Last May, I got into an amazing relationship. He was extremely sweet, he listened to my feelings, and he paid attention to me. Most relationships I had by that point hadn’t really been "real" relationships because I always ended up with the guy who turned out to be a player. Some of the names in this story have been altered.

I bragged about him at school to two of my close girlfriends. He would bring me Starbucks with two shots of espresso all the time while I was at work since I worked 25-30 hours on top of high school. One time, he brought me three different kinds of soups. I had texted him while I was at work and told him that I was craving soup. He brought three because I didn’t text back and he didn’t know what my favorite soup was. Another time, he drove 30 minutes to bring me lunch because I didn’t want to eat any of the food at work (I worked at Domino’s and I got tired of the food). He treated me right, complimented me all the time, we texted constantly, and he was the sweetest guy I had been with in a long time. I honestly thought he was the one. Harry had me fooled, though.

I remember the first time I told him I didn’t want to have sex that day. I wanted to go out and do something; We rarely ever went out when we were together. He kept pushing it and told me he could get me to enjoy it. I finally fell for his tricks but I didn’t enjoy it.

That’s when it slowly started to happen. He stopped texting as much, he freaked whenever I touched his phone, and even in the car when I would try to change the song. He was hanging out with friends I had never even heard of (I never met his friends, either). If I talked about my feelings, I was immediately shut down. He lied a lot and would always pressure me to have sex. He got mad at me twice when I was with my friend Billy and when I was about to go hang out with my “little sister” (she’s like a sister to me). I blamed myself for everything. He made me feel like the bad “guy”.

One of our reoccurring fights was about attention. His attention went elsewhere and I didn’t know why. So I would tell him my feelings about the amount of attention he gave me and he would FLIP out. He would constantly go on and on about how he couldn’t give me attention 24/7 and how he was constantly busy (I found this weird because his schedule never changed). Every fight he would do this and each time, I would tell him I wasn’t asking for attention 24/7. I just wanted to be acknowledged throughout the day or at least in the morning and then again at night. But that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. Everything went through one ear and out the other.

It got to the point where I would cry every day. It was always something. My feelings didn’t matter to him. I blamed myself. A cycle was created: I would tell him my feelings; he would go off on me and tear me down; I would keep explaining myself; and then he would apologize, respect my feelings for a few days, and then he wouldn’t be sweet anymore and he would be his true self again. That cycle repeated for three months.

My aunt wanted me to leave, my best friend Brittany wanted me to leave, and my older brother figure, Billy, wanted me to leave. But I told them it would get better and that maybe I was just being irrational. I wasn’t though.

One of the times he lied, he blamed the lie on me. His car “was in the shop” so I drove us everywhere and sometimes took him to work. We went to Busch Gardens for his birthday and I spent a lot of money on him to make the day perfect. That night, he went to the bathroom when we got back. He had finally left his phone so I decided to see the truth. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken his phone and read through his texts. But I couldn’t fully trust him because of the lies he had told me before and because he would always freak when I touched his phone. Anyways, I had watched him put in his [new] password before so I had it memorized. I put it in and began reading through a conversation between him and Gary, his best friend. I got no leads on him cheating (later it was confirmed) but I did find out his car had been repossessed; it wasn’t in the shop. When he came back, I asked him about it. He casually brushed it off and lied. He told me, “Oh, I didn’t want to tell him my car was in the shop. I didn’t want him to question me.” That logic made no sense so I questioned him twice more and he admitted it. I was hurt and I broke down crying. He tried to be sweet. He told me he lied because he didn’t want to stress me out. What kind of excuse is that? I left.

A few days later, I let him back again… Stupid. But I believed his apologies. I always thought he would be the sweet guy again. He had me trapped. He constantly talked about how he was going to get a ring and propose before I went off to college. I don’t think that ring ever existed.

Late August, I took my car to my “older brother”, who is a mechanic, for an inspection. I actually have parts of this conversation because I had screenshot and sent them to my aunt. I’ll post them below.

(And sometimes, he'd talk to me worse than that... Especially after we broke up- but that's another story to tell later.)

The other time he got mad was when I made plans with my "little sister" and her family. I was running errands and I was close by to Harry's house. I told him I would try to come over, but I needed to be at Gabby's by 5. He said, "You never told me this." But I had over the weekend and I told him that. He said, "No, you didn't," and went back to pushing me to come over. I didn't want to start another fight so I went over for a little bit... All he wanted to do was have sex...

Looking back at my conversations with my aunt (on Facebook), I was making a lot of excuses to stay with Harry. I didn’t want to start over, I missed him. I had been talking about breaking up with him for weeks but I could never stick with it. I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want to admit it wasn’t me. I didn’t understand why he wasn’t sweet anymore. I just wanted him to be the same person I had fallen in love with. I talked about how I couldn’t trust him anymore. And looking through my conversations with my aunt, I don't even understand how I stayed... But what can I say? Harry was a great manipulator.

Our relationship was pretty much over the day he asked for an open relationship. I was at work and we were (again) in a fight about attention. He asked, "What about my feelings? How does it make me feel that my girlfriend doesn't ever want to have sex." I told him, "It shouldn't be about sex. But if you gave me more attention and actually made me feel wanted, maybe then I would want to have sex." He then asked if I wanted to be in an open relationship. I told him to never talk to me again. The image of him being with another girl and coming back to me sickened me. The thought that he had asked because I didn't enjoy sex sickened me. Why did everything revolve around sex? How did the get pleasure from it when I clearly wasn't enjoying it and because I didn't want it, it hurt.

He was never physically abusive in our relationship. My aunt, however, said she wouldn't have been surprised if he had started. The only time he was "physical" with me was when I turned away from him. He yanked my shoulder back and I told him that it hurt. He told me that it didn't matter...

I wish I could tell more of the story. But I suppress a lot of my emotions and memories, so I am grateful for what I do remember. It has helped shape me into the person I am today. However, abuse in abusive relationships starts off slow. I didn't even know I was being emotionally abused. I just wanted the old Harry back.