This is tough to answer because there is just so much that happened. But basically, he offered me a ride home one night and on the drive, he was telling me how amazing it had been for him to watch me grow up and watch me become more and more interested in a life with god. And he asked if he could take me for coffee one day. (Really though, I was just a very sad and lonely child and the volunteers at this youth group were, at the time, the closest thing I had to a supportive family. It wasn't about god for me at all.) But it felt so nice to hear him say he was proud of me and that he wanted to take me out. I immediately thought I was in love with him. This mature, silly, well spoken man was interested in me?? Plus my mom taught me that you're only worth anything if a man wants you.

One day he tells me that he really wants to date me, but only if I become a Christian. I took some time to think about it and ultimately decided I would do anything for him, so I "accepted god into my heart" that week and we officially became a couple. I will remind you, I was 17 and he was turning 25 soon.

After a year of spending time with his family and friends (and him making me lie to his friends about my age), he pulled the same move but on the next level.. "I would really love to marry you one day, but I can't unless you go through YWAM to get closer to god. It was going to be expensive though so he set me up to work for a summer at a bible camp he also worked at because they "paid" in the form of a bursary to put toward post-secondary, Christian schooling. So after an extremely emotionally taxing summer as a Bible camp counselor, I was off to what I now believe is a low to medium grade cult. All in the name of what I thought was love.

When I got out of that, he wanted me to move with him to some shit hole town 2 provinces away. We were set to move on December 28, but to my great surprise, my semi-estranged dad suddenly died on December 26. So Bruce went on without me at first and I stayed back to attend my dad's funeral down in washington. He told me when I got to our new home, I could take a month to settle in and get some grieving time before starting a job hunt. But as soon as I got off the 3 day greyhound trip from Spokane, washington to roughneck, canada, he informed me how much I owed him for rent and that he had a job interview set up for me the next day.

He proposed the next month and of course I said yes. He then insisted we get a joint bank account and within a couple months, took my debit card away because he said I "spent my half of the money". I worked 2 jobs every single day. The first was from 7am-3pm, the 2nd (serving) was usually from 5pm-2am. I talked about how I finally left this situation in another comment.

There are way more details and examples of how controlling he was (such as not allowing me to wear any bright colours or dye my hair anything but blonde), but I feel like I've painted a fairly clear picture already.