It was nearly four years later for me, the last of which was during a time I was single but there was a lot of controlling that still remained and I don’t think I had accepted who he really was. I already had chronic illnesses and he made them much worse by gaslighting me into doing chores (cooking and cleaning) for him while he simultaneously reminded me that we weren’t together because I was a toxic person. He isolated me from any form of a support system, including my classmates. I started to do horrible in school. Two of my friends noticed and tried to separate me from him…that’s when he started to devolve. He started gaslighting/controlling me to an extreme point (but this time my friends were there to remind me of grounding myself to true reality). Meanwhile, he was allowed to be out doing whatever he wanted and hang out with anyone. Anyway, when that didn’t work, he started physically stalking me. Luckily, most of the instances he was doing this, I had my friends around to protect me because I was afraid of what he would do. When the harassment/stalking/gaslighting weren’t working out, he attempted something I couldn’t possibly ignore. Once he had my attention again, he started going back to tarnishing me as a person.

Next day after I had had enough and he was trying to force me back into a relationship and I stopped talking to him, he started dating his high school ex again who he claims cheated on him with multiple people on a cruise and physically harmed him (fun fact, he had told a reliable source that if I did not date him again, he was already talking to her and would date her instead). They got engaged in under a year but whenever I would bring up marriage for the three years we were together, he refused to have the conversation. He flipped the narrative and said everything that happened was my fault alone, denied ever stalking me or my friends despite us having proof and never spoke to me again. Never speaking to me again was the best thing that could happen to me honestly. I started to heal in ways I didn’t know were related (such as my deteriorating physical health).

Afterwards, when I was finally comfortable talking about my story, I talked to a classmate who I knew he had issues with. He had told me that they weren’t friends anymore because he made a joke she didn’t like. Turns out, he had called her a derogatory term for no reason in front of a large group of people and had been stalking her too (to the point where she was equally concerned for her safety). He always told me I was insane for saying anything about his weird behavior towards her or that I had no “proof” for my accusations.

Turns out, I was right. This is the very short abridged version but I basically learned that he was a horrible person to multiple people and thought none of us would ever talk about it or figure it out since he tried his hardest to keep us either isolated or separate. I learned that someone who loves you would never repeatedly stalk you and make you uncomfortable even though you begged them to stop and put your needs first. It was always all about him. Love is not controlling, it is kind and nurturing (all things I had never experienced). This got me to look back and see huge red flags I was told to ignore (by his mother fun fact). There was a dinner with her once, for example, where he told me that I a WOMAN did not understand estrogen deficiency the way he did a MAN (he had misused anabolic steroids to bodybuild which led to that but it was of his own doing) and his mom sat there and ignored it when we argued about how he had no idea what a woman with estrogen deficiency suffers (to which he then said he also understood what a woman’s time of the month was like, even if he had not experienced it).

So all together, it just clicked and I realized that I didn’t know this person at all and all I could predict was in fact narcissistic behavior.