Nikoleta Koleva

Living in an Abusive Relationship

Let me tell you a story about love, which turned out to be the worst story of my life. It all began in winter 2015. I met this guy on social media; he is five years older than me. He seemed genuinely nice and was very much interested in me. The moment I met him was just when I was applying for university. But we still started to hang out. He even got my number from somewhere, which I found adorable. At this point we started dating. This was my first real relationship. I dated guys before for like a month or two, but I knew this time it was real. I was madly in love with him. And he was the proper gentleman - picking me up from school, cooking me dinner, making all these small romantic gestures. Everything was perfect for a couple of months, but then I got accepted at university that is four thousand kilometers away from home. So I had to leave in September for uni. This is when everything changed, he changed. He became extremely jealous of my girlfriends. He didn't let me go out with them. I was only allowed to go to uni and work. He used to get annoyed at me if I spoke to my mum for more than fifteen minutes. He hacked my Facebook profile and was reading all of my messages with my friends. He was determined that I was cheating on him, even though he knew where I was every single minute. Because of him, my first year of uni was horrendous - I didn't meet any new people, I didn't have fun with my friends, I only studied and worked.... and spent hours FaceTiming with him. He wanted to have the FaceTime on during the night just to make sure I didn't go anywhere without him knowing. Yet, I didn't leave him. I was stupid and madly in love.