Ultimately, I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t there, but I think what you wrote up is very reasonable. I think they were two self absorbed people in a relationship together and I think after a little while it got old to always go to bed early and never drink. I also think after a while Hardwick likely got tired of dealing with a loud twenty-something and probably wanted someone more mature.
Something about Chloe’s Reddit comments bugged me, too. She makes a point to say how she’d totally not bad mouthed Hardwick in the essay.
Except she has.
I followed her makeup posts for a long time and would check in on her posting history because of it. Probably a year or more ago there was a long comment about Hardwick (no name mentioned, but OBVIOUSLY him). She’d been randomly answering relationships question threads with surprise! information about her relationship with him. I remember reading the longest one and going “Holy shit.. I wonder if someone’s going to pick up on this being Hardwick and publish it?”
Lots of time passes and BOOM! The essay hits. Then I go back and look at her comment history and ... stuff is missing ... There’s one where she’s like “Well there’s two guys like that on my history, but I can’t tell you guys about one.” It might as well scream “OH MY GOD ASK ME ABOUT THAT ONE!” Then right after that her comments about it become more and more prevalent. There was even a post about “Omg you guys I’m freaking out thinking about outing my abuser!”
Okay so if you were trying to be cool/quiet then why the hell did you delete comments? Why not just use a throwaway? Why did/do your comments contradict one another (there was one saying Hardwick was a decent guy and they just weren’t compatible), It’s like more than a year of her dropping nuggets in her comment history. It really seems like a cry for attention. I almost think she’s trying to bait Hardwick to talk to her again (remember he said he wouldn’t and she said he wouldn’t even after she contacted him).
Btw, my favorite deleted comment was her bitching about Hardwick not returning a Star Wars prop she’d given him AS A GIFT during their relationship. I believe she mentioned this nugget because Hardwick was so proud of the gift he bragged about it when they were together. It was a shitty way to be like “But I never said his name!”