Tl;dr — I broke off my engagement

On Dec. 30, 2014, I became engaged to my boyfriend of 4+ years. I was ecstatic. I knew it was coming (I snooped, I won’t lie), and I had started wedding planning six months before I actually became engaged. I read /r/weddingplanning multiple times a day, researched and created lists of venues, and came up with multiple lists of people to invite. My head was floating in the clouds, and I couldn’t be happier to be engaged.

I couldn’t be happier to be engaged.

I wasn’t thinking about what marriage meant. I admit, I was probably immature about the whole thing. I was so excited at the sight of the ring, and venues and dresses and tulle and parties. I was caught up in a lifestyle I didn’t think I could attain. Marriage is not a constant party. Marriage means working with your partner to support one another. It means you communicate with each other what your life goals are, and you do what you can to make them a reality. Marriage is when two people decide that they love each other enough that they will fight for the relationship, no matter what happens. In short, marriage is a union of two adults. Neither of us were adults, I would say.

Once I became engaged, I started planning my wedding for real. I felt bombarded by peoples’ opinions (remember, I knew exactly what I wanted — I had basically everything planned). His mom pressured me into putting money on a venue that I felt was lackluster in person. Suddenly, I had to think about money and budgeting. I couldn’t have the child-free wedding that I was hoping for, because his family apparently procreated and had lots of small children, and it would be rude of me to exclude them. I had to start considering having my wedding in the middle of the week to save money. Things just weren’t going the way I thought they would, and I was discouraged. I wasn’t getting the help from my fiance either, so I just stopped planning altogether.

Besides the stress of wedding planning, I started to become aware of the issues that weren’t getting resolved in my relationship. I felt that we had to start dealing with them, because I wasn’t happy with waiting for something to change. He was engulfed in his video games, in drinking large amounts every night, and gave me very little time.

His ex-girlfriend would text him sometimes, and when I told him that I was uncomfortable with her reaching out and suggested that he block her, he refused, saying that the best way to get rid of her was to ignore her. This might have been ok, except for the fact that he replied to her. He would hide it from me, too. He’d delete her messages, and his replies. I caught him once. We were at a party that I was hosting with some friends, and he was very obviously not having a good time (I assume because he wasn’t at home gaming) and was drinking. I asked him to take a picture of us with my friend, and when he opened his phone, I saw that it was an empty chat except for him writing her “Drunk.” I don’t know why I didn’t break up with him that night. I was so furious. Another night I woke up in our bed and saw that he was online, talking to some girl alone. He didn’t realize I was awake, and I saw him looking through pictures of her on Facebook, and she was playing that stupid “I’m so ugly” attention-whore game, and he was telling her that she looked good in a particular pair of shorts. I wanted to see how far this would go, and when he finally went to bed I was like, “What the fuck.” We argued the rest of the night, and I let it slide.

He also drank too much. He could finish a handle in two to three days, and a six pack in an evening. He would say that he’s not an alcoholic because he’s not drinking to get drunk, and he’s drinking over an extended period of time. I thought that the amount he drank was unhealthy, no matter what time period. Our recycling was always 50%+ full of his alcohol containers. I stayed in the living room, where I didn’t have to see him game in the bedroom. Out of sight, out of mind. I again let it slide.

He was a gamer. By gamer, I mean the moment he came home from work, til the moment he went to bed, he would be playing video games. On the weekends, he could easily play from 10 am to 2 or 3 in the morning, taking minimal breaks. When a new game came out, he would completely ignore me. I thought that when we moved in together, it would change. It didn’t. Games came out more frequently. He would actively seek out new games to play. There were few times he wasn’t casually gaming. He always said when we got married, he would game less, and when we started having children he would stop. I believed him. Once more, I let it slide.

The combination of drinking and gaming meant he didn’t want to spend time with me. We used to have a weekly date night, and that mostly stopped when we moved in together. We then had a dinner and a movie night (because he would take his dinners in the bedroom where he gamed), which I had to start nagging him about coming to because that stopped happening. Spending time with me was a burden to him. He wanted to see me on his time. He wanted to have sex when I was in bed, falling asleep. It irritated me and I felt that I had to acquiesce so he wouldn’t get mad at me. I would invite him to outings with my friends and he wouldn’t go, saying he didn’t like my friends, or he wanted to play a game. He even started masturbating the moment he got home because, as he told me, it was easier, less work, than getting me to have sex with him.

When I tried to object, he would become irritated and yell at me. He didn’t know how to argue like an adult. When I wanted to talk things out, he wouldn’t know how to follow suit, and would call me names — bitch, stupid. I would tell him not to call me a bitch, and his response was, “If you’re acting like a bitch, I reserve the right to call you one.” I didn’t know how to handle this situation, so I, you guessed it, let it slide.

There were other issues, but those were the main ones. They seemed minimal until one day my birth control changed, and my hormones went haywire, and I came to my senses and realized that what was happening wasn’t okay, and I was letting too much slide. I finally told him that I wasn’t happy and wasn’t sure I wanted to be with him. He was completely surprised. He said he had no idea that I had any issues with him, which shouldn’t have been the case as I had brought it up many times.

There were a couple of other things that happened during those last few months (I’ll write about them next), but the situation became extremely toxic and we officially broke up (for the second time during this whole ordeal) in August. I was so relieved when he finally accepted it. I had suffered from a lot of mental and verbal abuse from him. This was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make, but it’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made.