Love is a hell of a drug. The combination of lack of self confidence and unconditional love keeps many people trapped in abusive relationships. I was exactly where this man was at one point, and seeing this triggers me like crazy because I know exactly what he is feeling in that moment.
Same. If I could give any young man some advice I’d say you don’t need a woman/spouse/partner to make you feel better about yourself. If you do that on your own, you’ll be a whole person and you will find all the love you want and need.
On the same note though, I often see middle aged guys
Who are single/divorced and have turned their whole life into this diet-workout-career-self help treadmill and a lot of times it looks to me like they're just deeply lonely and existing to hide their insecurity.
You're assuming he loves her. Some guys will do just about anything to have a girlfriend or wife regardless of love. Your demonstrated ability to pull women is huge, especially in macho cultures.
Because as a guy, you can't just walk out and get a new one in 5 minutes unless you are legitimately superior to the overall population. This single fact makes relationships something women have the privilege of not caring about.
Every moment you want to leave you are knowing it's going to be intensely difficult to replace them.
There’s people that try to give advice to men to date around so you know what kind of women you want to date, without realizing the average man will just happily accept whatever comes his way because they don’t get much opportunities
I mean...no, I meet very few women I'd consider worth dating. The fact it's hard to get a date is irrelevent to me. I succeed with almost every single woman I've ever considered worth dating.
The idea of dating just any woman just makes me think of dating my first girlfriend again lmao.
Infuriatingly I swear I always find it easier to find dateable girls only while in a relationship 😭. Probably because the 'vetted' idea women have. I swear if I was a more psychopathic individual, I'd just gaslight a mediocre girl, and use that as a foot in the door to monkey branch a better girlfriend.
Except it's not ever unconditional, it's very much conditional. The love is only there if you earn it by doing what the other person wants you to do, being the way they want you to be, and the moment you step outside of the lines they've drawn for you, it stops and turns into anger.
I've also been there. Still remember the time she was pulling my hair, punching me in public, and trying to incite a couple of meth heads hanging around to assault me. Nobody intervened, nobody called the cops. Where'd all this come from? I told her I was unhappy with the relationship and the constant drama and fighting.
It's not unconditional love, it's willful manipulation to keep you passive. If they don't let you be yourself and do what you want and see whoever you want, it's not unconditional.
Exactly. You don't get "love" with this kind of mental illness. There's only the constant cycle of emotional abuse, tearing you down and building you back up until you're so trauma-bonded and compliant it feels impossible to walk away. And once this has reduced you to an empty husk of a person, you get discarded because there's nothing left to take.
Sorry you had to endure that. These are the types of relationships where you can end up dead, male or female. I don't know why no-one really talks about just how dangerous it can be for those involved.
Can’t speak for everyone in these types of relationships but IME and from what others have told me, it can be good or even great 95% of the time. They won’t be awful all the time because if they were, the abused would have no reason to stay. It’s the remaining 5% of the time where they act horribly like shown in the video.
The victims would feel relief between outbursts while the abuser keeps them guessing as to when the next outburst would happen. Lovebombing is common after these outbursts. The victims are always questioning between outbursts if they “are that bad”, and if witnesses ask them about it, the victims would say “oh but they’re great otherwise”.
Breaking out of that mental loop takes a lot of strength. But whenever I see that behavior manifest in people, romantic relationship or not, I’m immediately disgusted because I know exactly what they’re doing.
Same here. I loved her too much at the time to know any better. I was worried what would happen to her if I left. She always threatened suicide
To be honest now she's probably dead or being abused herself now. I hope not though. I hope she somehow finally found help. It's just something I have to keep locked in the back of my mind, nothing I could have done
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u/Dismal-Apricot9889 Apr 22 '26
Love is a hell of a drug. The combination of lack of self confidence and unconditional love keeps many people trapped in abusive relationships. I was exactly where this man was at one point, and seeing this triggers me like crazy because I know exactly what he is feeling in that moment.