Scarleteen

A year ago I made a post as I wasn’t sure if what I went through was rape and a year later I have accepted that it was and have also realised that he was an abusive man, he dumped me on December 8th 2023 a few months later so he wasn’t serious about me like he said he was and I found messages from him to other girls flirting with them and chatting them up when he was telling me he was busy, when he was caught he turned totally nasty and degraded me and told me I don’t matter to him and that I need to make him care about me and I deserve to be abused because I accused him of cheating on me. thought he was in a bad mood but it never ended and he brought me down for a long time. I’ve realised a number of ways he’s been trying to lower my self esteem and how it all works because I started the freedom programme. The staff who responded to my post were right, he doesn’t respect me or my boundaries but I didn’t want to believe it. The person he’d made himself out to be was fake and I feel like a fool but I can understand why I did it because if the state of my mental health. I also feel conned and violated though.
We only stopped contact the other day as he told me he doesn’t want to speak to me again. It was for the better as I kept going back anyway, even though he never reached out himself I felt like I needed to go back. He has really messed with my head but I am determined to move on for a better life and I feel better when I don’t talk to him but sometimes I’ll go a few weeks and then wonder and once I’ve got it in my head that I’m thinking about reaching out I end up doing it within a few days not sure how to stop that. I might just try and keep busy still as that helps

I'm so sorry to hear what you've been put through by him, Anon. Abuse -- and all of the ways it manifests and is enacted -- is a terrible betrayal, for sure. And the way we feel when we realize we've been manipulated into it can be very hard to manage and process.

I am, however, so glad that you are working to move forward and that you are out of this. <3

My best suggestion as to how to remove the temptation to reach out is to take his number out of your phone, full-stop. Same with any other ways you may have been contacting him.