I’m writing this for any of the women who after reading the handbook still think they can apply this strategy to someone they have shown can treat them anyway they want. I’m writing this to show just where being a Becky causes you to end up.

I’m 30/f and I’ve been in a long term relationship with a 36/m for almost 10 years now. We have two kids together. He’s never been very kind to me. He cheated on me with a 19 year old girl back in 2017 and left me to be with her when I found out about it. But when that didn’t last with them, I took him back. I thought I was doing what I was raised to do. To stand by the man you love, no matter what.

This spouse of mine has always dangled “marriage someday” but always has a reason why we can’t plan a wedding right now. I was an exotic dancer when we met, and he never liked it. But it was my only source of income and I enjoyed having my own money. We had many issues with that. Until after we reconciled he said he was finally ready to marry me. I always said I would never continue to dance once I was married. So I quit dancing in March of 2018 and never looked back. I tried planning a wedding but anything I delegated for him to do, he didn’t do it. I had no access to the money so I could not buy the things we needed for the wedding, I had to give him a list of links of what we needed to start ordering. When 6 months went by and he hasn’t even ordered the $25 aisle runner, I knew it wasn’t happening. A month later he told me “Okay so...we are still getting married one day but I feel like we need to work on some things first, because I know you aren’t over me cheating on you, so the wedding is off, but just for now.”

He made sure to convince me we were getting married long enough for him to make sure I wouldn’t call off the reconciliation, and then went right back to canceling it once he was sure I wouldn’t leave. We have barely talked about it since then.

Which brings us to what happened tonight. I found this sub about 3 weeks ago and it opened my eyes to a ton of shit. Even though things have been “good” since the wedding was called off. When I say “Good” I mean we have had better conversations, we weren’t arguing, we were handling things in a mature and kind way if one of us had an issue. Once l started reading here, I realized I had stuck myself in the Becky mindset and that he was never going to marry me or see me as his dream girl. I realized the only reason things had been good was because I was doing that “cool girl” shit the whole time.

So after reading here I was gaining some confidence. Instead of replying “Eh I don’t know what I want for dinner, what do you want?” I would reply “You know what, I want Olive Garden for dinner.” Instead of being okay with him joining a group on social media where girls post nude photos, I told him I didn’t like it and would rather he leave the group. Never demanding, just vocal about how I really feel. I didn’t apply any of the rules here to the relationship, I was just trying out this whole confidence thing and saying how I really feel.

He did not like that. One bit. I walked into the bedroom a few days ago to ask him something, and he jumped out the bed in a panic and hid his phone. He would not tell me who he was talking too, and would not show me the phone. I was hoping he was joking with me so I walked out the room and sat down to collect myself. That’s when he tried saying he was “just venting to someone about me” and that he can’t tell me who because I made him unfriend anyone I don’t like. That he deserves to have a friend to vent too, and I have to deal with it. He claimed it wasn’t a female. But we all know that it’s a female. The fact that 3 days had gone by and he hasn’t tried proving he’s not cheating at all says it all. He just keeps telling me that I should leave if I feel that way. But when he had suspicions about me last week, I had to be kind to him and prove things to him for him to feel better.

I woke up today and seen the house a mess. I found out he left and went somewhere all day. I was getting to my breaking point. So I again start texting him while he’s laying in the bedroom. He’s still being cruel and telling me I have to deal with it because he won’t put up with my crazy shit again. So I tell him if he wants to be single then okay, we are single now. But that I’m not leaving my home right now. Especially not with what’s going on in the world. He says “Of course you won’t leave, you need a daddy to take care of you.” In which I said “I won’t ask you for anything, I’ll have someone loan me money.”

That’s when I noticed he walked out the room and was walking towards me, pissed. He was yelling something about how he wasn’t going to let me stay here while he paid all the bills and had to watch men pick me up or watch me talk to other men. He walked over to me and got in my face and I said something like “Are we really going to do this, we are adults we don’t put our hands on each other” and suddenly he grabs me by the neck, with both of his hands, lifts me from the chair, and pins me against a cabinet behind me and won’t let go. He was yelling into my face but I don’t remember what he was saying. I couldn’t breath. He held on for another 15 seconds and I was getting dizzy. Next thing I know, he’s moving me towards the back door in the laundry room. Hands around my neck squeezing, feet off the floor. Then he slams me to the ground and my head hits the wall and I’m scrambling to get away before he kills me.

So I run out to my backyard, where we have a camper that my own father lives in for the last year. I beat on the door for him to help me, and he walks out the camper door and starts blaming me for what happened. My own father. I’m now begging my father to let me inside the camper so I can sit down and catch my breath, and he is refusing to let me in because “he needs to get sleep, he has a job in the morning.” Then he starts berating me, telling me I should not have pissed off my spouse, telling me that I’m the one in the wrong. He’s telling me all I do is sleep all day. ( My kids have been on an opposite sleep schedule for the last 2 weeks where they are awake at night and sleep during the day, it’s been rough. The only chance I have to sleep is between Noon and 5pm ).

My father refused to help me. He told me not to call the cops. That I needed to go back inside and talk to my spouse. That there is something wrong with me and I have to fix it. It was during my father telling me this that my spouse left the house with his oldest son, so that way he wasn’t here when the cops came.

This is why the rule that you can’t follow this strategy while in a relationship is so important. It’s not only because it doesn’t work. It’s because it’s also dangerous. You have no idea what a man is capable of doing when he thinks he’s losing his grip on you and that your eyes are opening. You have already shown him he can do whatever he wants to you. You have already shown him you will keep coming back. You have to just leave. As hard as it may be, and I know you love him, he does not love you. He would rather that you leave versus him suddenly having to show you kindness and respect.