Longterm 'toxic' relationship ends when woman secretly ghosts boyfriend with family’s help. AITA? + UPDATE
"I (24f) am planning to ghost my boyfriend (23m) of 3 years. Is there a better way to breakup with him?"
Spirited-Earth7937
I will try to keep this as short as possible because I feel a lot of what’s going through my brain is nonsense rambling . But my boyfriend and I met at work nearly 4 years ago. We hit it off right away and formed a really close friendship.
We didn’t get together until a year later after we went through our own respective breakups. I was so happy after we got together. I felt like I had met my soulmate. He was almost everything I wanted in a man.
I started to rethink that in the last month or so. For some context my boyfriend had kept in contact with his ex even after I made it clear I was uncomfortable with it. After a while I stopped bringing it up because I knew what the answer would be.
After a conversation with my sister, I brought it up one more time about 2 months ago. He told me that he had already blocked her. I had never felt more happy and felt a positive shift in our relationship. Too bad it was a lie.
About a month or so ago I came home with this gut feeling that something was off with him. So for the first time in my life, I looked through a partner’s phone. The messages were innocent enough but spanned back far enough to tell me he lied about ever blocking her.
Not only did he lie about not being contact, he had blown off a date night with me to go hang out with her. When I confronted him he broke down and said that he had only gone to her because he was feeling upset about his family situation.
He claims the only reason he didn’t come to me was because he thought I couldn’t handle the stress given my mental illness. At the time I wanted to work it out and forgave him under the condition that he blocked her and came to me about his issues.
He got better about telling me things and as far as I knew he had her blocked. Well, the other night he said he was going out with some friends and would be home a late.
All of this was fine and normal until I noticed that he had turned off his location and was ignoring my calls. He says that he left his phone in his car and turned off his location by accident.
But given that I have more that 2 brain cells, I know he’s lying. He got a brand new phone and it has been glued to his hand since he got it so him leaving it his car seems so unlikely to me.
These 2 events aren’t the reason for me wanting to leave but rather the catalyst. After both of these things happened, I started looking a little too closely and have noticed some concerning behaviors.
The first being I don’t think he actually likes me as a person. He talks about how much he loves me but a lot of his compliments are rooted in my appearance. He says he thinks I’m smart but whenever I say something that he doesn’t really agree with, I’m stupid for thinking that.
He’s constantly telling me how much the gifts he gets me are despite me asking him not to because it makes me feel bad for not being able to afford the same caliber of gift for him. Our sense of humor is rooted in being slightly mean to each other. With that sense of humor, we’re bound to hit a small nerve every now and then.
When I hit a nerve he tells me and I stop bringing it up, but when I let him know that he made fun of a big insecurity he continues to make the same jokes. To make matters worse, the jokes aren’t even that funny.
Those are small behaviors I feel can go overlooked, but the following are more serious and have been a big fight between my boyfriend and I. The first one being his anger.
No matter the situation, if there is any kind of inconvenience he defaults to anger. Small disagreements escalate to fill blown fights because he gets angry and doesn’t let me share my thoughts on the situation. And big fights turn scary. We have only ever gotten into 2 or 3 really big fights but they have all left me feeling scared of him for a few hours following.
Now on the most serious in my opinion, his treatment of our animals. He came into the relationship with a dog and we just got a new puppy a few months ago. When the dogs chew on something or run up the street after a squirrel or whatever, he hits them. I’m not talking about a pop on the nose, I mean our puppy will scream his head off because my boyfriend is so incredibly mean to him.
In an attempt to keep the violence to a minimum, I took over their punishments. It’s worked for the most part but there are moments where he gets to them first and I always feel so guilty.
I also brought a cat into this relationship and even though he hasn’t laid a finger on the cat, he makes way too many jokes about hurting him. I know I want to leave but I’m torn between talking to my boyfriend about it or just packing up and leaving one day while he’s at work. Any advice?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
bassconfusion
Are you wanting to ghost to mitigate risk? I don’t think that’ll work. Take a day off while he’s working, rent a van, and break up with him over the phone after you’ve moved your things and pets out.
The day before doing this, deep clean the place— not to be nice to him, but to get stock of everything it is you need to take with you. To buy time, you might even be able to get away with putting things in trash bags or your car under the guise of “donating them”, but those will have to be low value things he won’t pay attention to, like your clothes.
Don’t draw a lot of attention to it, but you can use that as an excuse if he asks. Also, when you leave (if renting) take pictures of every room so you can prove the condition of the place when you left it.
BelmontIncident
The breakup is deserved, but sending a text telling him you're gone isn't hard. Don't tell him where you went, get anything you care about before you go, and block him if you feel the need.
Groundbreaking_Tie84
OP, like the other commenters said, do NOT leave the pets behind. He can lose his mind and hurt them or neglect them if he gets depressed of you leaving. Even if you have to rehome the pets in a different responsible household, do not leave them with him.
Oftentimes when things go down at home, it's the dogs who are the first casualty. You're saying he already hits them. Just NO. It's a known fact, that people who are violent towards animals tend to transition to being violent towards people down the road. Ghost him, but get everything in order first. I'm afraid he can hurt you next.
A little over two weeks later, the OP returned with an update.
Spirited-Earth7937
This update is not very interesting but a lot of people wanted to know. At the end of my last post, I had settled on leaving with my pets and was just waiting on move out day.
Move out day came quicker than expected. Nothing escalated to a dangerous degree but his behavior changed a lot. Suddenly he was being so incredibly sweet and was talking a lot about commitment.
During our last conversation, he was ready to go down to the courthouse and get married right that second. I’m not sure if this is what love bombing is or if it was just him being desperate because he sensed I was pulling away.
After that conversation, I knew if I stayed nothing good would come out of it. So, I called my family to come help me move out after he left for work. I was able to get out safely with my cat and puppy.
I wound up sending a message kind of explaining why I left and asking him to never contact me again before blocking him on everything. So far, he’s only tried to call me from a different number once.
If he continues to reach out, I plan to talk to local law enforcement to see if a restraining order is possible. I’m not a fan of how everything ended but I am glad to be out of that situation and somewhere safe where I can learn who I am outside of him.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's update:
davekayaus
Well done! Glad you and your pets are safe and sound. It's great that you had the support of your family in this.
Training-Constant-13
I'm truly baffled that OP detailed so many abusive incidents and yet some commenters had the nerve to call her abusive and controlling because she checked his location?? Um? What??
norabbitfood
I am so, so relieved OP managed to get out. I'm sad about his dog, but at least she got her cat and the puppy out. Hopefully animal welfare was able to rescue his dog.
presumingpete
It's such a typical internet thing that people call her controlling because her boyfriend who has put his ex above her multiple times turned off his location. He prioritized his ex and lies about it, of course she has trust issues ffs.
prolificseraphim
Normally I would say ghosting is a terrible idea but... in this case, probably a great idea.