This is an old story, but with the whole #believewomen movement coming out, I feel it needs to be shared because of the serious consequences I barely managed to avoid.

My ex had a traumatic past. she (and her siblings) had been physically and sexually abused by her dad for a long time. She also had an unhealthy attachment to BSDM & aggressive behavior. She gleans pleasure by being beaten and associates positive emotions with it. At the same time (and as I learned later), she is easily triggered with respect to anything she perceives to be abusive. I should have realized all that was one big red flag, but I ignored it because I didn't realize how much that would influence our relationship.

We were in the pool, playing around. swimming laps, playing basketball in the pool, splashing each other, etc. All innocent and nothing sexual.

At one point, I splashed her, and in the process, accidentally pushed her underwater very briefly, for about a second. I didn't hold her underwater. In that moment, she was triggered in a really big way. she said I pushed her underwater, and I apologized, and said that I didn't mean to. After that our relationship dissolved and it never recovered. At the time I had no idea why, because she didn't communicate with me about it at all.

about 1-2 months later she met up with a guy she had known for a long time, and 1-2 months after that they got married. I wasn't broken up about it, because we were only casually dating anyways.

6 months after we broke up, she made up some excuse to come over to my place, and she apologized. I was confused, but she told me about the time we were swimming, and about how she was triggered, and somehow she felt that I was honestly trying to kill her by drowning her. She went on and said that she spoke about this to her husband, and asked him if she should go to the police. I thank god He didn't push her to report it. Over the course of that 6 months, she gradually began to realize that this situation was in fact a figment of her traumatic past. She began to realize I never actually tried to hurt her.

I was honestly shocked. I'd always made consent and respect top priorities in my relationships, and even though i'm not perfect, i'd never tried to violate a woman or deny a woman's right to consent in any way.

If I could meet her husband today, I would almost want to give him a hug. Not only did he avoid pushing her to report this to the police because he truly understood her traumatic past, but he provided for her the kind of atmosphere she needed to heal, an environment sufficiently healthy that allowed her to sift through her traumatic past and deal with it in a healthy way.

I am an incredibly lucky man. Not only did she own up to it, but she never needed to. I never even knew that she accused me of trying to kill her, and yet she apologized for it.

I guess i've learned my lesson, though.

tl;dr: don't date women with serious, unresolved mental health issues. it will not end well for you.