You asked whether it is ever an anomaly if someone suddenly displays controlling behavior like your ex did. No, no it is not. Speaking from personal experience here. Controlling people can usually put there behaviors back in the box for a period of time. For instance, when others are watching, or when they realize they overplayed their hand and are trying to suck you back in. But once someone treats you with the aggression and contempt she displayed, you can never trust the good times to remain. People do not suddenly sprout controlling tendencies and start intimidating, belittling it, and abusing others out of nowhere. She likely has done this before, and likely will do it again. In fact, if you review the details of what happened you will probably be able to spot the ways she started off with smaller controlling behaviors before this last escalation. The way she spat at you and showed up at your house with a crew makes me very concerned for your physical safety, and I am very glad you have gotten this person out of your life. It is courageous to leave a person like this behind because it is so much scarier than leaving a normal relationship. Good for you for heeding your internal warning system. Seriously: congratulate yourself for that. I offer you something that helped me resist the pull to renew in a similar situation: if she really thinks you’re as bad as she said you were, then why would she want to stay with you? If she really thinks you’re capable of the horrible things she accused you of, she should break up with you and stay gone, not try to keep you around (to abuse more). People like this try to get you to believe two things: on the one hand you are a piece of shit, but on the other hand, they somehow need or want you and only you can fill a void in their life. Surround yourself with good people who treat you well, be very kind to yourself, and when the siren song of reconciliation echoes in your ears, remind yourself: real love does not make you feel shitty and afraid.
This book profoundly changed the way I think about a past abusive relationship (and also, incidentally, shed some deeply uncomfortable light on ways I personally have behaved with an intimate partner, which I am now exploring in therapy). The bottom line is that people who behave like this can only change if they are able to take full accountability, not just to you but to themselves, for a fundamental lack of respect and empathy for the people closest to them. This ex is not behaving like someone who is anywhere near engaging with that process.
Also very proud of the asker for listening to their own alarm system and taking the steps to separate themselves from this person, even as they’re in the stage of trying to figure out what the heck just happened. That shows serious strength and self-trust. You will get through this, this was not your fault, and this person’s actions do not point to some deeper truth about who you are as a person - this is about them. Big hugs.
I agree so much with the comments below and Maddy's sage wisdom. It is courageous and impressive that you were able to get out of your relationship with V, and she is not a safe person to have in your life. There is no conflict between drawing a hard line about communication with V and generally believing that you can move through conflict with exes. There was a violence and disrespect for your personhood that V displayed that shows you she is not a person you can have in your life, even in a peripheral way. This does not make you a hypocrite or mean that generally, you can't be a person who maintains friendships after relationships. What happened with V is a different scenario, and in fact, textbook abuse as you identified.
The other thing I'll add is, if you are mourning the loss of the good parts of the relationship with V, that is normal. It is such whiplash to hold that feeling alongside the knowledge that she was verbally abusive and physically threatening. Both these things are true. You get to mourn that loss and the imagined joy and comfort of the relationship you THOUGHT you were entering and STILL hold an incredibly firm boundary, knowing that no one should be treated the way V treated you. The truism "hurt people hurt people," feels like it really applies here in that probably behind V's absolutely unacceptable treatment of you is her own pain. But, that does not excuse her behavior in any way. You deserve to be safe, treated with care, and kindness. You owe her nothing. To say it once again, she has shown she is not someone you can safely have in your life in any kind of way.
In holding that boundary, take care of yourself - whatever movies, books, foods, or community bring you joy and stability. Seriously, be real gentle with yourself knowing that moving past this experience is going to take time. You are not bad because you got caught in a web of abuse - it has happened to a lot of us. As was said so well below, you deserve love where you feel safe and cherished, and it is out there!
can’t pick em, i am so sorry for your experience with V and i hope seeing your story written out - as well as maddy’s thoughtful response - is healing for you. people can change but V’s behavior is the kind that disqualifies her from ever receiving partner-level (or friend-level) trust from you. i think you will gather wisdom from this experience in time as you process with professionals and your community.
i work at an org in the midwest focused on domestic violence prevention. i can tell you that there are resources out there and i’d really encourage you to seek what resources are in your area. support groups can be very helpful. the national domestic violence hotline has a great list that you can use to find things local to you: https://www.thehotline.org/get-help/domestic-violence-local-resources/
Reading this, I began to wonder if "Can't Pick 'Em" is dating my abusive ex. The control and manipulation will not stop if you go back her. I recommend therapy, having a few friends who are geographically close on speed dial. Maybe a self-defense course or martial arts to improve confidence in your ability to defend yourself. Someone who will spit in your face, take your phone, and threaten you WILL TRY TO HURT YOU. It's just a matter of time and opportunity. I'm so glad you trusted your instinct and didn't let her in your home again. I made that mistake. Verbal and emotional violence is never okay, often leads to physical violence, and is rarely rehabilitated. Sad but the data is not optimistic.
Lots of fish in the sea, tho! Like several million that might be a good fit! Take care of yourself and keep listening to your heart and head, together.
Yes! And same, I 100% thought this was my abusive ex as well. And I can confirm that her particular cycle (let’s be real: pathology) has continued since I managed to leave (after 3 years), roughly ten years ago.
Via social media and other invested parties, I’ve been privy to her enacting this same pattern over and over. She meets someone new > teases it online > escalates to declarations of love > has a sudden and intense breakup. At this point, if they reunite, sadly, the abusive cycle has taken root and repeats, often for years. Until it doesn’t.
Her partners even have a type: new to the city, burgeoning queers, who are lured in by the exterior, intelligence, seeming self-awareness, and a veteran’s portal into the city’s general magic and queer doings. Many of her victims, myself included, now know each other, at least by sight and story (she routinely name drops exes to currents for clout and to stir jealousy), recognize each other at functions, and have even become friends (via trauma bonding).
A few years back, the community started to hold her accountable, to where she was complaining online about being a victim of bullying and nobody wanting to date her, but with Covid and lockdown, so many folks scattered and relocated, and she’s been able to continue to enact this cycle at an alarming, albeit predictable, rate.
I’m not super proud to admit that I mostly stay out of it (the handful of times I learned friends were talking to her I’ve warned them and made sure they knew her history), but I’m always a bit terrified it will come back to me and invite her wrath. She seems to drum up new groups of devoted internet/local friends every year or two (before tumultuous falling outs), has no shame in dragging currents and exes on social media, claiming abuse from them, etc (which is particularly damaging for newbies who established folks don’t know yet and can’t vouch for).
Also, any time I’ve reengaged with her since our breakup, it turns into either her attempting to convince me she’s changed (reconstructing the narrative) or violently cussing me out (stealing my peace). There are still a few long-timers in the community that she occasionally goes head-to-head with, but a lot of what I see is smaller groups of friends rallying around the victim post-abuse/breakup, helping and loving them while they rebuild and heal.
At first this cycle fortified me: I’m not the only one / it wasn’t my fault. But overtime I’ve just come to feel saddened and helpless, resigned. Maybe that’s why I felt compelled (and genuinely a little afraid) to write this here—it’s something I can do, anonymously, to say to folks in similar situations: I see you and I love you. And you CAN leave.
(Thank you so much, Maddy, for this incredible forum and resource.)
Maddy’s recommendation of reading In The Dream House is one I’ll always sound off on; before that book, I’d never read an account of abusive relationships that not only focused on abuse between queer women, but abuse that didn’t involve being physically hurt. I had a hard time acknowledging I’d been abused because it left no physical scars or marks, and I’d been taught these were the hallmarks of abusive relationships. Instead, like you, my finances were controlled and I was forced to cut off friends (who, thankfully, took me back when they knew the full story). This might not mean much from a stranger on the internet but I’m proud of you for changing your locks; that’s a physical reminder that, in spite of all she’s done, you have a safe place she cannot access where you can heal.
I also want to confirm that it is possible for friends, including the ex you’re friends with, to understand that your message wasn’t really your words and doesn’t reflect how you see them. I really hope they’re able to support you through this because the more friends in your corner right now to remind you of your worth, the better. Abuse can be so fucking isolating and it can feel like such a breath of fresh air to surround yourself with people who truly make you feel safe, in your entirety.
Sending you so much compassion, Letter Writer. Like other commenters, this story reminded me painfully of my own experiences with an abusive girlfriend. I wanted to second (third?) Maddy's recommendation for In The Dream House, which I've reread multiple times because it's just so validating and clarifying and beautiful.
I also wanted to add another resource that helped me a lot, which is the 2018 "Bi Bi Bi" episode of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast. I first listened to it at least a decade after getting out of that first abusive relationship, and had by that point done a lot of reading about abuse in queer relationships, gone to DV support groups, considered myself fairly well-educated about the dynamics of abuse... but it still was an absolute revelation to me to learn that bi-identifying people disproportionately experience abuse (as a direct result of being a marginalized group within the queer community). When you can sense, on either a conscious or subconscious level, that your acceptance in both the het and gay communities is a little more conditional than for those who are only attracted to one gender, it's easy to internalize that you have more to prove --that you have to put up with a little bit more than you would otherwise-- to be deserving of love. At its worst, the mistrust for bi folks can be weaponized by abusive/manipulative partners, as it was by your ex, V. My first girlfriend, the one who V reminded me of, bragged all the time about being a "gold star" lesbian, would talk endlessly about how disgusting it was to be attracted to men, and would go into vicious, graphic rants about how I was probably going to cheat on her any time I wanted to spend time with male friends. It got very isolating and scary by the end. Even though I was with her for less than a year, it was a very intense time (she moved in with me soon after we started dating), and it took me years to fully heal.
More than anything, I want to say how proud I am of you for recognizing that this was not safe or loving behavior that V was displaying; for reaching out to your support network for help; and for sticking to your boundaries even in the face of bullying from your ex and her friends. I hope you really take time to appreciate how much courage and competency you have displayed to get yourself through this hard, scary time. I wish you so many better, happier things going forward.
Thank you for pointing out the biphobia and how vulnerable bis are to abuse! I am bi, and this is something I contemplate often. My anchor partner is bi and we both have histories of abusive partners in relationships with folks of various genders. The situation the LW deceived reminded of my experiences with a cis male partner and a queer enby partner, in different aspects. Only a year later is it dawning on me that the enby partner was controlling specifically when it came to my relationships with cis men, and that this was rooted in biphobia. I also think that because queers in general have been through so much trauma, we often want to remain more open to folks who are behaving badly because we know that trauma can make people act out, without them being bad people. This can be weaponized against us by manipulative people. I admire so much how the LW seems to have gotten to a healthier place with their other ex, despite some harmful stuff going down in that relationship. The most recent ex is NOT doing any of the things that the previous ex did that made reconciliation possible.
Just echoing that I’m so so glad you changed your locks and have been talking with friends you trust about what’s going on. Having been in a similar situation where I did not tell my friends what was going on (bc it was “violating the privacy” of my ex) and even agreed to move into a studio with this emotionally abusive ex, I know how confusing patterns of affection can be and emotional turbulence can make it hard to see things clearly.
Especially when it isn’t a cis man doing classic controlling boyfriend thing, because we don’t really have well known tropes to identify emotional abuse outside of that dynamic. I would say you’re handling things as well as anyone could. Listen to whatever voice is telling you something isn’t right or that this is unfair and you deserve better. No matter what V says, that’s not selfishness, it’s self love. Please don’t blame yourself for how things play out or beat yourself up for not knowing what the right move is for now. All of this is shockingly normal in situations like these that most people (especially gay ppl) think they’ll never find themselves in.
I also know how blindsiding it can be when a partner starts acting controlling and cruel seemingly out of nowhere. And it can be especially hard when they open up about how terrible they feel or when they give heartfelt apologies. But it’s a huge red flag when someone considers any kind of intimate violence a justified reaction to their hurt feelings.
When you deeply care about someone, especially when they didn’t seem mean or controlling before, you’re more likely to learn all the seemingly good reasons they do cruel and hurtful things. Some deep trauma being triggered, some interpretation of events that makes it easier to sympathize with them. There’s always a reason that they couldn’t help it, or that they messed up and they’ll do better. When you start to believe all those things, it can be impossible not to feel like if you just try hard enough or do the right thing, you can make it all better and get back to the good parts of the relationship.
My situation isn’t exactly like yours but it started out similarly and I want to share in case it helps someone else avoid what I went through. I wish someone had told me about these things, and that it’s not your fault that you trusted or cared for someone who hurt you.
(cw: descriptions of abuse below, skip to *** for lessons learned)
My ex had been so kind and affectionate in the beginning, and had helped me open up and process things about my past that I hadn’t been able to with anyone else before. The relationship was romantic and intense, but they were careful to let me move slowly since I’d gotten out of a hard breakup months before. There were very few red flags the first several months, and the ones I noticed always seemed so unlike the rest of the relationship and came with some heart wrenching explanation and apology that assuaged my fears. They had gone to therapy in the past and were able to explain all traumatic experiences that had resulted in why they acted the way they did sometimes. They had so many stories of how people had hurt them where they always painted themself as kind and naive. As someone who supported people with mental health crises professionally, I thought I could handle it at least until my ex found another therapist and worked through these “uncontrollable reactions”.
We started doing long distance when they graduated and moved back home. I later graduated we moved in together. Once we were living together and more financially involved, the relationship became so deeply unsafe and unlivable before I could recognize what was going on. They did things I know they would never have done before we lived together when I could’ve left more easily. I thought that my faults were at least partially to blame for their extreme reactions. They were stressed about work and applying to grad school, and I was being unsympathetic for asking them to speak to me more kindly or to talk to a therapist again. If I ever stood up for myself, they’d call me out for being selfish or somehow bring up their abandonment trauma. Never mind that they were much wealthier than me, had easy access to therapy, didn’t have to work, and could afford any education they wanted.
But the truth was that after we had become closer, they had begun acting more cruel even when they weren’t in crisis. They were selectively mean to me in front of most people, but not in front of my friends or family. I found out they were secretly cruel to their close friends at times, even when their friends were just trying to help.
When I did finally leave it was because their cycles of cruelty/control then reconciliation/devotion were escalating, becoming more physical, and had just been too frightening to keep my shit together anymore. I couldn’t talk them down when they were enraged at me for something like not texting back fast enough or talking to my friends instead of staying by their side the entire time at a party. I was having constant panic attacks. It had become too difficult to spend time with friends at all without my ex lashing out, I couldn’t even hang out with my best friend for an hour on my own birthday without a jealousy fueled crisis that meant I had to go home and deescalate things. My body knew I needed to leave before I totally did. I was lucky a friend had a spare room in her family’s house that I could move into while deescalating things with my ex.
Of course, I thought I could just be friends with my ex, that we could consciously uncouple and that it wouldn’t be ok for me to just ghost them in such a vulnerable state. I didn’t tell others how bad things had been before the breakup, so they continued to stay in contact with my friends and even got closer to them. They said they needed me and wouldn’t be ok without me in their life supporting them. And it seemed like it was going fine. They seemed to have really changed until they realized I was never going to come back to the relationship, then they lashed out again and plowed through whatever boundaries I had communicated during the breakup. So I finally cut off contact.
Personally, it took me months after leaving my ex to realize how much of what I was being told were lies and manipulation. How I’d been made to bear choices my ex was actively making (and turned out had a pattern of making before me) as if my actions could have somehow kept these scary things from happening. It took at least another year to completely disentangle as they continued to show up at my work, and manipulate my friends and even family to get information about me. All to maintain some connection and control. It was easier to see this for what it was once I wasn’t financially or emotionally enmeshed with them anymore. The truth was, and I realized had always been, that they knew how badly they treated me and they were going to be fine without me.
***Once I had the space to replay events on my own, I realized my patience and care were knowingly being taken advantage of, and that all the apologies and promises would never have resulted in changing a dynamic that this person needed to recreate again and again with everyone they were close to in order to feel “safe”. They benefited from this arrangement, and the emotional labor I was putting in only enabled it.
The other difficult part was that this person had been a vocal queer woc feminist and a survivor of abuse and stalking, and then had done the same to me. I lost some friends to them who didn’t believe me when I tried to explain the abuse that had been happening. I lost a lot of the patience, self confidence, and open heartedness that made it easy to care for people that I’d had before the relationship, since that had been taken advantage of for so long. I’m still learning how to reclaim those qualities while holding love and protection for myself. I wish I had left sooner, that I hadn’t trusted part of myself to someone like that and that I had told everyone what was going on early on.
The biggest realization after all of this was also that my feelings fucking mattered. That my feeling safe and comfortable, and my ability to lead a full and healthy life with friends and autonomy is equally as important as anyone I’m in relationship with. Regardless of what anyone is going through, everyone has a choice in how they treat others. I had to realize that at that point my ex was not capable of making choices that prioritized my wellbeing over their need for power in our relationship (and by extension control and cruelty). It’s important to see people where they’re at now with the information they’re giving you about their motivations and priorities. Not the potential they have on their best days or when it’s easiest, but how they act when things are hard or scary. Because dating someone means you’re going to go through hard times together. No matter how “good” a partner you are to someone, relationships test people’s ability to trust and navigate emotional discomfort. It’s how people act in these situations that tell you what your future together will be like.
I wish people talked about this stuff more, because now that I’m in the other side of it I see it happening all the time especially in queer communities. I think the binary definitions of abuser and victim, and the myth of entirely one way harm and the evil people who commit it make it impossible to see abusive dynamics that fall outside of these extremely limited definitions. They make it easier for abusers to maintain control amidst confusion and for the honeymoon phase of the abuse cycle to effectively gaslight people into believing there isn’t actually a fucked up power dynamic in their relationships. Including family and friendships. Most of all, if our abusers are “good” people or even victims of oppression or abuse in other parts of their lives, this way of thinking keeps us from leaving or setting important boundaries to rectify nonconsensual power dynamics.
Nowadays I’m less interested in how good or bad a person is on the whole and instead focus on relation. Are they good for me? For their friends? For people with less power than them? In how they move through the world? Is the way I treat each of my loved ones good for them? Maybe there’s a good reason someone acts the way they do, but it’s just not good for me at this point in life. That’s information that helps me to decide whether the relationship is healthy for me to put my trust and energy into, or if their need to be boundaries in place to preserve safety and autonomy. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I hope it helps.
Anyways, I really deeply feel for you and how difficult all this is. Wishing you kindness and ease in your relationships <3
I am so glad you are out of this relationship and receiving such good advice from Maddy and <3 The Community<3
The Network/ La Red is an amazing survivor-led organization addressing abuse and DV in lgbtqia relationships. When I was leaving my emotionally abusive relationship, I called their hotline a few times and joined one of there phone support groups, and both helped me so much: https://www.tnlr.org/en/
Just want to say that I’m so impressed with this writer for reaching out and articulating what they’re going through so clearly—that can be a really hard and scary step and I think it’s really brave of them to be asking these questions
I had an ex with some similar traits: explosive anger, jealousy, calling me “disgusting,” insecurity about my past relationships with men, threatening suicide when I left, threatening to ruin my belongings, and once physically pushing me so hard against a wall that it left a mark. We were together for about 4.5 years in my mid-late 20s and it was my first serious longterm relationship. I’m glad you had some other relationships that maybe help you to have better perspective on the parts of this one that are unacceptable and harmful. In my experience, she never changed. The abusive behavior started just a few months into our relationship but was fairly infrequent overall (maybe 1x every few months). Then she got a traumatic brain injury and things got much much worse (but frankly they were very bad before that anyway). I begged her to go to therapy to deal with her anger and she never did. I wanted to have children one day and could not fathom exposing them to someone with such volatile anger. I made a plan to get out and it took a few months, but I did. I’m pretty sure by this time she was cheating on me anyway considering she moved in a woman within a few days of me leaving our house (according to Instagram). Driving away from the house when I finally decided to leave gave me intense feelings of relief. She tried to pull me back in in various ways (like threatening to destroy a few boxes of possessions that I was PAYING HER to store in a house I was 50% owner of) but I never went back and have zero regrets. I eventually was able to cut all ties and we live in different states now, which has helped a lot. She tries to still contact me every 1-2 years. She has never apologized in a meaningful way to me and I’ve made peace with that. My advice is this: Get out, don’t give them avenues to contact you while you go to therapy and do some healing, and call it abuse and do your best not to minimize what happened or blame yourself.
I don’t think this is ever an anomaly. I dated someone who blew up at me in similar ways a couple weeks in a row and after forgiving him the behavior just got worse and worse until when I broke up with him he tried to break into my house. I’ve been no contact with him for 2 years now and it was the best decision I could’ve made. I still hope he gets help and treats future partners better but I know I don’t want to have any place in that.
You asked whether it is ever an anomaly if someone suddenly displays controlling behavior like your ex did. No, no it is not. Speaking from personal experience here. Controlling people can usually put there behaviors back in the box for a period of time. For instance, when others are watching, or when they realize they overplayed their hand and are trying to suck you back in. But once someone treats you with the aggression and contempt she displayed, you can never trust the good times to remain. People do not suddenly sprout controlling tendencies and start intimidating, belittling it, and abusing others out of nowhere. She likely has done this before, and likely will do it again. In fact, if you review the details of what happened you will probably be able to spot the ways she started off with smaller controlling behaviors before this last escalation. The way she spat at you and showed up at your house with a crew makes me very concerned for your physical safety, and I am very glad you have gotten this person out of your life. It is courageous to leave a person like this behind because it is so much scarier than leaving a normal relationship. Good for you for heeding your internal warning system. Seriously: congratulate yourself for that. I offer you something that helped me resist the pull to renew in a similar situation: if she really thinks you’re as bad as she said you were, then why would she want to stay with you? If she really thinks you’re capable of the horrible things she accused you of, she should break up with you and stay gone, not try to keep you around (to abuse more). People like this try to get you to believe two things: on the one hand you are a piece of shit, but on the other hand, they somehow need or want you and only you can fill a void in their life. Surround yourself with good people who treat you well, be very kind to yourself, and when the siren song of reconciliation echoes in your ears, remind yourself: real love does not make you feel shitty and afraid.
Yes, thank you for this!!
Leaving the ‘Why Does He Do That?’ pdf link here - https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
This book profoundly changed the way I think about a past abusive relationship (and also, incidentally, shed some deeply uncomfortable light on ways I personally have behaved with an intimate partner, which I am now exploring in therapy). The bottom line is that people who behave like this can only change if they are able to take full accountability, not just to you but to themselves, for a fundamental lack of respect and empathy for the people closest to them. This ex is not behaving like someone who is anywhere near engaging with that process.
Also very proud of the asker for listening to their own alarm system and taking the steps to separate themselves from this person, even as they’re in the stage of trying to figure out what the heck just happened. That shows serious strength and self-trust. You will get through this, this was not your fault, and this person’s actions do not point to some deeper truth about who you are as a person - this is about them. Big hugs.
I agree so much with the comments below and Maddy's sage wisdom. It is courageous and impressive that you were able to get out of your relationship with V, and she is not a safe person to have in your life. There is no conflict between drawing a hard line about communication with V and generally believing that you can move through conflict with exes. There was a violence and disrespect for your personhood that V displayed that shows you she is not a person you can have in your life, even in a peripheral way. This does not make you a hypocrite or mean that generally, you can't be a person who maintains friendships after relationships. What happened with V is a different scenario, and in fact, textbook abuse as you identified.
The other thing I'll add is, if you are mourning the loss of the good parts of the relationship with V, that is normal. It is such whiplash to hold that feeling alongside the knowledge that she was verbally abusive and physically threatening. Both these things are true. You get to mourn that loss and the imagined joy and comfort of the relationship you THOUGHT you were entering and STILL hold an incredibly firm boundary, knowing that no one should be treated the way V treated you. The truism "hurt people hurt people," feels like it really applies here in that probably behind V's absolutely unacceptable treatment of you is her own pain. But, that does not excuse her behavior in any way. You deserve to be safe, treated with care, and kindness. You owe her nothing. To say it once again, she has shown she is not someone you can safely have in your life in any kind of way.
In holding that boundary, take care of yourself - whatever movies, books, foods, or community bring you joy and stability. Seriously, be real gentle with yourself knowing that moving past this experience is going to take time. You are not bad because you got caught in a web of abuse - it has happened to a lot of us. As was said so well below, you deserve love where you feel safe and cherished, and it is out there!
Thank you for speaking on contact with exes who aren't this specific nightmare person and mourning the good parts of a relationship!!
can’t pick em, i am so sorry for your experience with V and i hope seeing your story written out - as well as maddy’s thoughtful response - is healing for you. people can change but V’s behavior is the kind that disqualifies her from ever receiving partner-level (or friend-level) trust from you. i think you will gather wisdom from this experience in time as you process with professionals and your community.
i work at an org in the midwest focused on domestic violence prevention. i can tell you that there are resources out there and i’d really encourage you to seek what resources are in your area. support groups can be very helpful. the national domestic violence hotline has a great list that you can use to find things local to you: https://www.thehotline.org/get-help/domestic-violence-local-resources/
and here’s the national LGBTQ+ institute on intimate partner violence resource page: https://lgbtqipvinstitute.org/resources-for-survivors/
sending lots of love.
Reading this, I began to wonder if "Can't Pick 'Em" is dating my abusive ex. The control and manipulation will not stop if you go back her. I recommend therapy, having a few friends who are geographically close on speed dial. Maybe a self-defense course or martial arts to improve confidence in your ability to defend yourself. Someone who will spit in your face, take your phone, and threaten you WILL TRY TO HURT YOU. It's just a matter of time and opportunity. I'm so glad you trusted your instinct and didn't let her in your home again. I made that mistake. Verbal and emotional violence is never okay, often leads to physical violence, and is rarely rehabilitated. Sad but the data is not optimistic.
Lots of fish in the sea, tho! Like several million that might be a good fit! Take care of yourself and keep listening to your heart and head, together.
Yes! And same, I 100% thought this was my abusive ex as well. And I can confirm that her particular cycle (let’s be real: pathology) has continued since I managed to leave (after 3 years), roughly ten years ago.
Via social media and other invested parties, I’ve been privy to her enacting this same pattern over and over. She meets someone new > teases it online > escalates to declarations of love > has a sudden and intense breakup. At this point, if they reunite, sadly, the abusive cycle has taken root and repeats, often for years. Until it doesn’t.
Her partners even have a type: new to the city, burgeoning queers, who are lured in by the exterior, intelligence, seeming self-awareness, and a veteran’s portal into the city’s general magic and queer doings. Many of her victims, myself included, now know each other, at least by sight and story (she routinely name drops exes to currents for clout and to stir jealousy), recognize each other at functions, and have even become friends (via trauma bonding).
A few years back, the community started to hold her accountable, to where she was complaining online about being a victim of bullying and nobody wanting to date her, but with Covid and lockdown, so many folks scattered and relocated, and she’s been able to continue to enact this cycle at an alarming, albeit predictable, rate.
I’m not super proud to admit that I mostly stay out of it (the handful of times I learned friends were talking to her I’ve warned them and made sure they knew her history), but I’m always a bit terrified it will come back to me and invite her wrath. She seems to drum up new groups of devoted internet/local friends every year or two (before tumultuous falling outs), has no shame in dragging currents and exes on social media, claiming abuse from them, etc (which is particularly damaging for newbies who established folks don’t know yet and can’t vouch for).
Also, any time I’ve reengaged with her since our breakup, it turns into either her attempting to convince me she’s changed (reconstructing the narrative) or violently cussing me out (stealing my peace). There are still a few long-timers in the community that she occasionally goes head-to-head with, but a lot of what I see is smaller groups of friends rallying around the victim post-abuse/breakup, helping and loving them while they rebuild and heal.
At first this cycle fortified me: I’m not the only one / it wasn’t my fault. But overtime I’ve just come to feel saddened and helpless, resigned. Maybe that’s why I felt compelled (and genuinely a little afraid) to write this here—it’s something I can do, anonymously, to say to folks in similar situations: I see you and I love you. And you CAN leave.
(Thank you so much, Maddy, for this incredible forum and resource.)
Maddy’s recommendation of reading In The Dream House is one I’ll always sound off on; before that book, I’d never read an account of abusive relationships that not only focused on abuse between queer women, but abuse that didn’t involve being physically hurt. I had a hard time acknowledging I’d been abused because it left no physical scars or marks, and I’d been taught these were the hallmarks of abusive relationships. Instead, like you, my finances were controlled and I was forced to cut off friends (who, thankfully, took me back when they knew the full story). This might not mean much from a stranger on the internet but I’m proud of you for changing your locks; that’s a physical reminder that, in spite of all she’s done, you have a safe place she cannot access where you can heal.
I also want to confirm that it is possible for friends, including the ex you’re friends with, to understand that your message wasn’t really your words and doesn’t reflect how you see them. I really hope they’re able to support you through this because the more friends in your corner right now to remind you of your worth, the better. Abuse can be so fucking isolating and it can feel like such a breath of fresh air to surround yourself with people who truly make you feel safe, in your entirety.
Gentler times are coming <3
Omg, SAME! It's wild how abusers all use very similar tactics to control people and break their confidence.
Yeah sadly they are all pretty predictable/playing with the same old tricks 🙃
Sending you so much compassion, Letter Writer. Like other commenters, this story reminded me painfully of my own experiences with an abusive girlfriend. I wanted to second (third?) Maddy's recommendation for In The Dream House, which I've reread multiple times because it's just so validating and clarifying and beautiful.
I also wanted to add another resource that helped me a lot, which is the 2018 "Bi Bi Bi" episode of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast. I first listened to it at least a decade after getting out of that first abusive relationship, and had by that point done a lot of reading about abuse in queer relationships, gone to DV support groups, considered myself fairly well-educated about the dynamics of abuse... but it still was an absolute revelation to me to learn that bi-identifying people disproportionately experience abuse (as a direct result of being a marginalized group within the queer community). When you can sense, on either a conscious or subconscious level, that your acceptance in both the het and gay communities is a little more conditional than for those who are only attracted to one gender, it's easy to internalize that you have more to prove --that you have to put up with a little bit more than you would otherwise-- to be deserving of love. At its worst, the mistrust for bi folks can be weaponized by abusive/manipulative partners, as it was by your ex, V. My first girlfriend, the one who V reminded me of, bragged all the time about being a "gold star" lesbian, would talk endlessly about how disgusting it was to be attracted to men, and would go into vicious, graphic rants about how I was probably going to cheat on her any time I wanted to spend time with male friends. It got very isolating and scary by the end. Even though I was with her for less than a year, it was a very intense time (she moved in with me soon after we started dating), and it took me years to fully heal.
More than anything, I want to say how proud I am of you for recognizing that this was not safe or loving behavior that V was displaying; for reaching out to your support network for help; and for sticking to your boundaries even in the face of bullying from your ex and her friends. I hope you really take time to appreciate how much courage and competency you have displayed to get yourself through this hard, scary time. I wish you so many better, happier things going forward.
Thank you for pointing out the biphobia and how vulnerable bis are to abuse! I am bi, and this is something I contemplate often. My anchor partner is bi and we both have histories of abusive partners in relationships with folks of various genders. The situation the LW deceived reminded of my experiences with a cis male partner and a queer enby partner, in different aspects. Only a year later is it dawning on me that the enby partner was controlling specifically when it came to my relationships with cis men, and that this was rooted in biphobia. I also think that because queers in general have been through so much trauma, we often want to remain more open to folks who are behaving badly because we know that trauma can make people act out, without them being bad people. This can be weaponized against us by manipulative people. I admire so much how the LW seems to have gotten to a healthier place with their other ex, despite some harmful stuff going down in that relationship. The most recent ex is NOT doing any of the things that the previous ex did that made reconciliation possible.
Just echoing that I’m so so glad you changed your locks and have been talking with friends you trust about what’s going on. Having been in a similar situation where I did not tell my friends what was going on (bc it was “violating the privacy” of my ex) and even agreed to move into a studio with this emotionally abusive ex, I know how confusing patterns of affection can be and emotional turbulence can make it hard to see things clearly.
Especially when it isn’t a cis man doing classic controlling boyfriend thing, because we don’t really have well known tropes to identify emotional abuse outside of that dynamic. I would say you’re handling things as well as anyone could. Listen to whatever voice is telling you something isn’t right or that this is unfair and you deserve better. No matter what V says, that’s not selfishness, it’s self love. Please don’t blame yourself for how things play out or beat yourself up for not knowing what the right move is for now. All of this is shockingly normal in situations like these that most people (especially gay ppl) think they’ll never find themselves in.
I also know how blindsiding it can be when a partner starts acting controlling and cruel seemingly out of nowhere. And it can be especially hard when they open up about how terrible they feel or when they give heartfelt apologies. But it’s a huge red flag when someone considers any kind of intimate violence a justified reaction to their hurt feelings.
When you deeply care about someone, especially when they didn’t seem mean or controlling before, you’re more likely to learn all the seemingly good reasons they do cruel and hurtful things. Some deep trauma being triggered, some interpretation of events that makes it easier to sympathize with them. There’s always a reason that they couldn’t help it, or that they messed up and they’ll do better. When you start to believe all those things, it can be impossible not to feel like if you just try hard enough or do the right thing, you can make it all better and get back to the good parts of the relationship.
My situation isn’t exactly like yours but it started out similarly and I want to share in case it helps someone else avoid what I went through. I wish someone had told me about these things, and that it’s not your fault that you trusted or cared for someone who hurt you.
(cw: descriptions of abuse below, skip to *** for lessons learned)
My ex had been so kind and affectionate in the beginning, and had helped me open up and process things about my past that I hadn’t been able to with anyone else before. The relationship was romantic and intense, but they were careful to let me move slowly since I’d gotten out of a hard breakup months before. There were very few red flags the first several months, and the ones I noticed always seemed so unlike the rest of the relationship and came with some heart wrenching explanation and apology that assuaged my fears. They had gone to therapy in the past and were able to explain all traumatic experiences that had resulted in why they acted the way they did sometimes. They had so many stories of how people had hurt them where they always painted themself as kind and naive. As someone who supported people with mental health crises professionally, I thought I could handle it at least until my ex found another therapist and worked through these “uncontrollable reactions”.
We started doing long distance when they graduated and moved back home. I later graduated we moved in together. Once we were living together and more financially involved, the relationship became so deeply unsafe and unlivable before I could recognize what was going on. They did things I know they would never have done before we lived together when I could’ve left more easily. I thought that my faults were at least partially to blame for their extreme reactions. They were stressed about work and applying to grad school, and I was being unsympathetic for asking them to speak to me more kindly or to talk to a therapist again. If I ever stood up for myself, they’d call me out for being selfish or somehow bring up their abandonment trauma. Never mind that they were much wealthier than me, had easy access to therapy, didn’t have to work, and could afford any education they wanted.
But the truth was that after we had become closer, they had begun acting more cruel even when they weren’t in crisis. They were selectively mean to me in front of most people, but not in front of my friends or family. I found out they were secretly cruel to their close friends at times, even when their friends were just trying to help.
When I did finally leave it was because their cycles of cruelty/control then reconciliation/devotion were escalating, becoming more physical, and had just been too frightening to keep my shit together anymore. I couldn’t talk them down when they were enraged at me for something like not texting back fast enough or talking to my friends instead of staying by their side the entire time at a party. I was having constant panic attacks. It had become too difficult to spend time with friends at all without my ex lashing out, I couldn’t even hang out with my best friend for an hour on my own birthday without a jealousy fueled crisis that meant I had to go home and deescalate things. My body knew I needed to leave before I totally did. I was lucky a friend had a spare room in her family’s house that I could move into while deescalating things with my ex.
Of course, I thought I could just be friends with my ex, that we could consciously uncouple and that it wouldn’t be ok for me to just ghost them in such a vulnerable state. I didn’t tell others how bad things had been before the breakup, so they continued to stay in contact with my friends and even got closer to them. They said they needed me and wouldn’t be ok without me in their life supporting them. And it seemed like it was going fine. They seemed to have really changed until they realized I was never going to come back to the relationship, then they lashed out again and plowed through whatever boundaries I had communicated during the breakup. So I finally cut off contact.
Personally, it took me months after leaving my ex to realize how much of what I was being told were lies and manipulation. How I’d been made to bear choices my ex was actively making (and turned out had a pattern of making before me) as if my actions could have somehow kept these scary things from happening. It took at least another year to completely disentangle as they continued to show up at my work, and manipulate my friends and even family to get information about me. All to maintain some connection and control. It was easier to see this for what it was once I wasn’t financially or emotionally enmeshed with them anymore. The truth was, and I realized had always been, that they knew how badly they treated me and they were going to be fine without me.
***Once I had the space to replay events on my own, I realized my patience and care were knowingly being taken advantage of, and that all the apologies and promises would never have resulted in changing a dynamic that this person needed to recreate again and again with everyone they were close to in order to feel “safe”. They benefited from this arrangement, and the emotional labor I was putting in only enabled it.
The other difficult part was that this person had been a vocal queer woc feminist and a survivor of abuse and stalking, and then had done the same to me. I lost some friends to them who didn’t believe me when I tried to explain the abuse that had been happening. I lost a lot of the patience, self confidence, and open heartedness that made it easy to care for people that I’d had before the relationship, since that had been taken advantage of for so long. I’m still learning how to reclaim those qualities while holding love and protection for myself. I wish I had left sooner, that I hadn’t trusted part of myself to someone like that and that I had told everyone what was going on early on.
The biggest realization after all of this was also that my feelings fucking mattered. That my feeling safe and comfortable, and my ability to lead a full and healthy life with friends and autonomy is equally as important as anyone I’m in relationship with. Regardless of what anyone is going through, everyone has a choice in how they treat others. I had to realize that at that point my ex was not capable of making choices that prioritized my wellbeing over their need for power in our relationship (and by extension control and cruelty). It’s important to see people where they’re at now with the information they’re giving you about their motivations and priorities. Not the potential they have on their best days or when it’s easiest, but how they act when things are hard or scary. Because dating someone means you’re going to go through hard times together. No matter how “good” a partner you are to someone, relationships test people’s ability to trust and navigate emotional discomfort. It’s how people act in these situations that tell you what your future together will be like.
I wish people talked about this stuff more, because now that I’m in the other side of it I see it happening all the time especially in queer communities. I think the binary definitions of abuser and victim, and the myth of entirely one way harm and the evil people who commit it make it impossible to see abusive dynamics that fall outside of these extremely limited definitions. They make it easier for abusers to maintain control amidst confusion and for the honeymoon phase of the abuse cycle to effectively gaslight people into believing there isn’t actually a fucked up power dynamic in their relationships. Including family and friendships. Most of all, if our abusers are “good” people or even victims of oppression or abuse in other parts of their lives, this way of thinking keeps us from leaving or setting important boundaries to rectify nonconsensual power dynamics.
Nowadays I’m less interested in how good or bad a person is on the whole and instead focus on relation. Are they good for me? For their friends? For people with less power than them? In how they move through the world? Is the way I treat each of my loved ones good for them? Maybe there’s a good reason someone acts the way they do, but it’s just not good for me at this point in life. That’s information that helps me to decide whether the relationship is healthy for me to put my trust and energy into, or if their need to be boundaries in place to preserve safety and autonomy. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I hope it helps.
Anyways, I really deeply feel for you and how difficult all this is. Wishing you kindness and ease in your relationships <3
thank you so much for sharing!! so glad you're out of this.
I am so glad you are out of this relationship and receiving such good advice from Maddy and <3 The Community<3
The Network/ La Red is an amazing survivor-led organization addressing abuse and DV in lgbtqia relationships. When I was leaving my emotionally abusive relationship, I called their hotline a few times and joined one of there phone support groups, and both helped me so much: https://www.tnlr.org/en/
Just want to say that I’m so impressed with this writer for reaching out and articulating what they’re going through so clearly—that can be a really hard and scary step and I think it’s really brave of them to be asking these questions
<3
I had an ex with some similar traits: explosive anger, jealousy, calling me “disgusting,” insecurity about my past relationships with men, threatening suicide when I left, threatening to ruin my belongings, and once physically pushing me so hard against a wall that it left a mark. We were together for about 4.5 years in my mid-late 20s and it was my first serious longterm relationship. I’m glad you had some other relationships that maybe help you to have better perspective on the parts of this one that are unacceptable and harmful. In my experience, she never changed. The abusive behavior started just a few months into our relationship but was fairly infrequent overall (maybe 1x every few months). Then she got a traumatic brain injury and things got much much worse (but frankly they were very bad before that anyway). I begged her to go to therapy to deal with her anger and she never did. I wanted to have children one day and could not fathom exposing them to someone with such volatile anger. I made a plan to get out and it took a few months, but I did. I’m pretty sure by this time she was cheating on me anyway considering she moved in a woman within a few days of me leaving our house (according to Instagram). Driving away from the house when I finally decided to leave gave me intense feelings of relief. She tried to pull me back in in various ways (like threatening to destroy a few boxes of possessions that I was PAYING HER to store in a house I was 50% owner of) but I never went back and have zero regrets. I eventually was able to cut all ties and we live in different states now, which has helped a lot. She tries to still contact me every 1-2 years. She has never apologized in a meaningful way to me and I’ve made peace with that. My advice is this: Get out, don’t give them avenues to contact you while you go to therapy and do some healing, and call it abuse and do your best not to minimize what happened or blame yourself.
I don’t think this is ever an anomaly. I dated someone who blew up at me in similar ways a couple weeks in a row and after forgiving him the behavior just got worse and worse until when I broke up with him he tried to break into my house. I’ve been no contact with him for 2 years now and it was the best decision I could’ve made. I still hope he gets help and treats future partners better but I know I don’t want to have any place in that.