THERE ARE TRIGGERS HERE, I don't remember how to format so that they can't be seen (if someone can tell me, that would be cool).

Pretty much the red flags I look for are anything which makes me feel like or looks like what things were with my ex-fiance, because we stayed together for almost a year and a half even though things turned bad after about three months. Keep in mind, this was 12 years ago; this is not at all a current situation. We were best friends before we started dating, met at church, and used to hang out all the time. We even talked on the phone for hours (but we were in our mid-twenties and text really wasn't a thing. Actually, it wasn't at all a thing...flip phones weren't even a thing ). He was depressed, even suicidal at times. I don't even know why we started dating, except that I guess we were both just...there...and that to us seemed like fate. It was good for a minute, and then it was really, really bad. Our fights were brutal. We'd scream, throw things. I wouldn't hit him, but I would push him. And he was verbally and emotionally abusive. I gained 50 lbs while with him both, I think, because of stress and because of the meds I was taking to deal with it. He was on meds that kept changing, and which sometimes caused horrible side effects. One made him so enraged that, during a fight, he took off his leather jacket and started whipping me with it. Another time, just before we started off on a roadtrip to Chicago, we got into a dumb argument about the heat in the car, and he slammed my head into the passenger side window. I was too stunned to do anything and didn't move or speak for probably an hour, just stared out the window. Another time, while I was sleeping over, we got into a spat while in bed, and he covered my face with a pillow until I knocked him in the head and got him off of me.

The thing is that I rationalized everything: he's depressed, it's the meds. He loves me. I felt horribly about myself because I had gained so much weight (when I'd already thought I was fat to begin with...because I'd just passed that stage of my 20's where you do gain weight and stop looking like you're 18 anymore). He would always point this out: I don't want to have sex, you're too heavy, it hurts. How could I possibly be physically abusing you? You're bigger than me, I'm just defending myself. I was so incredibly beaten down, that when he stopped showing any affection, stopped calling, stopped taking me out anywhere, I just accepted it as my fault. There were so many dysfunctions that I could just go on and on. But it comes down to the fact that, somehow, I finally walked away after some incredible blow ups. And I had no "me" left. I'd lost most of my friends, because either they were mutual friends or I'd pushed them away in my depression. I'd lost my church. I'd almost lost my job because I was so depressed I was calling in too much. I dropped out of nursing school.

**trigger** I left him, went home, and promptly overdosed. I have no idea why he came over that night, but he is the one who found me and called the ambulance. And I remember, vaguely, because I wasn't really with it, watching his car following the ambulance to the hospital. And then I remember watching him turn onto the freeway to go home. It is 12 years later, and I still break down when I remember that, and being in the ER and in the hospital alone. None of the friends I had left wanted to be there. Once I woke up, I didn't tell my family what I'd done, just that I was going inpatient (and the hospital didn't call them because I didn't have any emergency numbers listed).

It still bothers me that he met his now-wife two weeks after I left (and overdosed). And they're still married and have two kids. Because it makes me feel that everything was my fault, that he was the sane one and I really did drive him to do everything he did to me. A friend once told me that I shattered his heart, and his wife was suspiciously similar to me...buuut I don't know why she told me that. Doesn't matter.

I sort of lashed out right after getting out of the hospital, spent about 6 months or more partying, drinking 3 or more nights a week, and going home with pretty much anyone at the bar who would give me attention, who was decently attractive. The reason was because I was 26, I had been a good little church girl before I'd met J, I chose to stay a virgin until marriage (as did he), and we both lost our virginities to each other (he told me he'd made a mistake in giving it up to me). So after it was already done, I just didn't give a shyt. And I was making up for lost time, I guess. I don't know. Thankfully, I got bored of that really quickly, and I reverted back to the introvert I am, got a computer, and went online (blogging and online communities were just exploding at that time, in 2004). This is when I somehow found a site called Flickr, got interested in photography, and started communicating with people on there. I was spending hours a day with this hobby, taking my own photos and editing them, commenting on photos, in groups, in chat. And this is when I met JD (the man I just had a thing with), and quickly realized he was going through something sort of similar, at least emotionally, to me. And I watched, through his photos, writing, and his vlogs, his decent into a deep breakdown and his subsequent climb, a few years later, out of it. It was awesome. The getting better part, not the breakdown part.

Anyway. That last part is neither here nor there. The point was that I don't ever want a relationship to take me down like things did with J. The problem is that I always feel anxious and scared. I always feel apprehensive, so I never know whether apprehension is a red flag, my gut, or if it's just me. JD knew my history somewhat; we knew each other's. I know why he is guarded, and I know why he retreated from me. But when I started feeling like I was fighting his demons more than I was working with him, is when I needed to get out, because it was just going to spiral. We would have hung on like that for a while, I suspect. And I gave full disclosure as to why, and what exactly happened 12 years ago after J. I suspect, as he has said many times that the hobbies he got into after his breakdown (rapier fighting) saved his life, he absolutely gets it.

Wow... I don't think I've ever shared that story on here before. Sorry, I know it was long.