(Serious) People who have been in abusive relationships, what was the first red flag?

my life is hell. all my life nobody ever liked me. people like me just fine until they talk to me. every time they start talking to me, they get this look in their face like theyve stepped in dog shit. later i found out its because im on the autistic spectrum. i simply do not have the built in knowledge of what other people are feeling or how my words are effecting them. this unfortunate phenomenon led to me being extremely lonely throughout my entire life. then when i was 22 i met my so. we were together for 3 years. she was amazing. she actually was interested in what i had to say. she listened and cared about what i said. she cared about me even though im strange and an outcast. to me, this was like getting a second lease on life. it was like drinking a tall glass of water after being in the desert for years and years. when nobody likes you at all it makes you feel like a sub-human. its horrible. so for me, this girl was salvation. and that opened up the door to all kinds of horrible abuse.

about a year into it i started getting really upset about the way she treated me. so i went online and looked at abusive relationship support sites. a lot of them have lists of warning signs or red flags. i had experienced every single one of the items on those lists. so if you want to know the red flags, the ones they provide on various sites really are accurate. here are some of them from the top of my head.

  • she was intensely jealous. very controlling. from the very start.

  • she was very into me very fast and basically took the relationship from 0 to 100 as fast as possible. she said she loved me very early.

  • any kind of contradiction would prompt intense yelling and screaming. any kind of tiny comment might trigger it.

  • any kind of mistake or oversight on my part would prompt intense and scornful comments.

and the list goes on and on. sometimes she was horrible. but other times, maybe half the time, she did not display any of these behaviors -- sometimes she would have the exact opposite attitude and everything was wonderful. she would flip between horrible and abusive to sweet and caring. when she was behaving badly, we would get into the worst fights ive ever seen. and then we would make up and be great the next day. my situation in life made it very hard to leave her -- even her horrible treatment was way better than being alone again. we would leap-frog from great to horrible to great and back to horrible. we did it for three years. total dysfunction. we separated recently and i feel horrible. back to being a sub-human nobody who nobody cares about.

/r/AskReddit Thread