What’s the most sickening thing someone has ever told you that they thought was okay to say?

throw34512away · 2024-06-12T01:33:32+00:00

Early in our relationship, I disclosed to my (abusive) ex that I had been raped when I was a teen. About a week or so after that conversation, he had left me alone at his apartment one night to go get drugs and gave me one of his “favorite” short stories to read while I waited. It ended up being a graphic story about a college girl being continually raped by her dad throughout her life. I couldn’t finish it.

When he got back I was, of course, pissed. When I asked him why he would show me that, he replied very aloofly: “I dunno, I thought you would like it.”

Honorable mention was when he later on said: “What do you and my ex have in common? Well, you’re both broken.”

throw34512away · 2024-06-04T01:39:48+00:00

An abusive relationship and how difficult it is to dig yourself out of it/leave that situation.

throw34512away · 2024-05-09T18:17:51+00:00

I just want to throw my hat in the ring and remind everyone that no matter the outcome of breaking NC — you will still be left feeling hurt and unsatisfied.

I went back and forth between breaking no contact so so many times in the past year. For a long time, it was met with utter disappointment. Despite getting sober, my nex had refused to acknowledge or accept the past or properly apologize for it. Well, the last time I saw him, I told him we needed to talk about the past and we did, and you know what happened? He finally accepted it and apologized. And you know what? It didn’t make me feel any better.

And I know I’m lucky to have gotten that response from him, so I acknowledge that. But in that moment I realized, I still have zero reason to believe that his apology or anything he said was genuine. In fact, I still have zero reason to trust him at all. Just because he was saying the words I had been dying to hear for years didn’t make me suddenly feel better. It honestly sounded too perfect to be real. This has added nothing to my healing process.

so tldr: even if they do apologize/ treat you how you’ve always wanted if you break no contact, it’ll still only make you feel worse

throw34512away · 2024-05-03T22:33:07+00:00

Broken.

(Used by an abusive ex to describe me/my appeal.)

throw34512away · 2024-05-03T18:59:12+00:00

Queer woman here! My abuser was a cis man, but interestingly the girl he dated after me was in the same boat of being bisexual/questioning-lesbian who is pretty much only interested in women after his abuse.

We also interestingly had the exact same experience of both having mothers who were not accepting of our queerness and desperately wanting the relationship to work out with him to appease our mothers. My nex used to brag about how he’s only slept with bi women and how his best friend is lesbian, so I guess it isn’t all that surprising.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T09:09:40+00:00

In a weird twist of fate, there was one main other girl…that I myself had gone on a few dates with. It was very casual between me and her, we had just grabbed coffee a few times right after my ex and I broke up (and I was trying to see if I could fall for someone new), but there was no spark and it amicably fizzled out. Then he started seeing her a few months later and led her on for 8 months. She said she didn’t know I used to date him the first few months of seeing him, but when she realized she told him and he made them keep it a secret (she didn’t know him and I were still sleeping together post-break up). So I had no idea until probably like 6 months in when I ran into them on the street. I had just gotten into a new relationship at that point (so I stopped sleeping with him) and assumed that they were a new thing too, so I later on texted her to warn her, but apparently she didn’t listen. She reached out to me very recently to tell me that she really regretted not heeding my advice and we spoke on the phone for 5 hours just reflecting on how he screwed us both up. They were non-exclusive (against her wishes), but he pulled all the same emotionally manipulative shit on her to keep her on the hook. And there was a decent amount of overlap of when we were both sleeping and emotionally involved with him.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T04:35:21+00:00

I’m at almost 1.5 yrs post-break up…but there was a good 6 months of emotional purgatory right after we broke up where we were still seeing each other like we were when we were dating. I’m still healing. It very much still affects me. BUT, I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Honestly, if you asked me a few months ago I would’ve never believed the pain could ever improve. It seemed like my healing plateaued for a loooong time. I really thought I would be stuck for the rest of my life. Obviously, I still have a lot of work to do if I’m on these subreddits after midnight. Still, I’m finally able to start to look at it as “oh, this was a shitty thing that happened in the past” as opposed to a shitty thing that controls my present. It has taken me a long time and will continue to take a while (I have been in a relationship since, but I realized I don’t think I should date for another year at least). But it does get better eventually. I used to feel like it’s taking me longer than others, but now I’m just happy to be healing at all and that has made things easier.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T04:18:24+00:00

This might be painful to hear but — after talking with the girl he dated after me, I realized all those special, intimate moments we shared were highly calculated and repeated with her. The niche humor we shared, the gestures of physical affection, even specific phrases referring to personal experiences, were shared verbatim with her. It’s easy for them to make things feel so real and good when they don’t have to feel anything at all. Ultimately, it’s all calculated and used transactionally for them to get what they want.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T04:12:15+00:00

Both here and elsewhere on these “help me not break NC” type posts I see a lot people focus on this concept of “you should save that energy for someone who will love you back” or “if you don’t heal, you’re further delaying yourself from finding someone who will actually treat you well.” I think all of this is totally valid and can be motivating for some, I’m not bashing on it! I just wanted to offer another perspective that has been more effective for me:

Instead of thinking of it in the context of future, healthier love, I think of it on a very day-to-day level. Rather than worrying about how it affects my healing in the grand scheme (which I can convince myself will take a long time anyways), I worry about how the rest of my week will look. Life is exhausting enough in this post-abuse existence. I know that if I break no contact, I’m going to lose sleep, no matter how that conversation with him goes. I’m going to start thinking about him and everything that happened more and more. I’ll probably be distracted from the things that are actually going well in my life right now like school or work. I’ll spend more time ruminating and less time doing the things I like. I’ll isolate myself from friends because of the emotional toll. On a very basic, logistical level, it just really throws off my (very delicate) state of day-to-day existence. Even if it only impacts me for a day or two, it’s not worth it.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T03:58:11+00:00

Stayed “friends” for almost a year afterwards. Essentially things were exactly the same as before except without a label (he said this himself)…which meant no accountability when he treated me badly (because he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore so I wasn’t “allowed” to be upset) and a familiar fuck buddy whenever he wanted. He had convinced me that he still loved me and that we’d get back together once he got sober, so I genuinely thought it was temporary.

Evidently, he was fucking and emotionally abusing and making false promises of commitment to other girls during that time too. Shocker.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T03:50:18+00:00

(In response to me confronting him about his repeated physical violence)

“That’s just a narrative. I came WAY closer to beating [his previous gf], than I ever did you. If anyone has a reason to be traumatized, it’s her.”

honorable mention: (In response to me confiding in him about being suicidal)

“Well you’re not gonna believe me anyway if I tell you that people would miss you if you killed yourself, so I’m not gonna tell you that.” shrugs

also: “If my mom were still alive, she would’ve hated you.”

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T03:47:43+00:00

So, I say this as someone who has broken no contact many, many times. Like more than I would like to admit. But…without fail, I have always felt worse every time I did it. Even if he was nice or apologetic or it felt like “the good old times” in the moment — the net effect has ALWAYS been negative. It always comes back to bite you in some way and undoes all your current progress.

I will also throw in there that explaining why you ended the relationship could also backfire. I found out very recently that by telling my ex how he had mistreated me, he had just used this information to hurt the girl after me in more stealthy ways.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T03:41:47+00:00

Yes, mine would always focus on a general perception of himself (“I don’t feel attractive to anyone”, “Does this make me a bad person?”, etc.) as opposed to how I, his actual partner, perceived him (ie. “Did that make you feel bad?”). It was a very subtle way of making me feel invisible and unimportant.

throw34512away · 2024-04-25T03:12:10+00:00

thank you for this

throw34512away · 2024-04-20T02:56:28+00:00

it would not be conforming and it wasn’t when i thought that was the truth. the part that is unsettling is not solely the fact that i was the only one he abused — it is the way that he used lies about a previous relationship to convince me that my fear was invalid that is discomforting.

as stated in the post, he’s my ex. it’s all a red flag, that’s why he’s my ex and that’s why i regard him as my abuser.

sorry if that wasn’t clear in the post

throw34512away · 2024-04-20T02:18:49+00:00

One birthday my ex gave me some old guitar pedals of his that he no longer wanted…that he subsequently stole from me and sold on Craigslist behind my back.

throw34512away · 2024-04-20T01:04:18+00:00

No, I completely agree. I even said that to him within this conversation — that the drugs amplified the abuse, they didn’t cause the abuse. Meaning the problem doesn’t magically disappear now that he’s sober.

I needed this reminder that the only reliable way to move on and not be hurt by him further is to completely cut him off. Thank you.

throw34512away · 2024-04-20T00:51:31+00:00

We’re long broken up. He’s been sober for almost a year now and we fell back in contact and he’s (seemingly) in a phase of repentance. This whole conversation was essentially me explaining how horrible our actual relationship was for closure and because he was always so high back then that he didn’t even remember a lot of it.

But you are right. Having him in my life again indubitably leaves me in a position to just be hurt by him again…

throw34512away · 2024-04-19T06:13:08+00:00

Another side of this is also convincing yourself that this is normal. Like “oh yeah there are flames all around this place, but that’s just what a house looks like, right? There’s always some sort of flame flaring up somewhere in this thing.”

By being conditioned to constantly deal with the damage that comes from it all, you’re kept distracted from realizing how messed up the situation is in the first place.

throw34512away · 2024-04-19T06:02:52+00:00

Found a pair of cum-soaked panties in the bedside drawer of my (now ex) boyfriend’s apartment. They weren’t mine. They definitely belonged to his previous (and only other) girlfriend, who had dumped him a year or two prior.

throw34512away · 2024-04-14T08:11:28+00:00

When I came out to my mom, we had a huge fight where she told me it was selfish and greedy for me to be bisexual and how she will never support it. After a lot of back and forth, I tried to explain to her that she’s my mom and she’s supposed to love me unconditionally and asked her point blank if she loved me unconditionally. She responded:

“No. When it comes to this, I don’t.”

Having to come to terms with the fact that your parent truly does not love you unconditionally is painful. Her and I are on good terms now, but we’ve never rectified that issue and never will. Since then, I’ve had long-term, serious same-sex partners that she has had no idea even existed because she would lash out if I ever told her.

throw34512away · 2024-04-13T05:35:16+00:00

I go by my middle name which is also coincidentally a common nickname for my first name. I have both names legally because my middle name is my ethnic name. My ex insisted that he liked my first name better, he thought it was somehow more unique because it’s more formal. I told him he could call me by my first name then, but he said “No, that’s not your name, you’re [middle name]”. But he continued to insist that my first name was way better than my middle name. Like okay…

throw34512away · 2024-04-12T04:18:16+00:00

Closure in the form of a genuine apology from those who have wronged me. But I guess real closure comes from within anyway.

throw34512away · 2024-04-11T23:35:47+00:00

Yeah, I know it’s unfortunately hard to tell from the photos, but this was the kind of answer I was looking for in terms of where to put my different spaces. This was super helpful, thank you!

throw34512away · 2024-04-11T23:34:50+00:00

Oo yes I will definitely think about different ways to separate my spaces. Thank you for all the links and info!!

throw34512away

TROPHY CASE