He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care that since he made the remark that ‘British girls have big front teeth’ you’ve gone back to the old habit of covering your mouth with your hand when you smile or laugh.

He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care that what he said about your mother has made you cry until you have a migraine and your pillow is soaked. Angry, yet you didn’t lash out like you used to because you worked on your anger issues a decade ago and broke the cycle where ‘hurt people, hurt people’.

He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care about the anxiety you feel facing the year ahead. The revisiting trauma. The health issues you have and the procedures you can’t think about otherwise you will throw up. He doesn’t care to be gentle like you’ve been with him so many times.

He doesn’t care that he made you question the one thing you love about yourself. Your heart. That’s some serious manipulation skill right there. If it wasn’t so cruel it may be worthy of applaud.

He doesn’t care.

That you ignored his friend’s advice and warnings and were so sad for him that his friend would do him like that. You were frosty AF with his friend post phone call. Regardless of whether the friend seriously lacks integrity or not, he took the time to call you. Perhaps he had valid reasons to rant so much. Still, it was sad to hear someone talk about a ‘friend’ in that way. That’s not friendship.

He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care that he disappointed you as a human when he’d be so harsh about people. Or that he shouldn’t be throwing stones from his glass house. Talking shit about someone’s beautiful home isn’t going to make his room any less cluttered or unclean. Yet you felt such a deep sadness for him when you saw he was living in such a state. You tried to encourage him and ‘hold his hand’ along the way. It was exhausting. It was frustrating when people who love him took the time to tidy it, more than once and he didn’t appreciate it.

He doesn’t care that talking shit about other’s teeth isn’t going to improve his oral health. Not neglecting his teeth is going to help with that. Prioritising dental hygiene and dentist visits. Not making excuses about the costs and prioritising his health and recognising the importance of saving funds for it. Or enquiring about health care?

He doesn’t care that saying ‘when we have kids, i’ll love them more than I love you’ was so painful and blunt. Unnecessary and weird. Of course your children come first, but who says that so coldly? Especially to somebody they know has been through so much pain and chose to cut ties and be estranged from the majority of their blood relatives. Callous.

He doesn’t care that none of his exes would have stuck by him through half of this. His shouting, his gross  behaviour. The lying. Oh God, the lying. I cannot tolerate dishonesty. It makes me nauseated. It bothers me to my core. I hate lies. I don’t associate with liars yet his loved one said ‘it’s the alcohol lying’. I can confidently say he’s just as nasty and unreasonable, if not more so, when sober. Yet, i’m happy for his liver. For his body to have the opportunity to heal.

He doesn’t care how much he has crushed you. Your confidence. Trash talked your friends who were so welcoming and accommodating to him. How the one friend he talked shit about stayed at your parents so he could have their bedroom. He’s ungrateful. So unappreciative. It’s such an ugly character flaw.

He says ..no shouts… ‘I’m not ready [to hear what he’s done wrong] yet’.

I wasn’t ‘ready’ to be subjected to the bullshit. The harshness. The dishonesty. The manipulation. No one is ever ‘ready’ for that.

When he’d been awful he’d send a 4 minute video of him crying and begging me to speak to him and it worked every time. I really am a muppet.

Every time I said I think we should just be friends or have a break he’d say ‘you haven’t taken your medication. You get like this when you forget your medication’.

I’d wonder, ‘oh maybe it is because I forgot my medication’. I should have realised that no, I had simply seen too many red flags and didn’t want to continue feeling so on edge and anxious. I had gone from looking forward to his call to dreading it. Or worse, not getting a call and wondering if he’d drank himself to having a seizure or choking on his vomit. He doesn’t care how much stress and worry that caused. Not just to me, to everyone who cares about him.

He doesn’t care about the sleepless nights. More than once you’d say ‘I have to go now, I have to be up in a few hours’ and he’d continue to talk. Or imply you’re going because you can’t ‘handle’ the conversation. What a dick move! How manipulative? No. I just don’t want to ignore my doctors advice telling me the importance of sleep. Or my friends and family worrying about me having seen me go downhill and looking exhausted and stressed all the time. You shouldn’t have to cry and say ‘you really don’t care if I sleep do you?’… I should have known then how little he truly cared for me.

The truth is, being there for him has been so detrimental to me. It’s knocked me so much. It’s crushed me.  Yet I hate to admit i’d probably do it all again for someone. But hopefully i’ll make sure it’s someone deserving of my time and unconditional love. Who could never be abusive or mentally manipulative. I didn’t deserve that. It took me back to being around awful people and awful times in my life I thought were long in the past. How did I welcome this back in? I’ve read that my personality type is a magnet for that personality type. Not anymore.

He doesn’t care that I burst out crying in the middle of a hospital and was so embarrassed I got a hug from a stranger. I was grateful for the kindness, i’m used to being the stranger offering a hug, but maybe I needed to humble myself and be on the other end of that. It still left me humiliated even though I’d never think poorly for another person in distress. I’d feel nothing but compassion (and probably cry about it for days after and make myself unwell worrying about the stranger. I have issues. One counsellor told me ‘you can’t save then world’. I don’t aspire to, I’m far too unimportant or incapable but I feel everything so deeply and am empathetic without boundaries. Something I have since learnt is self destructive. I hope I can become less sensitive).

He doesn’t care that I didn’t go back for another emotional support session since the counsellor suggested months ago that I ‘get out’ before it gets worse. I was upset with what she said and couldn’t possibly abandon him. Sometimes I wish I was more selfish. Not ruthless, but maybe occasionally put myself first. I should have gone back but I knew what she’d suggest. I knew it would upset me and make me seriously consider ending it. I couldn’t do that to him. He needed me.

He’d roll his eyes at this. Thinking i’m self righteous. Virtue signalling. He’d probably be smug at the typos and grammar mistakes. How i begin sentences with ‘but’. But hey, at least I didn’t think it was ‘edgewise’. Yes. That was a burn. Yes, I smiled. It’s not that fucking deep.

I honestly believe he convinced himself he’s this great human. Was rarely called out on his shitty behaviour and angry disposition (even his ‘best friend’ never confronted him yet ranted for the best part of an hour, passionately, to a stranger over 3000 miles away).

I think meeting someone innately kind (you know, it took me a long time and a lot of therapy and counselling to love one thing about myself, and my heart is the one thing I love) … I think meeting me, he can’t handle the realisation that actually, he’s not authentically kind. His ‘kindness’ is contrived. He has a mammoth ego. He has a tendency to be mean and tries to justify it as ‘male ego’. I’m proud I survived a toxic relationship and didn’t become a third wave feminist ranting about toxic masculinity.  Us women can be toxic assholes too. I’ve certainly had my moments years ago. I’m so glad I broke the cycle. I decided I didn’t want to be the person who was mean in response to someone hurting me. That wasn’t me. That was a shitty part of my life i’m not proud of, but I forgive myself for because I know I was never malicious. I just had anger management issues and didn’t know how to handle it when I was hurt so badly.

I think meeting guys who have their shit together made him feel shitty that he’s in his 30s and living with his parents still. (I’m quite certain he’d have me on speaker phone with his mother in the room, but I keep it real and didn’t alter myself. I’m not fake. I did always want to swear less (or not at all) in front of his mother out of respect even though he had zero respect for my mother). He would drink after the gym, excessively and eat poorly, So maybe that’s why he had to talk shit about their ‘form at the gym’, or how they ‘can’t hold a hammer correctly’. The difference is, the guys in my  life have banter with each other. With him, it wasn’t banter. He was being harsh about them. He didn’t say it to their faces. But he said enough to really upset my best friend. It was horrible seeing my best friend like that. It took some digging to find out what was wrong and I hadn’t seen him like that in a long time (since his parents would say really harsh things to him). I hate that I met someone and brought someone into his life that made him feel like that.

He got so vicious when we argued of ‘edgewise’ and ‘edgeways’. I tried to explain how it is ‘edgeways’ and he got so fucking mean. It was weird. I did laugh and say you’re a ‘dumb American’. Just like he used to joke I was an ‘uptight British chick’.  But no, the banter from the early days was no more. He wasn’t a real guy.  He really thought I was calling him dumb after I always said how he’s so intelligent and knowledgable. He took it literally and it made me on edge as I was confused why this time he was so serious and heated over a bloody word. I was correct. He was incorrect. But it wasn’t that deep.

I hope he finds inner peace. I hope he humbles himself. I hope he realises that calling someone else ‘fat’ and moaning about what they eat won’t make him any slimmer.  Living an active lifestyle and eating clean and sleeping in a good routine will help with that. Moaning about the bad food in rehab and then coming home to eat hot dogs and white bread isn’t exactly the right route. I hope he gets to a place where he is happy with himself. Where is is appreciative of his blessings. A place where he is financially stable and happy and doesn’t illegally drive his car. I hope he meets good people who are genuine friends, but quite honestly I don’t think he’ll attract good folk until he learns to love himself more. I don’t know if he truly cares about being a better person. He seems pretty self assured and obnoxious. I will not miss his tone or facial expressions. Insufferable. I can still see him angrily sipping coffee (out of the mug I bought him) and giving me attitude before being a c*nt of epic proportions. Shouting at me. Snapping. Such disdain in his voice. Unwarranted. Such anger in his eyes.  I’d hate to be such a ball self loathing and bitterness that I project. I am the opposite, I self deprecate. (Something I continue to work on).

Maybe one day he’ll realise that not many women would have continued to accept his flaws and continue to be romantically involved with someone so problematic in their nature and without their shit together. Hey, I’m in need of sorting my shit out too. But I don’t put others down to make myself feel better. I realise I have to hold myself accountable, stop making excuses, continue to get the help I need in order to improve and work hard.

I hope he heals. I hope he never fucks up another woman like he has me.

I hope one day he doesn’t make the fact that I compared myself to his beautiful, confident exes all the time about him and realises that it was my low self esteem. It was also him sending me so many photos of them in the beginning and talking about them. Admittedly as time went on I got weird and obsessive about them. I clearly wasn’t ready to be in a relationship and still have a very serious inferiority complex to other women (this goes back to when I was a little girl).   His exes were so pretty, and confident (it would seem) and were younger than me yet so much more stable and thriving in life (yep, I looked at their social media like a complete psycho! and google. oh God, I refuse to be that person again. That’s not healthy or normal.)

It’s kind of sad I felt so crap about myself that I felt the need to compare myself. It was like torturing myself and reminding myself I’ll never live up to them. He won’t admit it now but in the very beginning he spoke about them a lot. Later on it was me who brought them up constantly, but inn the beginning he spoke about them so much that it was annoying. I got a strong feeling he wasn’t over one of them. I felt so ugly compared to her.

Yet this was hurtful to him? How did he make this about him? I apologised the whole time and said I didn’t understand why i’d become such a loser. He told me about a comedienne who joked that most women google or social media ‘stalk’ their boyfriend’s exes. Regardless, I won’t be that person again. No fucking way. It was weird and it was a sign I have to get into a much better place before meeting someone.

I’ve started talking to people I lost touch with again and new people. I’ve been asked out by a lovely guy, but there’s no way i’d subject anyone to my messy self right now. Or the baggage of what’s going on in my personal life. I hesitant to hang out as friends just in case. I don’t want to ‘catch feelings’ again. I’m a whimsical lame hopeless romantic who is evidently a seasoned ignorer of red flags.

I know life is short, but I can’t survive another toxic AF relationship in any capacity. Be it a friend, lover or family. I can’t go through this again. I was already at my limit, I’d beyond exceeded it and he knew that coming into this. I came with a disclaimer.

If only I didn’t go into it blindly and had the opportunity to know I was getting involved with someone with a severe addiction problem. I caught feelings long before I found out. I didn’t find out from him, I found out was his mother. Reached out to his ‘best friend’ who said ‘there’s a lot to unpack’ and asked to speak on the phone. That was admittedly beyond my comfort zone but it was important because I thought I was letting someone know their friend needed love, support… a hug. But no, I found out far too much information to process.

I don’t want to be angry anymore. I find it difficult not to be because he’s really been such a dickhead. Such a cock. He’s been so unreasonable and not the logical guy I first met. He’s been petty and childish and cruel. But I don’t want to be angry anymore. Life is too short.

I don’t need him to miss me. He never appreciated me. He probably never will looking back. He took me for granted. Claimed he only went to rehab ‘because of me’, yet he told a woman there that she was the reason he stayed. That was difficult to hear.

If he did go to rehab for me, then I am at least grateful he went and to my knowledge he’s remained sober since. I’m proud of him for that. He’d probably find that patronising. I say it with sincerity. He’s kicked ass staying sober. I just wish he was a nice guy. He’s not. I like nice guys. Not the kind of ‘nice guys’ who complain ‘nice guys’ never get ‘the girl’. I don’t think they’re legit nice guys.

I hope to meet someone so authentically kind. A savage sense of humour and master at banter, but someone who could never continue to be mean to someone sobbing in front of them. Fortunately I am friends with guys like that, and i’m so fortunate to call those people friends, but I would like to meet someone and have kids one day. I’m getting older so realistically it may not be on the cards for me. But hey, there’s so much beauty in life still. Be alright.

One good thing is I’ve become super close to one of my girlfriend’s through this. She is going through a painful breakup but unfortunately has to share the house she owns with her ex. Mine lives over 3000 miles away, so I don’t need to worry about bumping into him.

I always wondered whether this friendship was the real deal or if she just tolerated me because we laugh a lot together, but she sent me a message and said ‘you’re one of the nicest people i’ve ever known. I’m not just saying that’. I ugly cried reading that. It’s not about validation, but I was in a dark place at the time and some asshole had made me doubt myself and this came from somebody I never expected it from. I knew I was a good soul, I don’t care if that seems arrogant to say. I do not lack humility on any level, but I do know with confidence my heart.  To realise someone has seen that in me, fuck…

Ok, I don’t want to cry again. I’m a fuck ugly crier. His exes probably were stunning when they cried. Those bitches.

(joke! I couldn’t resist)

Stace x