As title. We’ve been together 9 months. He cheated on me 6 months in and was on tinder the whole time, but by then I had already been living with him for 5 months, was paying our rent myself, I even paid for the flight back home that he used to cheat on me with his ex because I couldn’t leave work to go with him. He got me fired from that job, then took all my money.
At first he was apologetic about the cheating and proposed to me, told me he wanted us to have children and tried getting me pregnant. Then by the time a few weeks had passed it was to the point where he was insulting me and abusing me every day and laughed in my face for thinking the proposal was real.
I am in love with him, I know I need to leave, but I can’t find anyone else attractive at all. Before I found out who he was I was more in love than I ever have been. I haven’t been able to shake it.
TLDR: I need to leave but I’m afraid I won’t love someone the same.
38 comments
You’re in love with the idea of him, not who he actually is. Otherwise you’d realize just how garbage he is.
You’ll never give yourself the chance to be in a healthy relationship if you don’t leave.
Op? List the top five reasons you love him, please.
This was a depressing read. You know who you could love more? Yourself. Sounds like you’d have more money and live better alone. I highly recommend it.
1) PLEASE tell me you are on some type of birth control? If not, call a doc or go to a pharmacy today. Do NOT get pregnant with this piece of trash.
2) Your fear you won’t love someone the same is normal – but I hope you DON’T love someone the same ever again – the love someone has for their abuser is not a love that needs to be repeated.
3) Are you safe and do you have family you can move back with? Get out NOW. It’s so much easier to get out while you’re younger. He’s trash.
4) We can help find you assistance if you give your location – we can help find a shelter if you don’t have a family or friend you can move in with.
You’re 21 and you’re in an abusive relationship. He ruined employment that provided for him and you, he’s clearly not monogamous and will likely cheat again, and he’s exploited you financially. Rushing into a child with this man could be the worst decision of your life.
The experiences in life that got you to the point that you are willing to endure his abuse may need to be unpacked before you’re really truly ready to be in a healthy relationship. They may not either, but that’s something that’s worth thinking on, I believe.
I don’t think you should quickly tie your housing to your SO if you can avoid it, because you’re wont to jump into bad situations. Do you have family or friends you could stay with for a few weeks or a month or two until you had enough resources to rent or sublet a place of your own?
You have a lot of time in life to figure out what you’re attracted to, why you’re attracted to it, and where to establish healthy boundaries. I’d say right now you’re probably borderline suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, and you’re doing yourself a disservice not seeing what your life could be without someone that wants to repress your potential.
Have you considered that you don’t need to find anyone else attractive in order to leave your shitty boyfriend?
You have so much time still to find someone who will love you well and you will love in return. But you don’t need to find that person to start loving yourself. There are so many wonderful things about being single! You’ll be shocked at how much happier you are alone than you were with your abuser.
You don’t need to find anyone else attractive **right now** to get out of the shitty relationship with your current boyfriend.
Moving in together after *1 month* and having this many issues within 9 months of a relationship tells me that you’d probably benefit from spending some time single, as well as a lot of therapy.
Leave him without concern for loving someone else. It will happen in time, but after this relationship trauma, you’ll probably need some therapy before getting a healthy relationship.
PLEASE take care of yourself, and get away from this creep.
Girl, you gotta love yourself first. Breakup with him, go to therapy, work on yourself. May sound harsh but he doesn’t give two shits about you. There’s a great person out there for you, but he’s not it
Why do you think you need to be attracted to someone else?
Be single for a little while. Heal from this. Learn to love yourself. Treat yourself the way you want to be treated.
I promise there will be other people that you are attracted to if you do this. Right now, you’re attracted to what you think you deserve deep down. When you learn to value yourself, you will be attracted to people who value you.
You were with him 6 months, living with him for 5….sounds like you don’t want to be alone. My best advice is to be on your own awhile. You already know this guy is a cheating loser.
You’re gonna regret this later in life.
That’s called a trauma bond.
It is so depressing to see people not love themselves😭
You don’t need him as a BF or a more attractive BF. You need to be on your own, valuing you, go to therapy, heal, etc. Think about why you think you only deserve shitty men.
OP – you’re looking at this through a cheaters lens. You’re not supposed to be attracted to another person (to a point of questioning a relationship), while you’re in a relationship. That’s what cheaters do. What YOU need to do is leave, heal, work on yourself and learn to identify and avoid red flags, and THEN you start trying to be attracted to someone.
Why would you need to find someone else to leave this prick? Have you never heard of being single? I was single in my 20s and you know what? I learned to love myself. You need that in your life. Find out who you are as a person. Find out what makes you happy. Only then should you find someone else. Someone who will add to your light, not take away from it. You can have fun in the meantime, but figuring out how to love yourself is a vital aspect of happiness.
You shouldn’t be thinking about finding someone else attractive right now; you need to work on loving yourself, admitting that you are in a bad situation and working on getting out and healing yourself.
You can’t be in a healthy relationship if YOU aren’t healthy and only you can fix that, not someone else.
This is going to sound harsh. But you need to have more self respect. The first step is leaving this abusive and toxic relationship. That is the best thing you can do for yourself right now.
Everyone deserves respect and care. And your BF has done NEITHER of those. You also need to have the self respect to get yourself out of a toxic unhealthy situation that is beet for health and well being.
You feel in love with the idea of him. But that isn’t who he is. Someone that loves and RESPECTS you doesn’t cheat, insult, break boundaries and insult you.
Please leave and know there will be someone better that you can love.
you’re 21 and easily have 40+ years left of your life. just because you have yet to find someone else who’s more attractive doesn’t mean you won’t forever. if you can be this in love with somebody who isn’t good for you, imagine how in love you’ll genuinely be with someone who treats you right
It’s ok to be alone.
Love yourself more. You can be enough for yourself with out him. It will be a weight off your shoulders once you leave him for the last time
I could be wrong, but it sounds like you may be demisexual. If I’m right, you’ll find someone new attractive after you build an emotional connection.
That aside though if you don’t have friends or family in the area I would look into women’s shelters just to get away from him until you can sort things out and get your bearings.
Oh darling I’m so sorry you’re going through this. There is NOTHING special about him, and you DON”T need to find anyone else attractive in order to know you deserve respect and leave. That will come with time. You might want to start therapy or reading self help books about choosing bad guys, being drawn back and feeling addicted to abusive behavior is part of the abuse cycle, and you’re caught deep in it. I’m so sorry, good luck.
Honestly it doesn’t matter if you don’t find anyone else attractive…right now…. Just get out. Be by yourself for a bit. You will figure things out
Holy christ. Pull your head out of your ass and get some self respect!!
Why on God’s green earth would you feel it’s OK for someone to treat you like this!!
I have learned that lesson the hard way getting over somebody. You can find somebody new and they will be totally different from the last person, and you will feel all sorts of new and different things, and it will still be good even if it’s different.
Do yourself a favour and take the leap. I promise you will find someone infinitely better than this human and you will be even more in love with and attracted to them.
First, you need to take the scary leap into being alone for a while and working on yourself. Try to find why you allow yourself to accept this kind of fake love and decide to never let it happen again.
I was in your shoes years ago. Made the leap, did the work and found the most beautiful human (my now husband) and I have found a love for myself that I never had before. The horrible person I left? The memory of him repulses me.
>I am in love with him, I know I need to leave, but I can’t find anyone else attractive at all. I don’t want another relationship. My fear is leaving and never feeling this deeply again. Before I found out who he was I was more in love than I ever have been. I haven’t been able to shake it.
Love is not the Consumption. It’s not an infection that lasts until you die. You will not die of it. It doesn’t linger for decades with you pining.
UNLESS that’s what you want to do.
If you leave him, the obsession–what you’re describing isn’t love–will fade. If you start doing other things, it will fade faster since it’s not being fed.
Anyway, you do you boo, but the only thing trapping you with him is your own fear.
I promise you you will find love after some therapy and work on yourself.
But this? This ain’t love.
You were in love with who he PRETENDED to be.
It’s been barely a year. You’ll feel so much more free once you get OUTTA THERE.
Rally support from family and friends, make a safe exit plan, and
– call the abuse hotline 1.800.799.7233
– text “Start” to 88788
– or visit the website thehotline.org
You gotta get out of there, honey!
**also do all you can to avoid getting pregnant by him**
You are in love with being in love. You want a relationship so badly that you are ignoring reality. Your great love cheats, uses you financially, has negatively affected your career, has tried to get you pregnant, insults you, abuses you, and thinks you are a gullible fool. You are not in love. You are in denial. You found out who he is and you are still clinging to a fantasy relationship that is all in your head. You do not need another relationship until you get some therapy to understand why you would take such abuse and call it love. It is hard to have a real relationship with any one until you are able to be true to your self. Will you ever have a relationship that actually fits your ideal? I do not know, but you definitely won’t as long as you are stuck in this nightmare situation. You deserve better.
I married my husband after 6 exes. I’m happy now. What about you? First ex for first time?
Think about it.
When you leave him, you will see the beauty in others. Guaranteed
This isn’t love, this is addiction. You “love” him like an addict loves a fix. You can be attracted to other people, and you will love again, but that good supportive healthy love won’t happen for you so long as you stay tangled up in this mess.
You gotta go cold turkey.
Are you demisexual, by chance? Demisexuals don’t feel any attracktion to people, generally. They develop attraction while forming a strong bond with someone. So no love at first sight.
Do you have any more self respect to lose? Like dude leave him. You’re literally 21. Afraid you won’t love someone the same? How can you even love him?
You are fixated on what you want, while neglecting to acknowledge what you actually have. What I mean is that you are “in love” with an idealised concept. The reality is that that ideal doesn’t exist and isn’t remotely close to it. The reason you are stuck is that the feelings you have are very much real. This is a case where your rational brain needs to take charge, as your emotions have got it wrong. We grow up being told stories about “falling in love”, but real relationships are developed and maintained by both feelings and rational decisions.
You may not have the same overwhelming feelings for your next partner, but that may actually mean a healthier and long-lasting relationship with someone you can endure the ups and downs with. Also, it is OK to mourn the end of this relationship, even if it was unhealthy; you invested a lot of emotion and endured a lot of hardship, but it didn’t work out well.
Your self-esteem has taken a huge hit in this relationship. Take time to invest in yourself. Spend time really seeking things that you enjoy on your own, and that bring you personal fulfillment. It may feel hollow at first to look into hobbies or pursue other interests, but that investment will pay off with a stronger sense of self, and a better expectations for what actually makes you happy AND healthy in a relationship.