I’m a year removed from breakup with an ex who I dated for three years. He was a total jerk but I always wrote it off as avoidant/INTJ/neurospicy…literally WHATEVER. 

Please don’t call me an idiot, I have a kind husband now, but my mind reverts back to what my ex’s expectations of me were and how to fulfill them constsntly. It’s really broken me. I thought I loved him and saw past all the awful parts and withdrew into a place I never want to return to. It feels like a part of me does, though, and I hate that part.

In reality, he was awful. He was always crabby around my friends. When I asked for dates, he’d drive me somewhere in silence and then walk away. He sometimes cartoonishly gawked at my boobs with his mouth hanging open while I cried because he would go weeks without saying he loved me due to petty grudges. He said he hated me because I had a master’s degree when he had a bachelor’s. He’d only have sex in the dark and prop up his phone on my back to watch porn. He was onot into violent humiliation porn, like mangas where a woman’s boss finds out her husband has cancer and rapes her since she can’t quit due to financial burden. He expected daily blowjobs with full throat and loved it when I cried. I’m saying all this because…I still justify his behavior because he accused me of cheating and I’m still not sure if I did. 

I’m a foster care graduate with no close family. I pushed away friends to please him. The relationship got so bad, he wouldn’t even look me in the eye even though we shared an apartment. Eventually, he told me to find someone else. I booked some Hinge dates and cancelled to have sex with him because I just wanted his “love“ so bad. Eventually, he broke up with me three times on Valentine’s Day for tiny grievances, just to hurt me.

Now the cheating story…

I found an online boyfriend who was a professor and he encouraged me to apply for a PhD. The guy was kind of an icky daddy dom but it was what I was used to and I just wanted company. He was the first and only potential date I reached out to, and just clung on. After weeks of talking, he confessed to giving me a fake name and cheating on his wife. I blocked him, but eventually got accepted to the PhD program with a full five year research/teaching scholarship. I messaged the guy to say I got accepted, asked if he’d confessed to his wife, and asked for advice on how to interview my potential principal investigator well. Then I informed his wife on Facebook about her husband‘s online cheating with me.

My ex boyfriend and I were still sharing an apartment during this time, while I found alternate living arrangements on campus. At the time, I slept on the bathroom floor despite paying the entire rent. After I was accepted to the PhD, he found the messages and accused me of cheating, even though we were broken up. He choked me until I almost passed out and had the most violent awful sex with me that I didn’t want to have. 

For a year, I stayed. I dropped out of the PhD to be with him. My family and the department were mad, but I found a great stable government job with benefits now, so I’m okay with it. Unemployment is high for informatics PhDs, and I’d have been all alone across the country (WA -> PA).

My sex life with my husband is ruined, he waits for me and never asks or bothers because he’s so gentle and nice. He and I never have sex because none of the sex I had with my ex was consensual, always at threat of breakup, which he liked, and I’m not ready yet.

Even my therapist thinks this is too much for me to ever fully get over.

Was it cheating? Does it matter?

Artichoke pizza of shame I shared with my sweet, kind husband who would rather burn to death than ever put a finger on me.





Still Thinking About the Cruel Ex Who Said I Cheated