Stories

It was a whirlwind. But, a year later, he had become scary. He became jealous about parties, drinking – even evenings spent with family. He’d say I was “pissing our time away”.

He wanted to see me every day. College became difficult though; I had to stop hanging around with guy friends to be ‘a loyal girlfriend’. Before I knew it, I had no friends.

I never thought abuse would happen to someone like me. I always thought that it would happen to people that were married, in relationships that were a lot older than I was.

He checked my messages online, and accused me of flirting with male friends I had. I tried to break up with him, but he threatened me, telling me he’d share secrets I had told him with friends and family.

He’d make comments about the things I’d wear. I sent him a picture of my outfit and he made a comment that ‘if you were my girlfriend I wouldn’t really want you wearing that’.

He would upset me and do awful things, then he’d pretend like everything was fine and go back to being really lovely. This was extremely confusing.

He would say that my friends weren’t good for me and were misleading if they invited me out to drink etc. Eventually, I cut off my last best friend for him because I knew it’d happen again.