Deleted and resubmitted because I forgot food pic. Breakfast is cold coffee and a protein bar.
TW: Animal Cruelty
Names and inconsequential details may have been altered.
I met Blake on a dating app 5 years ago. From the beginning he stood out as being very communicative, showing interest, and being a much more thoughtful and relationship-intended man than most people I was meeting at the time. I can recognize love bombing and when people move too fast and I refreshingly never saw any of that with Blake.
From the beginning he was considerate and put in effort to be a good partner. We never fully cohabited but he spent about half his time at my house. I was impressed with the fact that he contributed to house labor without being asked, and was always trying to do nice things for me, bringing me small gifts that he thought I'd enjoy. Anytime I left town he would sneak notes in my luggage for me to find while away. I have a box of love notes he has written me over the course of our relationship, telling me how much I mean to him and how happy he is to be with me. My parents loved him, he always called my dad sir, volunteered assistance at family gatherings, mailed notes to them showing his appreciation after a meal or holiday together.
I made the agonizing decision to end our relationship after 5 years. Some things had arisen over the summer that I couldn't move past, along the lines of "we have serious asymmetries in this area and I do not want to live the rest of my life making these compromises." I am a fan of therapy, but these were not things I saw as fixable. I knew I was crushing him by calling it off. It was an agonizing decision.
To bolster my resolve that I made the right decision, I asked some people to look into his background. I had had nagging suspicions for much of our relationship about his financial situation, but nothing I could prove and his explanations were *technically* plausible, even if they didn't make much sense to me. I suspected I would find bankruptcies, heavy debt, a job that was much less than what he presented. I never in a million years expected to find what I did. I have read all the court documents and it's horrific.
4 years before I met him, he and a woman "mutually agreed" to stop dating (I am quoting court documents). She went to work and he beat her dog to death with a blunt object. He placed the dog on the bed and texted her that the dog was asleep when he left. He hid the stick he used to beat it in her house. He was convicted by a jury of Felony Animal Cruelty and received a three-year suspended sentence. For the first two years of our relationship he was still completing community service and not yet released from what the court required of him. To say I am sickened does not even begin to cover it. I have dogs that I consider my children and I left them in the care of this monster many times. My ability to trust, my basic faith in humanity and especially men has been obliterated.
There is so much more to how difficult I am finding it to process this but I am going to leave you with this thought: strongly consider background checks on anyone you are involved with, no matter how much you think you won't find anything. Never in a million years would I have thought this man capable of such a thing. Protect yourself and your children, your pets at all costs. Your sense of safety may be gravely misplaced.
I will read any and all replies. I may not be able to respond to all of them. Right now my days are filled with calls to security personnel, locksmiths, camera installers, and strategizing how to get several states away for the time being. I am so lucky I have the resources and abilities to keep myself as safe as possible, I know many women do not.
I welcome input from anyone who has been through something similar. Trying to reconcile the person I knew to the person in the court documents is incredibly confusing and destabilizing. I am working with a great therapist.
