I'll try and keep this as short as I can, even though it'll be a fucking novel by the time I'm done.

I've been lurking/posting since 2012 with various accounts and have a pretty decent understanding of RP concepts. I've applied what I've learned here to my personal and professional relationships, with varying degrees of success. But all that stuff went out the window in December when my last relationship started.

When I met my ex, she pandered HARD to try and seem like a unicorn. We liked all the same things, had the same sense of humor, she'd find out what bands I was into and buy me their merch, every week she was buying me Pepe gear and Trump shirts and whatever else she could find, even though I never overtly admitted to being into those things. She knew I was into redpill manosphere stuff as well and was totally cool with it. And somehow I didn't see any of this as a red flag, despite the fact that her friends, family - her entire support network - all of them were John Oliver-watching mainstream liberals. I fell back into old beta goober habits thinking "she likes me for who I am, I don't have to put on some act". Mistake.

In February, her roommate bailed and left her stuck with the remainder of the lease. She called me one morning crying, saying she was gonna lose her apartment and didn't know what to do. She asked me to move in. And instead of stating the obvious, "We haven't been together long enough, can't you just put an ad on craigslist?", I jumped in to save the damsel in distress. I fucking moved in with her. Mistake.

Throughout the relationship, she told me about her ex, who she'd lived with for a year. She told me he was a manipulator, a sociopath, an "abuser", that he kicked her out on a whim and essentially put her out on the street. She made him out to be the biggest scumbag possible. Now, a lot of girls talk shit about their exes for sport, either out of immaturity, or deliberately to cover their tracks after a shady breakup. And they're easy to spot. But I ignored all the signs because I thought she was my unicorn and I believed her. Mistake.

So we moved in together. And immediately we started fighting. It became unavoidable. She sought out conflict. The more I tried to be a "good" boyfriend and treat her well, the more she would nitpick and find things to argue about. She would stage these huge emotional breakdowns every time she couldn't get her way during an argument, and then she'd move the goalpost and change the subject of the argument to "I'm crying and you're not even consoling me". Crazy, circular debates and gaslighting became more and more frequent to the point where it was the norm. A lot of nights we slept in separate rooms. Again, she had me wrapped around her finger and I thought she was the one, so I chalked it up to "well, we're going through a rough spot." I convinced myself that this was all normal somehow. Mistake.

I had an insane, shitty job (telecom firm where nepotism ruled and working hard immediately made you a scapegoat, think 16-30 hour shifts with an ass chewing at the end) and most days I was on the edge of my sanity with how stressed out I was. My ex knew this, she knew I had tons of money saved up, and for months had been telling me, "If you ever need to quit and find a better job, I support whatever will make you happy" So one day I did. Mistake.

I told her the next day, and she broke down crying. I didn't understand why. After all, she'd been encouraging me to quit. So why was she acting like it was the end of the world? She said it was because of her new cat. She adopted this crazy, poorly adjusted shelter cat who ran around the apartment all night yelping and knocking things over. I didn't like him. And she apparently thought that, because I quit my job and was about to be around him more, that I was gonna either start beating him or take him back to the pound. The logic sounded pretty convoluted to me, but I didn't know what to make of it, so I just ignored her and went to bed.

My unemployed period lasted 5 weeks total. Not a big deal at all, I didn't have to go into frugal mode and I didn't run out of money, or even come close. I paid my share of the bills and I spent my days going to job interviews, cleaning the apartment, running errands for her while she was at work, and when she got home I'd take her out and spend time with her. And boom, just like that, we stopped fighting. Things were good for a little while. I briefly felt like I'd stumbled on the secret to not fighting constantly: just do tons of stuff for her constantly like a spineless doormat! MISTAKE.

A week before my new job was supposed to start, she got a new phone and left her old one at home.

A few nights before, we were hanging out watching Netflix when she got a call from a contact named "Michael - MUTED". When the phone rang, she turned white as a ghost and answered with a nervous, shaky "Heyycanicallyoubacklater??". So that struck me as really fucking weird, and I wondered who "Michael" was. She never told me about a Michael. She had no friends or coworkers named Michael.

So now here I was, home alone, staring at her phone sitting on the coffee table. I said fuck it and turned the thing on. It had no passcode. Just like that, I was in. I opened her texts. At the top was a conversation with Michael. I opened it. It was her ex (who isn't a Michael).

The conversation went back months. I read the entire thing. She'd been cheating on me for the entire time we'd been living together. All the nights she'd been claiming to work late, she was going over to his house. Every night that she came home and wanted to go straight to bed, she was tired from getting railed . She was full of another guy's nut. This guy who she told me was a sociopathic piece of shit.

It gets better: most of the things she told me about him, she was telling him about me. She told him I was an animal abuser (because I swatted her cat on the butt when he destroyed our stuff?) that she regretted ever being with me, that I emotionally neglected her, that I was an annoying jobless loser, etc. She complained to him that I woke her up in the morning by getting ready for job interviews. This girl had been telling me, "I love you baby, can't wait to see you, be home soon" and in the same breath telling him, "ugh fuckin Nick still hasn't found a job". The deception went pretty deep.

I read the entire conversation, screenshotted everything, emailed it to myself, removed all traces of my snooping, turned the phone off, and instead of wasting one minute moping or feeling sorry for myself, I started planning my escape.

Three weeks after my new job started, I got a Friday off randomly. That morning she went to work, and I immediately began packing up my things. Moved it all to my new place. She came home to a half empty apartment, and I was waiting for her.

She walked in, noticed the tv and entertainment system were gone, sat down on the floor with a dazed look on her face, and asked me what was going on. I told her I was moving out and breaking up with her. She really didn't want to see me go, and there was a lot of crying. I didn't even bring up the cheating, I just left.

It wasn't until three days later when I came home to get the last of my things, and found her ex's stuff in the apartment, that I actually brought it up. She apologized profusely, and sent me three page-long texts saying she made a huge mistake, that her ex had weaseled his way back into her life, yada yada. I told her "good luck with everything", turned my keys in, and left it at that.

This was a couple months back. I've basically retreated into full monk mode to try and psychologically recoup. They're now back together, they live together, and they work together. Pretty insane, but that's how the cookie crumbles I guess.

To briefly recap, moving forward from this experience, here are some hard lessons I learned:

1. AWALT
2. Don't fall for a plate
3. If a girl's pursuing you super hard, something is probably wrong with her
4. If a girl has everything in common with you, she's pandering - there are no unicorns.
5. Pay. Attention. To. Red. Flags.
6. Don't let a woman's love make you think it's ok to stop working on yourself. Don't fall into old habits.
7. Don't lose frame. Don't cave. Don't be a doormat.
8. Never move in with someone you just started dating
9. Quitting your job is poison to women. They will lose all attraction.
10. Trust your gut if you think she's cheating - all women are capable of cheating
11. If she badmouths her exes, she'll badmouth you
12. Women are pragmatic - they will lie and deceive as long as it produces a net benefit. Even when caught in a giant lie, they will continue to lie, if the lie is to their benefit. Loyalty is not a component of the female psyche.

Edit: grammar