Mia
‘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’
Before I met my ex- boyfriend, life was really fun. My friends will describe me as the one with the sparkle, I was a mum but also young at the same time.
I matched with my ex-boyfriend [on Tinder]. I remember he looked a lot older, mature, he was wearing nice clothes, and I gave him my number and then it went from there. The early relationship was fun, he told me he loved me after the second or third time of meeting him and I said it back, I remember at the time my friends were like ‘it’s going very quick’. There was love bombing, there’s no question about it, but I wouldn’t have even been able to tell you what that word meant at that point.
We started going a bit more downhill around the sixth month mark. 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’ and I was like ‘oh do you not like it’ and he said ‘it’s just a bit revealing.’ Then I got changed and sent him a picture back. He didn’t tell me to do that, but it was just that sort of comment that I was like ‘oh he doesn’t like it I I’ll just get changed.’
‘I’d always defend it.’
I was in the car with my friend one time, driving, and he rang but we were in the middle of a conversation, so I didn’t answer and then he rang again and again and then in the end when I answered he was just screaming like because I didn’t answer the phone. My friend afterwards was like ‘Mia, that’s not normal’ but I was like ‘oh no like I’d be angry if you didn’t answer’, I’d always defend it.
It was my birthday in September, I went out for dinner and drinks with my friends and we’re in this bar in London and it was where they have the shot girls so you could buy a shot from someone. I didn’t want a shot, but this table of these corporate Lads were next to us, and they encouraged us to have a shot together and we ended up talking to them. I felt on edge at the time because my ex would say to me ‘even if a boy asks you where the toilet is like you don’t need to tell a boy where the toilet is, don’t talk to anyone.’
He would justify the reason he did it as because he loves me. I felt guilty, I thought well obviously he’s going to feel something bad; he’s going to be suspicious.
‘He just he was just screaming. He rang me so many times that I wanted to change my phone number…’
One day after we broke up, he kept ringing and ringing and ringing and, in the end, I answered and said, ‘you need to leave me alone, I’m seeing someone else,’ and he absolutely lost it. He was just screaming. He rang me so many times that I wanted to change my phone number and then my [door] buzzer went, and I looked at my camera and it was him. He grabbed me and pulled me around and got my house key and ran up into my flat.
I started calling the police because I was panicking. He had replaced my sofa that I had because he didn’t like the thought that any other boy had ever sat on it – so he’d brought me a brand new sofa. At this point I’m on the phone to the police and he grabbed me to get my phone out my hand to hang up on the police. He went into my kitchen drawer, got a knife out and stabbed a hole in every cushion, so there were just slits in all my sofa and then he was arrested….
Listen to Mia’s story here:
‘I feel like my Sparkle is coming back but maybe in a different way.’
I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person – you never are no matter what someone goes through. I don’t believe that you’re always going to be the same person, and you change whether it’s good or bad so I know that it’ll never be that same Sparkle, but I would definitely say that it is coming back, I’d say I’m sparkly again.
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Matilda D’s Story
When I was 16, a girl I knew told me that James – a boy I’d never met – was “obsessed” with me. I took it as a massive compliment.
We met up twice on the same weekend. He was 17. I remember thinking, “This is how relationships must be.” Two weeks later, he said he loved me. He told me he’d seen me on the bus months before, and that he’d gone home to write poems about me. It was a whirlwind.
