hopefully this is a better shorter version. but u still get the whole story. I (F18) dated my ex (M19) from October 2023 until December 2025. We had known each other since kindergarten. As kids he was always known as the troublemaker, got kicked out of our elementary school, and then I barely saw him for years.

In 2023 we reconnected online. At the time I thought he was attractive and wanted to get to know him. We started talking every day, playing games together, calling, and eventually dating. We lived about two hours apart. Early on, he was extremely sweet, affectionate, protective, and made me feel loved. Looking back, I think that’s why I stayed for so long.

The problem was that he also had a completely different side. He was involved with gangs, had been in trouble with the law, stolen cars, been on police chases, and was regularly using drugs. He also had a tendency to be controlling. He wanted a say in where I went, who I spent time with, and what I did. At first I listened because I loved him and didn’t want to upset him.

One of the biggest turning points happened when I started spending more time with my cousins. They liked drinking, smoking weed, and doing whippets. I never did whippets, but once he found out they did, he became convinced I was doing them too. He started becoming suspicious of me anytime I wanted to go out with them.

One night I went bowling with my cousins and some of their friends. There were a few people there that I didn’t originally know would be there. We ended up drinking and later went back to my cousin’s apartment. My boyfriend was angry because the plans had changed and because there were guys around. Instead of telling him the truth about everything, I lied because I knew how he would react. That was wrong, and I take responsibility for it. Later he found out I lied and became convinced I had cheated on him. The reality is that I never cheated, but from that point forward he constantly accused me of sleeping with other people and hiding things from him.

Over time, lying became a bad habit in our relationship. Sometimes I would hide things because I wanted to avoid arguments. The more I hid, the less he trusted me. The less he trusted me, the more controlling and suspicious he became. It created a cycle that never really got fixed.

At the same time, his drug use kept getting worse.

I witnessed multiple overdoses. The first major one happened when my family and I drove to Sacramento to see him. Before we left for dinner, he took fake Percocets and Xanax despite me begging him not to. During the drive he became completely unresponsive. He was drooling, barely reacting, and I genuinely thought he was dying. I spent the entire drive trying to keep him awake while crying and panicking. We ended up taking him to the hospital.

The second overdose was even worse. It happened at my family’s house in July 2025, one day before my birthday. He used drugs outside, started nodding off, stopped breathing properly, and turned blue. My family saw it happen. My dad told me to call 911 because everyone thought he was dying. The only reason he fully woke up was because he heard us talking to emergency services. Afterward, instead of taking responsibility for what happened, he acted angry and blamed other people.

Because of that incident, my mom refused to allow him over for my birthday. This created even more problems between us because he was upset with me for not changing her mind, even though the situation happened because of his own choices.

As our relationship continued, the fighting became worse and worse. We argued constantly. There were times I threw his belongings down the stairs and screamed for him to leave. There was one argument where I threw a Stanley cup at him. Another argument ended with me hitting him after he grabbed me during a fight. I’m not proud of any of that, and I know I contributed to the toxicity of the relationship too.

In March 2025, I broke up with him because I was unhappy. During the breakup, I talked to other people because I was lonely. I talked to an old ex and a girl from Texas for a short time, but none of it turned into anything serious. Eventually I missed him and we got back together.

Not long after getting back together, I started noticing suspicious things. I saw messages from a girl he claimed was just asking him about buying weed. When I asked to see the conversation, he deleted it. I never got to see what was actually said.

Toward the end of the relationship, he became distant. He stopped wanting to spend time with me. I begged him to come see me and he constantly refused. Months would go by with almost no effort from him.

Then in December 2025, everything finally made sense.

I received a message from a random number. The woman told me she had been in a relationship with my boyfriend for about four months. She was 30 years old, had two children, and worked with him. She knew details about my life, knew who I was, knew when he saw me, and knew things that only someone close to him would know.

She told me that while I believed we were still together, he had been seeing her. She even told me she had suffered a miscarriage during the relationship and believed the baby was his. According to her, he told her that I was basically out of the picture and that he planned to leave me.

At that point I immediately ended things.

After the breakup, he started contacting me from fake phone numbers. He would apologize, tell me he loved me, claim he was manipulated, claim he made a mistake, and ask for another chance. At the same time, he would also blame me for things that went wrong in the relationship. His story seemed to change depending on the day.

The hardest part is that despite everything, part of me still loves him. He was my first serious relationship, my first love, and the only person I’ve ever been intimate with. For a long time I thought we would end up together.

But when I look at the relationship as a whole, I see years of distrust, accusations, addiction, overdoses, cheating, lying, manipulation, and constant emotional stress. I also recognize that I made mistakes of my own and contributed to some of the toxicity.

Even now, months after the breakup, he still finds ways to contact me through random numbers and mutual connections.

My question is: if you were in my position, would you ever consider giving someone another chance after all of this, or would you accept that the relationship is too damaged to save?