• ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    The cluster B people can be really alluring. I met a gorgeous woman once who was extremely enthusiastic about dating me. She couldn’t get enough of me. I was an awkward nerd who had never experienced anything like that before, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. After six months of dating, she asked me to marry her. I foolishly said “yes” - I knew it was crazy but here was this sexy, smart, funny woman literally begging me to accept her as my wife.

    Accepting her proposal flipped a switch. She had been high-strung before, but now completely random things would set her off and she would start yelling at me. She would yell at me in front of my family. She would even call me at work to yell at me because she remembered something and it made her angry at me. She was extremely jealous - I stopped talking to any of my female friends because even mentioning them made her flip out, but she still got mad that I wanted to spend time with my grandmother and my dog. She also started sending weird text messages to my relatives. For example, she kept telling my father that she wished she was not married to me.

    The thing is, she wasn’t always awful or else it would have been easy to leave. In between her angry outbursts she was still as affectionate as she had been before, but now I was constantly afraid that something would set her off. She was tiny and never physically violent but I was scared of her. I decided to divorce her after she yelled at me for wanting to include my family in my birthday celebration; the marriage had lasted six months.

    Anyway, where was I going with this… Men have to watch out too. Usually we imagine abuse as something a man does to a woman, but that’s not the only form it can take.

    • KnoLord@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yep, fell for the same trap (minus the marriage, but lived 3.5 years of literal hell instead), and that bullshit shapes you more than everything.

      The worst part is being accused of being unempathetic, even though you put almost everything aside for them, just to be met with hatred when you inevitably set them off again.

      Brother, I hope you are now in a better place in life. Stay frosty :)

      • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Yep. My exes like this always made me feel like I was this awful abusive monster of a person… for having totally normal boundaries and realistic timelines. turns out they were the monster.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      been there, done that.

      stay strong.

      been happier alone for the past 5 years then i ever was when i was with cluster b ladies. they make your life a living hell.

      but it’s hard to date women who aren’t super into you the way cluster b women are. i’ve had women say they are interested in me the past few years… but they never make me feel like they are… they seem totally disinterested. cluster b woman actually make a very concerted effort to get involved with you… the average woman expects you to do all the work in that regard, ime.

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 months ago

      Yup, dated someone with BPD. I ended the romantic relationship when I couldn’t take the drama, tried to stay friends because I honestly worried about her and wanted to provide support.

      Ended the friendship after the second time she called and held me hostage on the phone for hours, telling me if I hung up or didn’t agree to date again, she’d kill herself.

      She texted me for the next 8 months with constantly changing numbers calling me terrible things, sometimes hundreds of messages a day.

      Messed me up. Would not recommend.

      • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        amen. i had a relationship i ended 6 years ago because of lying. she stalked me for months afterward while she was already engaged to another guy… it was incredibly f’ed up and i feel awful for that poor dude. i ended up having to delete all my socials before she finally gave up.

        I am super glad I didn’t marry her. despite her wanting to marry me. I knew something was ‘off’.

        • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          A man my ex-wife dated after I divorced her contacted me on Facebook once, calling her a “horrible psychopath”. Apparently he knew my name because she had told him awful things about me. I feel really sorry for him, but I also feel validated in a sense. I get a nagging thought sometimes that I could have prevented the failure of my marriage and made the relationship work somehow. (I don’t miss my ex at all but I’m ashamed of being divorced.) Knowing that another guy also had the experience I did with her reassures me that it really wasn’t my fault.