Manipulative Ex?

[DeusEx737]

Hi all,

 

This is my first post but iv been looking at the forums for a while so I thought id say hi. This is a bit of a long story but please bare with me.

 

My situation is this, I recently broke up (my decision) with an ex about 2 month's ago. We had been dating around a year and a half, a lack of trust on my end was the reason why and of course understandably she couldn't deal with it.

 

The relationship began great, I had been recovering from a split with my ex-fiancé of 3 years when this girl ( lets call her B) came into my life. She seemed amazing and eventually I asked her out and everything was great for the first couple of months, she worked as a nurse at the local hospital. We went for a day trip with her parents and her mum kept saying things like shes a bit of a complicated person which got my attention. During the day she just dropped into a crazy almost B*tchy mood with me and said in conversation how she used to find the guy who lived downstairs from her to be gorgeous. I can be a bit jealous but not overly but she then looked at me and said no offence in a really blunt way which hurt but I still gave her the benefit of the doubt. She then began telling me about how she tended to flirt with a lot of the surgeons at work to get them to do things for her but later told me she had stopped this due to our relationship.

 

However my gut the whole time we were together kept saying clearly don't trust her and I couldn't I had to force myself to even though shed say shed never cheat or anything. She isn't a very openly expressive person but it felt like I was doing all the work and getting very little back id be the one saying I love you and she even said about 6months in she wasn't sure if she loved me during a bad patch but after things got better she said she was sure she did however the affection never really improved much although to be fair she tried.

 

Getting to the point the 2 things that really caused the downfall of the relationship are that seeing as I am 30 and she was 24 (shes quite mature for her age mind) I expected behavioural differences but everytime we went to her parents she would just tease me to the point of blatant disrespect and put downs, of course I'm not gonna stand for it and expressed my annoyance when she would, however every single time she'd respond with "That's just the way I am and you cant take a joke" making me feel guilty for everything.

 

The relationship became quite toxic and brought out the worst in me sometimes and I became really anxious and felt like she was going to cheat eventually and she wasn't that serious about me even though she has helped me amazingly through a difficult patch in my life.

 

The final straw was that she kept making eye contact and watching one of the instructor's at the gym we both attend, the first day she saw him I saw her do it and then the day I broke up with her she must of stared at him for about 7-8 seconds when he walked past. By this point although I loved her I felt so uncomfortable that I told her I didn't trust her and stormed out from her life. She always told me that love is about actions (due to her not very emotional nature) and that's how she shows love and that I am more touchy feely kind of person which is true but in the end I just didn't see her words match up with her actions towards me.

 

It's over now but I really wanted some input from more experienced people.

 

Thanks - Sorry for the long post.

[jen1447]

It sounds like she didn't respect you. If she put you down publicly and flirted with others publicly, those are signs of disrespect. It could be those things were legit character traits or she was trying to "sh*t test" you by pushing your buttons, but either way, lack of respect was the core issue imo.