I’m afraid I have not great news of my own, at least in the short run.
In short, over the last few days, I have realized that R is massively emotionally manipulative and has been taking advantage of me. I happened to listen to a podcast about financial coercive control, and parts sounded a little too familiar.
The last couple of days, I’ve had an absolute cascade of realizations and finally started asking friends their opinions. (Shoutout to Vortex for having a two-hour convo with me about it last night while I was tripping balls on Spravato).
I’m still trying to process this and figure out what to do next. A bunch of my shit and my cat are up at the cabin. Robby wants to talk and I am holding off on that for now. I don’t know what to say to them.
After an absolute crazy year, this may be the thing that breaks me for a minute. I did get a lot of support from R and there were (past tense, hmm) very good things about the relationship.
I was thinking maybe it was all unconscious, but then I remembered that they are a master dog trainer and a social media whiz at creating a compelling story. So.