I was there.

I’m not just rewriting information that’s been written online millions of times. I actually lived this.

I’ve already gone through this horror, 3 years of horror to be precise.

We met and fell in love, at least I know I did. It was like a fairy tale, almost too good to be true.

I should have known from the beginning that life never works that way. I should have known something was going to go wrong.

I should have known I was standing on the edge of the abyss. The view was beautiful but one more step forward and I would be stepping towards certain death.

Yes, that’s what I call life with him, certain death.

In fact, death was a nice idea compared to what he was doing to me. Death was an easy path I refused to take, even though I was often tempted by it.

You know, when they teach you the difference between good and evil, well, some people tell you to take care of the devil because he’ll present himself as something you desire, something you won’t be able to resist.

Evil consumes you and seduces you, and it was my evil. It was my demon who bewitched me and tried to destroy me.

But my wounded soul somehow found the strength to patch itself up and get away from him!

He was so perfect, caring and loving. I thought I had it all, I thought life had given me the gift of love. I thought it gave me a chance to be happy until the end. But it was all just a test.

I realize now that his toxic spirit was drawn to me to make me stronger, to teach me how to fight back, to teach me how to fight for myself. It brought me thousands of tears and tremendous heartbreak but I learned my lesson and won.

He was a strange artist.

He knew how to disguise himself so well that no one would ever doubt, even for a moment, his kindness and his fake smiles.

He has been playing the role of a philanthropist for a very long time and everyone has bought into him. I fell in love with him until we started living together until he could no longer hide his true face.

As I learned to oppose him and take a stand for myself, his anger and toxic inner self became bigger and stronger.

His actions became more destructive. He felt like he lost control over me and it got worse.

There were moments when I thought he was going to give up on me and leave me alone, but he became more obsessed with me because he couldn’t handle the fact that I was about to leave him.

He couldn’t accept that he lost this battle. And then I will pay the price for my desire for freedom, for my desire for a world free of abuse.

This is what he did to me, thus blowing his cover and proving that he is a toxic manipulator:

He played the victim

When we argued, when I had enough of his lies and confronted him, he played the victim card.

Somehow he always did it about himself. He knew exactly when to cast his magic and pretend he was sorry, that he had made a mistake, and that now he felt bad. I fell for it every time.

I thought he was truly sorry, I thought he realized what he was doing to me, and most importantly, I thought he didn’t do it on purpose.

That’s when I felt foolish. I felt guilty for cornering him and accusing him of being a manipulative idiot. I felt sorry for him and gave him another chance.

There were hundreds of situations and I gave him hundreds of new opportunities and nothing ever changed.

This is how he would play with me and make me feel sorry for him, so at the end of every argument I would apologize to him and forget why I was angry with him in the first place. That was his plan all along.

Pretend to respect me

Like I said, he was kind and loving from the beginning.

He wanted to give me the world. He listened to every word I said and fulfilled all my wishes.

He was the man I dreamed of spending the rest of my life with. Wasn’t I that stupid and blind?

First, really listen to everything you have to say. When I spoke, he paid attention to me, but not because he cared about me and was interested in what I had to say, but because he wanted to benefit from it.

He listened to me because he wanted to use all the information he had to manipulate me whenever he wanted.

His plan was to turn me into an obedient doll, a woman without an opinion, without a backbone.

He wanted me to dance to the music he was playing. And for a while he succeeded.

You made me feel guilty

He was always by my side, watching everything I did and always finding fault. Even when I did my best, he came and ruined it.

I thought nothing I did was right. I thought I was unable to live, let alone do anything.

So, I took all my trust and put it into it because I thought it would help me and teach me how to succeed in the end.

It was my biggest mistake and his biggest victory.

When I wanted to do something for myself, he let me but made sure I felt guilty for doing it. When I go out without it, I don’t enjoy myself.

I was just thinking about him and the fact that he was home alone while I was having fun.

So I’ll leave everything and go home, back to the misery and pain. He wanted this from the beginning.

It was full of promise

If you heard his speeches and promises, you would think you were the luckiest girl alive.

He made promises that built on each other and none of them ever came true.

They were just empty words thrown around for no purpose other than to blind me and keep me under control.

I never got anything he told me I was going to do that I was never supposed to get. These things were said to trick me into making me wait patiently for something beautiful to happen.

And you know what? Nothing nice ever happened, just things he wanted to happen and my feelings were never taken into consideration.

He was the most important thing in our relationship, and as long as he was happy, we were fine.

He pretended to want to help me

He pretended to be very worried about me.

He lied to me and pretended to care so much, yet he didn’t do anything for me to take the burden off my shoulders. They were just words followed by no action.

Even when he “wanted” to help me, he picked the perfect time to introduce himself. Usually, when I don’t need him to help me, or when I know I’ll do something better than him.

The problem is that he knew that. Several times, there were situations where he intentionally made a mistake just to get rid of the “helping me part” and to make sure I would never ask him for it again.

Everything was planned in advance and I didn’t stand a chance against him.

He was always criticizing and judging me

He made sure I knew my place. He made sure that I would never have this crazy idea that I could do whatever I wanted. And I could, because I was better than him and he knew it.

That was his greatest fear. So he wanted to put me down and make me feel like I wasn’t good enough for anything.

He wanted to make sure I didn’t try anything by convincing me up front that I would fail.

He judged everything I did and had to criticize even the things I did right.

It was killing me inside.

Slowly, my self-esteem and self-respect began to disappear. I didn’t trust myself because I thought I was incompetent.

Trust me, after some time, you really start to think that way about yourself. You really start to think that God put you on this planet for no purpose at all, so you give up. And you surrender yourself completely to him because you believe that he will at least know what to do with you.

This is where his manipulative behavior will take you – to self-doubt, to the brink of self-loathing.

Now I’m finally free from this hell but I’m far from okay. It’s just a phrase I say to people to get them to leave me alone. I lie to them but I don’t lie to myself.

I know what you went through but I don’t know how to get rid of all the pain and humiliation. But I don’t lie to myself. I know it will be difficult.

I’m falling apart because I survived the hardest battle life has ever faced and I’m now recovering and counting my blessings.

It will take a while for me to come back to life again. love? I’m not sure it exists but I’m not going to cross it off my list because I’m not going to lie to myself.

I just need some time to put everything back in place and regain my old self, which I let go of so easily.