Tell me about the first 6 months of your relationships.

Time for yet another wall of text. I've only had one "relationship" that lasted longer than 6 months. It wasn't pleasant.

I met him through a friend who I'd gone on a few dates with and just became friends due to a lack of chemistry. He seemed like a nice guy, despite being weird as fuck and sometimes obnoxiously loud. I still thought he was hot. We attempted to hook up once, but it didn't pan out due to conflicting schedules. A few months later, I worked up the nerve to ask him out to dinner.

We just went to some kind of local TGI Friday's knock-off. There wasn't a second date, as we just started hanging out more frequently afterwards. He had clinically diagnosed OCD, and while I have the same disorder his variation was a lot more.. severe than mine. Sex wasn't really something that he would immediately consider because of it, due to him being a germaphobe. Back at his tiny apartment, his room had two twin beds for some reason (he referred to it as his guest bed – which I guess makes sense because there wasn't a lot of room at his place). Whenever I slept over, we'd sleep in separate beds. I was always in the guest bed.

It was a few weeks before we even fooled around. And it only happened again once or twice after that. We never actually had sex, and he wasn't very affectionate. He had this weird voyeur thing too, which I never understood or got into.

Within a few months, he started to get very critical of me and somewhat abusive. He'd divulge aspects of our relationship to other people, often doing his best to embarrass me in whatever way he could. He also had no regard for things that made me uncomfortable, such as pushing me into crowded areas when he knew that I had social anxiety. Ironically, he'd get on my case whenever I said or did something that would "embarrass or defame" him, or unintentionally forgot one of the MANY triggers for his OCD.

A major red flag was that even after 4 months of this, with me driving him to work on a daily basis and cooking his meals, he would still only refer to me as a friend. He didn't consider me his significant other at all. Likewise, he'd often go out of his way to egg me on for the simple purpose of starting fights between us and victimizing himself (he was an incredibly self-righteous little asshat).

He also started drinking heavily when winter rolled around. After a few months of dealing with that, I eventually snapped and that was the end of the whole mess. I think it lasted about 9 to 10 months total.

It stands to reason that one of the main reasons that I've had so much difficult getting into another relationship is because my only reference for one past the 6 month mark was with an ambivalent, abusive asshole. Due to putting up with him, I tend to overanalyze the behaviors of the guys I date, and I instinctively began to emotionally detach the moment I see any sign that they're disinterested or see any red flags in their behavior. I haven't had a relationship past 2 months since.

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