And don’t forget the I will never marry you, so he decides that in ten years you haven’t “kept up with your appearance” he’s kicking you to the curb and starting over.

He will find another person to abuse, for sure, but he will probably still stalk and harass her for awhile too. My ex showed up at my house with gifts and wanting to “talk” six months into no contact, blocked/deleted etc from everywhere in my life. He continued to bother me for almost a year after I went no contact.

Will do. Fuck off.

I understand where you’re coming from, but not all political disagreement is as benign and superficial as “how each other votes”

Or, more likely, he’ll torment her for months or years. Try to blackmail her into coming back. Threaten self-harm. Stalk her. Call her family. Stake out her place of work.

Ok, the second guy comes off as a real ass. He is probably not as bad as I perceive him, but holy crap some of those things are just off the charts - “You wanna date me and have conservative parents? Break all ties with them and then we can hang out together forever not getting married and not having children”. That…

I may have suggested she slip her mother the address with a letter telling her to bring a police escort.

Huh. Did not catch that.

Still, even if that particular letter is fake, there are plenty of people in real situations like that, and I think they need to know they aren’t alone.

First letter: Would it be wrong to advise her to cut his balls off with a rusty scissor and then sew them into his mouth before feeding him into a wood chipper? Because if it is, then I don’t want to be right, because that’s what that asshole deserves.

Second letter: Anyone who doesn’t like animals is has a gaping…

Trust me on this: within two weeks of her leaving he’ll latch onto another sucker.

Coming from abusive parents myself, it’s sometimes hard to talk about abuse without sounding like you’re making things up. Sometimes abusers can be so over-the-top/irrational/paranoid, and so desperate to cover their own tracks (gaslighting their victims into believing they’re either misremembering stuff, lying, or…

Yeah, using left-behind stuff as a pretext for maintaining contact is a classic Deranged Ex move.

I already know I hate Dealbroken with a passion.

Forlorn Femme’s letter was a bit hard to read, because she’s basically describing my relationships with my ex-husband and my ex-boyfriend before him. Telling her to leave is exactly right, and I think she’s getting close to being able to do so, but telling her she needed to get out 4 years ago, etc, isn’t helpful.…

Yeah, normally in these abusive relationships “she” can’t leave because she’s financially dependent on his income. In this case, she’s the sole breadwinner, lady, dump his abusive, freeloading ass, and never look back.

I feel like dealbreaker guy is going to come back with another letter about having difficulty finding anybody fitting his desired description.

Who wants to bet Dealbroken, when faced with the perfect women who checkmarks all his current hard nos, would not change the slightest requested thing (don’t wear socks and sandals) and instead add it back to the list?

Letter 1: leave that asshole right goddamn now, already. Jesus.

That first letter is the most blatant cry for help ever. Five paragraphs of “My boyfriend is abusive” and then one of “How can I break up with someone who depends on me financially?” If I hadn’t read the column intro, I wouldn’t have seen where that letter was going.

“I am very socially progressive and I won’t even try to get along with conservatives” is probably a good way to get across that you’re not going to be nice to anyone’s racist uncle or whatever. You can, uh, leave out the part where you expect people to cut family members out of their lives, because that makes it sound…