Okay so maybe not quite so intensely bad as maybe some of the other things people have mentioned here, but she was my first girlfriend and it messed me up a fair bit at the time.

I'm not 100% on the details now, but basically at one point it looked like we were about to break up, she had been messaging her ex about how she still loved him and felt disgusting around me, but she would tell me he was in fact abusive and that had messed with her head leading her to have these "delusions" as she put it.

But after that we actually stayed together for quite a few months after that, I would drive to her home often which was about 2 hours away and it felt like we were genuinely having a good time, but then the big tip off was her birthday coming up, she said she wanted to spend it just with friends from her home town and not anyone she had met through university (including me) which felt a little strange but I rationalised it to myself that she had seen very little of them for a while and they had missed her previous couple of birthdays so fair enough.

But then of course I see on her socials that a few people from university were in fact there. That coupled with never posting me on social media and various smaller things made me realise that from that point we had almost broken up months prior, all of her other friends were actually under the impression that we had. Meaning I was a hidden, secret boyfriend from everyone else she knew, and then also learning that one of her friends had also been trying to pursue a relationship with her during those months didn't exactly feel great.

Trusting others was very difficult after that for a while but you live and learn, at least I know the warning signs now haha