CONTENT WARNING: Emotional Abuse

My boyfriend was always on his own time. If he wanted to do something that started at 2:00, we were there at 1:45. If he didn’t want to do it, we were there when we got there.

One time, I went to his house to go to an event that was $100 a ticket. I paid for both of our tickets, and he was going to drive. When I got there, he was sitting in the living room in his underwear, playing video games.

Me: “Are you ready?”

Boyfriend: “Yeah, just about.”

Me: “Okay… We need to leave in like ten minutes.”

Boyfriend: “Okay! I said yes!”

Me: “I’ll go start the car.”

Boyfriend: “Don’t waste my gas!”

Me: “Then you’d better hurry up.”

I sat in the car for half an hour — never actually turning it on — before going back inside. He was still playing video games.

Me: “What are you doing?! Let’s go!”

Boyfriend: “I f****** am! I told you—”

Me: “You know I’ve been sitting out there for half an hour?”

Boyfriend: “Fine! I’ll go!”

He slammed the remote control down and got dressed in record time. On the way to the event, he pulled into a gas station.

Boyfriend: “You’re buying me gas.”

Me: “I didn’t even—”

Boyfriend: “I said fill the f****** tank or I’ll leave you here. You think I’m playing?”

Me: “No, I believe you.”

I walked into the gas station and called my friend to come pick me up. [Boyfriend] sat at the pump waiting for me to come back out.

My friend showed up, I got in her car, and she used his ticket for the event. Since he never paid me for it, she was happy to cover the cost and drive us. We had a great time, and I never picked up the phone for him again.

CONTENT WARNING: Domestic Violence

I am in my mid-twenties and have been with my boyfriend since my teens. My relationship with him has gradually deteriorated, escalating from him cheating to verbally and physically abusing me. I’ve stupidly stayed with him, believing it’s my fault, and that he’ll change.

While camping late at night at a music festival, I catch him talking on the phone to yet another girl he’s cheating on me with. We argue, he clocks me in the face for “being nosy,” and then he storms off to get drunk for the night. I sob myself to sleep.

In the morning, I find a note in my shoe outside our tent. I’m filled with dread, assuming it’s from one of our angry neighbors who was kept awake by the fight. Then I read this:

“I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I want you to know that nobody who claims to love you would ever talk to you or treat you the way you were treated last night. You have a beautiful soul, and this is not your fault. Please leave him, and find someone who truly deserves you.”

I immediately packed up and left, leaving him stranded, and never spoke to him again. To the writer of the note: you will never know what you did for me that day. Thank you for saving my life.

I used to date a guy from my same course canal at university. We were together for five years, but toward the end of the relationship, whether because he felt he “had it in the bag” and could go mask-off or genuinely got worse in his ideas, he started making off-putting remarks and puerile sexist jokes. I thought it was a phase, so I didn’t ignore it outright, but eventually, I broke up with him over a specific incident.

I attend a graduation party for a coursemate, and he (the coursemate) has invited basically everyone he knows, including a guy nicknamed “Mr. Troglodyte” because of his clumsy mannerisms, his being a pop cultural alien, and his alleged general lack of class. 

At some point during the party, while a few lady friends and I go out for a smoke, Mr. Troglodyte, henceforth called “Dude”, comes to chat us up about our careers. At first, we try to hold our eye-rolls back, but after a while, my friends and I find ourselves actually talking nicely with him.

While we’re talking, my boyfriend walks by and waves theatrically at [Dude].

Boyfriend: “Oh, hey, [Dude]! How’s it going?”

Dude: “Oh, hi, [Boyfriend]. Is the party going all right in there?”

Boyfriend: *Shrugging* “Eh, it’s going smoothly, nothing much. By the way, which of these girls do you like best?”

I wish I were kidding.

Dude: “Uh… I think I like [My Name] the most.”

Boyfriend: *Goes wide-eyed* “No way, bro! That’s my girl! I can get really jealous, y’know that?”

Dude: “Mate, you’d need to be at rock bottom to lose your girlfriend to me of all people.”

My friends and I laugh, though I admit it’s mostly out of awkwardness than anything else.

Boyfriend: “Nah, bro, what’ve other dudes got that you haven’t got?” *Mimes a pinching and slapping motion* “All you need to do to get a girl is to slap their a** good and pinch their t*ts while they aren’t looking. All ya need is confidence!”

I stare, horrified.

Friend: “No, don’t listen to him. That’ll just get you punched!” 

Boyfriend: “Ah, c’mon. Women are pretty much all sluts anyway.”

Dude: “Seriously? You’re going to say that in front of your girlfriend?”

Boyfriend: *Acting nonchalant* “Anyway, wouldn’t you prefer having [Friend] in your bed?”

I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and splash my face several times to calm down, expensive makeup be d***ed. The rest of the party goes well; my soon-to-be ex is still pestering [Dude] or drinking several glasses with the graduating coursemate’s relatives. As soon as the desserts are served and things have quieted down, I decide to confront my boyfriend.

Me: “Okay, now that you are done with drinking, can you please tell me what has gotten into you?”

Boyfriend: *Confused* “What has gotten into me when?”

Me: *Sighing* “When you called me and my friends sluts in front of [Dude]. How could you, [Boyfriend]? How dare you?”

Boyfriend: “Aw, but c’mon, honey! I was just ridding myself of competition. Besides, I don’t think you were enjoying his talk anyway.”

Me: “Just because he isn’t the most interesting person on Earth, or the most suave, doesn’t mean he’s bad at talking. Also, what competition?!”

Boyfriend: “Do you know how hard it is to find a girl these days? I can’t let you slip past me like that, especially not to somebody who looks and acts like a caveman in a fancy suit.”

Speechless and irate, I went and congratulated the graduate, took the customary bomboniera (a traditional party favor), and then looked for somebody able to give me a ride back home, as I had no intention of going back home in my ex-boyfriend’s car.

I broke up officially over a text and have been looking since. No luck so far, and the aftermath was devastating on the face of it, but at least I grew wiser from it.

My boyfriend and I have a membership to one of those warehouse stores. You know, the type where you can get a three-pack of family-sized cereal, a 200-count box of frozen treats, five-gallon jugs of sauce, and a few shirts all in one trip.

A couple of things we enjoy are part of their monthly round of sales, and because I work literally two blocks away, I offer to just pick them up. [Boyfriend] says no, he’s been dealing with medical stuff and needs to get out of the house more, so we’ll take a trip over together. The problem is that every night I ask, he’s too tired from his own job. This is understandable because he’s at work roughly the time in the morning that my own alarm clock is going off. The weekend comes, and he just wants to recharge. The next week, the cycle starts over; he wants to go but “not tonight/today.”

Finally, one night, I call him up as I’m getting out of work.

Me: “I’m going over to [Store] and picking up the couple of things we wanted. Was there anything new?”

Boyfriend: “What? No, I said I wanted to go with you.”

Me: “Yeah, that was three weeks ago; the sale is ending today.”

Boyfriend: “Mmm… Maybe we can go.”

Me: “You sure? ‘Cause you sound like you’re half-asleep.”

Boyfriend: “Maybe…?”

Me: “Did you lay down in bed when you got home?”

Boyfriend: “I think so, but that was only a minute ago.”

Me: “Babe, you get home at 3:30. It’s 5:45 right now.”

Boyfriend: “What?” *Noises of him moving around in bed* “Oh. Can we go tomorrow?”

Me: “Honey, the sale’s ending today. I’m just going to go pick the things up. Tell you what, once I’m there and I have stuff, I’ll call back when you’re more awake.”

Boyfriend: “Okay, hon, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Me: “I’ll talk to you soon.”

I hang up and shake my head. Yes, he sounds extremely out of it, but after a few years together, I know the difference between “just woke up” out of it and “there’s something wrong” out of it. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later, I’m in the store, I have already picked up two of the things I am looking for, and I am just wading through the sea of humanity to get to the third when my phone rings.

Me: “Hey, babe!”

Boyfriend: “Hey! What’s wrong?!”

Me: “Nnnnothing? I mean, it’s busy, but nothing unusual.”

Boyfriend: “Why didn’t you call me?”

Me: “I did? I said I was going to [Store].”

Boyfriend: “No, you didn’t. I just woke up to go to the bathroom and saw the time!”

Me: “Hun, check the call logs. I don’t think you actually woke fully up before.”

He takes a second and does so. In the meantime, I’ve gotten the last product and am moving out to the back side of the aisle so I have some room.

Boyfriend: “Oh… You did. Why didn’t I answer?”

Me: “You did, babe. You sounded like you were on some pretty heavy drugs.”

Boyfriend: “I mean, I kind of am!”

Me: “Fair point. I’ve got the shrimp, the chicken, the sauce, and some neat samosa thingies they had out to try. Anything else we need?”

Boyfriend: “Can you see if they’ve got that caramel popcorn stuff?”

Good news: they had the caramel popcorn stuff.

And when I got home and talked to [Boyfriend], he agreed to set an alarm for a bit before I leave work, at least until he’s feeling better and not so lethargic.

CONTENT WARNING: Animal Cruelty

A guy I had been on a few dates with came over to my house to meet my pets. We hung out for a few hours, but one way or another, things got heated. We disagreed on a key issue, abortion — I am pro-choice — and began arguing loudly and vehemently. I was about to take the high road and agree to disagree for the sake of ending the argument, but he escalated things.

He grabbed my cat, who had been sitting on the couch, and threw her at the wall, shouting that if I had such disregard for human life, then a cat’s life didn’t mean anything to me, either. I was livid and chased him from the house, screaming. 

My cat was fine, if shaken, but something like that is a surefire way to ensure the end of any communication.