I’m interested to hear how guys out there deal with controlling and manipulative behaviour in a LTR.

My last girlfriend was super sweet to me to begin with but got more and more selfish, controlling and manipulative as time went by.

For example, she said ‘you realise have to marry me within a year’. Presented as banter but obviously more than that. No attempt whatever to find out what I want. I responded jokingly at first – that worked fine. But later I got quite annoyed feeling that that had somehow given her a free rein to say things like that whenever she wanted (and she did). And when I told her seriously that I didn’t like it she got all offended saying I must be repulsed by the idea of marrying her.

She regularly seemed to look for the most negative interpretation of anything I did to put me on the back foot. Eg I sent text saying ‘I’ve friends coming round for a drink tomorrow would be great to see you, [but knowing she was busy at work] no pressure’ she would respond saying ‘”no pressure” sounds like you don’t want to see me’.

When she was drunk one time, she said (completely unprovoked) to me ‘be nice or F off’, and ‘I don’t need you’. At the time this confused me a lot as to how someone could say they love you so much and they’re crazy about you one day then stuff like this the next. Usually I’d just respond with reassurance, ‘of course I’m going to be nice to you’, ‘of course I want to see you etc’. in hindsight and having been introduced to redpill I can see that was probably a bit too lame.

When she was stressed out she’d avoid me (cancel a meeting by text message – this happened a lot) and or get mad at me for no reason, but then later blame me for not supporting her. Not surprisingly, I started to worry about where all this was heading, and she interpreted my worry as ‘panic’ and said ‘what happened to the strong confident you?’.

But this was always interspersed with periods of calm and with messages telling me how much she loved me, etc. Given all this, it was probably not such a bad thing that I eventually broke up with this woman (or rather after I got mad one day and told her I was fed up with her behaviour, she broke up with me). But I’m finding a lot of women I’ve had relationships with recently seem to show similar kinds of behaviour to this. So I want to learn and practice how to manage it better generally.

Part of me thinks I’m better off without the last GF, another part thinks if I’d been more in control things would have been much smoother and then I would have had more choice over whether it was worth the hassle and whether to end it or not myself. Maybe I could even have been able to reduce her controlling behaviour to a manageable level over time.

To begin with I think I had a good frame and told her things like I only want to be with a good moral woman who treats other people well and she readily tried to comply with this and show herself in this light, but I think she gradually managed to erode this frame with a constant barrage over time!

So, anyway I’m interested to hear from others who have a good handle on managing LTRs - how would you have responded to these specific kinds of behaviours that I’ve mentioned?

Many thanks in advance