I am going to play a little Devil's advocate here. There have been times in my own life experiences that I HAVE shared things about myself that are private life challenges. To my horror, those very things were thrown at me casting unfair judgement of me. "What a bad person, I CAN'T LIKE YOU". To top that off I faced what is called a smear campaign too. And by individuals who come across as understanding and forgiving too. Yes, as long as you see things THEIR WAY.

I have been a member here a long time and all that time I have been Open Eyes. I haved shared life experiences here. And I am one of those members that may have shared my life experiences here more than once with different struggling members I reach out to help here and there. I don't do that to empower myself, instead I do it to say "yes, I have experienced a challenge like that myself".

Sharing some personal history challenges with another person is ALWAYS A RISK. Sometimes, a person is not mature enough to have the ability to hear something and be able to actually handle it well. And sometimes it may even hit too close to home with them too and they choose to distance from it.

This OP is very young yet. And he shared some things about this girl that he is really having a problem with. And I cannot tell him to "just" ignore any of it because I don't even know this girl he is talking about. All I can do for him is share things I have learned myself in my own life. And sometimes a person's history CAN reflect how they look at things, how they navigate and that they may not be a good fit for us when it comes to having a relationship that we can accept.

Sometimes, people go through crap in their life but are still NICE people, they may have learned some hard lessons. We all have our garbage. And other times some people go through things in their lives and they sometimes choose a darker path. Well, you live long enough, you can end up meeting/experiencing both, I know I have. I can't say with any certainty what this GF is, good or bad.

What I AM hearing however, is a young man that is simply not mature enough to know what to think about what he has been told. It's very likely he simply doesn't have enough life experience to know what to think. And you know what, "that's ok".

No abuse is ok, no matter what the age of someone. Some who are abused turn into abusers themselves. Some who are abused learn from it and become more protective and understanding despite of it. Each person will look at this situation a little differently depending on their history. Some have been abused and have to work through it, may have made some mistakes because of it but end up being good people.

I can't tell this young man what to do other than spending more time learning and to not commit until he has had enough time to come to terms with it and see if this individual actually has "changed" for the better.

What stands out to me the most is that he is very young yet and he genuinely doesn't know what to do with what he has learned. It's ok if he has the feelings he has. It's ok if this is too complicated for him at this time in his life too.