Should I break up with my boyfriend?

[Shalintan]

First of all, I am autistic and this is my first relationship.

 

I was in a situationship with a man I lived with who was my best friend and roommate. We slept in the same bed every night, sex or no sex, with naked cuddling involved. We both loved each other and knew it. The love from his side, while intense, was never of the romantic nature, he told me, the day after he proposed to marry me for my visa and I consented. I made it clear to him when agreeing to the visa marriage proposal, that I would not marry him for two years and then divorce him, but I would happily marry him if he was offering to stay with me forever. He agreed. 

 

The next day, he told me he had changed his mind as he didn’t like me like that and we were only friends. I cried and he cried. After this incident, he said he would marry me about five more times, only to say he’d changed his mind a couple of weeks later. While ‘engaged’ he would tenderly hold my hand and make me feel so loved tears would sometimes fill my eyes from the force of the emotion. Everytime he ‘broke up’ with me, the heartbreak was as intense as if it were the first time. He told me by crying whenever he broke up with me, I was being selfish and emotionally blackmailing him into a marriage where he would be miserable.  

 

Eventually, he finalised on not marrying me and I accepted without tears and gave up. Ge then met a girl at a party we were both at a couple of weeks after finalising on his choice. He spoke to her flirtatiously while I was beside him, watching. I left the part early and he declined to come home in the Uber with me, preferring to stay by her side and talk with her. I went home on my own and cried, and he returned home half an hour later. A couple of days later, the girl from the party asked him out after he finished his night shift at work at two in the morning. 

 

He agreed and the girl showed up at his work and then he proceeded to spend the next few hours with her walking around the lake and talking under the light of a full moon. He then went back to her apartment with her, and they talked some more. I was home alone, and noticed he was two hours late to come back from work. We always slept on the same bed together and I felt conscious of the empty space beside me. I rang him to ask him if everything was okay and he didn’t pick up. He texted me later to tell me he was with the girl from the party. The next day, he told me he wanted to pursue the girl for a relationship. 

 

I said okay and told him I no longer wanted to be friends with him (it was too painful living with someone I loved as though we were a married couple with none of the commitment). Anyhow, he talked me into staying friends with him. A couple of days later, I brought home another man to have sex with and he came home from work to hear my moans of pleasure and did not react well. I had been drinking beforehand, and I have no memories of what took place between me and this strange, random man apart from a blurry mental snapshot of his face leaning over my bare breasts. 

 

Me and my situationship buddy had agreed on being physically exclusive (his idea, not mine) while we were in a situationship and when I pushed him for his reasons for wanting physical exclusivity, he told me it was because he did not want to catch any STDs and that he certainly didn’t have any romantic feelings for me. When I brought another man home, I figured it shouldn’t bother him as I would inform him immediately afterwards and that way he make the informed choice not to sleep with me again and thus protect himself from the risk of STDs. 

 

Anyhow, upon hearing my moans upon entering the apartment, he flung open the door of my bedroom to find us both naked and later told me he did it because his heart was breaking and he wanted us to stop. I spoke to my situationship buddy the next day and he told me that he had in fact been developing feelings and he was sure I had known and that he was only using the girl he met at the party as a prop to force my jealousy out into the open so he could ask me for a relationship. 

 

Anyhow, he threw something at the wall and made a hole in it out of anger and insisted to me that I had cheated on him and he was disgusted by me. I was confused as I thought two people had to be in a relationship or at the very least be aware of the existence of romantic feelings from both sides for something like that to be classified as cheating. Anyhow, 

I was full of tears and remorse and confessions of love, and my situationship buddy asked me for a relationship a couple of days later and I agreed. 

 

After three days of relationship bliss, he broke up with me saying he no longer trusted me after what I did to him. He then proceeded to date the girl he met at the party and spend the night at her place, sleeping on her couch after hours of talking-while still being in a situationship with me, sharing the same bed with me, and being aware of my feelings for him. He told me he would never marry me because his family would think me too autistic to accept and he felt irritated at me for always missing social cues when in company with his friends and I cried. 

 

He told me that ever since he could no longer afford to pay the rent to hour apartment and he had become financially dependent on me, I’d become a dictator because I was emotionally cold to him and therefore making him feel unwelcome in the space when he stayed out the whole night with the other girl. During the one or two months he was seeing her, I developed a giant bald spot from the mental stress. Anyhow, eventually he broke things off with the girl and asked me for a relationship again and I consented because I loved him. 

 

While in a relationship with me, on the first day of our relationship, he took me clubbing with the other girl and other friends of his and danced with her in front of me and then I got to learn that the dress the other girl wore was a gift from him. While in a relationship with me, he also invited the other girl over to his birthday party and held hands with her in front of me. 

 

He then wore the sweater she had gifted him nearly everyday and when I told him he needed to throw it away out of respect for our relationship, he told me he was an orphan and had received few gifts in his life and so he would not do that and I wouldn’t understand because I was too spoilt and took things for granted.

 

 One day, after he’d allowed me to give away the sweater from her as a present to a friend, he confessed to me that he had never liked that other girl, had never even been attracted to her, that she meant nothing to him, and that he had used her  to get revenge on me for cheating on him. 

 

He told me he had planned the entire elaborate courtship with the girl and the buying of the dress and the staying out with her to punish me for what I had done to him. He told me that he did it because he wanted to be in a relationship with me and needed to purge himself of the hatred he felt towards me and he also wanted to test me to see if I loved him enough to stay by his side while he saw someone else. 

 

He told me he had never meant the awful things he said to me while he was seeing her and it was all a part of punishing me. He also told me he deliberately invited her to his party and held hands with her and invited her clubbing knowing she’d wear the dress he bought for her while in a relationship with me and wore the sweater she gifted him to provoke me into an emotional outburst so he could feel the satisfaction of having gotten his revenge. 

 

And now that the outburst had happened from me, he was ready to block her and proceeded to do so. Then he told me he promised if I stayed with him he would make me the happiest person on earth and never make me feel insecure in the relationship/love he had for me again. I consented to stay with him. But I am not the happiest person on earth. 

 

He forbid me from drinking when not in his presence and a friend of his told me he’d talked to him on the phone and he’d consented to me having one drink, and so I had a glass of wine. When my boyfriend found out I had drank, he shouted in my face that he would kill me, gave me a shove, and later threw water in my face when I came too close to him. 

 

It turned out his friend had lied about him consenting to me drinking because he noticed I looked uptight and withdrawn in the club with him and mutual friends of ours and thought a drink would help me relax. He hadn’t expected my boyfriend to have such an outburst. Later, my boyfriend told me to avoid socialising with mutual friends (girls and guys) he had introduced me to because they had been disrespectful to him and to tell them I was busy if they called. 

 

One of the mutual friends (a girl) called me up while he was out and asked if I’d like to come over to her apartment with my adult colouring book and colours and we could colour together, and told me, it’s okay, just tell your boyfriend we are only colouring. I felt a bit embarrassed about the control she thought he must have over me, and went over there with my art supplies. I am ashamed of what a people pleaser I have turned into-I used to be known for my assertiveness but I’ve changed over the past year. 

 

Anyhow, once I arrived there, I texted my boyfriend the situation and asked him if he would like me to leave and he messaged back saying it was alright and that I could stay. He got angry at me later, however, saying I had gone before asking his permission and that when he consented over text I should’ve known he didn’t really mean it and shouldn’t have stayed. He then had a panic attack and ran out of the apartment, saying I was the one who made him like this. 

 

I was very distressed and cut myself, which is something I have only ever done once before (the time he told me he was going to cut me out of his life after I cheated). I covered up the cuts from him by drawing floral designs all over the inside of my arm with a permanent marker. 

 

So should I stay with him or not?

[Gebidozo]

I really hope that this insane story is literary fiction.

In case it’s true - OP, no, you should not stay with that horrible man.

He is a violent abuser. You are a victim of abuse. You need therapy ASAP. Break off all contact with that man. Make sure he can’t physically reach you and hurt you. Block him on all social media. Get help from professionals, from your family and friends.

[NuevoYorko]

Yes.  You should break up.  

Need you ask?  Seriously, why would you stay in this mess?

[ExpatInItaly]

This man is going to seriously injure you.

Get away from him immediately, and please seek support from friends and family. This is abusive.