Wish I had dodged it, but a general piece of advice for everyone is familiarize yourself well with what a narcissist is, covert, overt, whatever kind, and if you are in a relationship and someone is making you question yourself, telling you something never happened or that you’re too sensitive or crazy or whatever or trying to isolate you or tell you that you shouldn’t talk about your relationship problems to other people, GTFO. Always have some fuck off money saved and a go bag packed. Learn what grey rocking is until you get someplace safe. They don’t change, they don’t have insight, but they’ll lie their way into convincing you it’s all you and what you’ve done. They’re actually incredibly dangerous.

And if someone is pushing you to try polyamory and you don’t want to, you’re just heading for a split anyway and they are going to cheat anyway. This didn’t happen to me but it’s such a red flag. If you are both into it, you do you, but it’s never a good sign if someone is trying to force you into it.

Finally, don’t ever lose control over your finances. This was a big mistake I’ve made and I’m paying for it. A favourite trick of my narcissist SO was to take my credit card and buy himself a bunch of stuff to upset me when he felt like I wasn’t “engaged in the relationship”, which meant I was depressed and withdrawn because of the hell he was putting me through.

One time I was breaking up with a gf and she told me in an attempt to make me mad that she cheated on me. Idek if it’s true or not but bruh, that just makes me confirm you’re trash.

Told a girl who confessed to me back in middle school I don’t believe her.

I grew up to be a piece of shit, sure spared her a lot of pain.

None, all my past GF’s were awesome, the trick is to chose wisely.

Broke off an engagement when he started showing hints of being way more trad / misogynist than he wanted me to see. It took him a few more years to come out of his closet with full Trump/ MAGA/ patriarchal/ white nationalist delusions. He did marry someone else and she recently pressed DV charges and divorced him. I don’t talk to either of them directly, but the stories I hear through friends and family sound like full blown reddit writing exercises.

A cop responding to a DV incident at my apartment told me privately that “statistically speaking, this guy is far more likely to murder you than ever follow through on any of the changes he keeps promising you.” I’m still here, haven’t spoken to that guy in years, and I never deal with cops anymore.

I think I was the bullet my relationships dodged. I didn’t realize how broken my childhood was and how shitty I treated my girlfriends. I don’t know what changed. Maybe it was just putting some distance between me and my family, but something let me develop a little perspective. I wish I could go back and apologize to so many exes.

My first real girlfriend got pregnant soon after we broke up. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been different if I did a teen pregnancy.

At this point in my life I’d barely traveled out of my red State; believed in Jesus; and the only contact I’d had with politics was Rush Limbaugh. Honestly, not ending up a Trump supporter with my demographics is like Neo-level bullet dodging.

When I was in my mid 30s, a cute young 24 year old online started hitting on me.

Turned out she had three kids with three different dads and the most recent one was in jail for domestic abuse.

I still almost went for it though. Problem is my life was in the shitter and couldn’t even afford to fly down or for her up to see me.

We were ‘together’ for about six months when I wised up and broke it off.

Broke up with a really cute, fun person because they didn’t take care of themselves and I couldn’t see that going well in the future. They died of a stroke a couple years later.

Ex cheated on me. She tried to get me back. I said no. She ended up engaged to the guy she cheated on me with. Then she went full on bridezilla and he broke it off with her.

I was passionately in love with a parasitic substance abuser

It was fun. By all the gods people have invented, it was fun. She was amazing at turning on the charm. All my friends were thrilled for me, saying how delightful she was

What they didn’t see was the manipulation, the abuse and expert-level twisting of everything to be either my responsibility or my fault

It all fell apart when I was busy working and she started using again. We weren’t angels. We drank (her drinking worried me, and that’s saying a lot given how fond of booze I am), we took drugs, we were playing very hard

If I hadn’t ended it, I know that it would have cost me everything. I was perilously close to doing things that would have cost me my career (which I did eventually anyway, but under quite different circumstances)

But without my “supervision”, she slipped back into getting high as soon as she was awake. I started to see why she was a child in an adult’s body

One day, her excuses for her shitty behaviour sounded even more hollow than usual, so I pulled the pin.

I learnt a lot. I’m glad it happened, but I wouldn’t do it again.

Dodged by no fault of mine. She dumped me because I made fun of her beliefs in astrology. From the little I keep hearing about her, she makes all her decisions according to horoscopes, pendulums, some kind of wooden sticks, etc. Because of that she eventually left a very successful career, her husband, moved across the country to a place she has no ties to, etc. I keep hearing gradually less about her, as she keeps cutting off all our mutual friends.