After over 2 years of thinking that he would be nice to me if I just CoMmUnIcAtEd, I realized that I had had enough. He was never going to respect me and that was never going to change. We are living together but he bought moving boxes and will be out of the apartment tomorrow! HALLELUJAH.

I have been reading FDS for close to a year but this is my first time posting and I just wanted to thank you all for the courage and inspiration to end the relationship. The first sign to leave should have been when I didn't want to tell my female friends about how he treated me because I knew they would be biased against him forever. Then I had my FDS friends-who-didn't-know-me-yet but I knew would say the same.

He seemed like a HVM when we started dating - undergrad and PhD from elite schools, ambitious, extremely capable at so many things, etc., etc. but he doesn't even respect my knowledge in my own field when I'm almost done with my PhD at arguably even more elite of a school. My interests were never good enough, my wants and needs never mattered in comparison to his, he walked in front of me instead of beside me, and you all know how the rest of the story goes. Lord knows why I put up with it for so long. I even read 'Why Does He Do That?' six months ago and nodded along the entire time. Between him and my POS father, they probably cover every single abuser type in the book. Luckily my mom has been free for almost 20 years and now I will be too. New plan: therapy for boundary-setting and lots of time away from men and relationships.