After the first PFMA (partner family member assault that I spoke about in my post about “The Beginning”) [L] and I didn’t speak for a few weeks. I was confused, I missed him, I was alone…. I couldn’t believe what had happened. I had a temporary restraining order put in place. I was scared, and wasn’t sure how to process when [L] slowly started sending me messages. He would “like” and then unlike a picture on fb, so I would get a notification on my phone but then the evidence would be gone…. Little things like that….. He sent a message that was a single period “.” Finally I just called him on it and he wanted to talk. There were certain personal matters that we needed to discuss anyways.
He was terrified when I met up with him. He was soooo afraid that I was sending him back to jail, he kept talking about killing himself, he was afraid of the restraining order, just everything. I didn’t plan on us getting back together, but we were both lost and confused about what had happened. He apologized, I was overwhelmed by other things going on in my life. He swore it would never happen, He cried, I cried…. I took him back under the understanding that he wouldn’t have contact with [BABY] until he was “better”. He had a whole list of things he was going to do and how he was going to get help and “fix” his problems etc…. Counseling, AA, therapy, he wasn’t going to work in a bar anymore…. As soon as I took him back though he threw all of those away. He had no reason to work on himself anymore, what was the point if I had already taken him back…. He had convinced me the charges would ruin his life and that he would never get another job, along with lots of heavy personal stuff going on in my life at the time, I dropped the restraining order and the charges against [L].
Things were hard, he slept on a friend’s couch for a very long time. He then managed to take over a lease for a different friend’s apartment when he was leaving town. I paid that lease as well as my own…..for months I paid both of our lease’s and made sure he always had a fridge/freezer full of food. He would come spend time with me when my son would visit his dad. It was a very stressful balancing act. Life, work, son, [L]; I tried so hard to juggle everything but [L] started to resent [BABY]. Instead of viewing the distance as his fault for his actions, he blamed my son for not being able to spend so much time with me.
It was hard, he had lots of fall-offs. I never knew if he was actually telling the truth or not about where he was at. He was spiraling more and more out of control….. That’s when he decided to move a few states away with some mutual friends of his. He claimed he wanted “distance” from [HIS HOME TOWN] because it was too toxic. We fought. I knew he was breaking up with me by moving, he swore he wasn’t….. All of this happened in a 2-3 day span, that’s all the notice he gave me that he was moving. It wasn’t a discussion he just told me, and that was that. He swore he wanted to still make things work and it was just temporary.
He was still signed in to his email on my computer, It was less than a day before he downloaded [HOOKUP APP]. It was pure chance I saw the confirmation email…. as soon as it was received I clicked on it and it was suddenly deleted….. He knew. I did something pretty childish; I completely admit it. I logged in and changed his bio to call him a liar and a cheater. I actually talked to one of the girls he was talking to and she was very sweet. Honestly she was so incredibly nice and here I was being the crazy girlfriend…. I never blamed the girls he cheated on me with, I’ve always had the opinion that he was the one that made commitments and promises to me not some other random woman. I’ve never blamed them…. I know how charming and persuasive he can be. I understand and don’t hold that against them. Only him.
I called him out on the [HOOKUP APP] account….. He tried to deny it even though, well before I changed it, his entire bio was written by him, likes, hobbies, everything was 100% [L]. At first he tried to say he had been hacked and that it was just made from his facebook when that was hacked….. then I called him out on the bio and he tried to tell me that one of the friends that he was living with made it for him while he was sleeping because they didn’t like me…… It was months before he admitted it was his account. Of course as soon as I got upset about it though it was all denial and him professing how much he loved me and how this whole move was about getting better so we could be together again….. I tried to leave, he screamed and yelled and called me names, it was so soon after he had left that fear was still pretty deeply ingrained in me.
So I stayed and we started talking, and facetiming every second one of us wasn’t working or busy…… It was a new safe version of our previous relationship. Some nights he would go dark and I wouldn’t hear from him but he would say he “fell asleep” and I would just go along with it. As long as I always had my phone on and answered his messages and calls he was happy. It was pretend but I felt like I had my bestfriend back. As long as I didn’t pay attention to the nights he wouldn’t respond it wasn’t too bad. I had the emotional closeness we had at the beginning of our relationship and I had the safety. The worst thing that happened was he would get mean and make me cry, but that was nothing compared to really being with him. Our distance worked…. ish.
I went to visit…. Once. A few months after he moved. The whole plan was that [BABY] was visiting his dad for a period of time so I was going to drive down spend a day or two to visit, pick [L] up and he was going to come back with me for a while until it was time for [BABY] to come home, and he’d go back. It was supposed to be time for us to rekindle our relationship and spend time together since the distance was so strenuous.
He let me know on my way down that his friends that he was living with didn’t want me there. After I was already on the road, in the middle of the winter, trying to make it there before the winter storm closed the roads. He convinced them it would be okay finally as I was driving. He had lied to me and told me it was okay weeks ahead of time. We had this all planned out, I had taken the time off, everything was settled. Nope, he waited until I was already on my way to even let the people that he was living with know that I was coming.
I got there early the next morning after driving through the night and things were tense, we fought about it at first but I was exhausted and we finally relaxed. We hung out that day and I asked what if he wanted to leave the next day or the day after….. He then admitted that he couldn’t come back with me. AFTER I had driven hours, spent money, time, energy, everything to get there. AFTER he told me that everything was okay and we had been planning this for weeks. I should have turned around when he admitted his friends didn’t know I was coming until I was already on the road…. I spent the next two days crying, I’m sure his friends thought I was dramatic. They were pissed that he would have agreed to it at all in the first place.I cried and begged him not to make me go back alone, I didn’t want to make the drive, It was horrible in the storm on the way down. I hated that he did this to me in the first place. The whole thing was devastating. I felt so used. He did what most master manipulators do best. He made me feel horrible about his lies like I was the one overreacting and being unreasonable and he made more promises to me to cover up his transgressions. This time the promise to marry me. I went home alone and cried most of the way.
[NAME REDACTED] 