I don’t mean to self insert into a comment section that is meant to be a safe space for male abuse survivors, but I am a woman who was falsely accused of abuse. This was back in high school, but this guy would emotionally manipulate me to care for him. If I wasn’t the perfect girlfriend, or even if I was, he would have a total meltdown. And if I tried to break things off, he would threaten to do something like drop out of school or injure himself, so I had to get back with him to “save” him. More than once the police had to be called to ensure his safety. This resulted in me losing a lot of time and mental growth, which contributed to my later identity crisis. The school luckily took my side and put restrictions on him, but then I had to follow those restrictions with him to keep him happy. Our mutual friends knew what was going on but took his side because they thought if it was bad I should just break up with him - which as previously stated, doing so would have had dire consequences - so the abuse was my fault for staying with him. And when I did leave him, I lost all of those friends. To this day I’m friends with only one person from high school, and when I try to rebuild contact with anyone else they get angry with me.

Please don’t misinterpret my message: if you are a man, or know a man, in an abusive relationship, please get the much-deserved help. It just sucks knowing what it’s like to not being believed/supported.