[Chevalelena]

Is my boyfriend’s behaviour normal?

He cheated on me about 8 months ago with my best friend. When he told me three months after it happened, I stood up to leave him and leave his house. He fell to his knees and grabbed my legs and cried, telling me he had cancer and that his dad beat him until I felt so bad I told him we could make things work again. I am convinced by now that he does not have cancer at all.

He has never physically hit me. Once he punched a wall beside my face so hard that his knuckles broke and once he roughly pulled me back after I wanted to leave during an argument. He said he would never hit a girl, but his ex-girlfriend told me he almost hit her once.

Our arguments keep getting worse. In the beginning, he used to hold back and try to solve the situation. Now he hurls a bunch of spiteful, hurtful words at me and each time, he raises his voice more than before. And afterwards he tells me that he is so hurt, but that he will never stop trying. Then he says that even though it is my fault because I hurt him, he will make a change. He apologizes and becomes very affectionate, telling me he needs me and loves me.
He tells me I need to tell him when something is wrong immediately. But when I complain about anything, no matter how calmly I do it, he sits down and dejectedly tells me how much that hurts him when he always does something wrong and that he feels like such a failure and that he was just trying to hold on tightly and to love me, but that he guesses he can’t even get that right. I’m not sure if that is a form of manipulative behavior or guilt tripping, but afterwards I always feel like I’m the problem.

His ex and him had a complicated relationship. He always made her look like the problem, like she was the crazy, toxic one. But I talked to her in recent days because she noticed that I was facing similar problems as her. We compared our relationships and noticed many similarities. He would guilt trip both of us after arguments, tell us we are all he has and treat us like queens when everything is fine. He even proposed to her the same way he proposed to me. When I look at how their relationship went, I wonder if ours is going down the same road. She broke up with him, but he guilt-tripped her into getting back together. Then he found another source that could comfort him and make him feel loved (me) and dropped her like a hot potato. I know he might as do the same with me, but he promises he won’t.

He moves so fast. He told me he loved me on our first date. Within five months, he forged me a ring and proposed to me. He showered me with affection in the past: he painted me things and gave me valuable family artifacts.

He always tries to twist the words I said into the words he interpreted. After every crisis he tells me that I treat him like an option, even though he can’t produce any evidence to back his statement. He says he sacrifices so much more than me.

His words and his actions often don’t correspond, but when I try to point it out he accuses me of not trusting him and ignoring all the good things he has done for me. When I tell him that I do not trust him because he cheated on me, he calls me unreasonable of bringing up something that was 5 months ago and that he has ‘more than made up since’.

He always tells me that I am all he has. But I know that that’s not true. As soon as I’m out of town, he has twenty friends over, girls and boys. He keeps a very close relationship with one girl and two boys I think. And he brags about the girl to his friends and often compares me to her. At his wish, I have given up quite a bunch of my hobbies and friendships. Boys that I used to be friends with don’t talk to me anymore. I know that he ‘talked’ to some of them. He is a boxer and has a bigger build than all the other boys I know. He always tells me that he wishes me to have good friendships, but then he takes up all my time in school and I hardly see even my girl friends. Once, when I asked for space, he turned the situation back on me and told me how much he was hurt that I didn’t want to see him anymore. He distanced himself from me completely then.

Everyone tells me I need to get out of the relationship. I don’t know why. Is his behaviour normal?