i changed into goddesses, villains, and fools

And now he has rewritten history and talks about being the victim of unfair treatment with us being the favourites and him being the poor middle child, despite everyone having experienced his aggressive and cruel behaviour. Like everyone knows he's full of shit but he refuses to accept it. As if he wasn't also 18 beating on a fucking eleven year old for asking him to please stop screaming at the tv when I was away at uni and my mum didn't listen to me about never leaving them home alone together.

This isn't to say, "stay in relationships that make you unhappy", because you really shouldn't. But I know just like he knew all along that we were right for each other, and that his struggles with affection were genuine and he needed to bond for a long time to feel more secure in showing affection, something he never had before - not in family and not in relationships. And I knew that I loved him and wanted to hang around because I believed him when he said he wanted to be closer and affectionate in my way - because he proved that he cares and actually took the steps towards changing things that troubled me, just like I did too. So I knew he wasn't just saying it to placate me.

And this is the best relationship of my life. A lot of relationships are not worth two years of trying and hoping, but some genuinely are. Because when I think of how many times I almost broke up with the kindest, gentlest man who I'm head over heels for, I get palpitations. I stayed in my last relationship for five years, when I should have left two and a half years into it. But in my current relationship, it was worth the effort and time because he is as giving and caring as I am to him, we are equal, and he does not expect me to minimise myself and everything about me to fit into my side of the bedroom of the house we shared and nowhere else, and he does not consider himself more intelligent and enlightened than me. I am myself authentically, whilst in my last relationship, after the first six months, I became nothing more than that man's girlfriend and lost my sense of identity trying to be easy and good. That isn't to say my ex was a bad man. I was just a doormat and he subconsciously just kept taking advantage of that more and more. What he said, went. I couldn't even have my little brother come stay, or have pieces of me around the flat. The bookshelves downstairs had my books and he was always pushing me to give them away to charity or store them away where they aren't in his line of sight.