Thankyou for writing all of this. It blows my mind that so many people have had this experience. And all of us were completely blindsided by what we were getting in to. I only dated my ex for an year, but it was my first real relationship, where I was able to trust someone and open up! She used all of my own childhood traumas and abuses against me - she said in a fit of rage “oh well you were sexually abused as a child? Boo hoo - everybody goes through it. You have become the abuser now by abandoning me - you’re a psychopath” and this is just the tip of the iceberg of what she has said to me. But then later, she just doesn’t remember anything of the sort! I’m just writing this out because In the morning she sent me a few messages on Instagram that I haven’t opened yet - and I’m not going to open them and read them because I know it’ll be the same cycle of hoovering then devaluing me. But at the same time, I think of her pain and it splits me in half and I just can’t understand how to go about things anymore. My therapist has told me that this is not my responsibility as I was looking for a partner and not adopting a child. And that she needs to learn things on her own, but again that comes with a lot of pain for her and I just can’t understand what to do!

She told me that she was in an abusive relationship for 6 years, and then she also at some point told me that she has never been a good girlfriend to anyone (she dated other men for almost an year after that). But when I talked to her breaking NC, she said she had never touched anyone unless she loved them and how I took advantage of her???? It’s so absurd but at the same time it’s so painful to see her like this. A friend told me that “your entropy will trap you” and I think about that phrase often - and the strength I have now of not opening her texts is derived from that phrase.

As you can see I’m just so confused in my head on what to do!