to stay with her at her grandparent's house instead of my own. She stayed at her grandparent's house because she didn’t want to share this super tiny room with her sister, and they either had the treehouse or the overstocked basement with a bed tucked in between everything.
And a lot of the time, us 16 and 17-year-old girls were left unsupervised because the grandparent had found a new lover and was always gone. If I wanted to stay at my own house at night, she was blowing up my phone or showing up and throwing rocks at my second-story window. After about a year of dating, things got worse. She was constantly calling my names and I just sat there and took it. Finally, I had enough, and I dumped her after she cheated on me.
Among other bizarre events, she impersonated someone else acting menacing towards her, utilizing a texting application to send herself unkind messages, and then reached out to me to halt it. When it didn’t get to me through the first three attempts of contact, she texted me herself on another nasty number, then she contacted me on a new Facebook account.
On Messenger, she left voice messages of how she was going to hurt me, my mother, my brother, my boyfriend, and my pets, and more. She has made up a number of lies about me since then, and I have run into multiple people who are surprised to see me in such healthy condition. She has gone around saying that I’m an addict, my boyfriend is some kind of dealer kingpin, and so on.
I have her blocked, but someone else was concerned and sent me her nasty posts. She is now going around social media (but blocking me from seeing any) claiming that I am plotting to take her out and that she heard me say these things herself. Even though she lives about an hour or two away from me, and I haven't seen her in over a year.
27. Ticking Timebomb
Me and my ex of two-ish years broke up in June. We tried working things out for two months. But he decided it wasn't worth talking to me because I may be moving. He was very manipulative and emotionally abusive throughout the relationship, promised he would change...blah blah blah. Finally, we stopped talking in August. But I was in for an unpleasant surprise.
Two days later, without saying a word to me, he shows up at my job. He left work an hour early without saying anything to anyone, and sat outside my job for 30 minutes. When I came out, he was surprised I wasn't welcoming toward him, and asked if he was a nuisance. He yelled at me in the parking lot for an hour, while co-workers and customers walked by and four co-workers (mostly bosses) watched from inside.
They were all very concerned and ready to call the authorities, because he seemed like he was about to snap, yelling, pacing back and forth, throwing his hands everywhere, squatting down to my eye level. Telling me he was different and has changed and I should move back in with him. After he realized I wasn't changing my mind, he left, blew me a big kiss, and said he loves me.
His mom texted me two different days about our finances...I had to tell her I didn't feel comfortable talking to her about it. One week after the incident, he emailed me because he got a notification about an address change to the Verizon account, he was wondering what that was about. He already knew I changed my address a month prior so I didn't respond.
This past Thursday an hour after I got to work, I got a call from a friend who works with my ex. He told me he saw my ex outside yelling on the phone and throwing his hands all over the place. Then my ex told his boss he had to leave for a few hours because his mind was all over the place. I told one of my bosses (who also witnessed the incident) since I had a bad feeling he was going to show up.
They had a meeting, decided to have me hide my car and have someone walk me out at the end of the shift. He didn't end up showing, to my knowledge. He could have seen that my car wasn't there and left, or someone warned him of his job. He was back at work two hours after he left. My mom is moving, I wanted to stay behind. I don't want him to take this away from me.
My job also offered me a really good promotion. But after Thursday...I don't know if I feel safe on my own. I wanted to move in with my friend, but if I stay I don't know if it'll set him off.
28. Factitious Disorder
My ex used to follow me home from school, stalk me in the hallways, hacked my phone at one point and pretended to have a mental illness to get my attention. This dude was absolutely crazy and had serious attachment issues. He pretended to have autism so he could make excuses when he did something wrong. I know for a fact he didn’t because even his parents said he was lying.
Whenever he did something wrong he said he’d get “blackouts” because of his “autism” which would make him lose control of his body and say those things. I think he was a pathological liar. He also asked to borrow my phone at one point and refused to return it. Because I store passwords on there, he was able to hack into my phone and change some of my passwords.
He also talks about me behind my back by making fun of me to his friends and spreading lies like, “She’s begging me to get back with her”.
29. ISO: A Time Machine
This was a long, long relationship. I knew this girl (let’s call her B) five years before we started dating. She asked me out over the internet, seeing as we were a few states away. When I was 18 and B was 16 turning 17, she came to my prom and essentially told me she’d break up with me if I didn’t propose to her. Being naive and afraid of being alone, I obliged.
I nearly ruined my relationship with my family because of that little stunt. Flash forward to my first job, at a local restaurant. Became best friends with the staff, and they realized that I was really not happy in my current relationship. Who can blame them? I had to talk with B almost all day, then she’d turn around and say she'd take her life if I didn’t move to her state as soon as I possibly could, in the same day, almost every day.
I was saving my money to get a better car, so I could move to her state. It was almost like fate when I got fired after almost a year working there. In February, sometime before Valentine’s Day, I booked a one-way plane trip and packed my stuff to move in with B. Never moved away from family before, I was not mentally ready to leave. It truly was the hardest goodbye I’ve ever given.
I moved into her family’s home, they gave me the downstairs basement bedroom. No joke, it was like I was staying for a few-day vacation. The room was B’s old room with almost all her stuff still in it. I was living out of my suitcases for a while. A week in, her dog had to be put down. I tried my hardest to be there for her, sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.
After that point, I knew I had to do whatever I could to help her. We went on a lot of “dates” (mostly excuses to get food and fool around somewhere), until I spent the last of my money getting a car. I had almost $5,000 saved up from the many months I worked at my job at home, and we ended up spending every last penny. I got a job at the first place I applied for, as a deli clerk.
It was one of the most miserable jobs I’ve had, but it paid the bills. It was her job, actually. Every paycheck I had, she had me go out and spend it on grocery trips for hot dogs, bologna, and sweet tea no matter how full our fridge was. Probably important that I mention at this point, I’m a chef. And if it wasn’t groceries, then it was games.
Mobile games, games for MY switch, PC games, you name it. It was not uncommon for B to gaslight me by saying I already promised to get her said games. It got so bad that I barely had enough money to pay for gas to get to work. I told her I was miserable and she shrugged it off. At some point, I finally stood up for myself and flat out told B that I wasn’t ready to get married.
She cried, telling me that “I promised”. Her family flipped out, and I had to hide in my room to convince myself that I was lying and was in fact ready to get married. Our relationship was really not in great shape, but neither one of us wanted to end it. We didn’t really talk about what happened, but more or less rescheduled the wedding.
In attempts to get closer to me, B seduced me a couple of times. This plan to bring us closer, however, backfired. To me, it felt forced, and I had to stop it a few times before we went too far. I don’t know what was wrong with her, but she openly admitted that she gets turned on when I look miserable. When I got mad, sad, upset, or wanted to be left alone, she tried to “make up” for it.
So to no surprise, when she wanted me I resented her. This scheme went on for a few months before we were caught. I was forced to be baptized, in order to marry B. It’s ironic to me now, I was being baptized against my will to attend my wedding that I didn’t want. I was a pushover in those years, and B took full advantage of that.
I lied to a pastor—probably the most sane and honest person I’ve met there, and I regret ever lying to him—about wanting to get married. Sometimes a month or so before the wedding, B decided that she wanted to move to my home state with me. But then, she cried about how she wasn’t ready to move, and that there was family here that need her.
I did not have the guts to call her a hypocrite to her face. It’s hard to say if B faked being sick to get out of work, but regardless it meant that I was taking her hours alongside mine. The weeks leading up to the wedding, I worked all day every day. She did the shopping. If it weren’t for the few times we had to call B in, I would say she almost didn’t work at all in that last month.
Sometime in the last month before the wedding, B seemed to have fallen out of love with me. Instead of breaking it off like a normal person, she took a seriously disturbing route. She decided the best course of action would be to open a roleplay account on Instagram, and actively do racy roleplay with complete strangers on the internet.
She’d then gaslight me by telling me that I’m being paranoid for nothing when I would catch her, so that I would break up with her. Of course, I didn’t, because I didn’t want to be alone at the time, and our wedding was literally in two weeks. We had the wedding. It was nothing super special. The next day we drove all the way back to my home state.
My family redid our room and tried their hardest to include her. To B, it wasn’t enough to keep her happy. We had a honeymoon, she role-played with other guys essentially the whole time. A week and a half in, B moved one of my most important files on my computer to try and get an angry reaction out of me. It failed, I had a panic attack because my life’s work went missing.
She then told me that she couldn’t do it anymore, then called one of my friends to pick her up so she could stay with them. I was in disbelief. I had no idea what just happened. The next 48 hours were the most stressful, most confusing, and most revealing 48 hours in our entire relationship. She came home the next morning, and told my family (and friends) that I had been hurting her, hitting her, and that I forced her to get married so that I could force her to move away.
At this point, I had been manipulated by her so much that I thought she might’ve been telling the truth—that is, if it wasn’t for the fact that I had no memory of any of the things she was saying that happened. Not even six hours later, we got to talking, kind of having a heart-to-heart, and she completely changes her story.
To my family and me, it was now the story I’m telling you all. To anyone else who asks? I’m the bad guy. The same night B admitted over text that she was flirting with guys, then quickly declined it when I questioned her about it. The next day was agonizing. We barely talked to each other, essentially waiting for her family to come and pick her up to take her back home.
That night, B was on the phone with one of the guys I assume she’d been flirting with. In my room. Just loud enough for everyone in the house to hear. I realize now that she wanted me to storm in that room and yell at her, so that she’d have audio evidence of me getting angry at her. This plan also backfired. I didn’t storm in the room and yell at her—my dad did.
She manipulated his son, tried to frame me, and started openly flirting with this guy on the phone loud enough for the whole house to hear. That one night. That one fateful night, it felt like she truly cornered herself. No one tolerated her sidestepping the issue, trying to wave off why it was okay, and—for the first time in our relationship—she gave an almost true-to-heart sobbing apology.
She admitted to overblowing our relationship issues completely, and that she never thought it’d get this far—which I didn’t believe for a second, but it was the most comforting thing she said ever. The next day, the final day, she finally left. My family took me out to celebrate, and I almost had this awakening—a feeling that maybe this was for the better, and that maybe things were going to be alright.
I wish I could say that was the end of it. I left out a lot of other details—like B hitting me to wake me up because she was mad; throwing a fit like a child when I didn’t pick up what she wanted at the store, which got me pulled over for speeding; our many, many pregnancy scares; B telling me I was playing victim when trying to figure out why she left—and the best for last: Sending her posse after me because I caught her red-handed snooping through my social media, and getting mad that I was trying to date a new girl.
This girl was a living nightmare. She cost me my friends, my money, my psyche, my virginity, and my title as a bachelor. Only god knows what her end goal was. Though the people who know me knows that she’s full of it, and I’ve lost contact with those that think otherwise. Things have gotten better, and I have moved on.
30. How To Lose An Ex In One Day
My ex, Micah, was my first girlfriend ever and I was also her first boyfriend. But all things have to end and she broke up with me for being too depressed. We broke up 2014, and she finds ways of talking to me no matter how many times I block her on every social platforms I have. So, a week ago she created an account on Facebook and Instagram all so she could tell me how much she missed my "hard, warm and gentle body on her own".
I knew exactly what to do. I told her that if she wanted to meet me, she would have to treat me to dinner since I’m flat-out broke. Also, I told her I needed money for a few different things—about $200. Now she is the one blocking me and doesn’t want to hear from me since she now thinks I’m a gold digger. I know some of your exes can’t be dealt with this way—but at least try it.
31. A Tangled Web
I talked about taking a break with my ex when things were still sane. At the time, I felt like I was not important to her and was being treated poorly. She was mocking me around mutual friends and sharing my insecurities with others. Unfortunately, I was blinded by love at the time but couldn't handle her behavior. I loved her very much and just kept coming back for punishment.
Either way we break up and after a few months she offers a friends with benefits situation, me still loving her and wanting to make some attempt at trying again stupidly said yes. Well, there was one brutal detail I didn’t know. She had been sleeping with my brother at the same time. She kept this from me for six months. The real kicker is that he was sleeping with her best friend at the same time and my brother got the best friend pregnant.
My ex goes off the rails. She then goes on to try sabotaging my brother’s relationship with her ex-best friend, unfortunately succeeding and destroying any hope of a healthy family dynamic. Not being satisfied with that outcome, my ex decided to intimidate her pregnant ex-best friend. Yet me screaming at her for sleeping with my brother and me at the same time makes me a psycho.
32. Inescapable
I got together with a guy and we're extremely happy together, and we’re getting married in two years! BUT, he does have a crazy ex. I mean this girl is nuts. She's already created 11 Instagram accounts and four Facebook accounts to harass us. She slides casually into our DMs telling us to break up, or how I’m not good enough for him or how dare he dump her for me. She keeps adding all my friends and family on those bogus accounts, my best friend showed me.
She has at least three different numbers which we blocked, but every time we block her, she texts us with a new mobile number. She says totally vile stuff. Things like, I hope you get AIDs, he was my boyfriend first, and so on. All of this, over three years. I have screenshots of her crazy texts and accounts. I've maybe half a darn mind to post it on social media to call her out, but have been hesitating because ironically, I don't want to destroy her life.
I’ve tried reporting her to the authorities but they said there was nothing they could do. I've tried reasoning with her. They broke up for two years before my boyfriend and I met each other, to no avail. Will it ever stop?
33. Where’s The Panic Room
Last fall, I met a girl on Tinder. I thought it was too good to be true—and I was right. She was beautiful but I didn't realize to what extent she had problems until much later. As I don’t have a car, I mostly walk to campus for my classes from an apartment only a 10-minute walk away. I enjoy it, I get my steps in. Anyway, this girl decides to basically move in with me for two or three days, a week at a time.
My roommate doesn't even mind at first, but as her true colors are shown over the next couple weeks, it’s clear she has issues beyond being a bratty 19-year-old dealer. She begins to be rude to everyone, and I mean everyone, as long she was sure she was out or earshot. She insults my sibling for being non-binary. She insults and makes fun of elements of my family despite my personal feelings.
Every time she would visit me, it became clear I was only good for two things. Physical stuff and potential buyers. With the exception of drinking and weed , I've been clean for years now and I'm quite proud of that. She would call me late at night to complain about personal issues, that she clearly could have prevented If she had been more careful or even remotely cared about her family or was not perpetually high.
She gets high while driving, claiming it makes her drive better. She drives terribly to begin with by the way. Even calling me after T-boning someone in a parking lot and failing to exchange insurance information with someone in a previous fender-bender. Even not even telling her parents or family after one, pretending her insurance issues were taken care of and lying to her family once they got a whiff of her situation.
She would also frequently mention her ex and derail entire evenings while checking social media to check up on him...while she was with me. Once this guy got a new girlfriend, she began sending her intimidating messages. It went so far that her mother had to get involved and to this day I am unsure whether she has a restraining order against her now.
I couldn't joke with her. We came from two different worlds. I'm 24 and come from academia, with my family being writers, scientists, lawyers, etc. She’s 19 and well, a dealer who lives with her grandma simply because she refused to find common ground with her mother. Who as far as I can tell, simply didn't want her selling in the first place and simply won’t put up with her defiant attitude.
She is incapable of listening and unable to accept or even hear the lightest criticisms. Since November, I don't think I've had a conversation with her, in person or otherwise that wasn't completely one-sided, while she'd rant about something trivial that could have been solved with a few words of civility and compromise. It would take her hours or even days for her to register that I was upset or not feeling well.
It came to a point where I was either too uncomfortable to open up to her or even too scared. It got seriously ridiculous. On one occasion she'd let me know when I wasn't behaving "manly" enough, such as when I use my satchel instead of a regular book bag when I get ready for school. Or my love of musical theater, show tunes, and what have you.
I'm a straight guy comfortable with his own masculinity. I have nothing to prove, nor do I have anything to hide. She would go out of her way to make me feel horrible about anything in my life she didn't like, such as when my kitchen needed a sweep or I was behind on dishes on a weekday after classes. Everyday people issues. Even going as so far as to take tweezers to my eyebrows without my consent as I "didn't look right".
She constantly berates me for not having a car. I pay rent. I go to college full time, pay bills, and what not. I can't afford one at present. I'm okay with that. I've worked hard in my academic life as well as worked on my mental health to be in a place where I'm doing better than I was a few years ago. But apparently, what little I have and what little I've gained is subject to ridicule and I have no say in the matter.
She’s rude, and distrustful and I'm simply a toy to her. I can't tell you how glad and lucky I am to have friends like this that tell me I'm too good for her. One friend, in particular, has been telling me to leave her since October. I should have listened. I'm 24, an undergrad, far from home. I'm just lonely I guess. Despite my loneliness, I do have my boundaries.
I once got yelled at for breaking a Snapchat streak and multiple times for leaving her messages on read for more than half an hour due to school or a commitment of some kind or even something that demeaned my focus. And even in one case leaving my computer on while I was out with a Facebook tab open. Anyway, cut to today.
My roommate is out. I am alone. I have been ignoring her for three days. Her last message says that she wants her stuff. So here I am, pretending not be home on a Sunday. I left her stuff in a box outside my door. The lights are off, I'm staying away from my windows despite being on the second floor. I’m currently relying on natural light and turning off my thermostat to pretend I'm not here as I type this to pass the time.
Every little sound that isn't a tick from the clock is met with a mild jump. She could even have come by already and taken it, I don't know. I haven't checked. I probably won't until tonight. Until then I'm going to shudder in the cold while I jump at every noise because she’s awful and crazy and I have no desire for a confrontation of any kind.
34. Living In A Dream World
A couple of months ago, I went on a date with a nice man. We just went to brunch and talked. I enjoyed myself, however, did not really see myself romantically with this man. I am 30 and am now only really interested in dating guys that I can see something more serious with. About an hour after our date, he called me and said he had a great time and would like to pursue this.
I told him nicely that I was not interested and wished him luck. He then asked if he could occasionally text me as a friend because he doesn’t have many friends. I agreed but said do not expect anything more. For a while, I only got the occasional hi how are you texts and nothing more. I never initiated any conversation but everything was very short and insignificant that I didn’t even think about him much.
Then one day he texts me that he is dating someone. I congratulated him and told him that I was also seeing someone. I figured this would be the end of everything. Then he texts me a few days later that he wants to have kids. I said well I hope that works out for you and your girlfriend. What he said next was completely unexpected. He then told me he wants me to be the mother because I am hotter.
He said his girlfriend is overweight and more homely and therefore I would give him better-looking kids. I said this is really not an appropriate conversation and please do not contact me again. He said this was a joke. I said good but let’s concentrate on our significant others. A few days later, he texts me. I still can’t believe what I read.
It said: “I can’t stop thinking about our conversation about kids the other day. I’m really looking forward to the family we will create”. I didn’t respond then he kept asking what I was thinking about all this. I said please don’t contact me I told you I’m not interested in you. He said I was leading him on by telling him I want to be the mother of his children.
I said that never happened. He has apparently been fantasizing an entire relationship with me. The girlfriend does not exist, he just made it up hoping I would be jealous enough to go to him. I said I told him right from the beginning that I wasn’t interested. I said please don’t contact me again and that he needs help. My boyfriend is worried that this guy is stalking me. Ugh.
35. The Blame Shame Game
Me and my husband got married six months ago, and his ex won't move on. When they broke up she tried to blame-shame him—always texting him and telling him she started seeing a psychiatrist. Then there was the constant stalking. When we got engaged, she posed as a victim, suffering because of us. We got married, and she started to spread gossip among common acquaintances that my husband married me because I'm pregnant. I am not.
A couple of months into our marriage and his ex was still posting pictures of them two together, from the era when they were a couple—and captioning the photos as though they were still together. When the rumors about pregnancy did not work, she posted on her blog (again) a letter about my husband and how he's the one to blame for everything, how she offered him the world and he did not appreciate that.
She said that she forgives him for not being at the level of her expectations. Then she starts texting all my husband's male friends on Tinder, and other social media. More recently, she's started stalking me: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. I've started receiving messages from people in her friends list: “Hey pretty, are you single"? And besides that, one day she posts how my husband is to blame.
But then, the next day she goes with "He's going to come back to me, they will break up and he will realize how much he needs me," or my favorite, "I wish I could change myself into her, so you could choose me". It’s clear that some people need more time to recover from break-ups, but we've been married for six months now, and I'm getting tired of her stalking me all over.
Get over yourself, move on and for the love of God, stop living in the past. I do not consider it normal for a 35-year-old woman to act this way. It’s been a year of cheap circus and cheap drama and no one needs that. The funny thing is that my husband stopped talking with her, ignoring her, and not responding to her at all a long time ago.
No one walks away from a happy and functional relationship and if she cannot accept the fact that her ex married someone else, then the problem is with her and I would really enjoy a break from her stalking and drama.
36. Still Mad, 30 Years Later
So, my adult son gets married this past weekend. Beautiful area of Colorado. I show up, along with my father, and my adult daughter, and twin grandkids. I haven't seen or talked to my ex-wife in more than 30 years. I'm doing a great job of ignoring her and she does the same. The ceremony is over, now the groom and bride want to do pics. We hang around, as we are included in some of them.
After about two hours, my elderly father needs to get back to our hotel room, which is an hour drive away. So, I tell my son we are leaving, and he says, "NO! Not yet, I need one more pic with you Dad”. Okay, no problem. It turns out he wants a pic of him with me on one side, his mom on the other. I find out the next morning, that the crazy ex ran to her hotel room, slammed the door, and turned off her cell phone—all for a truly ridiculous reason.
Because her son, the groom...her only living child...wanted a pic of his parents together. What kind of crazy, stupid person would tarnish her only child's wedding day with this kind of garbage?!? Regardless of anything else, this was supposed to be the newlyweds’ day, not a day for her!
37. Turning On A Dime
I met my ex through a mutual friend in 2017. Besides a little drinking habit, he wasn't a bad guy. His drinking didn't affect our relationship too much. We stayed in a lot. After three years and a couple of short break-ups, we were getting along okay but my insecurities were taking a toll on us. I fell head over heels. He was caring and considerate. He was easy to open up to.
I felt safe and well taken care of. We shared everything. He made me feel like the only woman in the room on date night. He was open and honest. When we argued we talked it out. He looked me in the eyes and said I love you every day. I knew my depression and insecurities were causing problems so I decided to tell him how I felt. Why wouldn't I?
We could work this out. And I thought we had. But I was so wrong. He started "forgetting" to tell me things. He stopped answering my calls and text. He started taking his tablet to work and didn't leave it out unattended. We decided to cut back on screen time (his idea). He promised to stop forgetting things and I thought we were getting back on track.
Seven days later, the gaslighting started. I was making stuff up. He twisted everything I said. He picked fights with me and in a few short days threw me out. He talked smack, he spread lies. When we talked, which was through text, he put me down. He said nothing good about our relationship. He accused me of being a person he knew I wasn't.
He took no responsibility for any problems we had. He made claims he didn't drink anymore. He bragged about doing things we talked about doing together. Did I mention he kept some of my belongings—which he sent pictures of other women wearing. He avoided me for an entire year despite living a mile apart. But the story doesn’t end there. We recently connected again and he's a completely different person. I'm talking 145°.
I helped him through an illness and we were getting along sorta. He was constantly scratching his arm and rolling his eyes when I talked. He took long baths every day but always looked dirty and greasy. He wouldn't look me in the eyes when he talked to me. He rambled on to himself and made hypocritical statements one right after another. I knew something was off.
So I told him I didn't need this and we parted ways. That was months ago. We've talked a few times but it always ends with some lame excuse why we can't get along and be friends. His last reason why friendship was impossible was that we don't listen to the same music, watch the same TV, and I'm a bad driver. Thank God I have enough self-worth that I can finally agree with him. We can't be friends.
I dodged something terrible and I need to be thankful he only hurt me mentally the last couple months. My love was genuine and I still miss him. Not the man he is today. The man that no longer exists.
38. I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me…
So, me and my ex-boyfriend currently work together. When we first began texting each other, he would take photos of me when I didn’t know he was around. He’d then send them to me. He would say that he wants me to know that he’s “always watching me”. I didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes I would catch him just staring at me and wouldn’t say hello until I said hello.
Well, I broke up with him two months ago—for unrelated issues—and I notice that he is still watching me. I turn around and he’s there behind me or around the corner of the hallway. I started ignoring him at work and one time he was laughing by himself after I walked away from him. One of my coworkers caught him laughing to himself and asked what was so funny.
Looks like I need a new job.
39. The Warning Signs Were All There…
I met my ex at school. I had been new to the city, and honestly was not looking for any sort of relationship. I thought it would be a quick one year of school, getting work, and then I'd be out. Boy was I wrong. About one month into the program, I started gaining interest in a classmate, he was three years younger than me, but he was really hardworking and talented.
We had similar tastes in music, fashion, and other interests. Anyway, after some time we started dating, about 3-4 months into the program. Before we had started dating, he mentioned to me "I'm pretty crazy, but if you still want to try, I'm down”. I should've believed him. Only about one month into the relationship, we were already fighting.
It was initially simple misunderstandings that we were able to talk through, but now that I can look back with a clear head, it was all manipulation. He always made it my fault, said the misunderstanding was only on my end because I wasn't as "smart" as him. Additionally, it was due to the fact that I was a smaller and weaker female and that I wasn't as superior as a strong male. Classic.
It got worse as I stayed in the relationship, and we would have intense arguments, even in public. I'd want to leave, but he would guilt trip me to stay. He always said that he was trying, trying, trying...but it was hard to be nice to someone like me. I was a confident person that bordered defiance and had a strong sense of what was right and wrong to me.
Slowly though, he tore all of that down and took away my sense of self, and I let it happen because I thought there was real love there. He constantly said that if I left, I'd ruin his career, I'd ruin this life. He kept saying that, and soon I began believing it, and became scared to leave. He had this paranoia that everyone was out to get him. But it got even more disturbing.
He was scared that the country he knew, which was built on "white men" was being overtaken and whenever we were out in public, he'd look around and start getting upset. I asked him once what was wrong, and he answered "When I look around, there are no people with blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. Why the heck is there only people that look foreign”? I’m Asian.
I think the final turning point was that I hadn't been in the mood and he said he would cheat on me. Up to that point, he had convinced me that if I didn't get intimate with him, our relationship was over. If I tried to talk to him about it, he said I was a horrible girlfriend for not satisfying his needs, and that he did everything for me, but I couldn't do anything for him?
To this day, I feel like he cheated just because he could. After two years, he broke up with me, after I told him that I didn't love him anymore and started developing feelings for someone else. I wanted to be honest with him, but I needed him to end it. I couldn't. He had to be the one to do it, that was the only way I knew I'd be free.
He kicked me out of the apartment, and I got an Airbnb to stay in until I got a new place, plus a friend let me stay at their place to help. Thank god for good friends. During this two-week period of looking for a place, I got 10-15 calls a night and about 4-5 voice messages, additionally text messages in a varying degree of comprehension. I ignored all of it.
It was just things about how he wanted me back and would do better, and blah blah blah, same story. I was finally free, and I wasn't going to give that up. A month or two later, I'm happier than I've ever been in those two years with my new partner. I was walking home from work—and there is my ex. Who tries to follow me home, but then stops and just watches me leave through a park.
The next day at work, he starts chat messaging me. We work at the same place—I know, awkward...but we are in different departments, thankfully. I answered just saying that I hope he's better. Big mistake on my part. This opened another series of annoyance from him. He starts waiting outside my building while staring at me through the window I sit next to.
He started messaging me about how much he still loves me, or about how horrible and malicious I am. I ignored everything again and just moved on. I've recently hit the one-year mark in my relationship with my partner, and I'm still as happy as ever.
40. No Cinderella Story
I auditioned for the Cinderella musical at my high school—this was during my senior year—and my boyfriend started a fight with me saying he didn't want me kissing or holding hands with the Prince if I got the role of Cinderella. He told me to please not audition for her. I informed him the audition process was just each person singing and the director placing us.
We didn't audition for specific roles...plus I wasn't nearly as classically trained as most of the other actors so I was positive I wouldn't be placed as Cinderella anyway. But he kept picking a fight and told me if I WAS offered the role, I'd have to reject it because he wouldn't want me kissing or holding hands with anyone who wasn't him.
He said I was the "love of his life" (we'd been dating for two months) and that he would "never be able to see me for me again" knowing that I "kissed some random guy onstage in front of thousands of people and just let it happen”. I told him if I somehow got offered the role I wasn't just gonna back down from it, and I'd have to follow the script.
I said, "I'm just letting you know how theater works," to which he responded, "I'm just letting you know how I work”. He told me I was going to ruin our relationship over a stupid high school play. Long story short, my stupid self promised him if I got offered the role of Cinderella I would reject it because he wasn't comfortable with it.
I didn't get offered the role of course, but I can't believe I promised to back down if I did. It's sickening to think that I ever promised that.
41. Got Yourself Into Quite A Pickle
I was on Skype with him and I mentioned some friends and I went out to a restaurant earlier that night. I mentioned they had these really good pickles, but one of my friends didn't like pickles so he gave me his. I realized that sounded like an innuendo and jokingly said, "Hehe, he let me eat his pickle... get it”. A LOT of our relationship was made up of both of us telling dirty jokes, so I didn't really see anything different about this one.
He then vented his anger on me for joking about another guy, and I responded, "Whoa, that's not what I intended; it just seemed humorous due to the sequence of words." He then retorted, "What's so humorous about another guy's personal area?!" So I kept trying to explain that wasn't what I meant, and that I was sorry—even though I was mostly confused.
But he kept going off and yelling over me so I hung up. Then he yelled at me via text about WHY WOULD I BE SO RUDE AS TO HANG UP ON HIM JUST FOR CUTTING ME OFF AT THE END OF SENTENCES SOMETIMES??? So I explained what I'd been trying to explain, which was that the point of the joke wasn't about the individual person or their “pickle”; the phrase just sounded funny.
I apologized because even though I didn't understand, I knew it made him uncomfortable and I wanted to respect that. But he just kept asking me what kind of stupid logic goes behind thinking a joke like that would be funny. I promised not to say anything like that in front of him again, but then he accused me of acting like he was a controlling person. Which he was. But obviously, I was blind to that at the time.
Just because he didn't want me to make such "awful jokes”. This argument continued for 30 minutes. The next day, he "apologized" but also said, "Hey did you clear up with your friends about what happened last night? I don't want them to get the wrong idea". In other words, the concept—or indeed the reality—that he was thoroughly disagreeable and unpleasant.
42. Hands Off
This one time, he grabbed my behind in public in front of a bunch of my friends and their parents; I asked him if he could please not grab me in front of my friends' parents, and he got mad and gave me the silent treatment for 15 minutes. We were on an outing for my friend's birthday so I tried to keep calm, but eventually, him ignoring me got so frustrating I started tearing up a bit.
Only then did he "apologize”. I put it in quotes because I think he said sorry, but then he tried to make excuses, specifically that he hadn't slept well the night before and therefore was irritable. I went to the bathroom to let out my tears, and when I returned, of course, he was just acting normal.
43. No Escape
My old friend was having a birthday party, I didn't know my ex was invited. I was asking people who were invited a few weeks before, but no one knew, not even the birthday girl. I get there, hang out with the birthday girl we talk for a bit about random things. It was getting awkward as not knowing what to say, so we head downstairs and wait for people to start arriving.
Once they do I hang out with a few people I know and then go to check on who else arrives and it was my ex. I was confused but didn't care I said hello and she jumped on me, basically hugging me in this tight squeeze. I didn't like being touched and she knew it. I let it slide seeing as she hasn't seen me for a few months.
Well, normal party stuff goes on, opening presents and eating food, getting cake while others were hanging out and the last of the presents were being opened she asked to talk to me upstairs. I didn't think much of it so I agree and we wait till everything is done, and we head upstairs. Well, we start talking and she admits she still likes me, grabs my face, and just kisses me.
She keeps telling me how beautiful I was (it creeped me out) and how we should've never broken up. I get up and I walk out of the room and run down the stairs and down to the basement where the party was going on and where people were. A few people I knew came up to me after and asked me about it and saw how unnerved I was but didn't step in.
I didn't know what to say, but after that, she would follow me around, about two hours later after we start settling down and everyone's watching a movie I head upstairs and she follows and she pulls me into the bathroom and we talk for a bit. I was getting stressed after a few minutes of her still calling me pretty and touching my face, she pushes me against the door and tries to kiss me.
I turn my face away and she acts all offended I reach for the door and she jumps on it, she blocks the door so I can't get out. I'm here thinking to myself "Are you kidding me? I wanted nothing to do with this”. I told her I wasn't ready for a relationship, then she comes back with "Who hurt you? Why don't you want to be with me? Please give it another try".
I say "That's my business" and I keep trying to open the door as she keeps asking who hurt me. I manage to pull the door open and I go into the room with the most people but she didn't care, she'd put her hand on my thigh and rub it or she'd touch my face or put her arm around me. I felt so uncomfortable I left the party.
44. New Friends Vs. Old Girlfriend
Toward the end of our relationship, we made plans for him to visit me at my university. We were long distance at this point, six hours to be exact, so this was a pretty big deal. This particular visit had two purposes for him. One: there was a band he'd wanted to see for a while that happened to be performing near my college that weekend. Two: It was near V-Day so he said he wanted to see me.
He went to the concert—we decided I wouldn't go since it wasn't really my type of music. He met some random people (several of whom were girls) that he made plans to meet up with the next day. He did this often, by the way—became seemingly obsessed with people he just met. The next day I went with him to meet them at their nearby campus, and they actually seemed pretty cool.
I did feel kinda insecure about how he seemed so attached to them after only knowing them a day...But anyway, after we got back, one of them texted him around 1 am saying he'd left his scarf at their dorm. He responded he'd be right over to pick it up. I asked if I could come with but he refused, saying he'd be "back in five". Well, an hour later, he still wasn't back.
He claimed they'd invited him to stay. He was like, "Don't worry, I'll still be back soon and we can fall asleep together"...well, by the time 3 am rolled around I got fed up waiting and just went to bed, leaving my phone on so I could hear if he called to be let into the dorm. I woke up to a bunch of missed calls and texts from him asking to be let in.
Once I let him in, we got into a huge fight which started with me telling him to go sleep on the couch but somehow ended with him crying and sleeping next to me because his go-to technique was always making me feel sorry for him even if he was the one in the wrong. So basically, he drove six hours to visit and then ditched me for people he'd just met.
A few weeks later it was his spring break and he wanted to visit again. I told him I wasn't sure if that was a good idea after last time. I felt I still needed some physical space from him. He told me he already packed for the weekend and really wanted to see me...PLUS he wanted to see the friends he'd made at that concert again.
I didn't like this, partly because I was scared he'd ditch me for them again, but also again I just needed some space. I told him I was sorry, but I didn't think that weekend was a good idea. Well...that Saturday, I woke up with a text from him saying, "Hey I'm in town if you want to hang”. Obviously, I was shocked that he'd driven six hours to where I was after I said I didn't think we should hang that weekend.
I confronted him on that and he said, "I drove up to see the friends I met at the concert, I'm just letting you know I'm here in case you change your mind and wanna hang after all”. I was shocked and confused because I realized he either a) was trying to manipulate me into seeing him, or b) literally drove six hours to meet up with people he'd only met once.
Both were quite weird. I had a video chat with my friends talking through all this and they said I seriously should break up with him. I agreed, and met him face-to-face and broke up with him...which he was surprisingly unfazed by? I guess he just thought it wouldn't last, because it hadn't before. However, later that night after he'd gone to stay with the "friends" he'd made, he called me saying his plans to sleep at one of their places didn't work out after all.
I told him one of my friends was okay with him crashing on their couch for the night, but for some reason, he kept saying he needed me and his calls and texts started becoming more and more desperate. Luckily, though, he just ended up crashing on my friend's couch. I discovered the following day that he'd apparently lost control of his behavior and started acting unreasonably at his "friend’s" place, which led to his expulsion from their party.
Apparently, they'd called an Uber for him, but his phone ran out of battery which is why he started calling me in a panic from his Apple watch. After discovering this, I talked to him one last time and apologized for possibly seeming hostile because I hadn't known how bad his situation was at the time. We said goodbye to each other.
I told him that he could reach out to me if he had ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ELSE to talk to, but that other than that, we needed at least six months without any contact because I needed to learn to be independent and figure out what I individually wanted. Spoiler alert: I've since blocked him and fortunately, he's completely out of my life.
45. Sometimes Crazy Begets Crazy
So let me share an interesting story with everyone. I started talking to this guy and we talked for a month, as things seemed to be getting serious. He told me he recently broke up with his girlfriend, he kicked her out because be caught her sleeping with another guy and she also treated him like trash. That was all before we really got to serious talking.
Well, I was supposed to drive up and see him this weekend because we live some hours away from each other but somehow, he ended up having to work. I was like well, that's fine I'll come up next weekend I have weekends off and next weekend is my birthday anyways. He was like I'm sorry baby blah blah blah all that stuff.
So we continued to talk and the day went on and we talked and everything like it was normal. He called me later that night and was talking about things he needed to do this weekend. I should have questioned when he said he was going to go to Sam's club and get his hair cut when he was supposed to be at work till 8 pm, both those places close early on Saturdays.
But my dumb self didn't think about that and was like whatever. It's like one am I'm not really going to question anything. So I ended up falling asleep and I woke up several hours later to go to pee. I looked at my phone and had to do a double-take. I see I have a text message from him. It's his girlfriend texting me telling me they are still together and that she is five months pregnant with their second child.
She goes on to say that she loves him and will do anything to make it work with him. I text him back like,"What the heck is this you need to explain". I call and it rings normally and I leave a voicemail telling him I got an interesting text and he needs to explain it. He never texted me. I text again closer to when he is supposed to be getting up for work a longer angrier text and I get nothing.
I also call and it goes straight to voicemail. So at that point, I call my friend to have her call his phone, it rings twice and then goes to voicemail. I go look for him on Facebook, where we hadn’t added each other. I find him but with a different last name. He lied to me about his last name. He told me his last name was Whitman it ended up being almost that but it was Whitmarsh.
I find him and his girlfriend. I message them both on Facebook. I tell her that he told me he kicked her out because he walked in on her sleeping with a different dude. I message him telling him this is messed up and if this is some stuff him and his girlfriend do for fun they need to get a new a new hobby.
46. One Last Scare
As per horror movie rules, my crazy ex came back for one last scare. Here’s how it all began. We met in 2014 in my home city. In 2015 I moved away from all my family and friends to be with her several states away. After the move was when all the horrible insults began, then the body shaming started. I gained weight because I began taking antidepressants.
I had no family, or friends nearby, my job was a big stressor, and this girl I was with never gave me a second of peace when I was home. Always starting fights, trying to make me clean up after her, general nagging if I wasn’t taking the bait. All together four years of dealing with someone whose behavior was on par with the devil.
One day I finally just left, as I was going to snap. She berated me for a week or two after I left. Facebook messages telling me how I’m the worst human being ever, calling me a piece of trash, etc. It finally stopped after she got a new boyfriend not very long after. So after three years of silence, this maniac messages me on IG.
All she said was “Hey can I get your advice on something”? I have never been happier to leave someone on “read”. After such an ugly history (I left out a lot) how can someone have so much nerve? I know it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does but it’s incredibly difficult to not tell her to go jump off a cliff.
47. Gaslighting 101
Back when we were dating, my ex constantly lied to me about girls he was talking to even harmless stuff. He once lied to me and told me he wasn’t talking to anyone on Snapchat since he’d gotten a new one. He handed me the phone to let me add myself to his new account and a whole stack of conversations with girls come up.
He attempted to hide them from me (his chat screen was empty and deleted but when you clicked the search bar all the conversations came up), then wouldn’t let me open any of them and I jumped to the conclusion of him cheating. Because if the conversations with the girls were harmless, why lie about them?
It turns out he wasn’t with these girls but convinced our mutual friends that I was crazy and invasive when I asked to know what they were speaking about since he tried to hide them from me. I spoke to the girls and he wasn’t flirting with any of them. But then I discovered the dark truth. I find out a month later that the entire time he’d been dating me (six months only), he had a long-term girlfriend.
It honestly ended up being worse than I originally imagined!
48. Putting The Cart Before The Horse
So my ex-husband (we'll call him A) left me for another woman (B) a few years ago. B was an apprentice ("squire") with a very well-known jousting company with a Renaissance festival. Apparently, A and B went to a horse breeder/trainer (C) who specializes in jousting horses and bought a jousting-trained pedigree Andalusian stallion with a showy white coat.
Because B was associated with such a prestigious jousting company and A is a real smooth talker, they somehow convinced C to sell the horse on a payment plan rather than full payment up front. C would retain the breeding papers until the horse would be paid off, naturally. Cue the pandemic. A and B stopped making payments on the horse. C began to worry.
C did not have their contact information except for a phone number they refused to answer, and couldn't read B's handwriting well enough to google her name. More time passed. C began to really panic about the horse's welfare. C began trying to google based on anything she knew about A and B. She turned up A's old address, across the country: my address.
It happens to be on the same block as her friend T's house, and she knows T because T boards the horses for our local Renaissance festival. The jousting circuit is small, and everybody knows everybody. C called T and filled her in, T sent me a DM me and was like "Girl, is this your ex”? Crazy times. I passed along the contact info I had from the divorce paperwork to C to try to help her repo her horse.
That's how I learned horse repo is a thing! More time passed. A and B were dodging creditors like it's a new Olympic sport. C was going crazy trying to serve them papers to sue to get her horse back. C was wondering whether flying to my city to try to serve A papers here when he came to pick up the last of his possessions would work.
Then, C made a disturbing discovery. She started getting contacted by angry mare owners with new baby foals without lineage papers. It seems A and B had started selling stud services on their stolen horse, promising breeding papers they didn't have, taking cash up front, and when the mare owners demanded bloodline papers for the foals, just sent them to C.
And THAT'S how I realized that underhanded practices in black market horse breeding truly exist! The horse is back home with C. A and B stopped paying board and the barn owner managed to track C down to rehome him. It was just in time, he is expected to make a full recovery with lots of love and care and work.
49. Sisters Know Best
I was in a relationship for four years with someone who treated me terribly. It was so subtle, covert, and gradual that it took the end of the relationship and a more objective view from the outside to realize what he was doing for so long. I’m going to tell you the gnarly bits. But you have to understand what makes this so complex and difficult is the acts of kindness and humanity that were peppered in.
The relationship wasn’t ALL bad. But, unfortunately, what stuck with me—what’s got me in trauma therapy years later—is the years’ worth of gnarly stuff. That good stuff didn’t stick around and the constant roller coaster of despair and elation is part of the abusive behavior. But I’ve been pondering for years now… is this individual an extreme narcissist or was he merely self-centered and paranoid?
Here’s my story. It started in 2013. Jonathan (*not his actual name) and I started dating. When we began dating, we hit it off immediately and were VERY into one another. He was mysterious, successful as a photographer and musician, and very cool. Jonathan was eight years older (I was 26 and he was 34) and generally seemed to have it together.
I loved his art and his music. I felt special and very cool on his arm. I was a TOTAL FANGIRL. Shortly after we started dating, Jonathan went on tour for nine weeks. We texted a lot while he was gone, very sexy and fun things, and I got a handwritten postcard every. single. day. that he was on tour. A postcard a day for nine weeks seems like something out of a romance movie—but it’s not.
It SHOULD have been a red flag. It wasn’t. I was head-over-heels. I was a hopeless romantic, codependent thanks to my own dysfunctional childhood, dumb, and in love. His tour ended in Vegas. He paid to get my hair cut and colored and flew me out to Vegas to watch his last show and to spend a few days with him, decompressing before he returned home.
Again, something that seemed really impressive and romantic. We had a BLAST. But again, this could’ve been a bit of a red flag so early on in the relationship. Flash forward a few months. My little sister meets him. Strongly dislikes him. Calls him egotistical. She and I argued big time. I continued to see him anyway. Always listen to your sister, y’all.
The first year or two were okay. Heck, even good. I moved into his loft after about a year of dating. But the mental and emotional abusive stuff was still there, then, it was just more subtle and I just shrugged some bad behaviors off as little annoyances or bad character traits. It turns out, he was generally a bit of a curmudgeon and threw tantrums constantly. But they were more silent and manipulative.
He could suck the air out of a room if he was upset about something. And he did, frequently. And now, I believe he did it purposely, as a control and manipulation tactic. When he was upset, he would withhold affection. He was short and rude. He’d withdraw. When he was upset, he wanted you and everyone else to KNOW, to feel it, but he didn’t want to have to say a word. And it worked.
He was boastful, but also didn’t really seem to love or even like himself. He wanted others to recognize his greatness, his specialness. He used his famous friends in casual conversation to elevate his sense of importance. But he never believed you when you told him nice things about himself. He was VERY influential. For example: He liked girls with short hair so I cut mine frequently for him.
Not to say I didn’t like it either but I was certainly heavily influenced. He was a force. His word was rule. If he didn’t like something, you couldn’t either. He was the main attraction and I was the sidekick. He was big. And I was small. I existed to lift him up. I walked on eggshells constantly. After I moved in, I stupidly read a text message of his, and what I found made my blood run cold.
When he was on tour, he had shared a bed with a girl he had been interested in dating previous to me. They had “talked” romantically and kissed before I was in the picture but supposedly nothing happened that night, it wasn’t a big deal, I had nothing to worry about and should just trust him. He also went through my phone at one point.
We then had a conversation about trust and privacy and agreed not to snoop again. Yeah right. He was always the jealous type but as time went on, his jealousy started to increase in severity. He wanted to be my one and only. Truly, my one and only. He didn’t like when I went out with friends, and god forbid another man show up! He was suspicious of EVERYONE and he wanted to know who I was with all the time.
He was incredibly unpleasant to any man that showed even the slightest kindness or cordiality towards me. All the while, he’s frequently working on “personal work”—photoshoots where he takes photos of gorgeous, scantily-clad, or undressed women. Where it was just the two of them, in studio, or the woman’s home, or in a hotel room for HOURS. But I had to keep my jealousy in check.
If it got overwhelming, I’d bring up my feelings and he’d assure me that nothing ever happens and that trust and honesty are of the utmost importance to him. He found a fundamental flaw with all of my friends. He didn’t like any of them and let it be known frequently. He once admitted he was “jealous of the relationship you have with your sister”.
He was so adamantly against these people that he criticized me for spending time with them and would throw his tantrums when I did, so eventually, my hangs got less and less frequent. He didn't appreciate when I went to spend time with my family, and if I could persuade him to accompany me, he behaved in an arrogant manner throughout, as if we were beneath him, as if he had superior places to attend.
He’d withdraw and go out to smoke constantly, scrolling on his phone instead of interacting with my loved ones, who I’m incredibly close with. He never made an effort to connect with them. Not once. He didn’t even want ME to be so deeply connected to them. He would frequently remind me, randomly, firmly, throughout the years, “I’m YOUR boyfriend. You’re MY girlfriend”.
And it seemed so weird and possessive and random. He’d comment on my Instagram photos “Mine”. Which was kinda cutesy until the abusive behavior ramped up and I realized he was marking his territory. He never let me help decorate our loft. When I asked him to put up a photo of me, one that HE took, he put it behind the bedroom door, where no one could ever see it. My photo, my face, wasn’t worthy of being seen.
He never let me get a Christmas tree, despite my begging, despite the joy he knew it would bring me. I wanted to travel. We “couldn’t” travel because he already traveled too much for work and wanted to stay home. He told me I needed to get used to the idea of never having a dog again because he would never, ever, ever have one.
He would never teach me about photography, despite my asking and genuine interest. He would always joke to people “I’m afraid to hand her a camera cause she’ll put me out of a job”! And when I gave him ideas for photoshoot concepts, I never ever got credit. I had anxiety and I could always tell when something was bugging him.
For years, I would ask him what was going on, BEG him to talk to me, and I’d be met with the same response “Nothing is wrong”. and he’d blame my anxiety. This happened multiple times a week. It wasn’t true, though. Something was always wrong and it wasn’t my anxiety. One night in 2015 or 2016, I fell asleep on the couch. He woke me up and said “Hey, who is Bobby? You were repeating that name over and over in your sleep”.
When I explained it was an ex and I hated that guy, he said “Oh, okay”. Later, I found out the chilling truth. After we broke up, Jonathan told me he made that story up completely. He had found my old journal on the bookshelf, read it, and saw that I mentioned I was in love with Bobby months before I met Jonathan. Jonathan just couldn’t believe I could love HIM after being so in love with someone else just months before.
So, years into our relationship, he made up a story instead of expressing his insecurities and talking to me. Eventually, he started drinking more and more and more. Our arguments got more heated. He would pound his finger into his palm in front of my face, or hit the table out of anger, all while I’m crying that I’m sorry, and I’m terrified.
I wasn't perfect. I cursed a few times or raised my voice when I felt bad, but that pales in comparison to the physical intimidation tactics he used. I told him before how my father would aggressively/loudly wash dishes and slam cabinet doors when he was upset. Jonathan ended up doing this and then insisting he wasn't. "I don't know what you're talking about, I'm just washing the dishes”!
For years, we would have interactions that felt unsafe or scary or manipulative. I would frequently think to myself “This feels abusive. This feels abusive,” but blame my anxiety and talk myself out of it and hope it would get better. Maybe Jonathan would go to therapy. Maybe he would realize how much he loved me and treat me the way he did in the beginning.
Maybe he’s just really stressed. Maybe we could fix this. Maybe it's all my fault. Maybe I deserve this. It didn't take long before my spark was gone and I was an empty, sad shell of a human. Before long, it all came to a disturbing head. I was going out with some friends as I rarely got to see them and wanted desperately to reconnect. He tried to tell me I couldn’t “go out dressed like that”. When I got upset and tried to leave, he got between me and the door.
I was convinced this was the night his rage would finally boil over and he would hit me. He didn’t. I left. He began to realize he was losing his grip on me. He couldn’t control me anymore and I didn’t worship him like I did in the beginning. He needed someone to worship him. A few nights later, we broke up…but he had a chilling gift for me.
He presented me with a manila envelope of my personal phone records that he had collected for 1.5+ years prior. You see, Jonathan had my password to my phone and would check it any chance he got, apparently. But what’s worse (wayyyyy worse) is that he somehow could access my phone records. So when he was out of town (and he admitted this ALL during our last dispute) and I sent him a photo of myself, he would upload the pic to his computer to retrieve the metadata.
He would then get into my phone records to compare the metadata to the files being sent to other numbers—to see if I was sending the same photos to other men. He did this for over a year. Compiled the data. Put it on a manila envelope and set it on our bookshelf for months (months!) just waiting for me to discover it so he could confront me. He very was angry that I never discovered it.
He accused me of using him. I was making $13 an hour and paying hundreds of dollars in groceries for us each month and my own medical bills/RXs. He literally NEVER asked me to contribute to rent. Just “Remind me I have to go pay rent today”! He said I used him for room and board for years, accused me of having “back-up boyfriends”, and having “emotional affairs” with multiple men.
Not a single word of that was even remotely true. I sent a few MILDLY flirty texts over the years but that is the extent of it. We “tried” to be friends after the split. Big mistake. We were “friends” for a while. But every time I saw him, I felt icky afterward. During, I felt like I was being manipulated still. For a long time, I had the discussion with my friends: “I call him an abuser—WHY AM I SPENDING TIME WITH HIM”. I was conditioned.
I thought I had no one left because he was so successful in isolating me. I thought I had to cling to the familiar. He’s now dating a very sweet woman who is 14 years younger and, as he explained to me when they first got together, “can’t make a decision for herself” so she’ll be easy for him to control. She’s a super fangirl of him, cut off all her hair and is dressing like him and they photograph people together.
I’m so worried for her. I pray he doesn’t damage her like he damaged me. One very, very strange thing is he photographed her and another model in a motel room where I was photographed with another model—and recreated almost PERFECTLY some of the images of me from years ago. If that’s not weird, I don’t know what is.
It’s almost like he’s getting a do-over or something. As my time in therapy went on, I realized that I got to make the decisions in my life. That he didn’t get to control me anymore. So I cut him off. And while I’m still recovering from the abusive behavior and the codependency, I’m doing really, really, really well. My life is better than I ever could’ve imagined.
I have a dog. And a blush pink Christmas tree that I keep up for an obnoxiously long time. I have a career I love and excel in that has given me the financial freedom to get out of debt, purchase a new car, and I’m on track to buy a house soon. I have incredible friends who picked up with me where we left off and never held it against me that I was isolated during that relationship.
I have a partner who is independent, loving, kind, communicative, and healthy. We’re both in therapy as individuals to be the best people we can be and have the healthiest relationship we can possibly have. It’s full of autonomy and healthy interdependence and so much support and patience and encouragement. I’m closer than ever to my family, and my sister likes my new partner—so that’s a good sign.
50. Playing The Victim
I was pulled off a work trip that she and I volunteered for together. It's one of several regular events throughout the year and this, in particular, was a not-so-fun trip so we figured volunteering would put us in good standing to be picked for a better one coming up. The timing could not have been worse. Completely by coincidence, we broke up the evening before my dad called me from back home saying my grandmother had a heart attack.
It had happened a couple of days prior and she might not pull through. I get pulled off, make arrangements for emergency travel, etc. The day I got the news was rough. Bad break up, then right after, granny might not make it another week. I kept to myself at work, and when she asked about it I told her, like I told our other coworkers, that I didn't want to talk about it.
I told her on my lunch break that me being pulled off the bad trip was not due to the breakup since I'm sure it looked that way. After the shift, I met her at her place and she immediately made this my fault. She said I was abandoning her, how could I be so selfish, everything she could think of. Then I informed her my grandmother was likely nearing the end of her life.
Her reaction was chilling. Her attitude didn't change in the slightest. She kept the same position, acting like I was doing this TO her. Like it was my fault she had to go on the work trip. My grandmother passed a half hour I started driving to the airport. And my ex never apologized for her behavior.
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