Hi everyone this is fairly long so please bare with me and please excuse the spelling errors...

three years ago i met this man who i thought was the best thing ever. he was 25 and i was 23. Everything started out great, he loved being around me and loved being with me at least that is what i thought. about six months into the relationship he found out i dated someone when we were going out for 2 months and he flipped. but we had an open relationship and agreed that we did not want to be serious at that time. We broke up and got back together and thats when this abuse??? began.

Day in and day out i would be called nasty names for things that i never did. Everytime i went out with my friends he would call me a drunk, whore or low class. When i am a person who has only been with 2 people in my life!! He degraded me for the car I drove and also my financial situation. To the point in which i would cry and think i an a horrible person. Well he would have his good times and try and treat me well but as time when on it got worst.

Things became even more horrible. I would iron his clothes and make him breakfest just to hear him get up and say "I am annoying and that i can't do anything right , look at the wrinkles in these clothes and you say you know how to iron". He would say things to me like I don't like sleeping next to you and always suggest i take classes or learn something that could benefit him.

Every weekend even after 2 years i would still wonder if I would see him. He would never let me know his plans and then claim that i was smothering when i didn't see him all week and wanted to hang out on the weekends. He would tell me that he would rather see his friends because i just annoy him.

In turn, he would always call me every nigth and make plans for the near furture and tell me every once and awhile that he missed me, but even with that one thing that i thought maybe he was starting to come around he would say constantly that I would rather sit with my friends at this function then you.

My self esteem grew lower and lower and i tried to please him as much as i could. Eventually it got to the point that he decided to break up with me - that is where i am confused - because don't emotional abusers try and keep you as long as they can?

Now after we broke up I decided to move on but he still had a hold onto me. He would call and know i would come running because i thougth i was in love. Well a few weeks after we broke up i made a mistake of kissing someone he knows just because i was at a vulerable state and i didnt' mean to do it. Well he found out and now is verbally abusing me again calling me nasty names and degrading me for my family, friends, work and school.

I am not sure what is my fault and what is not. I don't understand what i am going through because i tried so hard to please him and it was never good enough. He never said he loved me and he never wanted to do anything with me. I found out that he had every intention of sleeping with someone one week after we broke up and still i think that is my fault because he use to never want to "sleep" with me towards the end. He said he was i tried of it and that i should understand and not be so somerthing....

I don't know i am confused and hurt and sad but happy that i am moving on in my life, but what if he comes back??? He says i am dead to him for what i did, but after three years i never did anything to him and now i made a mistake and he is taking it this bad, maybe i am a horrible person like he says, maybe i will never meet anyone good enough because i am not good enough..

Can someone please help me here!!!

-- Anonymous, July 30, 2003