my first time...

i don't know why i am posting here, or what i expect to get out of it... i just am lost and disoriented and i don't know what to do with myself atm... i don't have anybody else to talk to, nobody else really knows what has been going on.

a little back story, we dated 20 years ago for a few years. i was a dumb teenager and i cheated on her and then we didn't talk for 15 or 16 years. i had moved away and started a new life. i got a phone call a year ago asking for help, and things just kind of took off from there, we reconciled and we started kind of an over the phone relationship. i know i screwed up our first relationship, but it wasnt because i didnt love her or wanted it to be over. i was just stupid and didnt deal with my own issues properly then, or for a large portion of my life really. but, i truly love this person and i have my entire life. i have never felt this way about ANYBODY else i have ever dated, and i have never envisioned or wanted a future with anyone else like i do with this person. so when i found out after 15 or so years they felt the same way i was stunned and elated. they separated from their spouse, we started our phone relationship, and i eventually left my current life behind and moved back to our home town so we could be together.

and things made an almost immediate 180. she pulled back hard. suddenly wanted everything to slow almost to a halt. it was very disorienting. i pushed back on it because i had just packed up my entire life and moved to be with her. i didn't understand the pullback. i still don't honestly when i think about it. but that was also the beginning of the rollercoaster. and this rollercoaster happens just about monthly. things will be great, n then she makes up a problem for us to fight about, and then we have to take a step back and not be serious. then a week or 2 after the fight everything has been great again and i'm supposed to assume that things are better than ever and we need to be more serious than ever... the best way i can describe it is emotional whiplash.

when we argue the things she would say didn't make sense, they were things that never happened and she just assumed and started yelling at me for. i would start pointing out things she did or said to the contrary, and she would simply reply "that never happened"... not "that's not what i meant", not "you're misinterpretting that", not even "i don't remember that"... very frankly "that never happened". and that was very confusing to me. she did admit one time, while we were drinking, that i'm not the first person to tell her that she does that. and then in a later argument i pointed that out, "hey you're doing that thing again..." and it did stop for a while. but it came back, just wordier or phrased slightly differently at first, and then recently we're back to just the simple "no that never happened". and we argue completely differently. i try to keep things to actions and feelings "when you say this" "when you assume these things" "when you do this" "this is how it makes me feel". her version of arguing is to just insult with very personal, deeply hurtful things, that usually don't have anything to do with what we're even talking about.

and the things she fights about, the overwhelming majority of the time, are things that never happened; that she just made up in her own head. and this is where i started to really wear down. she would invent a problem, that i need to solve to prove my loyalty or "prioritize her over everything else". and i would do these things that she demands of me, with a little pushback of course because i don't understand what or why...but i would do exactly what she wanted. until the next argument she would straight up say "no you didnt" ADAMANTLY or she would come up with another task for me to do because the previous task wasnt enough. nothing was ever enough.

recently she tells me that i "hide her" or i "keep her in a box" and don't take her around my friends or talk about her to my friends. I have 2 friends that i see sometimes. i've asked her to come hang out with us, and she always has a reason why she can't. i've asked her to come hang out with me and my brother. she made other plans with her friends instead. i've asked her to come hang out with me and HER brother. "nah, that should be 'guy time'". in the past 11 months i don't need 1 full hand to count how many times we have done something as a couple that i've wanted to do, or with my friends/family. all we ever do is what she wants to do. i devoted all of my time to her, trying to "prioritize" her. and i have to borderline start a fight with her to get her to do something i'd like to do... a handful of times... in a year.... and yet, now she tells me that i hide her and keep her in a box...

things had gotten to a point a month or so ago, i'm worn out by this. the fighting became constant. the moving of the goalposts was unrelenting. i'm not ignoring the fact that yes ive screwed up, no i'm not always right. but when i'm wrong, i admit fault and apologize. a month or so ago, she has literally taken away my ability to admit when i'm wrong and apologize. she straight up tells me that the only reason i do it is to placate her. yes i made mistakes early on, i admitted i was wrong and apologized and then learned from my mistake and didn't say or do those things again. however, she has never let a single thing go. i have ended up apologizing for the same things from almost a year ago the entire time... meanwhile she has never apologized once. she refuses to acknowledge the things she says or does, straight up denies everything, and won't take accountability. and yet she has taken away my ability to be accountable when i'm in the wrong. where do you go from there? what are you supposed to do when you can't even admit that you're wrong?

now she says she can't talk to me because every time it just turns into a fight.. and if i'm being completely honest, it's gotten to a point where she's right. i feel like i'm constantly on the defensive, like i'm constantly being attacked. and now i am the bad guy... now i am the person that is closed off and distant and angry all the time. now she's telling me that i'm the narcissist. that nothing i'm saying is true, none of it ever happened, everything i've done is just the "narcissist timeline". she has been the sweet, caring, perfect girlfriend this entire time and this has all been me manipulating her... when i describe what she's doing or how she argues she quite literally says "no that's you. i don't do that, you do", in a way that is almost childlike... like, i actually find it a little disturbing the way that she does it, if that makes any sense?

there are other red flags; she literally re-writes the narrative. she deletes all her messages that would look unfavorable to her or takes and keeps very carefully cropped screenshots. she's deleted entire accounts before just to get rid of the messages. we had to invent cover stories for how we ended up back together in the beginning so that it "looked like she got out of her marriage the RIGHT WAY and we just kinda stumbled into eachother afterwards", which i was also later chastized for sticking to that story instead of telling everybody i moved back to town to be with her several times, even tho i did tell my few friends that's why i moved home. she is paranoid like nobody i've ever met, she constantly thinks EVERYBODY is out to get her including her own brothers, and even one of her own kids... she can dismiss people out of her life at the drop of a hat. last week i "was hers, and she's never going to lose me again and we're gonna be together forever and have the best life", this week she absolutely hates me and has blocked me from everything. she takes and stockpiles nude pictures of herself, not to send to anybody because she doesnt trust anybody with them, but so that SHE CAN LOOK AT THEM. she lives for outward appearances. it is strictly forbidden to talk about her or talk about any problems we are having to anybody (except she's allowed to do this). she is a wildly different person outside of our relationship or on social media than she is behind closed doors. she tries to pit people against eachother; ie- since the beginning she's told me that one of our mutual friends has routinely had some pretty shitty things to say about me, but i'm not allowed to ask or confront that person about it because "i had better never jeopardize HER friendship with him". and probably the most damning, every single one of her exes including the one she just left to be with me, is an abusive narcissist... which i guess now according to our last conversation, so am i....

again, i dont know what i'm doing here or why i'm posting this. i'm paralyzed, im not doing anything at work, i have no appetite, i don't want to be around my friends, i just sit on my couch and stare at the roku screensaver on my tv and cry. i gave up everything to be here in a town i hate so much i moved away from. i'm bordering on bankrupt because i was not really in a position to pick up and move. i have barely any friends here, i have barely any family, i have nobody and practically nothing. and all i truly want is her... i want my future with her. i wanna grow old with her. i want marry her. i want our family together. i want my happily ever after with her... i dont understand any of this, why its happening, WHAT is happening... what to do... where to go from here. i would do anything to make this work, i DID do everything to make this work, and i know deep down inside she would NEVER do anything for me, to keep things together with me, i know it... she's practically said it multiple times. but its all i want.

thank you for letting me rant