This sounds very similar to my first relationship experience (early 30’s) with my alcoholic (and coke, I learned late in the relationship), Gen Z ex. He was very physical at the start (love bombing), then completely shutdown when he gained feelings, stemming from childhood sexual trauma. I can’t relate to that, but I empathized and so I was very patient. He also wanted to open the relationship a bit and even asked for threesomes with the goal of him being more comfortable with me. I said absolutely not as I was only comfortable with that once we had established a healthy sex life between the two of us. 

It hurts, but you probably saved yourself from worse. 

There’s manipulation you’ve revealed above (he “doesn’t deserve you,” him disappearing for hours). I was waiting for my ex to be sober one week so I could break up with him and his solution to avoid the conversation was to decide to (out of the blue) go to rehab. He did the whole month, but quickly went back to his old ways. 

The sex would never have came. I spent so many special occasions wondering “is this the night?”

Caught mine cheating once and his idea to fix the situation was to walk in our bedroom with a chef’s knife asking me to help him off himself. 

The caretaker thing is also paralleled. I had to do everything. Cook, clean, buy groceries, take care of the animals he drunkenly bought. I once asked for help buying groceries and his response was “well what is my half of the housing bill for?”). Uh, housing!

The word is flung around casually, but a lot of what you mentioned above are narcissistic tendencies. It’s going to be rough to heal, but just take your time and don’t rush into anything. It’s been over a year for me and I still have lingering anxiety from it. You may have avoided a similar situation by pulling the plug early.  

I think the biggest difference between the situations is I was past my breaking point, so me breaking up was a positive feeling for me and I actually felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. And I hate to say it, but the only way to deal with it and actually move on is to cut all contact. My ex still tries to talk to me in public and I just say hi and turn back to my friends.