Estimated reading time: 20 minutes
Dear Doctor,
A couple of months ago, I broke up with my long-term boyfriend and I wish I had done it a lot sooner.
I’ll call him “Chad” but I feel like I should name him Carbon Monoxide for how much he was gaslighting me and how long it took me to realize what was going on. Everything he did was just on the right side of deniable so that you couldn’t quite put your finger on what was wrong. At first I was impressed with how take-charge and confident he was, but I didn’t realize until later just how domineering he was. Everything was ultimately his way, but he always phrased things like we had already agreed and my giving in was a foregone conclusion. I don’t know why this worked so well, but it did, and he used it constantly until I wised up.
He was also the kind of man who would reflexively shoot down anything I said or suggested. It didn’t matter what I wanted to try or where I wanted to go, it was an immediate “no”, sometimes before I even finished my suggestion. Once I started catching on, I would even try to suggest things that were originally HIS idea or that I knew HE preferred. When I would point it out to him, he would just segue into how this was different and now it wasn’t something he wanted or was into. Until the next time he decided it absolutely was, anyway. Never any acknowledgement that he did this.
He was a regular cheater, though I never actually caught him, I just found suspicious signs, like times when he was out much later after work without calling to let me know, but the friends who were his alibi would inadvertently contradict him. I would confront him, he would tell me that he can’t help why Steve or Jackson or Ally didn’t remember that they hit whatever bar or restaurant or caught the game that he said they did, but hey you know how guys are especially after a few beers. I only ever got actual confirmation after we broke up when one of his side girls contacted me to ask whether she was crazy or if Chad was always like this.
If I complained about how he treated me to the point where he couldn’t just bald-faced lie or deny it, he would go into a speech about how sorry he was and how it’s a problem he’s always had and he needs to be better and I deserve so much better and would get so upset that I had to drop it just to make the discussion stop.
The point where I think I finally had enough was when I noticed how much he was bullying my younger brother, “Earl”, who lives with me. Earl is autistic, has a laundry list of sensitivities and a couple allergies including scents and food related ones, as well as serious social anxiety. He’s a sweet guy and I adore him, but he’s always going to struggle on his own, so I make sure to take care of him.
Chad decided to “take Earl under his wing” and get him to “come out of his shell”, because he was convinced that Earl wasn’t actually autistic and a “drama queen”. So he would constantly be pushing Earl into things that made him uncomfortable because “Earl needed to get out there and meet people”, which would lead to Earl having a meltdown. Or he would try to force Earl to deal with some of his sensitivities like smells or clothing textures that drove him crazy, because Earl should “just man up and get over it.” He even tried to “prove” that Earl wasn’t really allergic to some of the foods by slipping it into his meals. Thank God none of Earl’s allergies were bad enough to send him to the hospital, but that was the final straw. I told Chad I wasn’t going to put up with any of this any longer, he told me that I was being unreasonable and that we were in this together and had to solve this as a team, I told him that we’re not a team any more, he said he was going to give me a couple days to settle down and realize I was being hysterical and went to a hotel. When I wouldn’t “settle down”, he finally moved out for good.
I mention all of this because despite Chad being out of my home, he’s not out of my life. I’m writing because he’s been telling everyone in “our” (mostly my, since I refuse to have anything to do with his asshole friends anymore) social scene about the break up and he’s getting very upset that I keep telling folks about what he did and why I broke up with him. He wants folks to believe that I was a needy shrew, probably who has BPD and that he was a long-suffering saint who really just wanted me and my brother to be our best selves.
Meanwhile, I’ve told people about the woman who contacted me over Instagram to ask about him, who confirmed that he’d been sleeping with her for at least a year while he and I were still dating and how he complained that I was controlling and insisting that he’d leave me, but. I would even include the receipts when I was telling my friends. Chad is VERY upset about this and says (in his social media videos and posts, and to many of “our” friends) that its unfair for me to do this, that it’s out of context and that it’s all way more complicated than I’m making it out to be. And of course, he’s the victim in all this. He’s been asking people to ask me to lighten up, since I blocked him and refuse to take his calls or texts. And what’s annoying is: some of my friends are buying it. They don’t believe him, exactly, but they do think that maybe I should relax about it and just “let him have his version”, like it shouldn’t bother me what he says.
So here’s my question, Doctor: who gets to define a break up? Am I being unreasonable for wanting to speak my truth about what Chad did and why? Is he trying to get revenge and turn my friends against me, or is he just an asshole? It’s not like I’m broadcasting his name and face all over Instagram, I’m complaining to my friends and family and he’s still insisting that this is hurting him somehow. Should I just let this go so I can get him out of my life once and for all?
Who Tells Your Story?
What you’re describing is an extension of your relationship, WTYS. Chad’s whole schtick was about control – controlling you, controlling your reality, controlling the relationship. You fought back when you kicked him loose, which was a challenge to his authority and control over the situation. So now, it’s not really a surprise that he’s still trying to control things, by controlling the narrative of your break up.
As a general rule, nobody thinks of themselves as The Bad Guy, especially when it comes to relationships. Even someone who’s an unrepentant dirtbag tends to have some sort of justification for why their actions are ok, even when objectively they aren’t. Nobody’s sitting around like they’re Cobra Commander, plotting evil for the sake of being evil because fuck you, that’s why.
OK, maybe some of the AI bros who think that The Empire was badass and keep naming their businesses after the evil shit from Lord of the Rings. But I digress.
I mention this because it’s tempting to think of toxic people like Chad as being finger-steepling masterminds who have a plan they follow and do shit deliberately to undermine people’s self-esteem, but the reality is almost always much more banal. Manipulation-as-dating-strategy chuds aside, most of the time these are folks who are behaving the way they do because it’s always worked for them, not because they have some sort of master plan. It’s usually something they’ve stumbled into, something reactive rather than a proactive line of attack they’ve actually put thought into.
The same goes with how they behave after the fact. Sometimes you’ll get someone who is plotting revenge, to varying degrees of competence. But more often than not, what you’re seeing are people who are throwing tantrums because they were denied a toy and don’t like it; any rationalization of some “grand plan” tends to be self-aggrandizement after the fact.
So I think what you’re seeing here is basic-bitch behavior from Chad: you hurt his ego and he’s trying to make the hurt go away and salvage what he can of his reputation. He’s trying to control the narrative in part because he wants to control you, but also because he’s worried that folks won’t think well of him if it gets out there. He may legitimately think he’s the good guy in this scenario and any hope that he’s going to have a moment of stunning self-awareness is… unlikely at best.
Now, under normal circumstances, my advice for someone who’s talking non-actionable shit post-breakup (that is: not actually committing libel or slander) is to ignore it and live your life with authenticity and in alignment with your values. The folks who are actually involved in your life will see the difference between what he says and what they know about you. I would say that, again, under normal circumstances, letting them have their bullshit narrative costs you nothing, because they’re not a factor in your life any more. While taking the moral high ground may not be as satisfying as nuking them from orbit, it tends to be a lower-drama course of action and eventually everyone moves the fuck on.
Everyone gets to feel how they feel about the break up and tell the story they want to tell and it matters not one single solitary six-legged rat’s ass whether it matches with yours.
Under normal circumstances.
In this case though, with him continually dragging people you know back into the mix? I think it’s worth standing your ground and pushing back when it comes up. You don’t say whether you’re proactively going out and talking about him, so I’m presuming that you’re not exactly waging a social media campaign about it, nor are you stalking his social media to see what he’s been doing; this is all coming to you, rather than you sending it our seeking it out. At most, it sounds like you’re having those normal “Christ, my asshole ex did this-and-that back when we were dating” moments and “we broke up because he was a toxic, controlling shithead” rants that are fairly typical after the drama bombs finally stop falling. That’s all legit.
But the whole “why aren’t you moving on” issue? It’s because Chad isn’t letting you move on. He’s trying to prevent you from moving on because he’s trying to “win” one last time. It’s an extension of the way he’s behaved with you this entire time. Again, if it weren’t for the ways this keeps getting injected into your social circle, this would be a non-issue. But it is, so it becomes something you’re stuck dealing with, wanted or not.
Another important point is that you say that you broke up with him a couple months ago, from what sounds like a multi-year relationship with someone who you actually lived with. Considering not just the duration of your relationship but the way he was behaving? I’m not surprised you’re still processing everything that happened and you’re still trying to get to the other side of things. While I don’t think there’s a magic formula for how long it takes to get over someone (some folks process their break up before they actually break up with people), I think you can be forgiven for the fact you’re still detoxing and trying to come to terms with all the bullshit he laid on you. If you’re not bringing him up unprompted, or you haven’t made hating on him your entire personality, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong here.
So being willing to say “No, I’m going to talk about the shit I dealt with” and “Why is it important for me to let this go,” is entirely right and proper. It’s ultimately less about “defining the break up” and more about pushing back against gaslighting behavior from someone who was determined to define your reality. I think you might even want to ask your friends why they’re so concerned about your holding onto this, rather than asking why Chad keeps bringing it up. I suspect that if you flip it around and ask why you’re the one who should be moving on, your friends are going to have a hard time answering. It may help them realize just how easy it is to buy into someone’s bullshit when it’s said confidently enough and repeated enough times, especially by men. If they haven’t questioned Chad’s tantrums, but are questioning yours? Well, they may need to look carefully at how many times they’ve fallen for similar shit.
Sometimes people don’t realize when they’ve bought into bullshit tropes about couples or how easy it is to be manipulated without realizing it. Even people who are nominally progressive can be carrying around a lot of toxic or regressive assumptions and beliefs that they don’t realize, because they never had to confront them directly. They likely haven’t heard from folks they care about who say “hey, this is a problem.”
Or you may find out that they’re not the friends you thought they were before. Which will suck, but better to know that now than to have someone who’s ultimately not someone you can fully trust in the ways that you need in your life.
Like I said: I think you’re entirely within your rights to stand your verbal ground here. You’re not out attacking him, you’re not trying to “spread the word”, you’re just living your life and shit is finding you regardless. Pushing back and saying “no, it was like this” isn’t aggressive or out of line. It’s just you reasserting that you’re not going to let him control you, even after he’s gone.
Good luck
Hi there I’m 25 years old and I have a hard trying to find someone serious and I’m starting to lose hope and I feel like I’m never going to meet anyone. I see people my age getting married, moving in together, and having kids and I don’t know why none of those moments are happening in my life. What do you think is wrong with me?
I Want to Know What Love Is
OK, I’m going to get a little inside baseball here, because I get a lot of letters like this. I don’t normally run them because, frankly they’re pretty much the same, and carry next to no relevant detail. I can’t exactly say what the problem is when the only information is “age, single, don’t know why”.
But I pulled this one because I want to give some suggestions for how folks can start troubleshooting their own love lives and figuring out what’s happening.
The first issue to pay attention to is one of expectations. Age comes up a lot in these letters, and one of the things that’s really striking is just how wide that age range is. I still get occasional letters from people in their teens who are afraid that there’s something wrong with them because they haven’t had a relationship yet… especially one that would supposedly be True Love. More often than not, this is a self-imposed problem; it’s an expectation that there’s a “standard” out there that you’re failing to meet, and that means that there’s something wrong with you. And there isn’t. While there have been a metric fuckton (scientific term) of rules-of-thumb regarding age for finding a relationship (everything from “Christmas Cake” in Japan to “People over 40 are more likely to be killed by terrorists than get married”), all of it has been varying flavors of bullshit. In fact, the median age of men’s first marriages in the United States is 30, and the numbers of married people starts to peak at 45.
It all presumes that everyone has the same background and upbringing, cultural values, social class and lifestyle, health and life circumstances, and they don’t. The experiences of a middle-class white woman in San Diego are going to be wildly different from a lower-class Filipino man working in Dubai, which will be incredibly unlike the experience of a nonbinary person working at a publishing company in Lahore.
Even if people in your immediate social circle are dating, getting married or having kids… that doesn’t mean their experiences are universal, nor are they the standard that you’re being measured against. Their experiences aren’t going to be yours, no matter how superficially similar they may be. Your circumstances are yours alone and you are the only yardstick that your progress can or should be measured against.
(Which is especially true when relationships, marriage and child-rearing are all being wielded as a club for overtly political reasons. Can’t think of why that comes to mind lately, huh…)
There’s nothing wrong with being upset or disappointed that you’re single when you don’t want to be, or that you’re struggling to find a relationship and don’t know why. But comparing yourself to others and deciding that this is A Problem is part of how you’re stealing joy from your own life, for no real purpose.
So the first step is to examine your expectations and question why you have them, then why you aren’t giving yourself credit for your specific situation. It doesn’t matter if “other” people have similar issues and succeed; they’re not you and you’re not them. You need to focus on you and give yourself both credit and grace. Remember: you can’t shame or browbeat yourself into genuine improvement. It’s a lot easier to sort and solve issues if you’re not kicking yourself for having them in the first place.
The second step is to really stop and look at what you’re doing. One thing that comes up constantly in this column are how rarely people – mostly, but not exclusively men – are not actually attempting to date. Assuming there actually making an active effort, and that’s a big assumption, they’re either doing “approaches” – a problem in itself that I’ll get to – on an irregular basis, or relying solely on dating apps and barely making any real effort there. I’ve ranted plenty about dating apps and how their designs get in the way of their supposed purpose, so I would recommend folks just do a search in the archives; I’d just be repeating myself for no purpose otherwise.
It’s the “are you actually putting yourself out there” question that’s more pressing. And most of the time the answer is: no, they aren’t.
Now the thing about “putting yourself out there” is that it requires more than just existing in public and hoping that other people are going to send up unmistakable signal flares. It also requires more than one-off conversations and hoping that you’re going to convince a relative stranger to start a relationship with you. This is one of the problems with doing “approaches”; they’re high-pressure, high-intensity situations that are often incompatible with where you are and the people you’re talking to, and they’re not how most folks meet their partners, especially long-term ones. Most people aren’t going to decide to go on a date with someone they just met, especially women and femme-bodied people. It happens, yes, but people also win the Powerball; the odds are simply not in your favor.
What’s far more likely is getting to know someone over a period of time and building a connection with them, so that they get a chance to know you. This is one of the reasons why I hammer the “date slow” button: you want to take the pressure off yourself to get immediate results (you won’t) and to just get to know people. You do far better to practice your social skills by talking to people, get comfortable with making small talk and being curious about folks without an overt agenda. Not only does this take the pressure off of you to get results – thus ensuring that you’re not going to be authentic or in the moment, but rather too busy focusing on “what do I say next” and trying desperately to read every micro-expression that person has – but discovering whether this is someone you might want to spend five minutes with, never mind five years.
This is important, because many of the people in this situation are dealing with the belief that they’re pre-rejected and that they have to take anything that comes their way. Not only does this make it harder to actually connect with someone, but in the event that you do get a date… well, you often end up on a date you aren’t enjoying, with a person who you don’t like and trying to ignore how miserable you are because you think it’s your one and only shot.
The third step is that you need to pay attention to how you feel about yourself, and how that’s affecting how you feel about other people. Almost every time, this is the core issue that feeds the rest and leads to people buying into bullshit statistics to justify why they’re still single and why it’s not fair.
I can’t count the number of folks who insist that a literally impossible number of people are the “only” ones who date or get relationships. Seriously, men over 6’ are less than 15% of the population in the US and 5% globally, yet 54% of adults in the US alone are currently married. The various misstatements, misunderstandings and outright lies about the whole “80% of women date 20% of men” is another example that not only isn’t correct, but doesn’t apply, because it’s based on unscientific studies using incomplete data on an incredibly niche and not-statistically relevant number of participants with no controls nor randomization.
The problem isn’t that women are too exclusive or their standards are too high, any more than it’s that some imagined coterie of men are hogging all the women. The problem is that the guys feel bad about themselves and turn that outward; not surprisingly this tends to correlate a lot with time spent on the Internet, especially with other people either complaining that they’re single, complaining about women, or telling other men that women won’t love them unless they meet standards that women aren’t asking for. In fact, it’s almost always standards of looks and beauty that men find attractive, not women – and dudes will actively lose their shit when corrected on this.
The best way to counteract this is not just to step away from the shit that’s feeding you poison, but to start doing things for yourself that make you feel awesome. Dressing well, with clothes that fit and make you feel like a sexy badass, treating yourself with care (which includes making sure you’re eating well, getting plenty of water, fresh air and sunlight, getting exercise, going to the doctor, have a good skin care routine) and having hobbies and passions that feed your soul will help make you more confident and charismatic. This can help you build a social circle of people who care about you and who you like having in your life, which, in turn, makes it easier to meet people you might eventually want to date.
Your build and your height are always going to be what they are; you can lean into it and embrace it, or you can make yourself miserable for no purpose. But a woman is going to have a much better time with a short, stocky guy who is at peace with himself and genuinely feels good about himself and is good at connecting with people than someone who’s going to lose his goddamn mind because she wore heels on their date that made her taller than them.
The fourth step is that sometimes you need to take a step back from dating on occasion. It’s incredibly easy to get frustrated, which in turn can push you to making rash decisions and getting tunnel vision. It’s like getting frustrated trying to get past That One Fucking Boss Fight in a video game, where every time you lose, you try to rush back to the point where you died before, only to lose even more progress because now you’re making more mistakes, dying even quicker and getting more frustrated. Soon you’re no longer trying to beat the level, you’re trying to make up for all the lost ground, which only serves to make you more frustrated.
But taking a break and giving yourself permission to just not think about it, to do other things and let yourself relax and recharge is incredibly important. Pushing yourself into burnout is a good way to force yourself into an unintended, much longer break, while also causing you to regress. Giving yourself time off lets you recharge, it lets you refocus on what’s important and it gives you an opportunity to decide where your priorities are and how you want to approach them. And, mechanically speaking, that break means that you have more energy, more drive and more enthusiasm than when you’re on tilt and losing focus so that you’re trying to not lose, rather than trying to win.
These four steps go a long way towards helping improve your life in general, but especially your social life. A great deal of the problems people have tend to fall into one of these four areas; sorting them out first then means you can zero in on any issues with technical ability, demographics or the many fiddly bits that might also be contributing.
So, IWTKWLI, start with sorting these areas out. Even if everything doesn’t immediately fall into place, it’ll make life almost infinitely easier and more satisfying. That, in turn, will make it more enjoyable… and more likely for you to meet folks who will want to share it with you.
Good luck.
