Oh dear, to avoid revealing anything identifiable, and not write a novel, I’ll keep this shortish… but to answer the question…

My last relationship, she pursued me aggressively, then once she got me to agree to relationship with her, ended up screwing around with 3 other people behind my back not long after. slipped up her story with one of them, which made all 3 aware and her house of cards fell, and she had the audacity to come to me expecting there theres and head pats telling her it was all right from me, while telling me about all 3 and everything she did with them… I gave her a nice tirade about what I thought about her audacity, and her, and told her to never even think my name again, much less contact me in any fashion.

The relationship before that, another woman that kinda aggressively pursued me, got me to spend a lot of money for her, would emotionally manipulate me, and eventually started to physically hit me. When I finally stood up for myself in the smallest way, she lost her absolute shit at me, which resulted in me finally saying enough is enough and ending the relationship.

The “relationship” before that, that I’m just mentioning for a laugh over how ridiculous it was… another woman that approached me and asked me if I wanted to try dating her, I’d casually known her for a short while as a friend of a friend kind of thing, so I said sure…30 minutes later she was in another room with her dress hiked up bouncing on someone elses lap on a couch. Obviously this wasnt a real relationship, so its not like I had any hangups from this one, but its certainly a what the fuck moment.

So yeah, I’ve never really had what you’d call a healthy relationship, and honestly at this point in my life I genuinely thinking I’m giving up on women in general, as far as relationships go.

When my wife became a drunk and started fucking her coworkers it was a pretty good sign things weren’t going to work out

I am a muse with a soft spot for strays. I curate sexual and financial talent and then it leaves the nest when it’s ready. I’ve made peace with it because I too just move on to the next thing. But like, if you are broke and horny and we date long term, history suggests that within 3 years you’ll be clearing $150k and fucking with your feet behind your head. It keeps happening and I can’t explain it, but I also don’t hate it.

I feel like in the third act, my harem of wealthy exes is going to unite to do something great.

Because I’m not good at relationships, I’m over reliant on being independent and spontaneous. My ex’s needed much more but I couldn’t be what they deserved and I hope they’ve found what they need. I’m not sure if I can ever give someone what they need, I need the time to be isolated from people.

We had an open relationship that he completely took advantage of. Every night that I wasn’t home, he was at a bar trying to hook up and often did. Problem was, I worked overnights and I wasn’t home 5 nights a week.

Then he said he didn’t love me anymore and moved in with a woman twice our age. Can someone say, hobosexual?

It was really funny when he kept coming back to me trying to hookup. The fucking crocodile tears when he went to kiss me and I turned away. He sobbed like a little baby bitch and said “I just wanted to feel like you wanted me here” like I hadn’t begged him to come back multiple times. Not my best moment but I’m better off without 🤷‍♀️

It never really got started. Ive known this woman for many years, back to when we were both kids. We met through a friend of a friend over the phone, so for a while, I thought she was much older than she actually was. When i found out she was significantly younger than me, I had to tell myself no. And that “no” stayed in the back of my head for a long, long time.

Now its been many years, and we’ve stayed close for a long time. We had a few periods of fooling around once she got older, but between going away for college and both of us starting careers, it never worked out. A couple years ago she moved back and we had been spending more and more time together. We actually started getting intimate with each other in the last year or so, even if we saw each other barely once evey month or so.

I had a traumatic incident at work, losing my job, and spent about a day in shock, and she was there for everything for me. She didnt judge me or push me or do anything besides understand and comfort. I didnt know that was something I desperately needed until that point.

After about a week of pulling myself together, i turned to really pursing her. I asked her out on dates, I tried everything I could to make myself available to her. Weeks went by and she never has the time. Then she told me she’d asked someone at work out and how excited she was.

I was devastated. I didnt understand for a few weeks. Then we talked about it and she said she just didnt notice that I was even making an effort. She said it just felt like the old hang out and whatever between us, and that she had let those feelings go a long time ago.

Im still recovering honestly. Part of me entirely understands where she is coming from. I told her no when she wanted it most, and it bothers her that I would take her saying no so hard now. I asked her if she felt it would have been taking advantage of her to accept her back then, and she said she doesnt know, but wanted it anyways.

The intimacy over the last year is what confuses me most. We’d done some rough kissing a few times, but nothing like what we shared in the last 12 months. Part of that was finally having time and being close enough to each other, Part of that was growing as people and being more honest about being what we wanted. I just dont understand why she would want that with me if those feelings were really gone a long time ago.

I really dont know. A huge part of me just wants to wait for things to get better. I sleep a lot. Between the loss of work and the loss of hope, its hard to tell which one feels worse. I still message her. We share dumb memes. It hurts every time I see her notification pop up, but hurting is better than nothing sometimes. Its been a long time since I’ve been so deep in the hole, but I’ve always pulled through before. Just have to wait. Sleep is good for waiting. Dreams dont hurt.

Everyone copes.

I moved across the country

I was unmedicated.

She decided she wanted to explore polyamory without telling me first. I probably would have been cool with it, or at least given it a shot, had we talked about it beforehand

I definitely don’t consider the end of the relationship a failure but the entire thing was the failure and leaving was the success.

He wasn’t abusive or anything. He was also very Christian and it took me a while to realize that he was fetishizing me for being “bad” while simultaneously putting me on a pedastal. I feel so gross when I even think about it tbh. He wanted kids, wanted a marriage, I convinced myself I wanted that as well. Thankfully we never even got close to that. He criticized me constantly for drinking/weed (I was in my early 20s and in college and definitely wasn’t partaking anymore than your average party person), but he criticized me for it in the condescending fucking way only a religious person would.

He also only brushed his teeth like twice a week… Something I only figured out when he stayed with me and my parents for a month and we didn’t have mouthwash for him to clean his mouth with daily??

Talked about his previous ex pretty often too, about how heartbroken she had left him blah blah blah. Honestly there were a lot of red flags but I was young and infatuated.

Last straw was when I had to cancel a trip to visit him to travel to my home country because my aunt was sick. He told me to “have fun” (in a completely serious tone, not sarcastically) and was sending me selfies throughout asking me which ones were better as I watched my aunt dying.

I spiralled very soon after that, faced some of the darkest experiences of my life. But at least I broke up with him.

I don’t think he was necessarily a bad person after all that, maybe just naive, but I will never trust any feelings of infatuation again. He’s probably the only person I’ve dated where I genuinely regret it.

She died…

Becoming a widower at 40 sucks.

She was a parasite, a substance abuser and a manipulator

She had never been in a “real” relationship before, in her late 30s, and I grew to understand why

She was mostly asexual and I was relatively inexperienced. We got along really well and moved in together. Unfortunately we just wanted different things.

I still don’t know. One day they were there, the next I was ghosted. Not really fair but that’s life unfortunately.

I am, or at least was, an immature ass.