How I related to "It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover - W/ SPOILERS (PART 1)

Hi,

I'm not sure if anyone here is read the book "It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover but I just wanted to write about it and talk about how I related to it. (****SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK AHEAD****)

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TW: domestic violence, abuse

So in a nutshell this story is about a girl named Lily who has a history of family trauma (her father used to hit her mother). She gets into a toxic relationship with a guy called Ryle and at first things are good but then at some point in the book he hits her. And when I read this I was so triggered, because I used to be in a relationship with a guy like Ryle. My ex never hit me but he often gaslighted me and invalidated my feelings, saying I was "too sensitive" or that he was "just joking" when he hurt my feelings. And then when I started to pull away from him he would love bomb me and make me feel all warm inside again. When I was in the relationship, I justified his actions as him just being "different" to me and that he's been hurt by people in the past so that's why he acts that way. So when my friends and family expressed their concerns about him, I always just assumed that it was simply because they didn't know him like I did. Now that we've broken up and I've had time to reflect on the situation, I realised that they were right all along - he wasn't good for me. In fact, he made me feel so bad about myself that I started questioning everything I believed in.

But when we broke up, it felt like my world was falling apart. Despite everything he'd done to me, I still cared about him so much. It felt like my heart was being ripped into shreds. Sounds cliché but that is genuinely how it felt like. He was the only one that I believed saw me for who I was, and even though he wasn't perfect, I felt like he really did care about me.

[Will continue this post at a later date]