1.
“My friends had been telling me for two years (TWO YEARS) that they thought he was wrong for me and that he was making me unhappy, but I couldn’t see it. And then at the end of a vacation he came on with my family (where he was a total jerk and so ungrateful), my dad pulled me aside and actually teared up and told me that I deserved someone so much better, someone who was good enough for me. I’ve never seen my dad cry. It killed me. I broke up with him four days later.”
–Renee, 26
2.
“I told her my aunt died and she basically gave me an obligatory two minutes of seeming sad and then she immediately started talking about someone who was annoying her at work. Like she didn’t even notice how upset I was. It was my favorite aunt. My closest friends had hinted for a while that they thought she was self-absorbed, but that was the first time I saw it.”
–Max, 24
3.
“I got a promotion and a raise at work and had to COMFORT HIM about the fact that I was now making more money than him. NO THANK YOU.”
–Maryann, 28
4.
“He got mad whenever I was hanging out with my friends instead of him. And people kept telling me over and over that this was controlling and emotionally manipulative behavior, but I never saw it. And then, this is the silliest part: the thing that got me to realize it was my campus did a campaign against emotionally abusive relationships. And there were posters everywhere revealing the not-so-noticeable signs. And he did all of them. I was shocked. I never used to think those types of campaigns worked, but it really did for me.”
–Janie, 21
5.
“We were traveling together and in the middle of a really bad fight. And she started picking at me on the plane, not controlling her voice, listing all of the reasons why I was a loser and ‘no good’ and a ‘waste of a person.’ In front of all these people. I’ve never been more humiliated in my life. When it was finally over we were at the luggage carousel and I went up to grab a bag and a middle-aged woman whispered, very quietly, ‘You don’t deserve that.’ It was the launching off point I needed. Broke up with her right there in the airport, made sure she got safely in an uber, and haven’t spoken to her since.”
–Felix, 24
6.
“He didn’t like that I didn’t work out. I always could sense it, but one day he literally said ‘You really should exercise’ in front of an ENTIRE group of friends at a dinner party. So thankful that happened though, because can you imagine if I had ended up staying with a jackass like that?”
–Sonya, 27
7.
“She expected me to always want to spend time with her family, but then would get visibly irritated and annoyed when I asked her to spend time with mine. She didn’t even try to hide it. And when I finally called her out on it, she said it was because my family was ‘crass and immature.’ Just because we’re silly together. I was done.”
–Nathaniel, 23
8.
“I went on a four-day trip to visit one of my friends in Boston in the middle of shit cold winter, the most miserable weather Boston could have had for me, and it was the greatest four days I had had in months. And I realized it was because I was away from him.”
–Cassandra, 26
9.
“Whenever I had exciting news to share, I would always tell my friends and family first because when I told her she either didn’t react or she would just make me feel like I should have been doing or getting more. And when I finally got assigned a project for work that I had wanted to take on for weeks, I had no desire to tell her because I knew she would pull me right off Cloud 9. That was my wakeup call.”
–Kay, 29
10.
“My best friend gently pointed out one day that my insecurity had gotten a thousand times worse since I started dating him. Which made me more sad than anything. And she was right. I broke up with him and am not 100% back to being comfortable again, but I already feel a huge positive change in myself.”
–Rebeckah, 24
11.
“She didn’t like to get too emotional. Whenever I had something I was really struggling with, she made me feel like I was burdening her if I needed to talk about it ‘more than once.’ She was so cold and it was just too hard to be with someone like that.”
–Darrell, 27
12.
“When I admitted to myself that I literally dreaded hanging out with her. Instead of not caring about leaving my friends to go hang out with her, I hated it. She just whined and complained about how everything in her life sucks (thanks.) Whereas my friends, even though we gave them shit, always seemed to not care if they had to miss something to hang out with their girlfriend.”
–Aaron, 25
13.
“One day I randomly noticed that every time I needed to cry, I went into another room because I didn’t feel comfortable enough crying in front of him. I did it once and he was so awkward and kind of just told me to get it together. I knew it was super unhealthy and toxic.”
–Jena, 29
14.
“When I realized that I was embarrassed to introduce him to my parents, because I knew he was an arrogant dick. He never met them. I called it off ahead of time. Thank God.”
–Layce, 24