This is what happened to me, so I know what I’m talking about. I want to share my extremely painful experience.
I want to open up my heart and become completely vulnerable in front of you all.
I’m doing this in the hope that my story will help others break free from the hell they are going through like I broke free from mine.
It took me a long time to understand what kind of a monster I was married to—it took me 4 years. 4 years of tears, 4 years of crippling pain, 4 years of thinking it was all my fault.
After all that time, I’m not the same anymore. He took that part of me that made me who I am.
He stole it from me and turned me into something I didn’t want to be. Something he wanted me to be.
Something he could control—a mannequin disguised as a woman.
He was an infinite bastard. A heartless mother fucker. He didn’t care for a single soul in this world except for himself.
He didn’t care for his family or his friends. Actually, he didn’t even have any friends.
And he robbed me of mine, as well. It was so calculated, it was so sneaky and I didn’t get it.
I couldn’t leave just like that. Even when I started to realize what he was doing to me, I couldn’t just walk away.
It’s not as easy as it seems. I know people sometimes judge women who are being abused for still sticking to their abusers.
These abused women even defend their abusers and make excuses for them. Well, it’s easy to play the role of just an observer and judge those women.
But, living that scenario and waking up every morning with a fear-filled stomach and with disappointment written all over your face is something completely different.
These women are afraid to leave because they got used to the poor treatment they get. They don’t know any better.
It is insanely weird, because, to some extent, they have at least some kind of security, even if it’s living with an abuser. These toxic men know how to trick you into thinking they really care for you.
They know how to give you just enough attention to make you stay.
And when they do, they turn into toxic sociopaths, their actual real selves, all over again, and the vicious circle goes on. That’s why you can’t leave.
He keeps giving you hope he will change.
The only thing these women know is maltreatment. When someone screams and lashes out at you every day, it becomes your natural surroundings.
After some time, those harsh loud insults don’t offend you as much.
His threats and his violent behavior don’t affect you as much. I mean it does affect you, but you swallow it all up.
You don’t shake anymore in front of him, but you go through hell inside of you.
He gives you a dose of himself and you are hooked.
It’s like you are a drug addict. He made you try it a few times and now, you can’t stop.
You need more and more and he keeps giving you something you think you need, something you think you can’t live without.
When a drug addict gets sober, he realizes what he was doing to himself.
He realizes how much damage he has done to his precious mind and body and he realizes how stupid he was up to the point when he couldn’t have enough.
It’s either give up on drugs or die. It’s the same for you. Leave him or die from the inside.
If your guts are telling you something is wrong, and if you’re feeling like you’ve been imprisoned, if your true self is slowly starting to fade or if you have disappeared completely, then you are being emotionally abused.
All of the things I wrote are true, but most of the women who are living it can’t accept it or are afraid to.
If you’re still too scared to take the step to being ‘sober’, to abandon the sociopath that constantly feeds you with toxicity, remember this…
Love isn’t supposed to be that way. Love isn’t supposed to yell at you because it’s having a bad day.
Love isn’t supposed to emotionally blackmail you. Love isn’t supposed to make you feel less worthy.
Love isn’t supposed to break you.
But these men are everything but love. They scream, they yell and they disrespect.
These men don’t know how to love. They know how to pretend to love you.
They use their villain manipulative power to gaslight you and make you completely oblivious to what’s happening.
They have the power to control you, but only until you wake up from the nightmare they’ve directed and realize you deserve and want way better than you have now.
Open your eyes to save yourself. See what he’s doing to you, and just like myself, run for your life.
See also: Are You The Target Of A Sociopath? 10 Ways To Find Out
He is gaslighting you and making you feel you are the crazy one
It’s his favorite tactic, something he does best. He makes you believe things which are not true.
Even if you doubt him at first and confront him about it, he will make such powerful and vivid excuses and that discussion will go on for days.
He will act like it’s not a big deal. Even if you caught him texting another woman who is clearly his mistress, he will make you believe it’s not true.
At first, you will insist on him explaining you the situation, but after some time of hearing the same excuses, you’ll start doubting yourself.
You will actually make yourself believe it’s all in your head, that you are pushing things too far.
That was his plan all along. To make you believe you’re the crazy one and that he never did anything wrong.
He is making you think everything is your fault.
He is totally guilt-tripping you. He makes you think you are the one to blame for literally anything—his and your mistakes.
After all, he is the perfect one and it is impossible for him to make a mistake. You are the incapable one, submissive, the last on the list.
This is how he emotionally blackmails you.
If he has troubles in his life, he will guilt you by saying you don’t love him or that you don’t give him enough of your time and that’s why he’s been failing. Not because he is incompetent, but because you don’t try hard enough.
He’s a control freak
He is obsessed with control. That’s why he has isolated you from the rest of the world.
He doesn’t want you to communicate with anybody but him, so he can feed you with his toxic thoughts and violent behavior.
So you think there is nothing better out there for you, only what he gives you.
He also knows he can’t keep your attention. After you fall for him, he knows he has to do something to force you to stay.
To make this come true, he has mastered controlling any possible situation, so there won’t be any surprises. This makes you feel like a prisoner.
He’s a complete hypocrite
At the beginning, he will be perfect. He will move mountains for you and you will for him. But, after some time, he will change and become worse and worse.
He will cheat, he will lie and he will manipulate you. He will treat you like you are the last on his list of priorities because, in fact, you are.
And what’s hilarious is that you are supposed to remain perfect and flawless.
You have to watch out for your behavior and you have to be careful not to hurt him in any possible way while he treats you like crap.
The world revolves around him
He needs to be the center of the attention and your whole world has to revolve around him.
If you do something that doesn’t have to do anything with him, he’ll get insanely jealous and make you pay for that ‘mistake’ you made.
In fact, he doesn’t have an identity of his own. He needs you to boost his ego and to feed him with your approval which is sad when you look at it more closely.
He doesn’t respect your boundaries
This is again because he doesn’t respect you enough to care. We all have boundaries, we all draw the line when something is too much for us.
We have things which we tolerate and things which we despise.
Well, he doesn’t respect that. He thinks he has the right to set your boundaries for you.
And even if you remain firm and let him realize when it’s enough, he won’t respect it.
He will cross those boundaries every time he wants because he doesn’t care at all about what you need or think.
He lies perfectly
He was born this way. Pretty much everything he says is a lie. He lies so perfectly that you would never doubt him and he is consistent.
He never loses himself in that mess of lies he creates. Even if you catch him lying, he will remain calm and all together. And he will lie his way out of that situation, too.
He will slowly consume you
He will use you and he will suck your energy dry. And this will go on and on as long as he needs it.
Even when you are all drained having nothing more left, he will leave you for a while to recharge and come back and feast on you some more.
He will infect you with his toxicity and prevent you from seeing how capable, strong and beautiful you are.
His main goal is to assure you that you are one big nothing without him.
And to achieve that, he plays all kinds of emotional mind games, just to assure you that he is all you can ever have.
If he tried to keep you in any other way, he would be alone forever.
You’re fighting with anxiety and you don’t know why
You’re anxious and you can’t figure out why. Well, it’s because your whole relationship is wrong.
He is wrong. It’s because you don’t feel good in your relationship and you feel he is being disrespectful and mean for no good reason.
You think everything is your fault, and you blame yourself because he tricks you into doing that.
You think you are less worthy and you actually start to believe that you are lucky you have any kind of relationship in the first place.
You’re anxious because you overanalyze things which are so simple, only you can’t see them yet.
He is extremely rude to the people he has no interest in
He was only kind to you and he only bothered to impress you. He doesn’t care about other people and is never kind to anyone.
On contrary, he is extremely rude and unpleasant. That’s because he doesn’t need anything from those people, so he doesn’t hide his real face and treats them like crap.
When he actually needs someone’s help, he turns on his full charm and of course gets what he wants.
Afterwards, you’re just another face in the crowd for him—completely irrelevant and non-existent.
I was dating a guy for 11 months. Worked out of town in Baltimore but had family and friends here in uniontown. Nothing he said or did while away made no sense ever. But I kept plugging away . When he was here we laughed, cooked together, laid in bed for hours and talked. Sex was off the charts. But I couldn’t stand him and his constant need to smoke pot because he said he was a diabetic. But I was afraid to be without him. Than I got a text one day from his girlfriend that he had been living with for 5 years. After all that I still took him back. But could not trust him while he was away. He left this weekend with all of his things and said he couldn’t deal with me not trusting him. I have no idea what I’m gonna do. I’m completely frozen in fear that he’s gone .
Some of these symptoms could arise from someone undiagnosed with autism – with the co-morbid trait of Pathological Demand Avoidance… and other neurological conditions. There are so many adults out there that don’t realise they have a condition – it is very invisible to friends and relatives too. I’m not saying their behaviour is right at all, or excusing it, but it could be worth looking at all angles rather than writing everyone off as a sociopath. The advice to escape the behaviour is sensible of course.
I really appreciate this article. It’s been almost a month since I ended my relationship of 31 years to a man exactly like the one written about here. I look back now with shame that I stayed as long as I did. He cheated repeatedly, lied incessantly and treated me like a damn doormat. I had no self respect or self esteem….he took that from me. I’m now struggling to gain those things back, and I do mean STRUGGLING. I know I’m a good person and I deserve so much better but I still have days when that horrible little thought crosses my mind….maybe he’s learned this time…maybe now that he knows how serious I am he’ll change….maybe this is his wake up call. I’ve completely blocked him on everything and I got an order of protection to keep him away but he still manages to get messages through to me through family members. The usual…” this time I’ve hit rock bottom”, ” I’ll do whatever it takes to get you back”, ” I’ve changed”. It weakens my resolve when I hear these things and ofcourse he knows that. I wish I had a crystal ball to see into the future, to see if I’ll ever have happiness and maybe true love in my life one day. It sure would make this Rollercoaster ride of pain a little more tolerable.
Dean Highway was my love and my world until I found this out. He had me so messed up that I even tried to commit suicide repeatedly, luckily they saved my life again and again. I am now free of the abuse and control he had over me, but like a fool I miss him everyday and still think that maybe he would change. I know he won’t and I know now that he never really Loved me. I am trying to get better and in time I will, I just need to stay far far away from him and his family or friends. It’s very very hard to just make it through the day without the need to call or text him. Trust me four years of that experience will have you in knots and doubting everything around you, including the people who truly love you. I hate myself for being so very stupid and falling for his lies. I will heal but when&how???
It could happen to men also.
This is my life right now but I don’t think any of it is his fault ….we recently had to burry our 7 month old son after months of stress and pain only to have our daughter taken by ministry due to “mental health concerns” that would cause anyone to lash out ….right?????…….however I can’t get a few things out of my head that took place prior to all of this…..f**k!!
Sadly it takes time before you even realize that you are in this situation… and by then you’ve been isolated and broken… in hindsight it was textbook. He would do anything for me in the beginning… until he got into my life where he wanted to be, and then his real personality seeped out. I don’t even think it was an intentional thing.. I think it’s just who he is. Always critical, always blaming, verbally abusive… until you believe that opinion of yourself… and accept all the crappy excuses. I lost most of my friends because no one wanted to be around him… I lost my self confidence, ended up on anxiety meds.. I lost who I used to be. It cost me many years before I understood and got out. And then for over a year he tried to convince me to take him back… he went back into the mode where he would do anything. And I thank my lucky starts I had strength to stay out once I was OUT!
I’m disgusted that I have let this happen to me for the 3rd relationship. I have no hope left. I’m done.
I litterally just broke up with ths guy i was with. April 2 would have been 9 years and im so happy i finally did it. .. hes 42 im turning 30….. i couldnt go another year of all the bullshit lies and yelling and raising his fist to shut me up and much more… i read the girls story that wrote this ..an its totally like mine. And its so true. You make excusses for them. And honestly didnt think i wasnt beautiful enough to get someone else and didnt think anyone else would want me again. Its sad how the men that do this dont even see what the fu k there doing … no matter how much i tell him what the problem is he will blame my friends or whoever or me. Anyways.. .. im just happy i read this artical today…. and even happy i just got out of the relationship. I just hope i can find a room to rent sooner then later with my dog so that i can get out of here. Wish me luck. Thanks again.
I am in it now he has no job .he has busted my lip I have four stitches . Fourth time he punched me in the face .I moved to a house away from everything everyone. I’m depressed beyond depressed .He leaves me for 24 hours t a time . I AM PLANNING MY ESCAPE . He lies to get money from me to smoke weed.
I’m 26 now but when I was 20 I got the strength to get of a 4 year hell of a relationship…… 6 months after we go together I had a miscarriage it messed me up really bad and he took advantage of me weakness… He pushed his family away and then he pushed mine away… He controlled my phone and followed me to work and if I wasn’t home at exactly 11:12pm then I had to prove that I had stopped for gas or whatever it was that I needed …. My Neighbors could here everything but never helped me until one day he beat me while I was still in my car with my seat belt still on .. the only reason the called the cops was because there daughter was staring out her window waiting for me to come home so that she could ask to see my new litter of puppies and she witnessed the whole thing… He tried to fight the cops and they took him a way…. I knew that was my chance to get out but I had no help and I didn’t know how to live in a safe place without being told what to wear or what to eat what to say so I attempted suicide .. not only did it wake me up but it got my family to see that I wasn’t trying to seek attention that I truly needed help looking back I hate the fact that it had to go that far just for my family to see that I needed them but that is now been six years I have two beautiful children and although I still struggle with the Demons of depression anxiety stress PTSD I am making the best of what I have … Please don’t do copy me when you get free and you fine yourself with help from family please call community services they have a lot of un talked about programs that can help you that I only found out after the fact….. there is help out there
I’m sorry I didn’t have good grammar or spelling… As my 5 year old learns so do I ?
I continue to get notifications saying there’s been a response to a comment I posted but cannot seem to find them or the original comment I left. I’d love to read them since people took the time to reply but cannot find them. Please help. Thanks so much.
Still receiving messages saying there’s a reply to my post. Please send a way I can read these and possibly respond. Thank you so much for the article.
This can happen to men, too. Trust me on that.
Yes it can indeed 🙁 being one, a man, it’s shit how most articles are one sided, these PERSONS can very easily utilize this and make you look like the crazy one who doesn’t care about anything and just treat people like shit. Being that most articles on narcissism and abusive behavior puts the man as the abuser…. Pushed so far I have become a bit of an asshole, walking on eggshells, waiting for the next round of hurt feelings I’m at fault for… AllWays…. I love her regardless and so I can’t give up on her right? It’s been bad, been worse, looks good at times, but I know I’m basically lying to myself, hope for real change, it’s a viscous cycle. Push away and pull back in, over and over…
In my case, the trash took itself out, he left me 4 days before Christmas, while I was in the hospital with pneumonia. I don’t miss him as much as I thought I would. Thed only thing I struggle with is trying to get on my feet with next to nothing, and not having genuine love in my life.
OMG! I was in this relationship for 33 years until my son helped me to break up. He couldn’t tolerate the pain I was going through! I hope to heal.
I just got out of a 8.5 year relationship with a man like this we were highschool sweet hearts. My whole world is shifting in Suva positive way and I’m so grateful.
You can get out Cynthia I did, twice.
My life right now. Don’t even know how to get out
Cynthia… I left a 6 year relationship, owned a house and everything.. not that long ago I never thought I could leave. I felt trapped, I thought I’d be seen as a failure.
Create a support system, whether it’s friends, family, co-workers. Tell them what’s happening. Most employers have resources to help you.. either Human Resources or occupational health.. once you have a plan you have to understand it’s going to hurt like hell to leave, they make you feel that you cannot live without them, no one else will want you. But that’s not true, and even if it was, wouldn’t it be nicer to have no one, than to have someone who makes you feel absolutely horrible more than not. Pack your things, leave. Once you’re out, block all contact, that was a mistake I made.. when I moved out and left I didn’t block him at first, which made it hard. I would feel amazing, like I was doing the right thing.. then he’d call or text saying he missed me, he’d promise the world, but deep down I knew he didn’t mean it. He was never sorry, and he’d never change. So this would have me doubt myself that maybe I should have stayed. But that was part of his plan. So BLOCK all contact, cellphone, Facebook, Instagram EVERYTHING. Once you do that you’ll begin to heal and have realization of how wrong things really were. I struggled with a hard time because I was upset with myself for letting someone treat me so poorly for so long and letting it happen. I was upset that I had so little self respect that I let it happen. I’m almost a year since leaving, and at the time I never imagined I’d feel this way. I am happy. I love myself. I know that I do not need someone to make me a whole person; I am able to create my own happiness. It’s going to be a rollercoaster of emotions leaving but you can do it. If you’re strong enough to be with someone like that, you’re strong enough to get out. Leave and focus on you, your career, School, education. Anything that’s positive you can do it. Don’t let this define you another day. Get help. I’m praying for you. I know you can do this. Don’t let him win.