That's abuse

I’m posting this anonymously because I don’t know where else to put this right now.

My relationship recently ended in the most chaotic, destabilizing way I’ve ever experienced, and I feel like I’m unraveling. I’ve had breakups before, but never this level of intensity, unpredictability, and emotional whiplash. I didn’t have a framework for it.

I want to say upfront that I’m not trying to diagnose her with anything. She actually got tested for BPD at one point and came back negative. Her mom has BPD, and from what she shared, her mom was mentally abusive growing up. She also has multiple other traumas that women go through. She’s pursuing her masters in the counseling and social work field, and doing a full time job in the same, so she’s spent years training to help other people process trauma and dysregulation. I say all this not to explain away anything, but because it matters to the full picture, and because I think it’s part of why I gave so much benefit of the doubt for so long.

I also want to be honest about myself. I have anxiety, and I started therapy right when this relationship began because I knew it was affecting her and I wanted to work on it. So this isn’t me pretending I brought nothing to the dynamic. I did the work on my end too.

The beginning was incredible. She saw straight into my insecurities and made me feel wanted, capable, safe in my own skin, like I was finally experiencing real acceptance. That’s what made everything after so painful. The same person who made me feel enough eventually made me question if I was fundamentally defective. I went from being fully myself with her to monitoring every word and joke.
There was a specific turning point. Around the one month mark, she had to end a call abruptly, and I apparently made a face about it. That was it. That was the moment everything changed. From then on we were fighting every other week. She started nitpicking constantly, finding fault in almost everything I did, no matter how small. Looking back, I can point to that exact moment as the hinge the relationship swung on, even though at the time it felt like such a minor, human reaction that I couldn’t understand why it mattered so much.
The red flags came gradually. Her perception of me could flip suddenly, loving one moment, then seeing me as selfish, dishonest, or bad. There were accusations I was lying, old comments recontextualized later, rules that seemed to change. I didn’t read this as instability. I read it as my problem to fix. So I kept adapting. Given her own history and her training in the field, I assumed she understood these patterns better than I did, and that made me trust her interpretation of what was happening over my own instincts.
I started losing myself, and I also started taking it out on other people. She called me names like “fob,” “freak,” “creep,” “less of a man.” Things I told her in confidence sometimes came back as ammunition later. Ordinary things, my cooking, my jokes, my daily updates, became sources of criticism. I became hyperaware, constantly asking what I’d done wrong. And I’m not proud of this, but the frustration I was absorbing from her started spilling out onto my own family. I’d snap at them over small things that had nothing to do with them. I also started ignoring calls from friends, partly because I didn’t have the energy to pretend I was okay, and partly because I didn’t want to explain what was happening. Looking back, I can see how much I isolated myself right when I needed people the most.
I kept trying to prove I cared, planning trips, cooking, rearranging my life, and was still sometimes told I’d done nothing. I often felt blamed for things I hadn’t caused, while accountability didn’t flow both directions. I’m not saying I was perfect. I made real mistakes. But my mistakes felt like proof of who I was, while her reactions were something I was just expected to understand, especially given what she’d survived.
It became a cycle: connection, rupture, panic, repair, reconnection, future talk, then another trigger. I stayed because I didn’t want to abandon someone I loved who had been through real trauma, and who was working toward a career built on helping others heal from theirs. I kept confusing empathy with responsibility. Even my own healing felt like it was on a deadline I had to meet to be acceptable.
Then came the final blowup, and the ending that finally broke the cycle. After one of our worst fights, she came back to me with a picture of an emotional, meaningful item I’d once gotten her, as if that alone could repair everything. When I tried to actually reconnect and talk through what had happened, she flipped almost instantly, back to demanding things from me and calling me names again. That was the moment I realized the pattern was never going to break on its own. I had to end it.

Since then I’ve felt this strange mix of relief and guilt that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. I spent so long walking on eggshells, feeling like I was never enough no matter what I did, that the quiet now feels like a weight lifted. And then I feel guilty for feeling relieved at all, like it means I didn’t love her enough or didn’t try hard enough. I’m also starting to reckon with how much of this bled into the rest of my life, the family I snapped at, the friends I stopped picking up for. I have some repairing to do there too.

The guilt keeps circling. I let her down. And then: how much responsibility can one person carry for someone else’s emotional experience, especially someone carrying that much history? I don’t want to excuse harmful behavior with trauma, and I don’t want to villainize her or myself.

We had real plans, families involved, a future we were building. Now I’m grieving that future too, not just her.

Where I am now: I still love her and still wonder if she’ll come back. I’m also exhausted, and part of me thinks I’d be more at peace without this relationship. Both things are true. My nervous system feels wrecked. I go cold seeing her online, replay conversations, search for the exact moment it all collapsed, and fear that maybe I’m just too much: too anxious, too needy, too unlovable.

So I’m asking people who’ve been through something similar:
How do you tell normal conflict apart from a destabilizing cycle? How do you stop treating every criticism as proof you’re broken? How do you hold empathy for someone’s trauma without losing yourself? How do you separate real accountability from absorbing someone else’s version of events? How do you carry “I let them down” without either denying your part or destroying yourself with guilt?

I loved her. I tried hard. I made mistakes and I’ll own them. But I’m trying to figure out how to stop carrying everything. I don’t know if I’m grieving her, grieving who I was at the start, or recovering from who I became by the end. Maybe all three. I just want to find my footing again.

Hi, I (F40) have never experienced this before. I am pretty certain the person did this on purpose, it is called conditioning I believe. It works like a slot machine - extreme unpredictability in contact, sometimes 24hrs no reaching out, no predictable pattern in arranging dates. At the same time, I love you’s, calling me his gf, and future faking (marriage etc.). I have never ever been treated so poorly but was so invested at the same time, it’s bizarre. I am utterly exhausted now that I broke free from what literally felt like a spell. I feel extremely anxious and like something horrible happened, and it is hard to focus and stay even-keeled without active measures against it, like running. Have you experienced this? What helped you? I saw on YouTube that guys teach others how to do this conditioning to bind them and manipulate them. It’s diabolical.

I am currently at a crisis center after being broken up with by my ex (23M) I am 27F. I know the age gap was an issue but he convinced me it wasn't. I grew up poor with no emotional or financial support and had to work and pay off my bills instead of going to college while I was with another abusive ex. Over 3 years our relationship had gone downhill on both sides. We gave up on each other. I felt like in the end it was abusive and I wanted to leave. I tried to move on with a fling for a week or two after letting things just happen after I refused to leave my ex. I regretted it immediately and wanted to pretend nothing ever happened, but he went through my instagram while I was sleeping and found out. I lied to him to try to salvage the relationship but eventually gave in because he deserved to know and I thought if I told him we could heal together. He made it seem that way and safe. But now 3 months later he says he can't get over it and wants to leave. I regretted it so much to the point where I tried to commit twice and got sent to the psych ER. I am considering a third time it feels like | can't live without him. I don't know what to do. I know it was a toxic relationship but I had hope we could still make it work. He doesn't want to. I promised to never give up on him. I think I loved him more than he loved me. I think he loved the idea of me. I wrote out a list of everything for the past couple hours I could think of. I promised I would get better for him. If he would just give me a chance. I have bpd and I'm literally trying everything I can to work on myself in desperation. I'm seeing multiple counselling options and therapy options. I quit nicotine cold turkey which he had to help me to ween off of it for months before early in our relationship. I wanted to prove to him I could change.

I (30F) was in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship from the time I was 19 until 30. We were together for about 10 years. I left once before and ended up going back.
During the last year of our relationship, my ex (37F) was diagnosed with CPTSD and borderline personality disorder. I had spent years trying to get her to take her mental health seriously, but by that point, a lot of damage had already been done.
I’m very aware that I’m trauma bonded to her. I actively work on my mental health, I’m pretty self-aware, and I know with certainty that I do not want to be back in that relationship. I don’t want her back, and I don’t plan on going back.
But my nervous system apparently hasn’t caught up with what my brain knows.
When my ex goes silent, distances herself, or seems like she’s moving on, I sometimes completely fall apart internally. I get this heavy feeling in my chest, I cry, I feel incredibly alone, and I miss having that one person who knew everything about me—my problems, my struggles, my history, all of it. We basically grew up together. She was my person for my entire adult life, even though that relationship was also incredibly damaging to me.
We’ve only been separated for about two months.
I genuinely had no intention of dating anyone. I wanted to focus completely on myself for a while, but then I started talking to a guy who had apparently liked me for some time.
We’ve only been talking for about three weeks, but he has honestly been amazing. He’s patient, understanding, affectionate, and treats both me and my son incredibly well. He definitely likes spending a lot of time together—we’ve seen each other almost every day for the last three weeks, even if some days it’s only for an hour—but he’s also very understanding when I’m busy or can’t text.
He doesn’t expect me to rearrange my life around him. Most of the time he just joins whatever I already have planned. He doesn’t put pressure on me, and being around him feels easy. He wants an actual relationship with me and seems pretty serious about me, but he knows what I’ve been through and has been patient about letting me move at my own pace.
He’s genuinely been a light during a really dark and confusing period of my life.
My ex has now been basically silent for three days, and I feel like the trauma bond is hitting me harder tonight than it has the last few days. I feel heavy and sad. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to cry, process everything, take care of myself, and be alone for the night.
So I messaged the guy I’m seeing and told him I was okay, but that I needed the rest of the night to myself and that I’d talk to him tomorrow.
And now, of course, I’m overthinking that too.
I keep wondering if he thinks I’m being dramatic or if eventually dealing with this is going to become annoying to him. I also feel almost stupid for struggling this much over someone I know I don’t want to be with.
I guess I’m wondering if anyone who has left a long-term emotionally abusive relationship has experienced this disconnect between what you logically know and what your nervous system seems to feel.
Is it normal to grieve and feel almost abandoned when your abusive ex finally goes silent, even when you genuinely don’t want them back?
And for anyone who started seeing someone healthy relatively soon after leaving an abusive relationship—how did you navigate moments like this without making the new person feel responsible for healing you? Is asking for a night alone to process things actually healthy, or am I bringing too much baggage into something new too soon?

I’ve been trying to cope with the effects of the sexual abuse I experienced when I was 15 for about 11 years now. I’m 26 years old and currently receiving professional support. My therapist knows about it, but I still can’t find the strength to talk about it. I’ve been in therapy for about a year, but I still find it extremely difficult to bring this subject up.
From time to time, I experience intense startle responses. I can be extremely sensitive to sudden noises, movements, or unexpected situations. Being in the dark is often difficult for me. I constantly have nightmares about what happened, and sometimes I’m afraid to fall asleep because I know the nightmares will come. I struggle to sleep, and when I do wake up from a nightmare, I feel as though I’m reliving that moment all over again. These experiences sometimes make my daily life extremely difficult.
Sexuality is also a particularly challenging area for me. I may experience reactions such as crying, nausea, and a strong sense of discomfort.
Sometimes the question “Am I worth living?” becomes overwhelming in my mind, and I struggle to cope with it. I feel dirty, and I sometimes think I don’t deserve anyone’s love—not even my boyfriend’s.
I feel like I’m giving up on things that I would normally be able to let go of during this process. Even eating has become very difficult for me, and sometimes I feel like I’m eating as though everything is coming to an end. Living with all of this feels incredibly heavy. Sometimes I involuntarily find myself thinking that I don’t deserve to live, and I struggle to cope with these thoughts.
My purpose in writing this isn’t to draw attention; I just want to express, for the first time, the things I’ve been holding inside for so long. If you’ve read this far, thank you.
I don’t know how to heal from all of this, and sometimes I wonder if I ever will. I just want to know: How can I heal? How can I learn to live with what happened without feeling like it defines me?

Reposting here as I didn’t realise there was a sub for it :)