Hey Avery,

I made an account just to reply to this. It’s so shocking to hear of a situation so similar to mine. I’ve had my long distance boyfriend for a little over a year now. We moved extremely fast, I ignored the red flags and I thought the exact thing you did. “I’m just lucky,” I’d tell myself. “Other relationships just aren’t anywhere near as good as ours is”. I cut everyone off for him, he got upset whenever I’d spend time with other people and made me feel like I was the one that didn’t do enough for him, like I was the one being a shitty partner. I dropped most of the things going on in my life for him. I had ruined the relationship I had with my mother. We moved in together after about 6 months after officially being together. We’d been talking and friends for about 14 months before we did.
Living with him was fun, we spent all of our money going on fun trips and being irresponsible. It wasn’t enough for me, I still felt like I was missing something. I was missing my old friends, my family and school. I lost sight of my priorities. I decided to move back home and just go back to being long distance. I was lucky to have my family support me and take me in again. They had never liked him very much.

Once I got back home, he told me he was always open to me moving back in with him because I was the one that truly made him happy and our relationship was in it for the long run. I felt like I had made the mistake by coming back home. I started hanging out with my old friends again and he became very possessive, we agreed on rules we’d follow when hanging out with friends (texting each other back within 20 minutes, mentioning if we’d met new people while we were out. We had a “three strike” rule that if the partner didn’t approve of a new person, we’d have to cut off contact with said new person) He made me feel like he had done so much for me and I threw it all away. I had to go back. My heart was telling me I needed to be with him again but my brain was telling me that I needed to take advantage of my youth, get school done, spend time with my family, etc. I sided with my heart but I was still very conflicted. I told him I’d move back, he purchased his flight a few weeks out and we would take my car and together drive back to California, where he lived. A week went by and I realized I might have made the wrong decision, I began to side with my brain a little bit more.

Two days ago I told him I’d like to have more time to think about my decision, I said this in the most reasonable way I could. I wanted to be 100% sure I was making the right choice to go back. He has never ever been verbally rude or insulting to me but what he replied to that left me in shock. He called me an ungrateful selfish brat that wasn’t worth the bullshit I put him through. WTF. He spent all of yesterday telling me how awful I am, telling me that not one of his friends approved of me and that he ignored them, telling me that he’s put so much time and effort into our relationship to not have it reciprocated. It was absolutely brutal. I told him I wanted to break up with him because no way I’m letting my own boyfriend say things that rude to me. Once I said that, he did a complete flip. He told me he didn’t mean any of what he said, that he said it all to get a reaction out of me, that he loves me so much and that he knows we’d both be happier if I moved to him with California. The way he says things makes me reconsider everything. He’s manipulative and it works so well with me.

I am fed up though, I told him we have to take a break. We started our break this morning but I don’t think this relationship will lead to much at this point. I’ve never seen that side to him. Sometimes we need to let things go, even if we’ve invested so much time into it. Everything that starts has an end. We just need to accept that and use it to our advantage. I don’t know you but I can see the similarities in our relationships. They hold us back, they make us feel like we’re in the wrong, it’s a cycle and it won’t stop unless we do something about it. Don’t fall for the guilt trip. I know I got carried away with ranting, sorry. I would love to talk to you further about this, maybe email or something.