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NEED HELP UNDERSTANING THE RELATIONSHIP. sorry for the essay

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 6 Confirmed not a robot
So i will start, sorry if i repeat certain things

so i started being friends with this guy in january 2018 in university, we were friends with 6 months, i wasnt looking for a relationship with him, i cooked food for him, shared my food with him and literally talked in his car for like 4/5 hours like each week-ish and texted constantly. i did those things cos he was my friend, and he seemed sad to me and i would do that for a friend. we just talked about nothing really, just tv shows and things as we were both not very open about personal things so we just talked about stupid things really.

in like may 2018, he shared that him and his girlfriend broke up and i said i was sorry and hope that he was okay and everything.

June 2018, he told me he liked me and the first thing i replied with was,
''i dont want to hurt anyone. I can appreciate those who went out with others in the same year, their relationship can be a bit complicated as they have friends intertwined and the relationship can be complicated. i do not want my presence to make anyone uncomfortable or hurt anybody'' (him and his 1st ex were in the same year at uni, i was 2 years below)
and he replied with ''not really''

so, after that day, i moved back home as my university year had ended. and we talked a little more about our personal lives and stuff.
in july 2018, he went away on holiday and a few days after, me and the guy had our first date. and it was all fine.

we started to have more frequent dates in september 2018 as we were both back in university.
and in october 2018, we thought it would be a good idea to introduce one another to our housemates. and that day went fine. a couple of days later, one of his housemates mentioned his 1st ex in a story and i pieced together that they were a colse-nit friendship group and it was complicated (it was complicated for me and he told me it wasnt to him)

then we talked about it afterwards, and he replied with ''we didnt talk about our past, and you didnt ask me'' so i was completely clear about my past, and told him that my ex was calling me for some reason quite frequently now, we had be broken up for over nearly a year now and i dont know why he's been calling me as i hadnt answered and its quite frequent. i told him when the calls started when he stopped calling and when they started again.
so he told me that he was with his ex for 3 years and blah blah. and i kinda let that incident go cos although it was complicated, mine started to be complicated too as my ex started to call me out of the blue like 2 days before we had that conversation.

and we were fine, we started to go out and be more comfortable with one another. in december 2018, i wanted to start collating pictures of him for an anniversary present, and i came across a picture of him on holiday in july 2018, and it was with his friends and ex. so obviously, i was completely shocked as he told what he did each day and showed me pictures of what he did

and non of the stories or pictures included his ex and he never said. so a couple of days later, i asked him about it as i was trying to find my words and give him the benefit of the doubt. and i asked ''is there anything else you haven't told me'' like 5 times and then he finally told me. and i asked him why he didn't tell me and he said that it wasn't in his head to tell me about it. this holiday was planned in December 2017 (whilst they were together) and he told me he liked me in June 2018, and he went on this holiday in July 2018, we said that we'd be more open about out past in oct 2018 and in December 2018 i found out about the holiday.
obviously i was shocked as he hadn't told me when we said that we'd be more open and again i gave him the benefit of the doubt because he said he didn't think to mention it as it wasn't anything.
obviously i was really hurt but i just let it go because i thought maybe i was just overreacting and I'm not being mature enough to not understand that he just didn't think to tell me. so i completely gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried to make myself let it got.

and he was always so anxious and panicky when we went outside my flat (so the 10 steps to his car) he looked really anxious and i told him ''your face looks really weird, are you okay, it just looks really panicky'', and i used to ask him that a few times as it kept happening and i asked whether he was okay with us being outside. and he replied with ''i don't know what my face does, i cant see it, but I'm not thinking about anything'' but it kept happening.
so i blamed myself for thinking i was being too picky and only like 6months after i found out his wider friends lived near me so he let me blame myself for like 6 months. and when i asked him why he was panicky, he said,
''i didn't want them to judge you or for your community to find out about us as it was scary that you might leave me just because I'm Indian'' (I'm Bhutanese and he's indian so it would have been looked down upon by our community if they found out and there would have been repercussions) and i told him, i knew you were indian before we were together so if i genuinely thought it was going to be too much to handle, i just wouldn't have been with you.

and in January 2019, he dropped me off for my placement dates and he was strangely trying to hide again from the eyeliner of his year 4 friends. and i asked him whether he was okay and he said he was fine.
and i later realised that he was trying to avoid the eye-line of his year 4 friends/ cohort because they knew him to be with him and his 1st ex. and when i asked him why he was trying to hide, he said that he didn't want them to judge me and for my community to find out. and i kinda let it all go again because i gave him the benefit of the doubt again and thought his actions were well-meaning but again, he let me blame myself for another few months.

and i tried to let alot of it go but we still struggled with it and i think i was just tired to having to keep mention why it hurt.

and in June 2019, i had to retake my 3rd year exams at medical school so i was obviously very scared and really sad as i was due to return back to Burma for a family wedding with my mum and i hadn't seen my family in 7 years so i was obviously really distraught that i had to delay seeing my family for 10 days and also delaying my mum and run the risk of having to re-take my 3rd year. so i was very upset and he tried to help me and stuff, i told him that he didn't understand as he hasn't had to retake any of his medical exams. and he was really offended that i said he didn't understand and i did apologise as i knew he was trying to be there for me.
but, he told me that there were worse things that could have happened, and when he said that, i felt really hurt as he knew a bit about my past and the troubles in my past so when he said that i felt really insulted as I've obviously gone through worse but this at that time was making me sad. and when he said that i stopped telling him that i was sad and told him to concentrate on his 4th year exams instead as i was going to be fine. and even if i failed and he passed, it was still going to be a win for US.

and summer happened and i talked to him a lot about how he reacted to me having to retake my exams and i let him off as i knew he had good intentions and he just didn't know what to say at the time and stuff,

in September 2019, i wanted to ask him how serious/committed he was about us as i spent a few weeks in Burma and it made me realise what was at risk as i could lose my family over this relationship for a while. so i needed to know where he was to feel reassured about the relationship.

and in January 2020, he told me that he loved me, and i asked what that meant to him, what loving someone means to me and we talked about it.

and we started to talk a little more seriously about he future and everything and what would happen after his 5th year as he would graduate and i wanted to know how he would see us after he graduated. and he told me it was fine and he was fine about it being long-distant-ish after he graduated.

and in march 2020, we were a little careless and i needed to buy 72-hour emergency contraceptives. and he was with me before i took them and i told him i felt a bit weird as i was scared. cos as a medical student myself, i saw young girls coming into clinics and ask for emergency contraceptives and you could just see fear in their eyes and i had the same fear in my eyes when i went to get them. so yeah, i was obviously really sad as i saw how much fear were in my eyes and i needed to talk to myself before taking them as i was really scared.

he tried to console me by saying '' there's probably nothing there and the pill is just to reduce any chances'' and so on, and i told him that i needed myself to know it too because i was really affected.

in April 2020, we decided to go away to an air bnb for 2 days as we realised we hadn't gone away together before in nearly 2 years.
and when we were there, i was physically a little more distant, and after we came back he said that he felt a little physically rejected as when we kissed, he could feel me pulling away to make sure nothing else happened. and i told him it was because less than a month before, and i told him i was still thinking about it and i hadn't fully gotten over it cos i was still scared. and he was really strange and told me that i wasn't listening to him and that when it really matters i don't listen to him. and i had to console HIM saying i was listening to him but i needed to tell myself that i was okay too and that i needed to let myself believe that i was okay and it was going to take time. I NEEDED TO TELL A FINAL YEAR STUDENT DOCTOR THAT I WAS STILL SAD ABOUT BEING SCARED AFTER TAKING EMERGENCY PILLS.
and he said he felt rejected and stuff, and i told him it wasn't like i stopped being attracted to him or something i was still going through it.

i also told him that i felt like as he was going to graduate soon, i was worried that he was going to break up as all of his friends have graduated too so i felt like he was just going to break things off over summer

and he was really weird and told me that i was turning him into a bad guy in my head for thinking he would do that, and thinking that he wasnt all in. and i told him i just want reassurance but he just said that his feeling were there same from the start but I've got him in my head as a bad guy and he felt like he couldn't change that.
i told him no, i didn't have him in my head as a bad guy, i was just scared he wasnt all in and i was scared and i needed reassurance

and then we finished uni and we went back to hometowns at the start of April.

and in may 2020, he said him and his friends have like a zoom meeting voting thing to celebrate them all graduating. like 'most like to ...' kind of thing.
and he mentioned his old housemate that talked about his 1st ex and allowed me to piece it together about the complicated relationship with his ex cos i think i was trying to repress the confusion and i just couldn't do it anymore, the more serious we were becoming, him saying ''we didnt talk about our past, and you didnt ask me, i didn't know how much you wanted to know'' just wasnt good enough anymore.

and i need to work through it as i couldn't suppress it anymore and it was causing me a lot of pain.

so near the end of may 2020, i wanted to talk with him about everything as i wasnt coping on my own anymore and i needed truths.

i told him i was developing coping mechanisms like not taking him for his words as our definitions of complicated were different , emotionally attaching myself when i sensed he wanted to tell something serious.
he kept telling me he never hid anything from me, he never lied to me and i was really confused as it wasnt even him that told me about the close intertwining relationships with his ex and i was hurt.
i told him i couldn't keep playing detective about piecing things together as i wasnt made to do that and it was too hard and i wasnt coping. i asked him to be upfront and honest about things as i just couldn't keep finding things about his friends anymore

i couldnt.
it was too hard.

and i asked him about how he hid from his year 4 friends whenever we were outside or even when he dropped me off for placement cos he said that he did it so they wouldn't judge me
and i said i was super confused as i had never met those people in my life, i would only know them for a few minutes and id never see them again. and him acting so weird and letting me feel like it was my fault for such a long time and it wasnt good enough anymore. and i directly asked him whether he did that so his ex didn't find out that we were together.
cos him saying that he was scared that if his year 4 friends found out, it would somehow get to my community and that i would have to break up with him cos he was indian. i was so confused as i don't look stereotypically Burmese, i don't sound burmese, my name isn't stereotypically Burmese and its not plastered over my Facebook wall so it wasnt even a factor of them finding out or anything and as an outsider, they wouldn't have even known a Burmese-indian couple was traditionally difficult. like that wasnt even a thing.
and i wanted him to be honest with me, to not keep things from me and not to hide things from me as i kept blaming myself for a long time.

i also told him that i was still hurting over the fact that he didn't tell me about the holiday with his ex and it wasn't okay that he kept that from me until 6 months into the relationship and 2 months into our relationship.

3 days after we had this conversation, i asked him what he liked about our relationship and what he saw for our future, he said that he liked that we could be ourselves and be together and all that.
and i told him that i loved him but i don't know whether he wanted to love me at times. and he said that i was attacking him and he wanted some space so i said fine

and 3 days later he breaks up with me saying that i was toxic, that i was attacking him, that i was belittling him. that he wasnt there for his friends, he was losing confidence and all that

and i dont understand,
i literally told him all the way through that there was no pressure, that he doesn't need to say anything he doesn't mean and he can tell me if he's unsure.
i used to do monthly checks about how he was feeling about us, whether he had any doubts and what he feels like we need to work on. and all that.
i told him that i was scared that he wasnt all in this as there was a lot at risk for me and i needed to know he was all-in

and a week after he broke up with me, i did a 30 minute monologue of what i felt like a future he promised me, he always told me that he was all in this and that he told me that it was okay for me to hope and dream of our future together. and whenever i asked him that he was all in and i was worried that he wasnt. he used to say that i was turning him into the bad guy in my mind and i told him that wasnt true.

i felt like he gave me no warning that he had doubts or was deattaching and i found that increadly insulting as i had the right to know if he wasnt all in the relationship as i wouldn't have been as hurt and i wouldn't had tried so hard to get us back on track
i told him it was the events of our relationship that lead me to doubt him and whether he was trustworthy and those reasons were why i was being a little more distant and he told me i was just making excuses.

he told me he wasnt there for his friends but i know that i wasnt clingy or co-dependent in the relationship, i even told him to go to his friend's events when he said he didn't want to as his ex might be there and he knew how much he hurt her and he didn't want to see that. i used to reassure him that he wasnt there for his ex, he was there for his friend and if his wanted to be friends and try and have a conversation then u should try too.

i am so lost,
i gave him so much love and support
and kindness
and excused him thinking he was well meaning
and that he was a good guy really
and that we was all in it with me
that we were going to work though it together

and i just feel so stupid
i feel so hurt
i feel so betrayed
i feel like i was just abandoned as i was hurting as a consequence of his actions and instead of working through those with me, he just found it easier to leave because who knows what else he would have had to admit.
its been over a month and still my heart is so heavy as i was all in in a relationship that he told me he was all in too and when the time came to work through it, he just left

.he left me to excuse all of his actions in the relationship and he left me to clean up all the hurt he caused during the relationship even after the relationship

i am so lost.
i truly do not know what i was supposed to do
i cant sleep
i wake up in complete anxiety
i am so emotionally drained
and i cant talk about it to my family as i am not supposed to be in a relationships

so the guy i literally risked everything for left because he could handle me asking him to be truthful and honest and i don't know how to get on from there.

i am so sorry that this was so long but i hope that some of it was familiar to you and we can support one another

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 6 Confirmed not a robot
    i think from the start, it was because i literally didnt know what was right or not.. or whether it was normal or not.. and it wasnt until i came onto here that i didnt even know his actions through the relationship was wrong...

    - saying 'not really' when i asked whether it was complicated with his ex

    - him going on holiday with his ex and friends... a holiday they planned whilst they were together.. and me finding out (from FB) that she was there too as it made it sound as if it was just him and his friends.. and when i questioned him, i had to ask 'is there anything else' 5 times before he finally told me about the holiday

    - him hiding me from his wider friends, had a complete panicked face when there was a possibility that someone would see us because he 'wanted to protect me'

    - wrongness in him replying with 'youve turned me into the villain, youve turned me into the bad guy in your head' when i said 'im worried youre not all in this'

    - him making me feel sad when i needed time to recover from his actions... and the wrongness of me having to recover quicker because he was sad

    - him telling me to plan getaways.. we were university students studying medicine so we didnt even have the opportunity to go away for a few days cos of placements... i dont have the experience of going away/abroad... i dont have money and i dont come from money so i told him i dont know how to plan getaways cos ive never been in one, but im happy to go to cinemas/theatre or just watch netflix and takeaways cos i dont need alot, i just want to spend time with you.
    - him constantly saying, 'ive not done anything wrong, ive never lied to you, ive never hidden anything from you'
    it all messed up my version of whats right or wrong
    and what's normal relationship problem or what was a major red flag
    all of that was messed up, and i just need insight i guess into what thought you guys have cos i dealt with it all alone whilst i was with him... and made me feel like i wasnt being mature enough/modern enough to understand.. and it completely messed up my scale of right or wrong...
    im just left with all the feelings of doubt, hurt and loneliness as the person that told me 3 days before he broke up with me that he wanted just to be with me and for us to be team... just left. just ended it in 4 sentences... knowing he'll never see me agian, knowing he'll never have to look into my eyes again and actually admit he caused me hurt.. he'll just never have to accept any responsibility
    he just liked me because i was 'strong', and held myself high. and he poisoned himself into my life, with lies and deceit and left when he had broken me cos i wasnt the same girl i was before... that i was crying and begging him to be truthful, i was cautious towards him and his intentions, and i wasnt trusting him and his words blindly anymore - and that these were excuses to him
    and i just dont know how to cope with him leaving me with all of these feelings he never acknowledged hurt me

    people have told me that the reason he called me toxic, attacking and belittling was because he was projecting his own guilt onto me... to make himself the victim to make it easier to leave
    but i cant seem to stop feeling like shit over these words
    I always just wake up in hurt and pain...
    I know he broke up cos it was easier to start over with someone new rather than look into my eyes and help me cos he's a coward... but i still have the urge to ask him back or to talk to him
  • Former MemberFormer Member UKPosts: 1,171 Wise Owl
    edited September 18
    Hey @Past User

    I hope it feels better being able to talk about it and get that all out? We’re here for you and want to support you 💜 I’m so sorry to hear how much you are hurting. I understand it feels awful right now, break ups can be so tough especially when you feel like it’s happened out the blue.

    From your story it sounds like you did everything right, talking honestly to him about your feelings and accepting and forgiving him for his mistakes but also that he probably made quite a lot of mistakes? I don’t think you should feel like it’s your fault because it sounds like it’s his. And that he was causing quite a lot of worry anyway by not being fully honest about things and then blaming you? 

    I agree that it sounds like he was projecting onto you. Have you ever heard of the term gaslighting? It’s unfortunately quite common... have a read of this https://www.healthline.com/health/gaslighting#examples in case it helps.

    You're not alone here, please keep talking and hope we can help
    Take care
    Lucy 
    Post edited by TheMix on
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