How It Started
When we met, I was still grieving the end of my previous relationship. She knew this. She was a mutual friend of my ex, so she had full visibility into where I was emotionally. Despite that, she pursued me. She came on strong, sought my attention, and pushed for a relationship before I had finished processing the last one. I wasn't ready, but I went along with it.
Very early on — before we had any real foundation — she initiated a threesome. It happened without prior discussion or consent on my part. I woke up to find her and another woman engaged in sexual activity on the bed beside me. The other woman was my ex — the mutual friend, the person I was still grieving.
It was never brought up directly, but it set a bad tone from the start. The way the relationship began — her pursuing me while I was still grieving someone else, the threesome involving that same person — left her with a deep insecurity that never went away. In her mind, she was always the second choice. In my mind, she was my world. I loved her completely and never had eyes for anyone else. But that insecurity was there from the beginning, and it shaped everything that followed.
Shortly after, she vetoed my ex from my life. This was the first of five people she would pressure me to cut off. The same person she had involved in the threesome was now someone I was no longer allowed to speak to. She created the situation, then used it to justify isolating me from someone I cared about.
The Cycle
Five times she abandoned me over the course of the relationship. Each time followed a pattern.
It would start with her picking fights. Not ordinary arguments — deliberate provocations. She would push conflicts as far as she could, testing how much I would take. She later admitted this is what she was doing. She was looking for my limits, seeing what would happen if she pushed past them. These weren't disagreements that got out of hand. They were experiments.
When the fights escalated far enough, she would leave. Cut contact. Disappear. Each time, I would reach out — begging for a conversation, for closure, for some kind of resolution. She would withhold all of it. Then, after a week or two, once she realized what she had lost, she would beg to come back. Nothing that caused the blowup would be addressed. No accountability, no repair. Just a reset, and the cycle would start over.
The fourth time, I didn't chase her. Instead, I went on a road trip up north and stayed with my ex — the same person she had vetoed from my life. When she found out, she was devastated. She begged me to come back. I did.
I believe this is when she began planning what came next. The dynamic had shifted. For the first time, I hadn't followed the script. I hadn't chased. I had gone to the one person she had specifically removed from my life. From that point forward, the relationship lasted only a few months before the final breakup — and the systematic destruction of everything I cared about.
What Happened Between the Breakups
The cycles were the most visible damage, but the time between them is where the slow erosion happened.
She went through my phone while I slept. Multiple times. She searched for evidence of disloyalty or proof that I was breaking her rules about who I could talk to. When she found a screenshot of a woman in a bikini from an Instagram post, she used it as justification for doing a nude photo shoot with a coworker on a trip she took without me. I found out after the fact. When I raised it, the conversation became about how I didn't appreciate her enough.
She maintained a secret emotional relationship with a married coworker — ongoing flirting, inside jokes, emotional intimacy hidden from both me and his wife. When I discovered it, she minimized it. When I pressed further, my concern was reframed as insecurity.
She used drugs throughout the relationship. The instability was constant — mood swings, paranoia, erratic behavior. Sometimes she would show up and I could tell she was there because her supply was low, not because she wanted to see me. She later failed a drug test showing positive for methamphetamine. This had no consequences for her standing in the community. None.
Over the course of the relationship, she vetoed five people from my life. Friends, my ex, business contacts, community members. Each one was framed as necessary — for her safety, for the relationship, for my own good. I went along with it because I was afraid that pushing back would trigger another abandonment. My social circle shrank. I lost business opportunities. I lost the chance to play music at the venue I loved. I became more dependent on her as the people around me disappeared.
When I needed emotional support, she wasn't available. She said she had to "water herself before she could water me" and told me to learn to self-soothe. But when she was in pain, she would break down and demand my support, and I was always there. The care only went one direction.
Whenever I raised any of these issues — the secrecy, the boundary violations, the double standards — the conversation was turned around. Therapeutic language was used to frame me as the problem. Words like boundaries, healing, and shame were used not to create understanding but to shut down my concerns. She controlled the narrative of the relationship, and she made sure I couldn't question it without being told the questioning itself was proof of my dysfunction.
The Final Breakup
The fifth time was the last. She left and did not come back. But she didn't simply walk away. She set up what came next.
She blocked me on every platform except SMS and Venmo. These are the two channels where messages cannot be edited or deleted — everything sent is permanently recorded. This was not random. She chose to preserve a record of anything I would send while closing off every other avenue of communication.
She kept my property. She also owed me money, which she spent on her own rent instead of returning it. This left me three weeks behind on my own rent and put my housing at risk. She knew I needed my belongings and my money back. She knew these things would keep me reaching out to her.
For over two months, she did not respond to a single message. Not one. I asked for my property. No response. I asked for my money. No response. I asked for a conversation. No response. I offered peace and a chance to move forward. No response. The channels stayed open. The silence was total.
Two months of silence while someone holds your property and your money does something to a person. I went through cycles of frustration, sadness, anger, and grief. I sent messages asking for my things. I sent messages asking for de-escalation. I sent messages offering forgiveness. And in my worst moments, after weeks of nothing coming back, I sent angry messages. I own those. They happened.
She saved every one of them.
The Setup
This is the part that shows the planning.
She left the channels open so I would keep sending messages. She held my property and money so I had a reason to. She stayed silent so the frustration would build. Then she waited — for months — and collected everything I sent.
She took my angriest messages, removed all context — the silence, the withheld property, the stolen money, the five abandonments — and showed them to my friends and to the leadership of the community I had been part of for five years.
Without context, the messages looked like the words of an unstable, dangerous person. That was the point. She presented herself as the victim of a threatening ex-partner. No one saw the two months of silence. No one knew about the property or the money. They only saw the reaction she had spent months engineering.
She provoked the response, collected it, stripped the context, and used it to destroy my reputation. That is not self-protection. That is a plan, executed over months.
The False Report
Since she would not respond to any message, I tried to speak with her in person. I saw her car at the venue and walked over to ask for my property.
Before I reached her, she saw me, ran to the restrooms, and found someone to escort her to her car. I was not threatening her. I was calm and asked for my belongings. She drove off shouting at me to leave her alone.
She then filed a report claiming I was shouting and banging on her car window. I never touched her car. She got her escort to back up the story.
An investigation was opened. It found no cause to ban me because her account was not true. But it didn't matter — the story was already out. The image of the dangerous ex-boyfriend had been planted in the community.
The Deal
After the investigation cleared me, a manager at the venue — the same person who hired her — offered to get my property back on one condition: I could never speak to her again.
I agreed. I shouldn't have had to. No one should need to bargain with a third party to recover their own property. But I had no other option, so I accepted.
A week later, I messaged her. Not in anger. I said I wanted to heal and offered a chance to talk. She did not respond. But the agreement was declared broken.
The Ban
I went back to the venue on a Saturday night. I had been part of this community for five years. I moved to my current home specifically to be close to it. I can see it from my front yard.
I was told I was permanently banned. The same manager called me and said he was driving to the venue to "beat the shit out of me" and remove me physically. I left.
Inside, she was there with my friends — the people I had spent years building relationships with. They were partying. I was standing in a parking lot being told I would be arrested if I came back.
Within thirty minutes, I started getting threatening messages from an unknown number. A friend told me the rumor going around was that I had shown up to hurt her physically. That was a lie. I was there at the invitation of someone who later helped spread that rumor.
Where Things Stand
I lost my reputation. I lost nearly all of my friends. I lost access to the sport and the community I spent five years in. I was banned from a place I can see from my front door. I was threatened with violence by leadership. Rumors were spread that I was violent and dangerous.
She lost nothing. She still works at the venue. She still socializes with the friends she turned against me. She still presents herself as the victim. No one has heard my side. No one knows about the silence, the property, the money, the false report, or the months of engineering that made all of this possible.
She failed a drug test for methamphetamine and kept her position. I was calm and truthful and lost everything.
What This Was
I have spent a lot of time trying to make sense of what happened. The patterns are well documented in literature on narcissistic abuse and coercive control.
She pursued me while I was vulnerable. She created situations that generated insecurity and then used that insecurity against me. She isolated me from the people around me. She monitored and controlled my behavior. She violated boundaries and reframed my objections as proof of my inadequacy. She withheld care while demanding it. She abandoned me repeatedly to maintain control, and when I finally didn't chase her, she began planning her retaliation.
After the relationship ended, she engineered a provocation system — open channels, held property, total silence — designed to generate the angry messages she needed to turn my community against me. She filed a false report. She manipulated a manager into enforcing her terms. She spread lies about my intentions. Each step was deliberate and each step built on the one before it.
This was not a bad breakup. This was not two people who couldn't get along. This was a pattern of abuse that operated during the relationship and continued — with greater planning and worse consequences — after it ended.
If You See Yourself in This
I wrote this for anyone who has been through something similar. If your anger after months of being ignored and stolen from was used as evidence that you are the dangerous one. If the person who hurt you is now surrounded by the friends they took from you. If you have been told you are unstable by the person who spent months destabilizing you.
Your reaction to sustained provocation does not make you the abuser. Compliance under pressure is not consent. Silence paired with withheld property is not boundaries — it is control.
You are not what they told everyone you are.
And you are not alone.