Hi all, this one is going to be a long one so I apologise in advance and thank you kindly for your patience!

Basically, I ended a 2 month relationship with a very handsome and charming 31 year old guy (I am 24) only 2 months ago. He was so wonderful and we found a really special bond very quickly. He was happily single, only dating casually and said that he had never loved someone as much as he loved me and that after being happily single for so long that I was ‘every thing that he wanted’. We became exclusive only 1 week into the relationship (quite quick I know).

After 2 weeks or so I got a bit wary, because although he had such a loving and nurturing side, on some other days he would become quite a different person. There were times that he could be quite abrasive, in that he would get into these moods where he’d become quite contentious with many thoughts/topics/interests/personal stories/behaviours I would share with him, almost arguing for the sake of arguing. Not only that, I felt he was becoming quite critical of my behaviours, i.e., “can I ask that you don’t dance like you did last night in public?”, “Don’t tell my friends that you don’t like bike riding”, “Can I ask that you don’t wear that dressing gown, it smells”. I really don’t mind being challenged by others and appreciate a good honest bond, but after a while I started to build a bit of a wall as I was feeling quite self conscious around him.

He also had quite a short fuse in that he would have these concerning temper outbursts over trivial issues like spilling coffee on the floor (no outbursts directed at me however).There were also a number of other disrespectful behaviours which deterred me from him(i.e., gushing about how attractive other women were, being judgemental about others, finding out that he cheated on his ex of 4 years twice (but only a kiss) but his abrasiveness effected me most negatively and made me feel that in such an early stage of a relationship, that this was quite a big warning sign and I felt like I was losing touch of the person I was before I met him, which scared me.

I was in a healthy, happy relationship for 7 years with my first and only boyfriend before I met this guy and I never encountered any of these problems, everything was pretty cruisy with us, we were best friends with only a few minor hiccups. Because I had such little experience dating I was not sure if I was right to feel so hesitant about this guy.

Anyway, I tried to talk to him about my concerns, I tried to ask if this is something we could maybe work through and he said that “he didn’t want to change himself”. I tried to argue that it was only these behaviours I wanted to change, not him as a person but he still wouldn’t budge (even though he said throughout the relationship that he wanted to work through our problems as a team). I thought it was best that I break it off as much as I didn’t want to, so that is what I did.

The following week he would regularly send me some very spiteful messages, i.e that I was hyper-sensitive and overly defensive, that I was in denial of my personal problems in the relationship, that I was narcissistic about my personal problems in the relationship, that my previous ex of 7 years was a “pushover, which is why I am so sensitive” and “because my ex was so spineless, he had to put up with 7 years of bad habits”and “good luck to the next guy, I tried”. I was very patient and asked him to please stop being so unfair and to please take a step back and he was being quite hurtful. I also attempted to comfort him as the break up hit him quite hard and he was becoming very dark and masochistic.

On one day I got so fed up with all the angry messages and I confronted him via text about the things he had said and I also brought up his negative behaviours during the relationship. He stated that he really didn’t want to talk about it as he was at work and this discussion was bringing him to tears. I took this has him evading responsibility for what had happened (as he did throughout the relationship whenever I did confront any of his behaviours). I had quite a lot to say to him, so I continued. He asked me again to talk about it later. I finished what I had to say via a lengthy paragraph and left it at that.

I got really upset and started to feel remorse for my decision to break up. I ended up calling him and in that conversation he said that all the people he has spoken to have told him that I am manipulative and I am struggling for power, particularly with me texting him when he was upset at work. He reassured me that I am not ‘intentionally manipulative’. I was hurt by what he said so I cut all contact with him (texting, calling, social media, etc), only to weaken after seeing him in public and to be so stupid to call him and cry about how much I miss him and want to make it work. He told me that me cutting off contact was the cruelest thing I have done so far and that I was strategically removing him from his life as punishment. I asked him if there was any chance we could try to rekindle the relationship and he said that he couldn’t be with me as I am a manipulative person.

About a month later I called again and he was doing quite well, telling me that he is relieved that all this drama with our relationship is over as it was too much ‘hard work’. I later found out that he has started dating again, which is painful as I do have such severe remorse for breaking up with him and miss him so much.

All my friends and family are outraged by what he has said about me being manipulative. However I shared my experience with others on reddit and many people told me that he was in a “no win situation” with me, that I am manipulative and that I am just as bad as him.

I have not been able to eat or sleep properly for weeks agonising over this. I went on an overseas trip which I had planned for months only to still find myself crying every day about what went wrong and obsessing about how I could have screwed something like this up. I guess I just hate to think that I was manipulative without intending to be and that I was too hard on his guy, blowing a good opportunity at love due to having poor character and poor experience with relationships.

So here is my final question – was I the one at fault here, was I manipulative/did I ask too much of him?