For some context, i befriended my ex a couple of months after my father’s demise. I loved him dearly and could not function properly after he left. I did go to work, I went to college, I talked to people I had to talk but I was literally dying the entire time. I was not even covering the bare minimum of what a person has to do as a human. I used to forget when i had eaten, it was that bad. I had this work colleague who started talking to me casually while I was a mess. He used to start the conversation in a way that took me to the point where I would vent and he would console me. This happened alot since my friends didn’t even let me talk or rather think about what i would go home to and having him felt like a great escape. This started in March. By May, we were pretty close and talked alot. I was doing well too. He confessed his feelings for me and I reciprocated. This was all back in 2021.
I was used to him taking care of me, listening to me and replying logically to all my eccentricities. I did try to be what he was for me. All was good before he started imposing stuff on me, and not in the nice way, he did things with negative reinforcement. For instance, he wanted me to dress modestly and I kind of accepted it. It wasn’t as if i dressed provocatively but he had other standards in mind. He had issues with me wearing jeans, straight pants, trousers that weren’t too loose, and if they were too loose, that was an issue as well. He somwhow though that I would get an all new wardrobe the next day. He used to dissect every one of my outfits and scold me saying that i could have changed stuff if i wanted to. He knew how much I earned. It was a stupid demand. I explained it to him and he said he will keep an eye on the new stuff i get. Thats how it was.
Gradually, there was nothing we could talk about. He was really into the insta group chats and talking to a lot of people and our time was compromised. We started to drift apart. Then a friend of mine passed away and things started getting bad again. My friend was a part of the group that kept me afloat. I started getting panic attacks and had to go for therapy. (2022)
After every session, we used to discuss everything me and my doctor talked about. He knew what was said, and he was the only person who would read my doctor’s notebook. I was in therapy for an entire year. Summer of 2023, I got triggered and had a panic attack while talking to him. He had not triggered me, it was someone else. It was the first attack in months and i couldn’t talk after that. I texted him that i cant talk and that i was having a panic attack. He asked whats wrong and i told him i cant string words together. (After every panic attack, i would write what i felt, what caused it, and how can i explain it in a way that would keep that thing to be a trigger for me. I would send him and my doctor the notes and he knew this was the process). He asked me to text him back when i felt like talking to him. This was new since he used to text me stuff without asking for a reply when this previously happened. This added to the trigger.
A few hours later i told him what had happened and discussed his response and he got angry at me for not telling him what had happened. I kept explaining what was happening to me but he couldn’t understand where he went wrong. It was then when it dawned on me that he had no clue what a panic attack was. (My family didn’t understand either and they kept blaming me for what was happening to me and my mother kept labeling my diagnosed anxiety and depression as anger issues)
I asked him if he remembered what happened to me after my friend died. He said he did. And i asked him what did he remember. He told me that i had to go to the doctor. As i asked him which doctor he was, he said ‘the anxiety depression doctor’. This broke my heart. I proceeded to ask him what a panic attack was and he said he didn’t know. I didn’t want the conversation to heat up more so i forwarded him a video explaining all that was happening to me. And texted him that i thought he would have educated himself regarding everything that happened to me since he wanted to marry me. He said he was good uneducated. He didn’t even want to watch the video. He kept asking me to type it all for him but i was triggered by then and couldn’t string words together again. I stopped talking to him about anything that happened to me or the impact it had on me. If i was going through a rough patch, i would tell him i was busy. I also realized that any conversation, even on the brink of an argument, would end badly and show me more of what he was. I knew his family and his family knew me and vice versa. A couple of months ago i realized that it can’t go on like this and i wanted to end the relationship. The conversations were dying, there was nothing to talk about, i wasn’t talking to him about my stuff and he had never talked to me about his stuff. That was when i decided to end it. He literally begged me to stay with him and his promises actually made me feel like he would be better and i loved him enough to not let him go.
A few happy days went by and things were back to how they were. This was when i started getting sick again and had lost control of my triggers. I told him i wasn’t well and instead of being caring like he was in the beginning, he told me to get over stuff and to talk to him when stuff was normal. I stopped tellinh him what was happening again. It was as if we were not together. And i kept wondering how was it possible for him to be so broken when i called off the relationship but so casual about not talking to me for so long.
On a dark day, i texted to tell him that he was being missed. That backfired. He told me he was glad i was back to my senses and that he still loved me. That threw me off and we were having an argument again. I told him a simple i miss you too would have been enough and he said he can not think of stuff like this since he is dumb. I never called him that and him doing so was weird. He could do all this in the beginning but now, 3 years later, he wasn’t capable of doing it all?
Last night, he texted me to ask if i was being pushed away by something that he had said or done. I typed out a reply but could not send it, scared that he would start gaslighting me again. I deleted the typed text and told him that me explaning stuff that was wrong never goes well. He replied with why were we keeping this so called relationship alive. And if this was how it was going to be, we should end it. I replied with a sure and within minutes he had blocked me on everything.
I am down in the dumps. How was it so easy for him to disappear and block me? He left because he didn’t know how to care or be bothered by my shit the way he did when he was trying to win me. I don’t know what to do. My heart is broken.