“I’ve been off and on with my ex for almost half a year now and we dated for a year as well. I also love him to death and don’t want to lose him. Things were fine and absolutely awesome in the beginning. As months started going by, he started asking me to do things that I normally would never put up with. (Example. Cutting off guy/girl friends,what I can and can’t wear, etc.) He became very controlling and emotionally/verbally abusive with me. I have mad mistakes in our relationship like hanging with an old crush (nothing happened between us and he was just my friend), I did start liking someone else when we dated but again, nothing happened and it faded away. Also, he wanted to know everything about my past too in the beginning. I didn’t think that it was right for him to ask such a question and i’m not happy with some of the choices i’ve made in the past so I didn’t want to tell him. Eventually I told him everything little by little. These little things broke his trust with me. I’ve NEVER cheated on him, I would never cheat on any boyfriend of mine. He also has done things as well to break my some of my trust, like him liking this girl who was in his class,talking to certain girls that I wasn’t okay with,etc. He as well has never cheated on me. Anyways, like I said, after all of this, he started becoming emotionally abusive and calling me every name in the book. He controlled everything. He controlled what I could wear, who I could and couldn’t be friends with which was pretty much all of my friends. Who I could and couldn’t hang with, where I could and couldn’t go. He even started saying that I can’t go to places with my OWN MOTHER/FAMILY! All of this was very upsetting to me but at the same time, I didn’t want to lose him so I listened. We fought A LOT in our relationship and always came back to each other. The reason why i’m so attached to my ex is because my father was never there for my family and I and my ex was there for me whenever I needed someone and the reason i’ve become so attached is because he was a male figure in my life since my dad wasn’t there for me and I don’t want to lose that and not have someone be there for me as a male figure. Apart from the controlling side, he also has a very sweet side too and that’s who I fell in love with. He can be the sweetest, most caring, funniest, loving person ever. That’s what I keep holding on to. I keep holding on to the good times in hopes that he will change. Like I said before, we’ve been off and on for the past half year almost. He isn’t half as bad as he was when we were actually going out. He stopped calling me names since then, BUT he’s still controlling, not as bad as before but it’s still not good. Also, he gets jealous if a guy were to talk to me,etc. Now, I’ve been trying to do absolutely EVERYTHING to get my ex back because I don’t want to move on and I want to be with him. My ex doesn’t want me talking to guys,hanging with guys, hanging with certain girl friends still BUT it’s ok for him to talk to girls and hang with them (nothing sexually either) but still, that’s not fair to me. I feel that if he doesn’t want me doing certain things then why is it ok for him to do it if he gets mad at me if I did something he wouldn’t like. Also, I know he cares about me and has feelings for me still and he’s scared to lose me. I just don’t understand why it’s ok for him to do all of these things if he wants things to work out between us in the future. I’ve mentioned this to him before and he says “you’re the one trying to prove yourself to me”. It’s just so frustrating for him to say I can’t do things/talk to certain people but yet he can go do whatever he wants, talk to whoever,etc. But if I do that, he’ll yell at me. Also, whenever we talk on the phone, if he’s mad at me and I try talking to give him my side, he will not let me speak. I can’t have a say in anything he’ll just be rude and say something like “no,i don’t want to hear it” or “i’m going” or “shut up” even though I just let him speak and had respect for him. He always acts like he’s right about everything and i’m ALWAYS in the wrong. Everything I do is wrong. He says that nothing I do is ever PERFECT and he wants everything I do for him to be perfect so he won’t YELL at me! I keep telling him that nothing’s ever perfect but he doesn’t agree basically. I’m just getting tired of this. I do SO much for him but all he does is look at the “bad stuff” which isn’t even bad at all.It’s normal stuff that regular people do everyday. (Ex. Looking at someone when you’re walking,Looking at someone more than once if they ask you a question) stuff like that. Even with all this crap he’s putting me through, I still want to be with him. Whenever we hang, things are good. It’s when we don’t hang, that’s when we argue. It’s been a week or so since we’ve talked because I yelled at him for something he did wrong and something that he would NEVER be okay with if I were to do it to him what he did to me. I’ve tried apologizing for going out of proportion with the yelling but I did tell him that i’m still upset with what he did. Yet, he still has been ignoring me and doesn’t say a word whenever I tried to contact him. I stopped trying a few days ago. Whenever we fight lately, he’s been ignoring me but we just end up talking again days later. It doesn’t seem like that’s the case this time. Anyways,like I said, I want to be with him still even with all of this he’s put me through. I always ask him if he thinks that he’s eve mean to me and he said that he doesn’t think he’s as mean as I say he is and he says that if I just did everything perfect that he asks then he wouldn’t yell at me and we wouldn’t argue. We both want to be with together in the future but we want the arguing to stop. He can’t trust me because of the mistakes that I mentioned earlier and I am losing trust with him because of this controlling stuff and him being able to do whatever and talk to whoever. All of this is stressing me out and he doesn’t see that. I feel like all he cares about is himself lately and has been giving me mixed messages. We’ll hang one day and he’ll act as if we were going out and then the next day he’ll go hang with a girl and i’ll ask why he would do that after last night and he’ll say “because I can” even though if I did that to him he’d never talk to me again. Sorry this is so long but i’ve just been stressed for so long now and I don’t know what to do anymore or how to deal with this. I would love to be with him if the fighting would stop and for him to not expect everything to be perfect. I also would like for him to stop yelling at me for everything when the stuff I do isn’t even bad…except to him it is. Also, he is Muslim and if we were to get married in the future, I’d have to become Muslim which I wouldn’t mind doing. I need help on if you think things can possibly change between us in the future? I need help on what we can do to make a better relationship between us, I want to know what you think I should do? I just want to know what you think and how you feel about all this because I really need help on what I should do.” — Samantha* –
Thanks for your post, reading this hit me hard. Let me tell you one reason why I have started to help other women.
Because of people just like you who used to be me. I in my 36 years of being on this earth started out making all the same mistakes and bad choices.
One reason I had a bad start in this world was a lack of a father in my life. This lead me to one bad relationship to the next.
I have been there and exp almost any situation a woman can throw at me.
I have hit rock bottom in my life and thought it was the end of me at one point.
When at my worse at about 30 it seemed to go down hill even more.
Then one day I woke up like i has been living a nightmare of one bad story to the next.
And Then I asked myself who am I and where did Jennifer go? In this process I lost my house. The day I walked from my home I worked so hard to get as a single woman, I felt sick as I looked at what I was losing.
What have I done and what went wrong. I start5ed to go numb any tears that wanted to escape i pushed as far down inside me as I could.
Then just when I thought I had hit my worse once again here came even lower.
I was pretty much living in a broken down Mobile home to figure out what the heck i was going to do. I had never been so low in my life. I was broke jobless, depressed, confused and sick inside and felt as if I had zero emotions left inside me. I lost everything except for a few of my most loved cats.
Lets skip ahead I had a another birthday and looked in the mirror and said wait there I am. Where have I been once again? I felt like I had been dead for so long yet I saw me i was still there.
After all the hell and hard times in my life and more hard times then a lot of people I was still alive and right there.
My life changed that day. no more was I going to be any ones victim or any ones prey! No matter how bad life got I had myself, life really is about me and what I want for me.
At the end of the day you are all you have , I saw this yet I had made my own life so hard worrying about what others wanted or what the men I had dated told me it had to be or who I should be.
This is not going to be a short post because you hit my heart just in the right place. I can’t stand to see what your going throw.
Here is the light at the end of the tunnel, I can help you.
You might still be asking but how did Jennifer fix herself and get to a better life lets touch base with that for a min.
Very simple- I said I’m done with this. My life is mine to live as i see fit and i want to enjoy my time on this earth and have everything I ever wanted..
So no more. I started searching out getting my mind healthy, then relationships, then how people think and process information and why.
As I healed myself learned so much about people, then I started to apply everything I learned in my own real life and i tested all diff ways of handling things in the world to see what works best.
I changed my life in a very short period of time to making each step I wanted to happen really happen!! My life started to go uphill in every way I ever wanted.
So lets skip ahead, I am know on a mission to empower you and other females to do the same like me be successful in every part of there life and stop failing..
So lets do this Samantha!
First and most important problem is your feeling left by your father. You have allowed yourself to feel as if this is your fault and you are living in a real nightmare trying to replace your dad with men you date.
This is a impossible mission and can’t be done nor is it healthy.
What you must do is find a way to allow yourself to understand you can’t control what other people do, your father for sure made a bad choice by not being the dad he should have been. Samantha that’s not your cross to bare it’s his.
You have to work on forgiving him and understanding he had flaws as every human does and allow yourself to live again.
I think you need to free some of those hurt emotions inside yourself.
So what I want you to do is write your feelings down in a letter to him. You must release everything this has made you feel about yourself for your whole life.
Then mail it to him. If for some reason that’s not possible to get a letter to your father give this to your mother.
I need you to feel you can for once voice to someone that really counts in your life how bad this has affected your adult life.
This will started the healing process. And you have to start to understand you have the right to heal. I need you to stop beating yourself up over your father and understand this was never a flaw on you.
My own father had many reasons for why he felt i would be better off without him as a child, I was angry hurt bitter all those things. and I was searching for a father figure in pardon my french here but down right controlling jerks.
You are picking the controlling males because a father would be in charge so you are dating a men who makes you feel you are a kid and he has power over you.
Sad part is this man is taking advantage of you for this and hurting your own self worth.. Your dating a man who loves the power hes got over your head, hes feeding off all the control hes got over you.
Do you understand love is not control?
Do you understand that name calling means I don’t respect you?
Here is a issue you don’t seem to understand you are better then the man you are dating because you treat him with respect yet he shows you very little, your the better person and you can’t even see that right now..
Yes this is all about your father one really great thing is you already see that.
Let’s talk about him asking about your past. You where correct to not want to tell him mistakes you made in the past. Those type of topics are called no No’s in dating. However when you are with someone who really loves you there comes a point where you both have such a safe relationship you can open up more and talk about anything from your past bad choices however this was not the right man. This man has used anything you say as fire to burn you down and mistreat and control you.
I have to ask you Sam what do you really want for you?
Let me tell you why he does not want you to spend time with your own mother this is very simple.. A mother will always tell her child when she feels something is not right and a kid will value at least a adult kid will value what there mother says more then anyone else in this world.
The man you are dating knows this and is doing all the classic abusive controlling methods he can use on you.
I know you are tried and sick of feeling this way and going throw this.
This can end at anytime you are ready to push him out of your life.
I can’t make the choice for you this is where you have to start to heal and want a better life for yourself.
I can however tell you why he does everything he does to you and hope those facts make the choice easy soon.
You said he will say your not perfect and if you did everything right there would be no problem.
He also said he stated you are earning his trust.
He has set you up for a impossible mission here and he knows that, being a perfect person is never going to happen no one person in this world is perfect if they where i would have been a millionaire by 21.
You have to earn his trust since you never broke his trust and you have been loyal and hes knows that hes playing a nice little game with you.
He makes it sound like you have to make up for your mistakes in the past before him? Because you owe him something know?
Truth is he broke your trust by not being the man in your life you could trust with your past with and know hes taking advantage of you with it..
This is a classic Manipulation Game.
I have to tell you the hard things now in why abusive controlling men do this to you.
They mirror there feelings of quilt and insecurity onto you because of what there doing behind your back.
There is no way he can ever trust you because he can’t trust himself.
He and I am 99% sure is doing everything behind your back he is scared you will do to him.
Men like this just assume they can never trust you because they know there not trustable.
They feel bad in some ways for this so they take it out on you to feel better and create drama as if you did something wrong then they start to feel better about themselfs.
Abusive people hate themselfs inside and have very low self esteme. A way to make himself feel better again is too lower your self esteme.
The lower and less about yourself he can make you feel the more power of not losing you he feels he has.
You made the comment he hangs out with a girl one night then hes rude to you on the phone the next day thats because hes filled with guilt of what he did wrong or tired to do.
I am sorry to say this is not a faithful man.
Actions speak as you have heard this many times in life anyone can say anything but there actions show the truth if you really look.
I ask you know do you see yet?
I understand how bad this all can hurt and when your eyes really open the pain comes, pain can feel so bad and scary.
I want you to understand sometimes pain is a good thing, pain , crying, hurting can be a start to the Realization that you need very much right now in your life.
I am going to be here for you, at this point in your life it’s easy to feel like maybe you have no one you are allowed to talk with and his has taken all your support systems away.
I however will be here to help get you throw this is much as i can, I can’t say it’s going to be easy but i can tell you it can get alot better.
I would like to lead you back to the woman you are ment to be.
Besides the letter to your father I would like you to do one other thing for me , write down all the good points and great things about yourself that you think makes yourself a wonderful woman.
Then read them to yourself each day you wake up.
There is a term i like to use and learned to change myself Fake it till you make it.
Start acting like you are all those good things you write down over time you will start to see that in the mirror just like you should have your whole life.
Step by Step we can change this
.
I also would like you to do a turn the tables games with him this is a dating tactic I made up that worked very well for many and myself.
If he says shut up on the phone hang up on him. For every bad action he gives you on the phone give him one. I want you to give him the impression from now on when he calls you names or acts childish and rude to you you will just hang up and reject his bad behavior.
Start showing him you no longer accept fight or listen to any disrspectful acts from him on the phone. And when he calls and is upset because wow she never acted that way before you tell him the simple adult truth you respect me on the phone or I am hang up everytime. So boyfriend are you going to be nice???? When he is rude again ok im hanging up and hang up.
Doing this will start to show him what you will not put up with anymore sure hes going to get mad and thats ok, he will feel hes losing some power over you and thats ok. Allow him to weaker and allow him to start feeling like he best respect and listen to you.
Love is Equal not a dictatorship!
Keep me posted Samantha..
I will not tell you what you want to hear I will tell you the truth!
