What Should I Do with My Abusive Boyfriend?

I met this guy (he’s 53, I’m 43) on an online dating site, and our first and second date went so well, we slept together on the second date. However, the first shoe dropped right when we were in bed before the sex act. He informed me that he had slept with a woman just last week. THEN, he called me a couple of days after and asked to see me the very next day because he had two women flying in for sex, one right after the other, and he wouldn’t be able to see me for two weeks! Furious, I told him that unless he told the women to cancel their trips, it was over. He refused, saying plane tickets had already been bought, so I ended it. A few days later I get a few e-mails laced with anger, repeated phone calls and lastly, an e-mail asking me to forgive him, professing how he’d been doing nothing but crying since we last spoke and saying he’d made a mistake and wanted me back. And you guessed it, I was stupid enough to give this man a second chance.

We were in a relationship for 3 months and it turned out to be a living hell!

When I’d come over, he wanted to have sex FIRST. Whatever else we planned to do came after he got his rocks off. He started pressuring me.

He refused to divorce his wife (they have been separated for 6 years) who he shares custody of his 4 kids with. He told me he just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. It never happened.

Corinne’s guy is verbally abusive, selfish, and sexually unfaithful.

He still continued to take vacations with his wife and spend the holiday with her.

He started to become cruel and insulting to me. He got in my face one day and circled me during an argument and taunted me.

All the women he had sex with (including me) was done while his two teenage daughters and their friends were in the house, even in the daylight hours.

I would catch him frowning at me sometimes. He started to want to communicate with me only be e-mail. The phone calls lessened.

The final straw came when he refused to allow me around his young sons (who had recently come back from a vacation in Hawaii). He stated the reason was because I was selfish and it was always about, “me, me, me”.

At that point, I told him I was either to be included around his sons, or I wouldn’t be with him at all.

The one thing he loved about me was the sex. All throughout the relationship, he talked about how amazing it was for him. I believe that was why the “relationship” lasted as long as it did. So, Evan, what can I learn from this situation? That I was dating a loser and a jerk? Well, that I know. Anything else? Thanks!

Corrine

I have been in a relationship with this guy for eight years, four of which we have been engaged for. Before he gave me a ring, he cheated on me all of the time and that cheating sometimes included serious relationships. However, in the end though, he always seemed to be using the other girl for something that would benefit him, i.e. new clothes, new toys, drugs, clubbing, whatever. He promised me after I got the ring that if he ever doubted our relationship, he would ask me to take it off, as a sign that he wouldn’t cheat on me with the ring on.

Since then, we have had two children and we are still not married; a big sore in my eyes. Well, I had my newest child only six months ago, and shortly after I had her, he asked me to take my ring off. Needless to say, I should have known something was up when he wouldn’t come home at night but I believed all of his lies. He had a new girlfriend, and when he asked me to take the ring off, I asked him to move out. So he did move out and in with a buddy; that’s when I found out that his new girlfriend (with no kids and money) moved in too. The whole time he was gone he would always text me how much he missed me.

I let him move back home with the faith that he would stop talking to his ex-girlfriend. But he hasn’t, and after a serious talk, he still refuses too. He says they are not together, even though she wishes they were. He claims that they are best friends, and even if he stops talking to her it wouldn’t make our relationship better.

Jamie’s guy is a liar, selfish, and sexually unfaithful.
Laura’s guy is verbally AND physically abusive, selfish, and sexually unfaithful.

He says he loves me very much, but the spark is gone. I tried to explain to him that love changes over the years and you have to work at it, but he says if loves feels the way he does about me, then he doesn’t want it. I told him that I want him to pick our children up from daycare and meet me at home as I get off work, we could cook dinner, eat as a family, then just spend time with our little family. We could do stuff with friends or go out on the weekends. His response was “No, I don’t want that I don’t want to be at home with you.” I have put up with this for months and I am just really fed up. I want to be with him and even more because of my children but this is all just not fair to me. He seems so selfish. I would do anything to make this relationship work but he refuses to even try by not stopping talking to his girlfriend. So I want to move out, and I really think that’s what he has been working on, so I will be blamed when our children are older, because I moved out. So flat out, I think I deserve better, and I want a guy that is considerate to others, doesn’t lie or cheat, and etc. I am really ready to leave it all behind, but what if I hold on just a little longer and things get better? They did before we got engaged.

Jamie

I have been with a man for two years now and it was a wonderful love story. He has never been physically abusive to me but has displayed passive-aggressive tendencies, which I put down to the fact that his father was an abusive alcoholic who tried to kill him, resulting in him leaving home at a young age. His mother works two jobs, cleans the house from top to bottom every day whilst putting up with the ugly abuse from the father who sits around drinking all day. This is what he knows to be family and the role model of a woman, mother and wife.

So imagine the problems that started to arise when I refused to do daily chores because I have an extremely high-pressured and stressful job (which incidentally causes problems as I earn twice as much as him) and after working silly hours, the last thing I want to do is to start playing mummy to my partner. Major problems began to arise when my boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend from his home country moved over here. My boyfriend started spending a lot more time at their house and going out with his best friend while the girlfriend was working nights. To top it all, I got pregnant and we agreed on a termination within a two month period of my mother’s death. I became extremely depressed, and I tried to kill myself.

My boyfriend didn’t ring to ask how I was while I was sitting at home being miserable and became less and less interested in being at home. Eventually I went into his email account which is something I would not normally have done and came across a dating site. He told me that his friend had told him to do it and that he had not actually replied to any of the people that had contacted him. So I forgave him… And then I found another one a couple of months later and was so incensed that I told him it was over.

He refused to give me his key, and what followed was a bit of a scuffle, resulting in him hitting me and me calling the police. Since then, we would talk on the phone and sometimes even watch movies together in an attempt to try and rescue the beautiful relationship we had had. However, that all changed when I went out by myself one weekend and he called me up to find out where I had been, what time I came home and how many men I had talked to, and he actually drove to my home to call me a “slut”.

He is a lovely boy but I see that he is going to turn out to be his father’s son, not to mention jealous and possessive. This still does not take away from the fact that I am his first love, and the chemistry is so great many people openly express their admiration. What to do? Give him time to develop and mature a bit more, because essentially I am happy when he is not being insecure? Or do I call it a day due to cultural differences, gather my self-respect and channel my energy into understanding myself and what it is that I am looking for?

Laura

I want to make a confession. I was watching VH1’s Tool Academy the other day.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SUCH A TOOL?!

In this “reality” show, 9 frustrated women who are dating thoughtless, lying, cheating, arrogant “tools”, desperately try to save their relationships with these hunks of meat. Basically, a therapist puts these couples through exercises designed to teach communication, trust, and self-awareness — and the winning couple — the one whose muscled, spray-tanned, spiky-haired himbo is not voted off the show — wins $100,000.

Needless to say, I was riveted.

In videotaped confessions, each of these men brag about how they’ve got their girlfriends “trained” to accept being doormats. They tick off their sexual conquests — unfaithful sexual conquests — all while the teary girlfriends watch them like wounded puppies.

And all I could think when watching this show — all ANYONE could think when watching this show was this:

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SUCH A TOOL?!

Corinne’s guy is verbally abusive, selfish, and sexually unfaithful.

Jamie’s guy is a liar, selfish, and sexually unfaithful.

Laura’s guy is verbally AND physically abusive, selfish, and sexually unfaithful.

What is there to learn? What is there to say that hasn’t been said before?

There are millions of women out there in this position; I know, because thousands of them write to me. But how low does your self-esteem have to be to put up with an irredeemable, disrespectful cheater for years at a time?

So tell me, readers, what could possibly compel an otherwise sane woman to stay with such an awful specimen of a man, when that man has given no indication that he has the capacity to be either faithful or truthful?