Hey everyone,

I’m 26F, and I really need to vent about this intense situation I’ve been going through. Back in 2020, I took a vow of celibacy, stopped dating men, and exclusively dated women for a while. I was single for 2 years, and in 2023, I dated my first girlfriend. Things felt balanced, and I was finally in a space where I was happy, focused on my goals, and moving forward with my life.

Then, in July, I moved to San Francisco to further my career, and life quickly took a turn. I met a tech leader—handsome, athletic, blue eyes, seemingly perfect. We dated for 7 weeks, going on romantic dates like Broadway shows, dinner by the water, and we had deep, thoughtful conversations about our future, like building robots together and reading the same books. He never pressured me for sex, and I really thought we were building something special.

Then, out of nowhere, after our last date (where I went back to his place but didn’t sleep with him), he ghosted me. No closure, BS explanation. It was like everything we’d shared disappeared overnight. I was devastated. We had talked daily for almost two months, and I thought we were on the same page, but suddenly, it was over without a word. I felt emotionally gutted.

In the midst of my pain, I leaned on a guy friend for emotional support. He had been in my life for a while, but I wasn’t interested in him romantically. However, he introduced me to one of his associates—an engineer and owner of a makerspace—and that’s where everything began to unravel. From the start, I saw red flags with the engineer (35, 300lbs, not taking care of himself). He was controlling, intense, and monopolized my time, but after being ghosted, I was in such a vulnerable state that I convinced myself, “At least *he* wants me and believes in courting taking care of his girl.”

We started hanging out every day, working on tech projects together, and under pressure, I said yes to being his girlfriend. Deep down, I wasn’t ready. I had wanted to stay single and find the best man for me (I was even dating a 28-year-old VC with his own firm at the time), but the engineer was persistent, and I eventually gave in, even though I knew it wasn’t right.

Fast forward: We started a company together, and I basically moved into his makerspace, which had no shower. I stayed there for days at a time, going without basic self-care, just to help build our project and he wouldn’t even want me at my own place he would call me to come back for the project. We were working 24/7 on an AI hardware product for a hackathon with $10K prize. One night, after a long day of work, we got drunk, and even though I hadn’t planned it, we had sex. He told me he couldn’t use condoms, and in my vulnerable state, I didn’t resist. This was the first time I’d broken my 4-year vow of celibacy, and I was very upset but at least I felt like he was taking care of me and caring about my success building the product with me.

The next thing I knew, he was talking about babies. He told me, “You’re 26—time is running out,” and started saying that career-focused women end up old, single, and never married after 30. He pressured me to act like his “wife,” asking me to clean his workspace, do his laundry, and cook for him—tasks I hadn’t signed up for, especially without a real commitment. I was working alongside him, coding and helping build a company, but in his mind, I wasn’t doing “enough.”

When I asked him to help me with $700 rent at my place (I was living there full-time), he refused, saying, “That’s wifey privileges. If we were married, I’d help.” I couldn’t believe it. I had given up so much—my time, my energy, even my independence—but that wasn’t enough for him.

The worst part? He started talking about getting me pregnant, we were having unprotected sex regularly, planning for a farm with everything organic, and promised that once their funding came in, I could have whatever I wanted, even saying, “If you got pregnant, I’d just marry you.” But then, when I had an emergency and needed his help with a few hundred dollars to keep my real place to stay, he told me to ask my ex/mentor to keep paying it & that I should take an abortion pill if necessary, all while refusing to offer real support for my basic needs. He claimed that paying $500 for my hair once, ordering food for us, and building the product together was enough—and that I should be grateful. I felt so misled and abandoned.

After everything, I’m left with nothing. I don’t even have the prototypes we built together. I lost my mentor of 7 years, who had been supporting me because I chose this man. Now, I’m trying to make sure I’m not pregnant, I’m emotionally drained, and I feel like I’ve lost everything. To make matters worse, he told me, “I’m not going to marry you because you didn’t do the wifey things I wanted,” as if the value I brought to the project and our relationship wasn’t enough. The warehouse he was secretly living in in the back without a shower (it had a bathroom and kitchen and electric plug in stove and dishwasher/sink), that I lowered my standards to even live in to work on this project and be with him bc he made it seem like life was gonna get better and he’s the best engineer in the city and they build robots/laser for the 3 letter agency contracts soon to be worth millions.

I gave up my celibacy, my mentor, and my independence for this man. Now, he’s still working on his projects while I’m left picking up the pieces. He told me “sorry it didn’t work out, I couldn’t do everything for you, I’m bootstrapping, I’m not handing you money so forget it” after unprotected sex planning a baby knowing I’m not on birth control and don’t use that stuff as it damages reproductive health I got off it at 18 after complications. How do I even begin to recover from this? I feel like I’ve lost everything—my time, my trust, and my sense of self. I’m steaming with herbs, sleeping a lot in the 2 days since I’ve been home but I’m having nightmares and I was so peaceful before and all this happened so fast in 2 months because San Francisco is so fast paced in the startup scene as well😭 so 2 months feels like 4 months.

Any advice or support would be appreciated. I don’t even know where to begin.