The Most Dangerous Place I’ve Ever Been

People have always seen me as an adventurer. “Where are you living now?” they ask, half impressed, half curious—maybe even a little piteous. I suspect more and more of them see right through it. I've spent my life in motion, moving across cities, countries, continents, in search of opportunity, of belonging. The ‘adventures’ are a by-product. A certain type of person is always in-between cultures, places, and identities. Our roots are tangled, our sense of home constantly shifting.

We tend to find one another.

I envy people who have carved out a path, more or less stuck with it, and are completely content. Big dreams and fearlessness are a blessing and a curse. I go to bed at night with an ache I can’t shake—a desire to do something extraordinary, to build something with passion, to live in a way that feels heightened, cinematic. My entrepreneurial spirit has pushed me to start businesses, carve out opportunities where none seemed to exist, and walk into rooms where I knew no one and walk out with relationships that changed my life.

But beneath it all, I crave something deeper: a home, a community—and more than ever, as I moved through my thirties—love.

These desires, tangled with my growing fear of failure—my big dreams and the quiet worry that I may never reach them—push me forward. But they also make me vulnerable.

And that’s what made Mathias so dangerous.

The First Encounter

I connected with Mathias on an app during a difficult summer. I didn’t pay much attention to his sporadic messages. They were polite, I remember, but lacked personality, and I had other, more pressing things on my mind. I was living in California, an experiment that hadn’t quite worked out the way I hoped. I moved there yearning for a different chapter—a new job, a new guy, maybe a family in the not so distant future. Instead, a year went by, and I was no closer to that career progress—or any of the rest of it—than I had been when I arrived. The beauty was immense, which was important to me. Nature feeds me, and as someone who loves to cook, few things cured a bad day faster than a local farmers market. But the rest was lacking.

My strongest professional network was abroad, so with little to stand on, I bought a one-way ticket. I spent the summer promoting my new book, packed my beloved apartment in a redwood forest, rented a storage unit, and left.

On the plane to London, Mathias wrote a few things that rubbed me the wrong way.

“I’m not a fan of arrogance, to be honest, so I don’t think I’m the girl for you,” I replied when I landed.

“I’m not arrogant.”

“Fine, it’s easy to write me off as the finance guy, but that’s not me.”

“I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

He kept digging himself in. It wasn’t about fate; it was about what he said. And I had never even mentioned the finance guy stereotype—he was the one desperate to label himself. I gave him another crisp ‘no, thank you.’ I didn’t have time for unnecessary distraction.

I trusted my gut and deleted his number.

But he was persistent. And on my second day back in London, I ignored my instincts and gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Not long after, he said things like ‘the stars aligned’ and ‘I knew we would meet.’ ‘I had a feeling about you.’ ‘I kept the chat going all summer. I needed to know you.’ I started to believe him. But it wasn’t an accident that Mathias pulled me in. It was a skill.

"Listen, I’m going to lunch. You can join me if you want," I said, half-expecting him to back off.

To my surprise, he came. I remember thinking, Wow. This guy has courage.

It was midday in Soho. I was eating clams—ironic, in hindsight, given that he’s kosher. He arrived with an espresso, sat next to me, and watched me eat as we chatted. It was an odd first date, especially considering the wrong foot we got off on, but he wasn’t as arrogant as he had come across. He made efforts to be as humble as possible. I felt myself apologising to him for judging so quickly.

And then, I asked about his son.

It wasn’t an accusation. Just a statement of fact, something I knew and assumed we could discuss like adults. But when I said the words out loud, his gaze changed. The warmth evaporated. His eyes locked onto mine, and in that instant, something sharp and unreadable flickered behind them.

My first thought was, what is that look about? Why would someone grow so icy at the mention of their child? Instinctively, I pushed myself back in my seat, a wave of unease washing over me.

And he saw it. He smiled.

That was the moment I should have walked away.

Mathias didn’t just want power—he wanted control. And he got it by making sure you never quite knew whether to worship him or fear him.

You may view me as the cause of much angst and disruption, but I was only there because you pursued me.

Intensity isn’t proof of love. It’s proof of chaos.

When Love Becomes a Trap

I met Mathias in my mid-thirties—precious time for a woman. For me, it was also a time when I was searching for a sense of confidence that had been slowly chipping away without my realising it. I had come to London to hustle. I told him this the first time we met. I wasn’t ashamed, and I wasn’t there to fool anyone.

At first, I thought his support and enthusiasm would bolster me. But my entanglement with him equated to total derailment. The emotional energy he consumed. The sleepless nights caused by his volatility. The way his moods dictated mine.

I lost my confidence completely. I lost my groove.

And worst of all—

I lost myself.

I miss the idea of you. I miss the false feeling that I had finally fallen in love with

someone who loved me back, who didn’t judge me or make me feel like my

experiences and achievements were inconsequential, who wanted to know me. This

morning, I woke up with a chill and missed your warmth. I missed kissing your

face. I missed the times you’d reach for my hand and hold it in yours on the

pillow. Last night I made a banana bread, and I wished you were there to come up

behind me and squeeze me and taste test. I miss your arms around me. But I guess

it really comes down to the idea of you, the idea of a loving boyfriend who wants

me around. I feel like I fell in a hole of hope and have been trying to scrounge my

way out because there’s not much hope in the hole, after all.

Writing This Feels Indulgent—But It’s Necessary

Maybe it’s indulgent to put this on paper, to excavate something so raw—but I know I’m not alone. And if nothing else, I hope this serves as a flashing red light. The real danger of a mastermind manipulator isn’t just the pain they inflict—it’s the way they reprogram you, erode your instincts, and make you doubt yourself. They don’t just take your time; they take pieces of your identity.

If I had known what I was dealing with at the time, I would have reacted differently. I didn’t understand the extent of Mathias’ internal dysfunction until afterward, when I began putting the pieces together. There isn’t enough information about it floating out there, and I want women to have the tools to recognise it and protect themselves against it.

One of the most difficult things is coming to terms with the fact that someone with this disorder will never change. And what’s worse— they will rewrite reality however it serves them.

In the aftermath, my heart broke not just for myself, but for him. There existed a longing and frustration of knowing that something could be different if only he’d let it. Sadly, he will always choose anger and repression. Whether it’s due to pride, fear, or something else, he will stick to his stance until the end of time. Is he capable of breaking the cycle? I can’t say.

I would also like this to be a reminder to women to fortify their own lives first— to build a career, financial independence, a foundation that no man can destabilise. Confidence isn’t static. It isn’t fixed or permanent; it wavers in moments of self-doubt, career setbacks, and loneliness. And it’s in those fragile spaces that we are most vulnerable to people who seek to control us. Your power lies in having something that is yours. A life that no one else gets to dictate. A self-worth that isn’t precarious, because it isn’t tied to someone’s approval.

I’ve woven in excerpts from emails I wrote to him after everything imploded. I hope they provide context and demonstrate how easy it is to fall into a situation like this, and how incredibly challenging it is to get out of.

There are certain types of personality disorders that align with Mathias’ type. Not everyone with these disorders is dangerous. Some seek treatment. Some are self-aware.

Mathias was not.

That first meeting in the restaurant, I watched him walk toward the door with his paper espresso cup in hand. I can replay it in my mind so clearly, like a movie. He seemed to glide. He was so nimble in whatever he did. Walking up steps, his first time on a Pilates reformer... Six years in the army or a lifetime of practising the part. I never saw him trip. Never so much as a piece of food in his teeth. Always stylish and well dressed. No creases.

And yet, I would later learn, so much could unravel beneath a polished surface.

"I do find you stunning," he’d say.

Despite something.

Once someone makes you feel chosen, they can just as easily make you feel replaceable. And Mathias had a way of making me feel like both the exception and the problem at the same time.

You’ve said a few times, I don’t deserve the way you treated me. Well, I don’t deserve the way you discarded me either.

How can you be so cold to me? Please explain it.

The Performance of Importance

Mathias didn’t just crave validation. He needed it like oxygen.

Within days of meeting me, he was giddy at the idea of introducing me to his boss.

"He’ll love you," he said, as if I was already a fixture in his world, as if my presence at his side would somehow elevate him. When he looked at my LinkedIn photo, he was giddy again. “Wait until my colleagues see this.”

Why would he show it to them?

After a week, he asked if I’d come to a work charity event with him. I hesitated. Most of his colleagues didn’t even know he was divorced.

He was obsessed with how others perceived him, constantly dropping stories that made him seem desirable, impressive, wanted.

"Summer analysts have crushes on me," he said one day, smug.

"How do you know?" I asked.

He smirked and shrugged. “It’s obvious. They fall for the image. The finance guy. The clothes.”

Outside, out of nowhere, he’d ask, “Do you want to see how I run?” Like a child showing off to his mother, eager for praise.

With his job, he was the same. Always asserting how much he worked, how many hours he put in.

"I worked the entire plane ride while my colleague slept."

"I was up all night on my computer. Twenty-hour days."

Who knew if he was actually working, while the rest of us slept—the one thing necessary to stay sane?

Love-Bombed and Disarmed

Mathias came into my life fast and forcefully. Within five days, he insisted I move in with him.

It felt urgent, intoxicating. He made me feel special, seen, like I was different from the others. He told me I was deep, that I was more caring and loving than other women he had met. That I had accomplished so much, had lived so many lives. He was so impressed by me. He said I’d make a great mother.

“How do you know?” I’d ask.

“I see you,” he’d say.

In the moment, I believed him. Now, I see it for what it was—a setup. A script he had perfected to draw me in.

On our second date, we went to lunch and sat outside, the sun in our eyes. I blame the unusual weather. I fell for him. The next day, we met at noon and spent nine hours completing each other’s sentences. I didn’t go home until after dinner.

During those first few weeks, we barely went three hours without seeing each other. We’d criss-cross Mayfair to steal kisses, to have an espresso together, to linger in the thrill of it all. I told myself I needed to focus, but I also wanted to enjoy this—this ridiculously rare, happens just a handful of times, all-consuming love. The strange thing was, for the first time, I didn’t have butterflies in my tummy. I felt… fine. Maybe I feel fine because it’s finally right, I told myself. This is it.

Love is the most unique feeling in the world. It makes you deliriously happy, heartbreakingly sad, utterly broken, deeply confused, dangerously attached, and fiercely angry. Place the lens of love over any emotion, and it intensifies beyond recognition.

You’ve said this before, right? “I would never subject myself to an abusive relationship.”

I said the same. I’m strong, just like you. Highly independent. Self-aware. Street smart. But I fell in love in the biggest way possible. It was surreal. I told myself I was lucky. I told myself it was finally my turn. My turn to wake up next to someone every morning, my turn to have someone to spend Saturdays with, my turn to take care of someone and make them feel special, my turn to feel that back. My turn to feel valued even if I haven’t ‘made it’ yet. My turn to build a life with someone. My turn to grow in good company. My turn to understand what love actually means.

And then the earth came loose, and the rocks started to crumble to the road, and before I knew it, the tires had holes, and the car was careening.

Loving someone like Mathias was like sinking into a hot bath in the dead of winter—comforting at first, then suffocating. You don’t want to get out, even as your skin burns. Even though you know you must, sooner or later. Your skin withers. Your back turns red. Your breath becomes shallow. And soon, you can’t tell the difference between beads of sweat and cleansing water.

Get out. Out of the tub.

But it’s never as easy as that.

And when you do finally rise—heavy, dripping and raw—it’s the drying off part that sucks the most. The chill of being outside the hot water.

If only you could get back in… but is that really what you want?

The Fantasy

In his bed one night, within the first week of meeting, he told me he was falling in love with me.

I slapped my hand over his mouth.

"Don’t be ridiculous—you don’t know me."

“I do know you. You don’t see what I see,” he said with tenderness.

“You’re so hard on yourself.” And he rattled off a list of compliments. His eyes were feverish, too bright—like he had seen something no one else could. “I’ll stop saying it if it makes you uncomfortable, but that’s the truth.”

I straddled him as he reached for my hands. I asked, “What’s your type? Am I your type?”

He looked at me like I had missed the point.

"My type? My type?! You’re my fantasy."

Stay With Me

Because it became serious so quickly, I felt compelled to be transparent. I explained my financial situation—my ambition, my determination to get my career back on track. I didn’t have much to contribute. “Some guys would walk away. I’m giving you an out. If you prefer to be with someone whose life is more ‘together,’ I understand,” I said.

He was empathetic. Understanding. Kind.

At first.

He lavished me with compliments about my books, my production projects, my past work— he valued them as much as I had always hoped someone would. I pinched myself. “Think about how you measure success. You just have to believe in yourself. Things tend to happen when you least expect it. Just believe.”

He told me about a few of his own ups and downs in his career, how he pivoted from an Israeli army captain to finance, how he too had periods of doubt.

I looked away and swallowed the sting in my throat. I knew my entrepreneurial tendencies were less than appealing to most guys. I didn’t work at Twitter or Goldman, a more reliable career.

“I think you should stay in London. Stay with me,” he said.

I had a flight to Italy at the end of the month. It was cheaper than London, and I hoped to find freelance work.

“What do you mean, stay with you? Like on weekends, to visit?”

“No, stay with me. Cancel Italy. Live with me.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” He sat up in bed and held his arm out toward the wardrobe that took up an entire wall.

“You can’t have those, because I have a lot of suits, but you can have those— ” he pointed to two of the closets. “I’ll make room for you.”

I shrugged it off. “You’re just excited,” I said.

Then, because I suddenly felt the looming disappointment he would feel when he knew I wasn’t as shiny as I seemed, I said: “I’m sorry you’re meeting me at this moment in my life. When things are sort of a mess. You should have met me a few years ago.”

“Hey—teamwork,” he said.

Was he for real? I wondered.

I asked him, “Why are you so sweet to me? I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

“It’s our karma coming back for us,” he murmured, pulling me in so tight I could feel his heartbeat against my ribs.

The Weight of It

One of the things we talked about that first weekend was ‘things.’ I told him I could care less about having dozens of shoes or designer bags, and I definitely didn’t care about jewelry. "Don’t buy me jewelry," I said. "Help me build a business." Something like that. I told him I would never advertise a logo. I remember the words leaving my mouth, clean and sharp, with the certainty of someone who knows herself.

The next day, he arrived at coffee, practically glowing. He handed me an Hermès bag, his eyes expectant, his smile bright. Inside was an Hermès bracelet. A logo. An advertisement. I stared at it, feeling something eerie settle over me.

"It suits you," he said, watching for my reaction.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand why he had spent 800 pounds on someone he barely knew.

My first thought was, I could really use this money. My second thought was, He ignored everything I said yesterday.

It suits me? It doesn’t suit me. It doesn’t suit me at all. The weight of it in my hands felt foreign, like something meant for someone else, not the person I thought he’d been getting to know the past 72 hours.

"This is so unnecessary," I said. "I told you I don’t need gifts or jewelry."

He smiled, his voice light, almost triumphant, as if he had unraveled some hidden meaning in my words that I had never intended. "Yes, that’s exactly why I bought it for you."

I turned the bracelet over in my hands. How could he be so proud of himself? I felt like a doll, something to be adorned to suit him, not me. It wasn’t about what I liked or wanted—it was about something he could parade around, a reflection of his own taste, his image.

I wasn’t being courted—I was being branded.

“You deserve to be spoiled,” he said.

But, in hindsight, it wasn’t about spoils.

In that moment, he was proving something not to me, but to himself. He could win me. I could be a part of his armor. Against what, though? Or against who?

This is not a very sophisticated way to phrase it, but ’it’s not my fault’ that you did

not consider every angle of the situation, and ‘it’s not my fault’ that I desired or

expected some semblance of a relationship with my boyfriend. I wanted as normal of

a relationship as possible. I’m sorry that somehow I was the reason you felt trapped.

I’m not sorry for you, because it was of your own making, but I’m sorry in a hurt

sort of way-- here I was, elated to be in love and suddenly I became the thing that

made you feel trapped. I never set out to be the culprit of everything.

On Day 6, we went to lunch, and he asked me, as he had the night before, to stay in London. To cancel my Italy plans and stay with him. “Move in with me.”

Again, I told him he was crazy. “You don’t know me, and what about your son?”

“I know you. And I know myself. I’m 38 years old. I know when I’ve met the woman for me,” he said, unperturbed by the man sitting only a few inches away from us at the next table. “I know what my package is, and we’ll figure it out. I know what I’m doing.”

The words were perfectly rehearsed.

“What about rent?” I asked. “I’m not earning at the moment.”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t want you to be stressed. Save your money. Live with me.” He was adamant.

“I’ll cook for you, at least.”

“Yes, that’s a perfect arrangement.”

Recently, I heard someone ask, What’s the difference between a visionary and a fraud?

Success.

If a fraud succeeds, he’s suddenly called a visionary. If he fails, he’s misleading.

The Velvet Noose

Mathias had a way of making you feel like the most important person in the world. It wasn’t just charm—it was precision. He studied people, learned what made them feel seen, what made them feel chosen. And then he used it.

At first, it felt like a gift. The way he zeroed in on you, the way he seemed fascinated by every little thing you said. The illusion of deep connection, as if he had never met anyone like you before. His words were deliberate, his attention intoxicating. He wasn’t just interested—he was enthralled.

But the moment you started to trust him, the moment you softened into it, the shift began.

His affection became something he could withhold. Mathias kept people slightly insecure about where they stood with him. He’d say things like, “You need to be honest with yourself. Is this what you want?”— a phrase designed to sound reflective but was, in reality, a loaded gun.

I once heard him say it to his analyst. She was young, ambitious, sharp—but not sharp enough to see what was happening in real time. They worked at an asset management firm, where perception mattered as much as performance, where the wrong move could derail your entire trajectory. She had made the mistake of complaining about Mathias’ moods, his volatility. Word got back to him. And just like that, she was a problem to be solved.

But Mathias didn’t just remove people. He dismantled them first.

The thing was, he didn’t have the power to fire her. That wasn’t his call. But that didn’t matter—he had other ways of getting what he wanted.

He spent an hour on the phone with her, guiding the conversation like a slow, surgical unraveling. He didn’t tell her outright that she should leave. That would have been too obvious.

Instead, he led her there himself, planting doubt, poking at insecurities, making her question whether she was truly a fit. "I just want what’s best for you," he told her, his voice thick with false concern. "You need to be honest with yourself—are you sure this is the right place for you?"

She didn’t see what was happening. She thought she was in control. But he painted doubt like it was wisdom. He framed it as her decision, subtly distorting reality until she was questioning whether she was truly the right fit—whether she had what it took. He spoke in careful pauses, letting the silence do the work, letting her rush to fill the gaps with apologies, concessions. I sat there listening, stomach tightening. It wasn’t just manipulation—it was a masterclass in quiet destruction. But Mathias had orchestrated every word, every shift in tone, every inch of power she gave away.

By the end of the call, she was crying. She wasn’t just pleading to keep her job—she was pleading for him.

"I love working with you," she cried. "I want to stay.”

“She wants to stay,” he shrugged when I asked him about it afterward. “Everyone wants to be on my team.” As if he was the center of the universe.

As if he wasn’t puppeteering her downfall.

As if he wasn’t toying with her mind for sport.

The First Cracks

After a short time with me, his warmth was no longer freely given—it became conditional.

Sometimes, he was the most attentive, devoted person in the world, and sometimes, he was cold, distant, impossible to reach. He created a dynamic where you were always reaching for him, always adjusting to his moods, always wondering what version of him you’d get that day. There was an abrupt withdrawal of affection just when you were feeling safe. He knew exactly how to destabilise you, exactly how to make you second-guess yourself. And when he pushed you too far? When you questioned him, when you caught him in contradictions?

He rewrote reality.

He would subtly twist the conversation, make you doubt yourself, reframe events until suddenly, you weren’t sure what was true anymore. And if you pushed harder, if you refused to accept his version, he’d either erupt in anger or retreat into wounded silence, flipping the narrative so seamlessly that somehow, you were the one apologising in the end.

There were hiccups in my nervous system along the way, but I ignored them. All the ‘love you’ in the beginning… I thought he’s looking for a replacement. He feels a void in his life after his divorce, and he’s looking for a fast way to fill it. He’s lonely. It didn’t make me feel special, nor loved. I felt silly. I felt replaceable. Because how can you love someone you don’t know?

Once, we were running late for him to see his son. In the Uber, crossing central London, he exploded—yelling at his ex-wife on the phone, his voice sharp with rage. And then he punched the seat beside him—twice.

I was ready to jump out of the car.

Oh my god, I want no part of this, I thought.

I hated how he spoke to her. I hated how quickly he lost control. I hated how he punched the seat.

What else was he capable of punching?

"Are you trying to humiliate me?!" he yelled at her.

And I thought—Why is he saying that? She was angry, sure, but what did humiliation have to do with it?

Later, he snapped that same phrase at me.

In the car that day, I heard her yelling into the phone, "You're disgusting, you're disgusting." Maybe she was just stating facts.

The day after that fight with his ex, Mathias told me I’d never see that kind of behaviour again. That it was a one-off. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I sympathised. I tried to justify it—this is a difficult period for him.

I should have left and never looked back.

But the most appalling thing?

His flat had no bedroom for his son. It was the first thing I noticed. Upon separation, the priority is space for the child. Isn’t it? A place that feels like theirs, a room with their books, their toys, their things? But here, there was nothing. No traces of childhood. No signs of a father. It gnawed at me, but I let it go.

His flat was scarce—empty. No personal belongings. Not even a garbage can. I asked, “When exactly did you move in here?”

Six weeks ago.

Not months. Not nearly a year ago, as he had suggested.

Six. Weeks.

The Unspooling

The beginning with Mathias was exhilarating. It felt like stepping into something fresh and full of possibility—until it all imploded. The moment his ex-wife found out was as if the ground beneath us collapsed. She was furious, as to be expected. He had only moved out six weeks prior. The upheaval that came from it, the emotional turmoil—it swallowed us whole. And without realising it, I became his therapist, his only confidante, his friend, his lover. But I got nothing in return.

One evening, after listening to him talk for hours, I finally said, "Listen, I know I'm going to get the short end of the stick for a while, but just don’t forget that I’m here too."

He was sitting on the floor, and I was in a chair. He wrapped his arms around my waist and held me so tenderly, so sensitively, that my heart ached with compassion for him. I truly believed he thought he was making the best choice for everyone by leaving when he did. I was convinced he deserved happiness. But now, looking back, I wonder—did he actually leave? Or did his wife throw him out?

What also struck me was how utterly shocked he seemed by how his life had changed. He thought he could continue his old life as if nothing had happened, as if he were still married. When his ex-wife made dinner plans with friends they had socialised with together, he was upset he wasn’t invited. When she arranged playdates for their son with their usual circle, he was annoyed he wasn’t included. He expected to remain a part of their social circle, with a girlfriend at home.

I said, "Mathias, you’re getting divorced. People choose sides. Lives separate."

But it seemed like a revelation to him. The reality of divorce, of being on the outside of a life he had taken for granted, was a shock.

The morning Mathias called me from work, his voice thick with emotion after he told his ex-wife about me, made my heart break for him. He said she had been yelling at him over the phone for an hour, saying cruel, unforgivable things. I asked what she had said.

"Too horrible to repeat."

At the time, I didn’t push. I took him at his word. But now, I wonder—what exactly did she say? What truth was buried in that conversation that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me?

That same week, I spent an entire afternoon running around the city, gathering ingredients for a Jewish New Year dinner. I had never celebrated Rosh Hashanah before, but I knew it was important to him. I wanted to show him that I cared, that I was willing to embrace his world. I made the meal from scratch, putting thought and care into every detail. And yet, when we finally sat down to eat, he barely acknowledged it. He was absorbed in his own world, talking endlessly about his day, his stress, his dramas at work.

I listened, like I always did. I nodded, asked questions, gave advice. I was fully present, fully engaged, while he vented for hours about something that had happened at the office. I had started to notice, even then, an odd obsessiveness in the way he latched onto things that annoyed him. When something upset him, he couldn’t let it go. He would talk in circles, fixate on the details, go over it again and again. He could talk about the same thing for days without tiring himself out.

Later that night, when I was washing the dishes, he kept me company in the kitchen.

When I looked up at him, his face was fragmented. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

His voice was quiet, almost childlike. "Why are you so nice to me?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I removed the dishwashing gloves and held his crumpled face in my hands.

“I’m such a horrible person. I don’t deserve you."

I kissed him and said, "Don’t internalise her words. She’s angry and hurt. You’re a wonderful person."

Then I pulled him into me and said, "Me and you, baby. We’ll get through this together."

It was the first time I said “I love you” to a man who immediately said it back. It was a big deal to me.

That night, we spent hours rolling around the floor talking about our future. Where we would live. What our life would look like. London, only London—because that’s where his son lives. He wouldn’t consider anywhere else. He had his plan, and I was starting to realise that my role was to fit into it.

Days later, I talked myself through the possibility of being with someone with a child and an ex-wife. I weighed it against everything. Ditto living in London for the rest of my life, for giving up my freedom, for giving up the idea of a different lifestyle one day. I’ve always imagined being with someone open-minded, someone not opposed to moving a few times in life, to trying different things. Of course, I know that a job will keep someone somewhere, and I appreciate and respect this. But the idea that we’ll never be able to leave because of a child is different. I thought I was in love, so I swallowed my natural curiosity for other possible futures. I swallowed the idea of being with a partner with whom I might be able to create and to adventure. I confided in my father, who said, if you stay with him and you make a life together, you will hopefully grow to love this aspect of his life—that he has a child, and you will love his child dearly, and it will be a rewarding part of the relationship. Not easy, but special and dear. I put the situation into this perspective.

We talked about schools, finances, kids, traditions, religion. Mathias was the most religious man I had ever been with, and his beliefs were deeply ingrained. I had never been with someone who kept kosher, observed the holidays so strictly, or envisioned such an Orthodox family life. Friday night dinners at home? Fine. I could be okay with that. All the holidays. All the time at synagogue. I told myself I could adjust. I told myself I could make it work.

I was starting to feel like Charlotte, learning the rules, the customs, the expectations, convincing myself that I could mold my life into his.

Despite everything I was about to give up, despite how much I was bending, and preparing to bend, to fit into his world, what I got in return shocked me.

You don’t have any idea what’s going on inside my head or how hard I’ve tried

and am trying to get myself back on track. You have no idea how much pressure

I’m under. And then my new boyfriend, who claims to love and care for me,

yelling at me and insulting me and threatening me… I’ll remember that night

forever.

The Illusion of Generosity

Mathias didn’t want love. He wanted control.

His words—his compliments—felt like gifts. But they came with a catch. They were only genuine when he wanted them to be. His generosity wasn’t generosity at all. He booked me massages, always asked if he could buy me something when we passed certain stores. At first, it seemed sweet, thoughtful—even extravagant. He’d offer money for groceries, but later, in anger, he’d throw it in my face. When I told him I didn’t need gifts, just his kindness and love, he dismissed me. His gestures should have been enough. Wanting more—wanting him—made me ungrateful in his eyes.

Later still, he called me ungrateful outright. Accused me of being with him for money—though he wasn’t exactly earning enough to make that a plausible motive.

He would give—when it suited him. But never without expectation. Never without a price.

The Pull.

He called me ‘my gorgeous.’ My gorgeous girl. My pretty. His steady stream of compliments made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. "How did I get so lucky?" he’d ask. "You can’t go out like that—you’re too gorgeous." It was playful, but possessive. A joke, but not quite.

“What is your position on ‘cheating’?” I once asked.

His face snapped into something like his army photo ID. “Unacceptable.”

I have a different viewpoint. I don’t see relationships, or anything for that matter, in black and white terms. People are complex, messy creatures, who meet a lot of other complex, messy creatures in their lives. As a writer, I can’t reduce human behavior to absolutes. Some betrayals are deeper than infidelity. Some affairs are a cry for attention, a symptom of a love left untended for too long. There are a million shades of gray.

But Mathias had no room for gray.

“No, under no circumstance is cheating okay. Once and you’re out,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I’d kill you.” His face suggested: how could I possibly think otherwise?

What I didn’t realise then was that his intolerance for betrayal wasn’t about loyalty—it was about control. In his world, betrayal wasn’t just about sex. It was about defiance.

And yet, he would go on to betray me in a thousand ways—not with another woman, but with manipulation, with silence and cruelty, with slices into raw wounds he knew were unhealed.

Show Me How You Do It

At first though, I didn’t see betrayal. I saw a man navigating a deeply difficult period in his life, trying to balance it with love.

And I was so bowled over by his attention, so intoxicated by his adoration, that I didn’t see the difference between actual love and momentary obsession.

Even in public, we were all over each other. We were one of those couples. I relished it—the way he touched me constantly, the way we seemed consumed by each other. It made me feel wanted in a way that felt rare, urgent, important.

Our chemistry was hunger. That ‘if I even graze your finger…’ type. There was a constant, overwhelming need to close the space between us. We could barely make it across the living room without having sex, again. In the morning, as he said goodbye to me before work, he’d turn me around at the kitchen sink. We once did it in the bathroom of a luxury furnishing store. No one could stop us.

But even with all that hunger, something was off—in the actual act of it.

For a man who carried himself with such confidence—who presented himself as dominant, in control, effortless—he had none of that in bed.

I noticed it early. He wanted me desperately, but when it came down to it, he waited for me to lead. He had no natural rhythm, no instinct for how to touch me, no real command. Instead, he watched me, mimicked me, let me guide him. It was almost awkward, like a man who had mastered the image of confidence but had never fully settled into his own skin.

He wanted so badly to be the kind of man who knew what he was doing, but there was something uncertain underneath it all, something he was hoping I wouldn’t see.

It wasn't until later that I realised the truth behind the statement—who you are in bed is who you are in life.

It was all a farce. The confidence, the ease, the self-assurance—none of it was real.

The Illusion of Care

Mathias played another role just as convincingly:

He was a caretaker.

The flat was immaculate. Not just clean—perfect. The laundry always done, the bed made immediately, the magazine tilted just so. He was so organised, so productive, so efficient—it felt like he was the kind of man who had his life together.

Yet he seemed to be completely comfortable having me in his home. He let me take command of the kitchen, my domain. He doesn’t know how to cook, and he was very happy to let me steer the ship there. He’d compliment my cooking. I relished spoiling him in this way.

Once, after a Saturday lunch at home, we sat together at the table. He read the FT and I browsed shoes for a charity event he invited me to. I didn’t have anything to wear and had been spending far more time than I would have liked shopping for a dress, a clutch, shoes—all the things he passive aggressively assumed a woman in her mid-thirties would have.

“Why don’t you have anything to wear to something like this?” he had asked me. I was embarrassed.

I couldn’t afford to buy new dresses or new shoes or new anything.

“I’ll buy you a pair of shoes,” he offered multiple times. It made me uncomfortable.

Sitting at the table that day, next to one of his quieter moods, I suddenly felt on the spot when he asked: "What would you even be living on if I hadn’t asked you to move in?"

It wasn’t just a question. It was a reminder. There was something passive-aggressive in his tone, something that made me feel cornered, small, indebted.

I told him, "I don’t want to make this relationship about money."

He had been generous—yes. But generosity, in his world, was currency. And I was meant to feel it.

Suddenly, he was confused by my financial situation—as if I hadn’t already explained it. The money I had poured into my ventures, my nascent businesses that never quite took off. The books. The cost of living while I tried to build something. Our exchange was uncomfortable; it left me feeling ashamed, embarrassed, uncertain. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe I’m not special enough to warrant dating someone who’s job searching. I went into the kitchen with a tear in my eye, swallowing the lump in my throat.

And then, just as suddenly, he was soft again.

He followed me in, wrapped his arms around me from behind and pressed his lips to my hair.

"I want you to be happy."

His voice was low, tender, full of warmth. I gripped the back of his hand as he held it around my collarbone. This was part of his trickery: moments like this—moments of sweetness, of care, of what felt like real love. Moments where I convinced myself that he meant it. That it wasn’t manipulation. Because this was the version of him I wanted. This was the version I had fallen for. But now, looking back—I see it so clearly.

It was a game. The push and pull. Make me feel small, and then save me from it. A performance I was falling for over and over again.

It’s strange how much, even amidst constant moving and waves of emotions, I feel

like me again. How much I feel my sense of humor coming back and my goofiness,

my value and my personality. How much I’ve been able to sleep now that no one

shames me for going to bed at 10 or 10:30. How much I appreciate a kind and

gentle date or a friend who is there for me in a time of need. I didn’t realise how

much of myself I was shoving into a pocket.

The Weight of Silence

He had long hours, a demanding job. He saw his son randomly throughout the week. There was no set schedule, which meant I couldn’t plan anything with him in advance, but I was expected to be available to him when he was free. I understood that he was under pressure. I tried to not be one more thing vying for his time, for his attention. But I was, after all, the girlfriend he asked to move in.

I would spend time getting ready for our dates—blowing out my hair, picking out a dress, slipping on heels. I looked forward to our time together, knowing how limited it was. The long hours, the responsibilities—our nights out should have been sacred. And yet, some nights when we sat down at dinner, he would stare straight ahead, looking absolutely miserable.

I would try to draw him out, but it was as if I wasn’t there. As if he was a teenager being punished, forced to sit through dinner with his family. Outside, while waiting for an Uber, he would stand a few paces ahead, leaving me alone in the dark, not even offering a glance in my direction. I would follow behind him, my heels clicking on the pavement, my stomach tightening.

"Are you okay?" I would ask gently, wanting to yell at him in frustration but not daring. "Did I do something?"

He’d shake his head.

And then the silent treatment would begin. Days of it. One night, he was fine. The next morning, he barely looked at me. At home, he responded in grunts. No eye contact. A void where warmth used to be. He made sure I felt the weight of his misery.

I tried to be nice, to be sweet, to be happy—to coax it out of him. No dice.

I sucked it up. I just took it.

I’ll never forget his face when I tried to say goodbye one morning while he did his hair. He wouldn’t even look at me. He made a face at his reflection and grunted like a grumpy adolescent. Except he wasn’t my grumpy adolescent; he was my boyfriend.

What did I do to deserve that? Nothing.

I would walk out of the flat thinking, What a jerk.

But beneath my anger, I was a bucket of nerves. The anxiety gnawed at me, the constant wondering—Did I do something wrong? Is he going to toss me out?

And then I’d get a text from him. Have a productive day, miss you xx

That was it. After making me feel expendable. Like he wished I wasn’t there but couldn’t say it outright. Like my presence in his home was something he had to endure.

One meaningless text.

And somehow, it worked.

Because by then, I had told myself not to ask for more. To take what came and adjust accordingly.

Of course I wondered, if he was upset about something, why wasn’t he capable of communicating? Healthy relationships require open, honest dialogue—not silence used as a weapon. No one should have to live in fear of being ignored or abandoned for speaking their truth. But time and time again, I reminded myself what a difficult period he was going through. I muted myself as best as I could.

And when he finally snapped at the end of those silent treatments—when “Not Nice Mathias,” as he proudly referred to himself, came out, he’d project everything onto me. “You’ve been sulking around the flat for days, so grumpy, so grim, not speaking to me!” he’d yell. I’d stand there in shock. How could I argue with someone so twisted?

I’ve been with guys who were not prince charming but none of them claimed to love

and care for me the way you did, and none of them were nearly as vicious and

cruel to me the way you were. I was in shock. And I did not know what to make of

your behaviour— it’s not something I’ve seen before. I grew up with the other

extreme— the most calm, the gentlest, the least moody man in the world. Here is

what I’d like to say to you now: your behaviour is completely foreign to me. So,

maybe you do feel things you don’t express and maybe you do regret some of it but

you can’t or won’t say so in a way that is meaningful to me, or maybe you did care

for me or love me even with this other side of you that erupts. I don’t know what the

truth is, and you’re no help in clarifying. Maybe you have an extraordinarily

difficult time with your emotions or maybe you are having some sort of crisis and

everything seemed to implode and I unfortunately was wrapped up in it. Maybe you

are struggling with something you’re not telling me. But Mathias… you can tell me.

You can talk to me. Still—after everything.

One Saturday, I asked if he wanted to go to the farmers market. The ten-minute Uber ride seemed to set off his mood. In the car, I asked a simple question—would he be interested in taking a drive in the countryside one weekend? It was something I loved to do, just to get out of the city and explore. But he wouldn’t look at me. He ignored me, his grim face fixated out the window. I reached for his hand.

He mumbled an answer. “No, I don’t enjoy sitting in traffic. It’s a mess getting out of London.”

Why the mood? I wondered. Wouldn’t the normal response be, “There’s always traffic getting out of London but yes let’s do it one day—I’m sure it will be worth it.” Or something similar.

Instead, he was prickly.

I felt hurt and cheated. I had been so patient, so adoring, so sweet, so flexible with him. And what did I get? His cold shoulder, his eye-rolling, his expressions of misery and detest.

I grew quiet. Not sulky, just drained. I felt crushed by it.

At the farmers market, I tried to maintain a smile, but he was distant, detached. He refused to speak to me. He walked ahead of me, deliberately keeping space between us. What should have been a lovely Saturday morning together became just another confusing day with Mathias.

Walking through the neighbourhood, not speaking to me, I asked him a few times what was wrong. He grew angry and walked ahead of me.

I stopped him and asked, “Please, tell me what’s wrong? Stop walking ahead of me. Look me in the eye and tell me what’s wrong.”

He snapped at me. Stormed off. “Enough of this. Enough with the drama. You’re the one who was quiet in the Uber. You’re ruining my Saturday.”

And then, over his shoulder, he yelled: "Just apologise and keep walking."

Apologise for what? And why was I the one chasing him?

If I had lived alone, I would have left him there on the street.

I cannot believe I spent the rest of that day trying to appease Mathias—being as sweet as possible, trying to make him happy again. He punished me all day for what—for being quiet in an Uber? A normal reaction would have been to take my hand, look into my eyes, and say, Hey, my love, what’s wrong?

But Mathias’s reactions weren’t normal.

He spent that evening with his son at his old house (a strange arrangement that confounds me to this day). I sat at home unable to relax, wondering how many days left I had in that flat before he sent me packing. I texted him a heartfelt message, hoping maybe if I put it in writing, he’d soften more easily. My stomach was knotted in my throat. I felt like a girl who had fallen for a guy who had never liked her back to begin with—not a woman whose boyfriend had professed love and a desire to marry her.

When he came home, he was in a good mood, as if nothing had happened that day. He never brought it up. I was expected to step in line with him.

I had reached a point where I was emotionally exhausted. And because of his razor sharp, completely unpredictable temper, I was also, as much as I tried to minimise it, starting to become afraid of Mathias.

He had proven himself to be erratic, and I didn’t know what he was capable of. I didn’t think he was violent, but at the same time, his temper was fiery, irrational, and could flare up at any moment over nothing. He didn’t feel remorse. He wasn’t sensitive in the face of my hurt, my calm, my attempts to reason. He was also deceivingly, shockingly strong.

These were not good signs.

Every time I had my back to him in the flat, I thought better of it.

I’ve gone through every emotion and feeling and reaction about everything that

happened. As to be expected. You can’t treat someone the way you did, say

essentially nothing about it, and then expect them to be unphased. I would hope

that you would understand that and recognise that and expect it. Nevertheless, I

know that you are going to be upset/annoyed/angry — and more— by some of it. I

probably should not have expressed every thought that came to mind. You

completely shut down on me after such an event, after so much black and white

behaviour, and you gave me so little insofar as explanation or acknowledgement

after the fact…it left me feeling like, wow he feels no remorse, he feels nothing,

how is that possible? Was I nothing to him? That’s how little he cares about my

feelings — get rid of her, never look back.

The First Strike

On Halloween, Mathias came home from trick or treating with his son in a good mood, with no explanation for his behaviour over the previous days. I was, as usual, expected to roll from one mood to the next, to pretend the whiplash wasn’t real.

That night, he tried to have sex, and I didn’t feel like it. I was still hurt, still confused, still disturbed by the accumulation of everything.

And then he slapped my face—lightly, playfully, whatever it was.

“You hit me,” I said softly, cautiously.

“No, I didn’t,” he responded.

I grew wary. Scared, even. Not because it hurt—it didn’t. But because I was in a situation with a volatile boyfriend whose temper I now feared. Hitting me—whether in that moment or not—sounded alarms in my head.

Not only did he hit me, he denied it.

I said it again. “Yes, you did.” I wore a small smile to keep it light, knowing I was playing with fire.

He recoiled. Grew angry in a hot second. Accused me of acting weird.

And then he went off on me.

That was when I thought to myself: Oh my god. He is ill. He must be mentally ill.

Who treats their girlfriend like this? Who reacts like this? The correct response would have been, my love, I’m sorry. A little gentleness, and I would have shrugged it off.

But instead, Mathias became an angry lion, ripping into me over a myriad of unrelated topics with no warning.

It was sick.

I stared at him, heart hammering, words sputtering. Where to even begin? How do you defend yourself against someone like this? Against something you don’t even understand? I didn’t have the answers. But I knew one thing—it was worse than I thought.

I had coffee yesterday with a Colombian woman a few years younger than me

who spent an hour talking about how she doesn’t take shit from any guy—not one

suggestion of disrespect. And I left not sure if I felt inspired or pathetic. I kept

wondering, why does this come so naturally to her? And then here I am, just

taking abuse after abuse and going back for more. What the f*ck is wrong with

me?

Later, I realised what that moment was. When I held a mirror to him, when I said ‘yes, you slapped me,’ he lost control of the narrative. His response was to fly into a rage, to gaslight, to rewrite the scene.

The fear I felt wasn’t irrational. My body and mind were telling me something that my heart wasn’t ready to accept: I didn’t feel safe with him. That feeling doesn’t come out of nowhere. It builds over time—through the way he dismissed me, how he twisted reality, how his moods controlled the space, how his anger could flip in an instant.

I shouldn’t have been thinking about where knives were. I shouldn’t have felt scared to sleep next to someone who claimed to care about me. And yet, I did. That’s my instinct recognising something before my rational mind could catch up. Fear doesn’t come from nowhere—it’s a response to danger, even if the danger isn’t fully realised yet.

The fact that I still slept with him, despite being scared was survival. It was about managing him, trying to keep things steady, keep the peace, avoid whatever storm might come if I didn’t comply. I was in a situation where my body was screaming at me to leave, but my mind was negotiating, reasoning, telling me, maybe it’ll be okay, maybe it’s just in my head, maybe I can handle it.

But here’s the truth for every woman who has ever been in this situation: you shouldn’t have to handle it. I should never have been in a place where I felt I had to weigh the risk of setting him off against my own comfort and safety.

That’s not love. That’s control. That’s fear. And I was right to be scared.

Who Will He Be Tonight?

The unpredictable snapping was part of a cycle I didn’t realise was a cycle until after I got out.

Once, I was on my laptop when he got home, and maybe—because I didn’t immediately close it, didn’t drop everything to give him my full attention—he exploded.

His four-hour rages ate into my sleep—especially the nights before my most important interviews. He would cut deep, finding the exact spots where I was most vulnerable, insulting me in ways that weren’t just cruel, but targeted. He’d threaten me. “You’re not staying here anymore. Pack your shit and go.”

“Mathias, it’s the middle of the night—you can’t just kick me out onto the street.”

“Oh yes I can, go to a hotel, I don’t care.”

Occasionally I dared to fight back.

“You’re not a nice person, Mathias. I don’t deserve this. And if you keep treating people this way, you’ll live a lonely, miserable, angry life,” I said, an inch from his face.

“I’m a nice person,” he kept repeating. “I’m a nice person.”

And then, like the flipping of a metronome, he would collapse onto the floor, weeping, his body shaking.

"I’m not processing things well."

"I’m not stable."

"I don’t deserve you."

"I’ve never been like this before."

Just like that, the rage would transform into self-pity.

And I—the one he had just demolished—was expected to put him back together.

Then—right on cue—

“I miss my son,” he’d cry, a little too conveniently.

I started hiding my key in my purse. A precaution. I even buried it in a small pocket beneath a lip balm, knowing how conniving he could be. I never knew when he was going to erupt next. I started carrying my passport with me. I stopped eating.

Mathias had become vicious, unpredictable, cold as ice, like something out of a nightmare. He could be one person in the morning, another by dinner, and a complete stranger by night. Every time I left the flat, I was terrified that when I returned, the locks would be changed, that I would be shut out of the home I had been invited into—discarded like I was nothing.

Every time I slipped my key into the lock, I held my breath. The turn. The click. The moment of relief—until next time.

At night, when I heard him come home, I froze. My entire body went still, waiting. Listening.

Was he angry? Silent? Charming? Would he walk past me without a word, or stalk toward me like a predator ready to pounce?

Or would it be something else entirely?

Because sometimes, the shift was just as sudden in the other direction.

Would he pull me into his arms, whispering "my gorgeous" into my ear as if nothing had happened? Or would he hurl some new, cruel insult at me, aiming for the place where I was most fragile?

How many versions of him would I have to manage before morning? How much sleep would I manage to get?

Mostly I feel completely fooled.

You think you clarified everything but you haven’t. You can’t treat someone the

way you did, tell her you love her and want to be with her but that you can’t look at

her one more minute, and then just block her and expect her not to question

anything. I know you're busy. Good for you. That doesn’t give you a ‘pass’ on

taking responsibility for this. All I’m looking for is some understanding. Try to see

this from my perspective, try to imagine how I feel. If you genuinely feel like,

actually in hindsight it was never about you and I never wanted to be with you and

I can’t believe I asked you to move in… by all means go ahead and be that direct. I

get you were overwhelmed. I’m not referring to that. I’m referring to your anger

toward me, and how you disposed of me so carelessly. I’ve never met someone so

incapable of communicating. Please can you try. I just want answers. I don’t want

open-ended confusion.

I asked you a few Saturdays ago, was it ever about me, and

you said it was always about me. But look at how little you’ve shown you care…

Today, after six moves in two weeks, I have a really really hard time believing that.

Do You Hate Me?

A few nights after one of his explosive rages—after he had outdone himself with insults so calculated and cutting, they will reverberate in my head for years—I came home from drinks with a friend, and Mathias was acting strange. Unsteady. Off-kilter. His movements were nervous, lacking his usual confidence. He was trying to engage with me in mundane ways, following me from room to room. Hovering in the doorway as I washed my face, lingering as I put my clothes away, never quite approaching me in the way I could tell he wanted to. It was eerie, how uncomfortable he seemed in his own space, like a man who had been caught in a lie but couldn’t remember which one.

I left him in his office and went into the bedroom to go to bed. As soon as I shut the door, it slid open again.

He didn’t walk in—just stood in the frame, half in shadow, shoulders curled inward. He was looking at me sideways, as if facing me fully would be too much to bear. And then, in the smallest voice I’d ever heard from him, he asked: "Do you hate me?"

Not “I’m sorry.”

Not “I shouldn’t have said those things.”

Not “How can I make this right?”

Instead of apologising, instead of owning up to his behavior, he needed reassurance. He needed me to comfort him for the damage he had caused. That was Mathias. Every fight, every cruel remark, every time he cut me down—he wanted to reset things without accountability, like a child who had thrown a tantrum and, moments later, expected the world to start again, unchanged.

I looked at him, exhausted.

I exhaled. "No, I don’t hate you," I said, the words automatic, instinctual. "But why don’t you address the things you yelled at me the other night instead of ignoring them?"

Silence.

He wasn’t going to address it. He never did. That was how he worked—rage, destruction, cruelty, and then silence. A clean slate, if only I’d accept it. He expected me to absorb the damage, to smooth the air between us so he wouldn’t have to.

He never regretted the things he said. He only regretted that I remembered them.

Mathias, I’m not going to pretend like you are perfectly stable when we know you

are not. I’m guessing this is why you refuse to speak to me, because I've seen you in

moments you’re not proud of. I know my bringing it up makes you mad. But please

know that I’m not reaching out to you to accuse you of anything. You can be going

through something or have some sort of ongoing challenge and still be all the

things that you love about yourself and all the things I loved about you too.. No one

is a perfect version of themselves every day. Certainly, it would be helpful to

recognise your inability to regulate your emotions and your tendency to rage. Being

angry at the recipient of your black and white moods is not going to make it go

away. I’m not a therapist but I’m also not a total dunce. I care about you, still, but

I care about myself too. The tumult and toxicity was bad enough, but to come out of

it being treated like I did something horrible to deserve it and to deserve your

hatred is a bit too much. Please try to think about someone other than yourself. I’ve

managed to let go of my anger toward you.

And considering what happened… if I can do it, so can you.

Because He Wasn’t Always Cruel

We had our moments. A day or two, sometimes even a few in a row, where things felt good. Normal. When it was good, it was really good. And in those moments, I could almost forget what he was capable of.

For every night he stood in the doorway at 2 a.m., smirking as he told me to pack my things and get out, there was a morning when he wrapped his arms around me, kissed my forehead, and told me how lucky he was.

For every time he sat stone-faced at dinner, acting like he didn’t want to be there, there was a moment when he did something helpful for me, when he said things like “I know you’re not in a traditional relationship, with full-time mutual attention. My work is extremely busy, my son needs me, and I want to be with you all the time. Thank you for understanding—it’s not going to be like this forever. It’s just a transition period.”

And I’d feel sympathy all over again. What did I know about divorce? About custody? About a life like his?

That was another skill—timing. He never let me get too far. Knowing when to withdraw and when to dangle just enough warmth to keep you from walking away. If you tried to leave, he’d come back softer, more vulnerable. Maybe it was a grand gesture, maybe it was something simple—a text that made it seem like he finally understood, that maybe this time, it would be different.

It wasn’t.

I lived in that push and pull. It rewired me.

“Your butt feels smaller,” he said to me one morning.

I knew why.

I’ve finally confessed to friends everything you’ve put me through. I kept so much

of it to myself, because I knew once I said these things out loud, there would be no

going back. They would tell me the truth—about you and how horrible this

relationship was and how I don’t deserve a second of this and thank god it’s over.

Thank god it’s over before you decided that hurting me is normal. Thank god it’s

over before I wasted any more time taking the abuse, before I wasted any more of

my precious time with someone who doesn’t deserve my care or energy or love.

Where Do I Belong?

I was going through something too. No, it wasn’t a divorce or separating from a child, but it was a real, difficult, and sometimes painful chapter of my life. I had left behind a home, a version of myself I had been trying to build. I had no stability, no foundation. I wasn’t asking Mathias to solve that for me—but I wanted to be able to talk about it. I wanted to be able to lean on my boyfriend for support, not solutions. But I quickly realised that with him, I wasn’t allowed to have problems. Mine didn’t "stack up" to his.

At first, I stopped bringing things up because I knew he wouldn’t be sensitive. Then, I stopped because I was afraid. Afraid that if I let him see how unsettled I felt, he would see me as an investment not worth making. I could feel it in his calculations—what does she have going for her? Is she stable enough to be with me? And that gave me anxiety, made me feel more alone than ever. Because here I was, finally in a relationship, and yet, I couldn’t trust that I wouldn’t be discarded the second my life felt inconvenient for him.

One night, when he was shaking with rage, he threw it in my face. “You should just go back to California,” he yelled. “You’re always talking about it—why not just leave London?”

That moment crushed me. Was I not allowed to talk about places I had loved? About parts of my life that shaped me? Why did any expression of longing feel like a threat to him? I hated that he made me feel so uncertain. I wasn’t safe to reminisce, to dream, to feel things. I wasn’t safe to try. To struggle. I wasn’t safe to simply exist as myself.

I imagine you resented my presence in your house, because indeed you never had a

moment to yourself, while you worked so hard and slept so little and were pulled

from one thing to the next. And I’m just… there, existing, and somewhere along the

way I went from being something you wanted to something that weighed on you and

made you edgy and more stressed. I get that. I am not surprised. But you knew from

the start I was job searching, and we talked about how it’s not an overnight thing. So

the fact that I’m not racing out of the house fully dressed at 7:30am… it’s not fair to

resent me for that. It’s not as if I was lying on the sofa all day, and no I was not

wandering. I do know what it is to have responsibilities and I do know what it is to

be an adult, and my forehead still wrinkles at how condescending you were,

insinuating that I am some sort of non-adult, that I don’t know what it is to be busy.

“That’s called being busy. That’s called being an adult.” Fuck you. I’m not a child. I

hate that you said that. Of all the things you said and did, I hate that the most.

I get it. I’m not an ideal girlfriend.

I’m almost 35 and my life is completely unsettled. ‘A mess’ as you say. ‘There must

really be something wrong with me.’ It does look weird to an outsider,

doesn’t it? Why don’t I have it together yet? I should have a steady job, I should have

a bank account that doesn’t make me anxious, I shouldn’t have my belongings

spread across continents. I should have savings. That’s what a desirable woman has,

right? That’s the kind of woman you want to invest in, I understand. I can’t blame you for that.

But the way you yelled at me about it and how you phrased it, viciously cruel—how

you cut me down—no, you can’t justify that.

The Stranger in Milan

While in Milan for a few weeks searching for freelance work, I called Mathias on the verge of tears—wanting, needing to confide in my boyfriend, to turn to him for support and kindness. But even as the phone rang, I already knew it wasn’t wise.

Mathias didn’t know what to say. Instead of reassurance, he immediately brought up the visa situation, casting everything in a bleak light, as if my uphill battle was futile. I hung up feeling just as discouraged as before—maybe worse.

I hoped he’d send me a message afterward, some small reinforcement of emotional support—the way I had done for him countless times. But he said nothing. Later, when I admitted I was hurt by this, by this dismissal of a moment when I was clearly in need of his sensitivity, he grew hot and hostile. He yelled at me. “Why would I bring it up again if I knew it was a subject that made you feel bad? Why not just move on, move past it?”

I thought about all the times I’d called my dad in moments like that. How kind and sensitive he was. How, without fail, he’d send a message afterward: Chin up, sweetie. Tomorrow is another day. And the next day, he’d call again, unafraid to bring it up, because for him, checking in wasn’t about awkwardness—it was about care.

That day in Milan, I asked myself: What kind of father will Mathias be?

It’s not even about effort. It’s that he doesn’t feel the sensitivity one expects.

He doesn’t have it.

When Mathias got to Milan for the weekend to visit me and had zero enthusiasm or curiosity— about the city or about my life there—I felt seriously confused. Why is this guy here? Why is he with me? He had no genuine interest in me, my past, or how I became the person I am.

I tried, cautiously, to bring this up at lunch. His ice-cold, defensive, and angry reaction was terrifying. Sitting there, I was speechless. Who is this angry man I’ve fallen in love with? Why wouldn’t he look me in the eye when I was hurting? Why wouldn’t he listen instead of cutting me off, laughing, accusing me of starting drama? “Thanks for the feedback,” he snapped. Why didn’t he care that I was hurting? Why did he take every attempt at communication as an attack?

I tried to calm him down, as if he were the hurt party. And that’s when I knew—I would always walk on eggshells, always be apologising for my own pain—the pain he caused.

Mathias was not the person I thought he was.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

The way that you communicated your feelings that evening was despicable and

cruel. You were cutting and purposefully hurtful. Yelling at me about topics that

you knew were sensitive to me, licking your finger and swiping it on the kitchen

floor and shoving it in my face. You treated me no better than you do the dirt on

that floor. No one deserves to be abused like that.

The Eviction

In the hours before he left to go back to London, he turned distant. Again, I wondered, why isn’t he being kind to me in our last hours together? Why did he come here in the first place? He made me feel like he did me a favour—a massive inconvenience. There was no love, no tenderness, no care.

The next day, he was curt with me on the phone, and I was in turn curt with him. Mathias, however, is the type who can dish it, but he can’t take it. He hung up abruptly, refusing to address the tension between us, and I was too emotionally drained to chase a resolution.

Minutes later, I received a text from him. “I don’t think you should come back to my place tomorrow.”

I would land in London the next day. This type of thought doesn’t spring from nowhere. He must have been harbouring it all weekend. Why hadn’t he brought it up to my face? If it wasn’t working for him at that point, why not just say, Listen, clearly this isn’t working, let’s talk about how we unravel this from here. I would have agreed.

I tried to call him again, maybe a dozen times, but he wouldn’t answer.

Panic set in—where would I go, with less than twenty-four hours to find somewhere to live? How would I afford something so last minute?

This wasn’t just heartbreak—it was logistics.

All of this—his moods, his brutality, the exhaustion of keeping up with him—was such a waste of time, energy, and focus when I needed it most. I had a career to rebuild. I needed confidence, clarity, momentum. If he had wanted to end the relationship, a decent man would have said, Listen, why don’t you take a few weeks to find somewhere else? We both know this isn’t working.

But Mathias didn’t end things.

He detonated them.

He made me beg. I cried into the phone. He made me plead.

“You should be honest with yourself,” he said. I heard him typing. He wasn’t even giving me his full attention. “It’s not fair to you. This relationship is one-sided. You should be with someone who can give you more time.”

He refused to acknowledge his cruelty—the sudden threats, the unexpected punishments.

“Mathias, this is not how you treat someone you claim to love,” I cried.

“I went to Milan! Doesn’t that prove I love you?” he yelled.

When I flew back, Mathias acted as if nothing had happened. At dinner that night, he was in a great mood. The whiplash was relentless.

When I had the guts to try to talk about it—when I tried to organise my emotions instead of just enduring the swings between silence and normalcy—I was the one being difficult. I would be punished.

Mathias never brought up Italy again. It had been a tough few weeks—not just because of his nightly phone calls, always steeped in bad temper, but because Milan itself felt like a mirror I wasn’t ready to face.

A stark reminder of how lost I was. The woman I had once been in that city no longer existed. Once upon a time, my life was full of potential, colour, dynamism. Now, I could barely recognise myself. Milan had once been a chapter of possibility. Now, it felt like a book I had been locked out of.

And worst of all—where was I going from here? I wasn’t just losing him. I was losing direction, momentum, stability. Why was it so difficult to create the next chapters? I felt like my life was standing still, that time was slipping away with nothing to show for it.

And worse yet—no way to support myself.

His lack of enthusiasm and interest was like a pin in the balloon I had been blowing up for years, waiting for the right person to finally fly it with. I felt like I didn’t even exist. Like a mannequin—he could have brought anyone to that sushi restaurant, and nothing would have changed.

As he once said, sometimes he brought a date there just to have someone to go to dinner with.

That’s exactly how I felt in the relationship at that point. It wasn’t about me. It was about Mathias having someone to boost his ego when he needed it, someone to provide company, someone to absorb his anger whenever he felt like unleashing it.

But for every fleeting moment he was happy, I tried to hang on a little longer. I was in love with him, even if sometimes I felt like I could have walked away and never spoken to him again.

Before I returned from Italy, I had made dinner plans with a friend. Mathias had been so angry at me that I—stupidly—asked if he wanted me to cancel.

He said, "Yes."

I stared at my phone. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t pretend to be considerate. Just yes.

To this day, I am shocked by it.

It was all about Mathias. Always.

You’ve said a few times you’re ‘disappointed.’ I don’t really know what you’re

referring to. I suppose you’re disappointed that I was such a disaster for you. And

that I don’t have any money at the moment. I’m disappointed that I was such an

idiot, that I fell for any of it, that I stayed for as long as I did, and that I don’t seem

to be a ‘real adult’ enough to be taken seriously. Thank you for underlining it so

harshly. And thank you, I suppose, in a weird way, for pushing me away. It could

have been years. That would have been a very, very deep hole.

A Father In Theory

Mathias had once mentioned, almost offhandedly, that his ex-wife had complained there were no photos of their son in his flat. It wasn’t something he had noticed on his own, not something that had troubled him in the quiet of an evening. It was only after she pointed it out, after it was presented as a flaw, that he felt compelled to act.

And then, on a Monday afternoon, I found them. Black frames stacked neatly on a pile of books—face down.

I picked one up. His son, beaming, full of life. A child who should have had a place in his home, whose presence should have been undeniable. I texted him: Do you want me to put these out?

No, I’ll do it later, he replied.

But he never did.

Face down. On a pile of books. Like a burden, not a loved one.

This wasn’t forgetfulness. It was who he was. Perform just enough to avoid criticism, then discard and ignore when no one was watching.

His flat. His job. His social life. His own child. All just props in the Mathias Show.

If he could treat his own child this way, what chance did I ever have?

This was a man who was fundamentally uncomfortable with anything real. The idea of having to feel, to be present, to actually be a father—it was too much for him. So he buried it. Literally. That level of detachment wasn’t just neglectful. It was disturbing.

What kind of father does that?

Sometimes I’d find him sitting in the living room ordering inconsequential things for his son on Amazon. He’d shove them into a closet until it was time to take them out.

Click, buy, stash—Mathias in a nutshell.

To the outside world, he was a devoted father balancing work and family. But in reality, he was neither fully present nor fully absent—just hovering somewhere in between, playing whatever role suited him best in the moment.

Mathias existed in a strange limbo. If he was just dropping by their old home a few times a week to see his son while his ex was still there, that wasn’t co-parenting. That was an extension of their marriage, a new version of the same dysfunctional dynamic, only now with more resentment.

I always wondered, why did he let her control everything? Was he avoiding conflict? Relying on her to handle all the logistics of their son’s life because it was easier that way? Or did he like the arrangement, playing dad without having to shoulder the responsibility of structuring his own time with his son?

And then, one day, the arrangement shifted. It wasn’t a decision he made on his own—his ex had reached her limit. What bothered me wasn’t the fact that I had to hide my existence and leave the flat when his son came over, because neither his ex nor his son knew that I lived there. It was that he wasn’t actually choosing to have his son over—just accepting it once it was forced. Didn’t this say everything about Mathias as a father?

And it wasn’t just fatherhood—it was everything. His career, his (lack of) friendships, his past marriage, and now, me. The same pattern played out in every part of his life. He was always brimming with some internal conflict—guilt, resentment, jealousy, insecurity, pride, irritation—but he would rather suffocate it than face it. His fixation on power and perception dictated his every move.

At the root of it all was bitterness. Not toward me. Not even toward his ex-wife. But toward himself. His inability to be anything real. His resentment toward himself leaked onto everyone around him, poisoning whatever connections he still had.

He used to say that every day his goal is to be a ‘better Mathias than yesterday.’ I found this eerily ironic, considering his glaring sociopathic tendencies.

He was smart but blind. Powerful yet weak in moments that required softness. Observant but oblivious to the things that mattered.

Mathias didn’t live his relationships—he performed them.

You have projected so many of your issues onto me. Verbatim. You define

manipulative, Mathias. You define grim and grumpy and childish. You define

someone who cannot take responsibility. You are an emotional abuser. You are

unstable. You are a harm to others and yourself.

As I said in my message, I hope you get the help you so clearly and desperately

need.

I see you now.

Shame on me for not following my gut.

The Aftermath of His Rage

After his blow-ups, I tried to talk to him. I needed to process, to understand. "Can we talk about this? You were so angry. Did you actually mean it when you told me to leave?" I’d ask. His words lingered. I was still reeling, trying to make sense of how someone who claimed to love me could treat me with such cruelty.

But he refused. He expected me to wake up the next day and act as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t eviscerated me the night before. But I didn’t work that way. Who does?

The fact that he refused to acknowledge any of it made it worse. How could he shatter me and then just walk away from the wreckage like it was nothing? And when I did bring it up, he would snap again. My pain was a massive inconvenience.

Once, I tried to explain it, laying it out in a way I thought might reach him. "Mathias, I can’t move on from these things if you don’t help me. These wounds are raw. I need your help to heal if we’re going to move past this together. Does that make sense?"

He paused. Just for a second. Then his face hardened.

"No."

I stared at him. Speechless. No? Just... no? Flat-out, unflinching, angry no.

"Just move on," he said.

That was it. That was all he had to offer me.

I had nothing to say in response. How could I reason with someone so cold? He functioned without feeling. Without conscience.

Later, I understood that Mathias doesn’t have the emotional depth, the self-awareness, or the empathy required to truly feel the weight of what he did.

That’s why I could never win with him— because I was playing a human game, and he wasn’t even in the same arena.

The Rewriting of Reality

To me, many moments were raw, emotional, and defining. To him, these same events were moments to manage, to shut down, to make go away. That’s the key difference between us. I was feeling it; he was controlling it.

He’d reframe events, subtly adjust the narrative until suddenly, I wasn’t sure what was true anymore. He was a master at keeping me off-balance. When he hurt me, he’d either erupt in anger or retreat into wounded silence. If I pushed back? If I refused to accept his version of reality, he escalated.

He told me once that he “felt trapped.”

It was the kind of vague, convenient statement that could be molded into anything. I realised later, he was a master at this craft—weaponising ambiguity to evade responsibility. He’d give me vague statements all the time. “I disagree,” he’d reply to a layered, heartfelt message. With what, I’d frustratingly wonder. Give me something with weight, Mathias!

Maybe it was just a narrative he spun after the fact, a way to justify the destruction he left in his wake. He always finds a way to absolve himself. Whatever he meant by those words, it fit into his pattern: doing things that were bound to cause a reaction, then acting like he didn’t understand why people were upset.

Did he even fully understand what he was doing? Or was he just moving from one situation to the next, expecting the world to bend around him, expecting people to adjust while he avoided any real accountability?

Or worse—did he know exactly what he was doing all along?

You Can Get Out Tonight

By the end, we were barely in a relationship. Our conversations revolved around his constant back-and-forth—saying he wasn’t sure he had the capacity for a relationship but that he loved me and wanted to be with me. That it wasn’t fair to me. That I had been exceptional in handling his situation, that he knew he’d never find anyone as caring or understanding—but that it was just so complicated for him at the moment.

I tried not to be around as much; I could see he needed space. And yet, when I wasn’t there, he accused me of being out looking for something better. He yelled at me one night that he only ever saw me in my leggings, that we didn’t go out enough. But his schedule didn’t have time for me. I told him I’d make a few more dinner reservations. A week later, he yelled at me that I was only there to be taken to dinner.

I couldn’t win.

Our last days together were tense, marked by one of his implosive rages where he took aim at the most fragile places in me.

"There must be something wrong with you," he said. "You’re not a real adult. You’re a child."

He accused me of lying about my job search, of not looking hard enough. He found it suspicious that I hadn’t secured one within two months. He yelled that I didn’t do enough around the flat—Why wasn’t I cleaning every day with all my free time? (I was.) He licked his finger, swiped it on the floor, and stuck it in my face. Why wasn’t I cooking meals he could eat as leftovers? (I did.) He yelled that he wasn’t understanding anymore about my situation. That I should have been paying his bills, paying half his rent. When I asked how much it was, so that I could contribute, the number changed three times in three seconds.

"Mathias, if this has been bothering you, why didn’t you bring it up calmly?" I asked. "We could have discussed it."

But everything had to come out in a fire.

He raged and raged, his body shaking as he yelled at me, his fists slamming on surfaces. I pleaded with him. I tried to defend myself. I sat on my knees next to him, trying to coax him into a sensitive, kind place. But he seethed to no end.

Mid-week, he left his office to have coffee with me. He put his hand on my thigh and told me how beautiful I looked. I said he also looked handsome—as he always did.

“I wore this for you, knowing I’d see you,” he said, referring to his suit jacket.

“I wore these, knowing I’d see you,” I said, pointing to my heels.

I tried to talk to him about our living situation.

He wouldn’t engage in the discussion.

He never apologised for the yell-a-thon earlier that week.

He vacillated again. I told him his uncertainty wasn’t fair to me—one minute, he said he couldn’t handle everything, and the next, he wanted me next to him at all times. When I tried to talk about it, he said it gave him anxiety and that he needed to focus on work.

I didn’t know what to do anymore except maybe be quiet. But if I went quiet, he’d accuse me of being in a mood.

That evening, he was strangely apologetic. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight. He wanted to hold me, to be next to me. I just wanted to go to sleep. I had barely slept in weeks, constantly managing his moods. He was sorry. I was the best thing to ever happen to him. He didn’t want to lose me. He kissed me, he held me, he even tried to have sex with me.

The next night, the last night in the flat, he came home from a work dinner, buzzed, and walked around me as if nothing had happened. I was a little standoffish but friendly, trying to walk the tightrope. I told him I didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. I didn’t know how to be myself.

He said he could see that.

I started to suggest that maybe the relationship was over, that I needed a few weeks to find a place to live. He went cold—

"What—you think you can live here but not be my girlfriend?"

I could see that wasn’t a smart route, so I changed course.

"Do you want to be with me?" I asked him point blank.

He paused.

"Well, I guess that answers it," I said.

But then he said, "Yes."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Was clarity even worth fighting for anymore? I had nothing left.

"It’s complicated," he said.

"It’s not. It’s a yes or a no."

I told him I wanted to go to sleep. And once again, I reassured him that I would leave by the end of the year, whether he wanted to be together or not.

Suddenly, he went from sitting on the edge of the bed, holding my ankle, telling me he didn’t want to lose me, that he loved me—to snapping.

"You don’t have to wait that long. You can get out tomorrow. You can get out tonight."

My face twisted in confusion. What?

He started to escalate, his voice growing angrier.

"Get out. Get out now. You’re out of here."

I sat in bed in my pajamas while the wind whistled outside, the cold of the night seeping through the windows. I felt small. Exposed.

"I can’t find something with no notice," I said, my voice quieter now, almost reasoning, though I knew reason had no place here.

But he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t thinking. He was already gone, locked in the decision he had made seconds ago.

"Yes, you can," he snapped. "Open up Airbnb right now. I don’t care where you go or how you do it, just get out."

Tears encroached before I could stop them. My chest tightened, my breath caught in my throat. I wasn’t crying yet, but it was coming.

He saw it. His eyes darkened. He pointed a finger at me.

"Don’t do that. Don’t you dare. Don’t manipulate me."

Then he turned and walked out of the room, leaving me there—alone, discarded, like a problem he had just solved.

The Last Night

After midnight, I folded my clothes quietly, my suitcase open on the floor. At one point, Mathias walked into the room, watching me for a moment before asking, as if completely out of the blue—"What are you doing?"

I stared at him. What did he think I was doing? Did he not remember the last few hours?

A half-hour later, I stepped into the bedroom to see if he was still awake. He looked up at me from where he sat on the bed with an innocent expression, his voice soft, almost loving—"What is it?"

I turned back to the suitcase. My hands were shaking as I texted my mother.

"He's a psychopath."

She told me to call the police, to ask them to stay in the flat while I packed my belongings. I told her no. He’d go ballistic. Instead, I slept with my phone under my pillow, the emergency number already dialed.

I thought about sleeping in the living room, curling up on the sofa just to put distance between us, but I worried it might make me more vulnerable—stepping out on him, showing him I was afraid. If I went to bed next to him that night, maybe he’d think he still held the power.

In the morning, I got back to work. I spent hours stuffing what I could into canvas bags and suitcases. No boxes. No proper moving transport. Just a frantic scattering of my life there repacked in a rush to escape.

Mathias stepped over my things with a despicable expression, as if I were nothing more than an inconvenience taking up space in his home.

To make matters worse, the washing machine was broken. The hot water wasn’t working. He was livid about everything, the rage simmering just beneath the surface.

At one point, I saw him sitting at the dining table in front of his laptop, but the screen was closed. He wasn’t working. He was staring at it, hands in his lap, the shades drawn, sitting in the dark. At another point, he was on the kitchen floor, trying to fix the washing machine. I thought I could hear him crying.

But when I finally had all seventeen of my unorganised bags by the front door, waiting for an Uber, he stood there, stone-faced.

“Well, I wish you the best, and that’s it,” he said, flat, void of emotion. Then he walked outside and crossed the street.

He stood there, watching the front door as I waited for the car. When it finally arrived, neither Mathias nor the driver helped me carry the heavy suitcases and bags down the ten steps outside the house.

Mathias watched me struggle.

I didn’t hear from him at all that day. Or the next.

I called him.

Not once did he apologise. Not once did he ask if I was okay.

And when I finally did call him, my voice breaking, searching for comfort, he was cold.

“Was it ever about me?” I asked as tears fell.

“It was always about you,” he said—sweet—for a second.

“Then how could you do this? How could you throw me out like that?”

That’s when he grew malicious again, in an instant. He told me I was twisting things. He said he never told me to leave. That it was my decision. That I had made a big drama out of nothing. That he had been looking forward to having Friday night dinner with me.

I could have thrown up.

How could he be so deranged?

Days later, in the middle of the night, another message came. Volatile, cruel. He reminded me what a ‘mess’ my life was before I met him. He threw every despicable thing he had ever done back at me, as if I were the one who had done them. As if he could cleanse himself by making me wear the guilt instead.

And a few weeks after that, when I arrived at a restaurant I had once booked for us, where we had gone on our last evening out together, I walked in the door only to be standing face to face with him. And his date.

That was the slap of truth, wasn’t it? It was never about me.

Believe me, some other girl will take your place and he will focus his unwell mind on her.

Feel sorry for the next girl. He will do the exact same bs. The mad rush, the mad

crush, and the nastiness. That’s who he is.

Mathias will never truly realise how mis-wired he is. Men like him don’t self-reflect—they self-justify. They rewrite history to make themselves the victim, they blame others for their shortcomings, and they convince themselves that the problem is always someone else. Mathias never took responsibility. There was always an excuse, always a reason why it wasn’t really his fault. If he could spin himself into the victim, even better. That was his escape hatch. If he was the one suffering, the one feeling trapped, then suddenly, he wasn’t responsible for anything at all. The cycle doesn’t force self-awareness; it just reinforces their delusion that they’re never at fault. They will only ever change if it serves them to do so. But deep, fundamental change, the kind that requires accountability, humility, and true remorse? Not a chance. Men like him don’t evolve—they just find new audiences.

Mental and Emotional Gymnastics

Even though I knew there was something fundamentally off about Mathias, I still struggled like I’ve never struggled before—to unravel myself, to process it all.

I sent him emails. So many emails. Each one a different version of myself—furious, heartbroken, desperate, detached, longing, numb. It was like throwing darts in the dark, hoping one would land somewhere, anywhere. Hoping he’d prove he wasn’t just a monster. That there was a reason. That he had loved me, in some way, even if he was incapable of showing it.

But he ignored them all.

I told myself if I could just understand him, maybe I could move on. If I could decode the mess, if I could get an answer, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so discarded. So easily erased.

But the truth was, I was searching for someone who never existed.

And I knew, and still know, no one should have to suffer that much to be loved. Love isn’t meant to feel like you survived something. It’s meant to feel like you belong— without having to fight for your place.

A week after I left, in a series of angry texts, he said “I gave you enough of my time, money, and emotions." That sentence says so much. It wasn’t love to him—it was a transaction. He measured his time, his money, his emotions like a balance sheet, as if I was some kind of investment he expected a return on. The second he felt it was no longer worth it, he resented me.

That statement wasn’t just cruel—it was a confession. It exposed how he saw the relationship all along. Not as something sacred, not as something built on mutual care, but as a deal where he decided what I was "worth" to him.

And let’s be honest—what he actually gave me? Emotional pain. Confusion. Anxiety. A sense of never feeling fully secure or loved. His time? Given on his terms. His money? Weaponised. His emotions? Dripped out in calculated doses to keep me hooked.

Real love doesn’t come with a ledger. Real love doesn’t make you feel like you owe someone for existing in their life.

Maybe the worst part isn’t what he did, but what he erased. He rewrote my entire reality—the relationship I had been so excited about. All the things he said that made me feel beautiful, special, adored, impressive—the moments I let myself believe, for once, that I was truly loved—it was all false. He gave them to me, and then he took them back. And then, with his misdirected anger and silence, I didn’t even get the chance to understand how it happened. He walked away unscathed, while I was left to process it alone. He tricked me. He knew who he was. He knew what he was capable of. He knew how easily he could break me. And he led me into the fire anyway. And when it was over? He dropped me like a hot potato and walked over me like dirt, as if I had been nothing more than a phase, a mistake, an unfortunate casualty of his own chaos.

And I was expected to accept it. To not feel confused or hurt or used. To pick myself up and move on without demanding even the smallest bit of closure. The damage was ongoing. The fact that he can switch from calm to cold, laugh at my distress, choose cruelty when kindness wouldn’t have cost him a thing…that’s not love.

One moment I feel solid and defiant-- what the hell was I thinking putting up with that — and the next

moment I feel heartbroken Mathias, because you took me for a total fool, used me for

a high, manipulated and abused me, and then tossed me out with less sensitivity than

a felon. And then you say you were torn between ‘she’s the one’ and ‘get her out of

my life.’ I’d like to understand.

It’s maddening when someone’s actions after the fact rewrite the past, turning what felt real and deep into something that suddenly seems like a deception, a trick of the light. I look back at moments that once felt sacred and now wonder if they ever existed at all.

And that’s what makes it even harder to let go. The door should be ajar—just enough for a conversation, a moment of closure, something human that doesn’t feel so poisoned. But instead, it’s been sealed so tightly it’s inverted, like a vacuum, like a black hole where nothing survives.

The root of Mathias’ problems— and others like him— is actually quite straightforward to me now. His fear of humiliation comes from deep insecurity. His rage is a defense against vulnerability. His detachment is a survival mechanism. But instead of addressing any of it, he repeats the same destructive cycle.

I wanted to help Mathias grow. I wanted to be the person he could trust. I wanted to show him that he didn’t have to live this way. Instead of recognising that, he fought me, hurt me, and resented me for seeing him so clearly. People like Mathias aren’t accustomed to being ‘seen.’ If he admitted I was right, that I saw him clearly, that I actually understood him, he’d have to acknowledge that his problems are real. You can’t force someone like Mathias to see himself, to make him change, to drag him out of the darkness when they’re holding onto it for dear life. This is what hurts me the most—the hopelessness of it all.

I can’t force you to be a version of yourself you refuse to be. It makes me really sad that this is how you

want to leave things with me. Here I’m trying to be kind to you, which you don’t

deserve—lets be honest-- and you give me nothing but venom. You see how twisted

that is, right?

in its most shallow form, i made some really beautiful memories with you, and you're

ruining them. please stop it.

thats it, i dont have anything more to say. on a positive note, with every heartfelt

attempt that you ignore, the less i miss you. because what am i actually missing… im

not sure anymore. someone who doesn’t exist i suppose.

Afterward, people gave me all types of warnings under the same heading. Stay away from him. People like Mathias are dangerous. Does he know where you live? Don't let him find out. Are you still in contact? Block him. Seriously, he's not stable.

I'd nod and agree.

You don't know what he's capable of, they’d warn.

If you have ever loved and been shattered by a Mathias, you get it. You want to believe that something must have hit him later. That there had to be a crack in the armor. That he lay in bed at night and felt something. But people like him don’t operate like that. Once the moment is over, it’s over. He moves on. Not because he’s strong, but because he doesn’t care in the way you do.

That’s the hardest part to accept— the realisation that while you were carrying the weight of certain moments, replaying, trying to make sense—he wasn’t. He has his dinner, listens to his podcast, and never looks back. It’s as if you were screaming into the void. The truth is, he is the void.

I think about people like Mathias now more than ever when I pass women whose lives look perfectly buttoned up from the outside. Some people are not what they seem. If you’re in it, prepare for the end—because the end isn’t peace, it’s war. And if you have a friend still fighting, be patient. The detox from this kind of manipulation and abuse is brutal, and unless you’ve survived a Mathias yourself, you won’t fully understand. But you can still stand by her while she finds her way back.