My [26f] friends believe my boyfriend [33m] was emotionally abusing me. He wants to get back together, my friends are begging me not to, & I don’t know what to think.

My boyfriend and I were together 3 years and broke up on Valentines Day. It was the most beautiful and fulfilling relationship I’ve ever had thus far in my life - I have been with several emotionally manipulative men and I have a lot of baggage, and this guy seemed so out of my league when I met him, I was so shocked when he seemed okay with my hang ups and anxiety. About nine months in I got taken advantage of by a previous fling and I failed to defend our relationship. I ended up in a very sketchy situation where I got felt up and let it happen, but we still worked things out. Over the past two years thing got hard for me mentally and I fell into a depression and never really felt like myself anymore. My boyfriend was trying to be supportive but he had a problem blowing up when things weren’t going his was and he often felt unheard by me. Whenever he would do something I didn’t like, I never spoke up about it. In previous relationships I was always very communicative about things I didn’t like and I felt like an asshole all the time. I grew to feel I was overreacting and my feelings would recover and it was never worth being upset over, so I started to bite my tongue, even/especially in fights. Over the last year or so my friends have started expressing their concerns with the way I was being treated. It started off with a visiting friend telling me they observed he was kind of being a dick throughout an entire music festival, to my closest friend telling me straight up that I am being emotionally abused, manipulated, controlled and taken advantage of after venting about a terrible vacation we had together. I am aware I am no georgia peach, I have plenty of faults and I am sure he has problems with me, but... I need a common opinion on this and i would like reddit to help me based off some examples?

Here are some examples I have put together:

--- He told me if I gained any more weight (I am 5'7" and weighed almost 180 lbs, which is at least 35 lbs bigger than i was when we started dating) or continued sizing up my septum jewelry (I was at an 8g) he wouldn't be attracted to me anymore, and he would have to re-evaluate if he wants to continue dating me. I lost 30 lbs over last winter and took out all my piercings for about a year for him.

--- When I would dress up to go out with my friends, he would get upset because he felt like I didn't dress up like that for him, and he said 80% of the time I dress cute, he wanted it to be for him, then he wouldn't be bothered when I dressed up to hang out with friends. [To be fair it should be noted that one of the people I would dress up to hang out with is my best friend who ended up having feelings for me. Now he uses this against me as a reason not to dress cute.] Before this relationship I wore nothing but t-shirts and jeans, but for him I've bought skirts, dresses, crop tops, short-shorts, lingerie, etc. It took me a long time of pushing myself to wear these things for him to become comfortable enough to go out in public. He has said he specifically wants me to treat it as high priority and as a responsibility. I have tried to do so, but the moment I dress nice to go out with anyone else but him it comes up again as if it's not enough.

---I have never been a very sexual person, so my mind is often not on initiating sex. He has explained that sex is one of the most important aspects of a relationship for him, and that he also has a need/desire to always dominate me. I also do not initiate sex enough, never have; it is not on my mind enough, ergo I really didn't try hard enough because I felt uncomfortable or embarrassed. He's been telling me for over a year that if I didn't want the sexual relationship that he needed, then in his words from a long time ago, "we can fuck but not date because my needs need to be met". I tried to be more intimate and submissive because I knew he liked to dominate me, and in fact he said a couple weeks ago that dominating me was one of the most important things to him and if our sex life diminished any he wouldn't be okay with it and wouldn't want to date anymore. He knows I have always been insecure and afraid of a breakup out of a fear of not being good enough for him, so I now look back on this as kind of manipulative.

---He has sexualized my friends to me in weird ways "as a joke", because his personality is to jokingly pick on the people he loves. Example being, "Oh haha what would you do if [insert lesbian friend here] and I hooked up. I think she would dig it. I think I could get that." "Oh is [name] going to be there? I miss my wife." "While you’re gone I’ll have my other girlfriend over lol" (obviously a joke but annoying). And it's been his claim that it's totally non-serious, but I've voiced that I am uncomfortable with it and he has still done it time and time again. He would laugh and just say I’m jealous. He liked to make me jealous and I voiced my discomfort. He has apologized for this very recently because I was brave enough to bring it up in a serious conversation post-breakup, but it's caused a big blow to my self esteem for most of the relationship.

---When we would fight, he would either A) tell me how good everything would be if I would put in a "higher effort" to be a better girlfriend and not a "low effort" girlfriend, be less depressed, be more affectionate, achieve something with my time, etc., and I often felt like my actual efforts were never enough, and B) he would hold over my head that there are "so many women that flirt with me every day, that want me, if we broke up I'd have a date in an hour, I could fuck a new girl tonight if I wanted to, but I don't because I choose you every day". No reason, just to remind me that he is putting time and effort into me.

--- He has admitted to having a need to control everything around him, so when certain things don't go his way or close to perfect, he would erupt and tell me "come on, are you kidding me, what's wrong with you". Even his mom kind of warned me in a private conversation we had a few months ago.

--- He doesn't like me venting to friends about the relationship. He is a very stoic individual and doesn't feel the need to vent very often to anyone but me or POSSIBLY his best friend. He makes me out to be this perfect girlfriend with no flaws to his coworkers and friends, which I am obviously not considering we have fought often in the past year. But I can't handle the stress often and need to let off steam, but he says that's shitty of me so I feel I cannot vent to my friends.

--- He often makes me feel guilty about spending money and not sticking to a strict budget, because he is much much wealthier and makes a lot more money than I do, but when we met I was living paycheck to paycheck and he said I was one bad incident away from being financially destroyed. I saw this as him wanting the best for me but after so long it felt very controlling. We pay the bills 50/50 even though I can't afford it nearly as easily as he can. —- Also noting he doesn’t control my money but he definitely makes me feel guilty when I spend ANY money then asks me why I’m not helping contribute.

—-He doesn’t clean almost ever but gets upset when I don’t clean and says "you have to do chores too, you’re so messy". I clean entire rooms until they’re spotless and he will tell me how much he appreciates it and thanks me, but rarely does any cleaning himself and makes it known that the house being messy "stresses him out". Even his long time friends make jokes when they come over, "oh we see that your girlfriend cleaned again lol". I feel like a maid and he vehemently denies that he neglected cleaning until VERY recently.

—-One of my biggest joys is decorating my living space. When we moved in together he made it clear I can NOT decorate the house unless he approves it. He gave me spots of the living room to put things on the wall and a corner of the bedroom behind the door where it’s hidden.

--- He has a big problem with me spending time on social media or devices at all, and insists I'm not spending enough time with him, but almost all his time at home is spent on his computer or on his phone. He tells me to get off my phone and spend time with him when I'm staring at it too long, but he will spend entire conversations/car rides/nights on his phone and doesn't respond to me when I speak. When I try to get his attention he deflects: "just relax", "i'm doing something right now, don't be rude", "come on, jesus, please wait a minute", etc. He says he wants to watch something with me, but when I put it on h3 just stays on the computer and doesn’t pay much attention and I typically am alone on the couch.

I don't know if these are all just.... Complaints? Or if they mean anything? It's hard for me to explain and I don't know if this even paints the same picture that my friends see.

I'm very very dependent on this person emotionally and don’t know what I’d do without them, but I also have been pushing and pulling away from him a lot in the past few months. I want it to work, we talk about a future where we're both living somewhere else and happy, but it's hard for me to figure why I'm so unhappy with how things are currently. He's been working on his anger issues and hasn't been exploding on me as much recently, but besides that I don't know what else he's working on? He has asked me if I wanted to work things out, and I said I do. We agreed to take space away from each other and think hard about what we can do to improve ourselves and he wants to sit down and talk soon.

I have tried to leave him in the past when I decided I wasn’t happy because I felt like I would never be good enough, and he told me he has NEVER made me feel like that with his actions (but he’s sorry if he DID which makes me feel a certain way), when I bring up things he has said that hurt me he usually says he never said it or that’s not the way it happened, or that it was my depression talking and I’m not working hard enough on it and if I went on walks or read the cognitive therapy book he bought me I would be fine. I often felt invalidated when I would finally be brave enough to address a concern or two. One of the only times that stands out to me that I felt heard in was when I told him I was afraid of him and his anger and that’s why I felt I couldn’t communicate with him easily and why I often would freeze up and cry when he got frustrated. He also tends to tell me how much of a mistake it is/will be to leave, that we are so compatible and I am making potentially the biggest mistake leaving him, talking about how we’d never find someone as perfect for each other and I’ll be left wondering for the rest of my life. Ex., "ten years in the future you could think, wow, today could have been our wedding day but I chose to leave and now I’ll never know", or that I will "live a life of loneliness wondering if the grass is greener and never be fully fulfilled or satisfied".

Am I being manipulated???? Are my friends right? Is it my fault for not being brave enough to speak up?

Tl;dr my friends say I’ve been manipulated and emotionally abused, and I listed some examples of things that they claim are huge red flags, but I genuinely don’t know if this is just normal relationship shit or not because truth be told I’ve never had just a normal easy relationship, looking for opinions and advice? I know I type a lot I’m so sorry fyi

Submitted February 21, 2020 at 04:01PM by thinktwiceramona https://ift.tt/2T0WMOi