6-26-2026
In a few days, it will have been two full weeks since I broke up with my ex who was seemingly planning to break up with me. In that time, I've done a lot of thinking.

In my initial post about the breakup, I said I didn't want to talk about the situation more than was necessary, and this is still true. However, the operative word in that sentence was "necessary".

In order to help you understand how much would or wouldn't be necessary to talk about, it is vital that I explain the impact of this relationship on me.

The relationship I was in lasted for three years and is the longest relationship I have ever been in, including with an ex from IRL from whom I have significant trauma. I made the other person the center of my life for most of that time, up to and including to my own detriment. Many of the ways this person hurt me were in the past, but I had not healed from them because they were not someone who would really tolerate it if you needed to express that you were having difficulty processing something that they had put you through. This can be seen in how, when the host of their system split into two alters and ceased to exist in the system, they didn't want me to act sad where they could see it even though I'd lost the person who initiated the relationship and who I saw as my only partner in the system.

As stated in the initial post, the relationship was neglectful. My ex is a Twitch streamer, which picked up towards the end of the relationship, and they spent the vast most of their time either on stream or playing video games with people they'd met from the streaming world. Towards the end of it, they basically only messaged me when they were winding down for the night to go to bed. They live in another country than me, and I understand that time zones are a thing, but by this point in the relationship, it had been the case for a considerable time that they were a disabled person on government benefits who did not need to work or keep a "typical" sleep schedule and, after I had voluntarily chosen to partly alter my sleep schedule for them, they chose to more dramatically alter their sleep schedule for me, still in effect by the time of the breakup. There was a time in the relationship where I spent literally all day every day messaging with them.

However, there was a period of time in the relationship between 2023-2024 where my ex was worse than neglectful and was extremely toxic. They had BPD that was not entirely being treated, and they did not share the belief that I now hold that mental illness is the responsibility of the individual suffering from it. They made me responsible for their mental health and, whether they conceptualized their actions this way, they took advantage of my status as a disabled agoraphobe who stayed home all day and they made me their personal emotional caretaker. All of their rage and depression, I was subject to, and they would just constantly spiral and break down at me and make me comfort them during and after it. Most every day between spring 2023 and autumn 2024 was like this. I was never really allowed to show weakness, and there were many times where they did not treat me as though my feelings mattered, especially in comparison to other people's.

There was some emotional support from them, but mostly in the form of one of their headmates acting like a pet cat as per her kintype and a petplay arrangement, and not enough genuine human connection or support. Whenever they listened to me talk about things I was struggling with, particularly a particular issue I had during that time, they would often treat it like a huge inconvenience to them, whereas I was not allowed to indicate that any of my struggles ever came from them. Furthermore, if I was struggling with something, I would always be expected to drop the topic at a moment's notice if they started having a breakdown, which was frequent, and I would have to stop everything to take care of them.

In particular, the system had a hard time accepting I was a gay man who was not attracted to non-binary people who were not masc-aligned. They are aromantic, and they did not want me to feel romantically for them, but they seemed very upset over the fact that I did not have the ability to feel romantically for them. Whenever I talked about my identity as a gay man, they would say that they thought gender-based attraction was strange (they are bisexual) and that it "didn't make sense" to them. When I said I felt like being gay was a mental illness for me (which I felt because of how they treated me), they validated this belief by citing the fact that homosexuality used to be classed as a mental illness. They most certainly felt threatened by and jealous of my ability to have romantic feelings for people other than them, and the vast majority of the time, they would act very jealous and angry if I expressed that I did or could have romantic feelings for a man. Treating a gay man poorly for his attraction to men is homophobic, even if you are bisexual, even if you don't think you're being homophobic. Opinions are mixed in the system as to whether this fully qualifies our ex as a homophobe, but it was undoubtedly homophobic treatment.

The reason I am airing these specific details in this space is because, since the breakup, not one but two very close friends have very strongly advised me that my relationship with my ex was abusive. I am yet to discuss it in therapy and get my therapist's input, but I feel she will likely agree with my friends.

If so, then I am someone who has just spent the past three years being moderately to intensely abused, and if so, then I might consider it necessary to make a fairly large number of posts in which I talk about the abuse and its effect on me.

I understand that my ex has spoken publicly about having been an abuser in the past, but the relatively distant past, and they considered themself to have changed since then. I genuinely don't know how they'd take it if I said they'd been abusing me much more recently than their past abuses of others. Based on the fact that their parting message to me contained no acknowledgement that I had repeatedly told them I did not feel safe with them (and no apology, even though my abusive IRL ex's parting message to me WAS apologetic), they would likely have a hard time accepting that they had wronged me and that their actions were abusive. They had acknowledged on a few occasions that "what they put me through" in the past was not something I should have "put up with", but I'm not sure if they actively see it as mistreatment that they DID to me, as opposed to just something I experienced because of them.

Additionally, I want it to be really clear that I am not gearing up to level some kind of official allegations against them or try to ruin their social life or their streaming career or anything of the like. If they live their life with their shitty friends, that doesn't affect me, although, with regards to anyone who keeps company with my ex and myself, I'd like them to reconsider, as well as to please give me the courtesy of telling me if they're actively siding with the person who hurt me, so I can remove them from my life. I do not want this situation to become more public than the Neocities posts I am making about the situation - which is to say, technically public, but not on a major platform, and no one's making a big deal out of it in a collective way.

Either way, the relationship has very permanently affected me and my system, and now that I fully appreciate that effect on me, I understand I may be talking about this issue more than anticipated, as well as in language I didn't originally anticipate.