getting your confidence back after being cheated on

It has been a fair while since I took the time to reflect and write a little something personal, and its one of those things that I find myself doing a hell of a lot less these days, it’s weird I run a lifestyle blog and I’ve been consciously sharing less and less of my life since loosing my Mum, I guess it could be a mix of having a bit of a boring life and probably laziness but anyway that doesn’t matter.

I have in the past often found myself in situations I guess you could say relationships of a sort with guys that literally were frankly a waste of my time and energy. The last two years I have spent a large proportion of my time with very dare I say nasty men I guess even up till the end of 2016 this was the case and I realised that something needed to change this is something I slightly touched on back in maybe April and I have been very quiet and secretive regarding what exactly happened.

I guess once again I have consciously shared this with anyone other then close family and friends and I wanted to share a little run down of guys I have dated and just maybe a little insight on how if you are dealing with similar to tell you its not ok, what the signs are and how to get out.

Please bear in mind I am currently dating the nicest guy I have ever met, which he jokes that, that’s not to hard given my track record and sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. So I have broken down three previous relationships to either make you feel fab about yours or help you realise you deserve better.

The sociopath

Right this is the one person that I possibly will happily use the word hate towards, many moons ago (2015) when my mother was still alive she would often say get off the internet dating and go to a pub and meet a nice guy… I did this and this is where I met ‘The sociopath’ now I am not blind to the nasty people of the world but two weeks into this relationship my mother died, so I pretty much clung to any niceness or affection that was about. I was with this guy for 6 months and in this time I discovered he already had a Girlfriend, yep and probably endless other women, I can’t go into too much details and this is still on going in court ( I told you I had been secretive) he stole money, a phone with photos of my Mum on and spent our whole relationship (I don’t often call it that) lying to me and you know what I kind of knew it, but he was so aggressive, manipulative and abusive, I couldn’t tell my dad that he was right that I just let it be, that was one of the biggest mistakes as I dealt with it alone. I was in such a bad place with my mum that I didn’t have the energy to cope with the truth even now the thought of him makes me anxious and teary.

So the signs that he was a liar living a double life

– Nothing he said was backed up with facts

– If I confronted him he became angry

– Very secretive

– All consuming would say what I wanted to hear

– Inconsistent

– Secretive over his phone

– Flakey / would disappear

– use violence and aggression to sort a situation out

– Wasn’t affectionate in public

– Manipulative

– Different person behind closed doors

This guy lied about his sister dying in the same way my mum had died only 6 weeks before and when I confronted him about all this he claimed it was the only way he felt he could talk to me about my mum’s passing, can I just say for the record, ‘fuck right off that’s not ok.’ and I discovered his double life after his manipulative ways struck again, giving me the name of his so called sister, clearly wasn’t I did some facebook stalking and it turns out after he disappeared off the face of the earth stealing money that, it was infact  his other girlfriend. Full blown Jeremy Kyle moment, I met her we spoke she seemed lovely, we met him it was all very dramatic he denied knowing me and guess what she’s still with him now nearly a year on, after knowing the abuse I suffered with him she can still be with someone like that is just crazy and this recently really made me think, how desperate we are not to be alone that we seek comfort in someone that isn’t right for us for fear of actually having to deal with ourselves.

As sad as it is to say, and I would hate for this person to know but his action and the way he treated me have left me mentally scared, I’m not the kind of person that lets things like that get to me but sadly this one will take a life time of occasionally looking over my shoulder, brief panic attacks and anxiety to fully recover from, but fundamentally I know I made a mistake but I am ok. 

The control freak

Now I have been in two minds about sharing this situation because it is fairly recently and also I know for a want of a better word that he still stalks my social media but anyway. We only dated it wasn’t ever official but very quickly I realised we weren’t compatible and I broke it off after a few weeks as certain traits made it very hard for me to even sit in the same room as this person. This is where the gut instinct kicks in, don’t stay with someone when your guts is screaming run away.

I enjoy a good gym session and in the past I have suffered from an eating disorder to control how I feel and when you spot this destructive behaviour in someone else I found it too much for me to be around. He would say certain things about my size, ask me what food I had eaten and when I would next be going to the gym, please bear in mind he went for at least 6 hours a day and barely ate anything and would judge me for having sugar in my tea, who does that!?! Any way I picked up on the signs of this control pretty early on and I voiced how I felt which as you can imagine, wasn’t met with nice words. He came back into my life then only to ‘dump me’ so he could control the situation which I even found laughable at the time.

– would call 3/4 times a day literally about nothing

– Would put you down about size, hair colour things that were personal

– project their insecurities on you

– too much too quick

– Unhealthy  / obsessive behaviour

– Mentally controlling

– Judgmental

Looking back at this I only wasted a month but after having someone check the calories in my sandwich I was eating and would regularly do this I realised I would rather date that sandwich then that kind of human. But due to previous encounters with men I could spot the signs and confidently realise that I needed to run for the hills!

The one that can’t be saved

I have not spoken much about this person really on my social media, this person was the hardest for me to get over, not because I was in Love or that we were even right for each other but because he was the last guy my Mother ever met, she was my vetting process and by god did we jointly get this person all wrong. It wouldn’t be till months later when a close mate spoke to me about  how much of a bullet I dodged. This person at the time was pretty much everything I wanted, gave me all the right attention, I met his family and they were incredible we dated for 4 months and it was never official and It was one of those situations that I never knew where I stood. That horrible will I hear from him tomorrow, what have I said this time to upset him?

He was the first person I called when my mum had initially been rushed into hospital slumped on the floor by the ambulance bay in floods of tears and the response I got was ‘what do you want me to do about it I have work to do’, alarm bells should of rang, but bear in mind I was with ‘the sociopath’ by this time and this guy had binned me because lets face fact a combination of cocaine and steroids aren’t any good to anyone and when you already have mental health issues that’s not going to do anyone any favours. So time passed and I still wanted to be with him and we tried again, for me to then be left alone in a hotel room (he walked out after an argument) for me to never see him again. He then got into a relationship with someone else pretty quickly after this and I am not going to lie that was harder to deal with then ever being cheated on but the funny thing was two weeks later I got an influx of facebook messages from other women he was dating asking if I was Ella and that he had been cheating the whole entire time, i’d been to family do’s, his mum had been to my mums funeral and then you find that out and my first reaction wasn’t sadness for me but genuine sadness for him, no woman would ever manage to put up with the mood swings and high maintenance and I realised I am so glad to not be with someone I can’t trust.

What I learned from those 7 months on and off with this person was, I deserve consistency, respect and love. It’s not much to ask and even basic friendships are based on those things. I couldn’t save him from his drug habit, or suicidal thoughts. I wasn’t strong enough after loosing my mum to look after me, so being dumped was a relief. In all honestly I think I stuck around because I adored his mum ha!

So what’s the point of you telling us all this Ella? well I would like it even if one girl reading this realises that she is worth so so much more then the relationship she is in, it’s ok to be single and not have to deal with anyone else’s shit, Don’t get me wrong I have mental health issues, but you shouldn’t be with someone who fuels these and makes things worst and vice verses. You should be with someone that brings out the best version of you and if that means remaining single until you’re 80 and being with the love of your life then? so be it!

How to gain your confidence back.

The first step to getting your confidence back is realising that you can’t change someone, what has happened has happened and it’s not always you that’s problem and more often then not they’re the one with the issue and projecting It on you. Take the time to be on your own. Do things for you, take the time to give yourself distance from that person and surround yourself with good people.

I can not tell you this enough, you are stronger then you think and braver then you feel, I have dealt with physical violence and mental abuse from guys in the past and they are always weaker, if someone has to physically harm you to get what they want then man or woman that’s not right and you need to walk away from that, you’ll find the strength If I can deal with finding my mother dying then you can find the strength inside you to realise you are worth the world.

If you find the person you’re with is cheating, then my advice would be to walk away, assess the situation and often then not once a cheat always a cheat and find yourself someone you can trust.

Learning to be with someone new after similar situations I have been in it takes a lot of strength to let someone else in, take your time and don’t judge someone new on how someone else has treated you, I am cautious and can easily cut someone else out of my life and my wall remains a tiny bit up but believe me in time things wont feel so hard and you are more then capable of being loved again.

Once someone starts eroding yourself confidence and self belief then that’s the moment you put yourself first and you walk away, because believe me if they think that’s ok then they aren’t the person for you I am so grateful I genuinely am to these men that have treated me so badly in the past because it makes me realise that being with the person I am currently with which is not easy for me at times but it makes me appreciate all the little things he does and its made me realise what real affection and care is, this is probably the first time in my adult life I have felt that.

A lot of my mates laugh at this and find it hard to believe but I have never had a valentines or a present from a guy I have been seeing because you know what they’ve been selfish, narcissistic controlling and to be honest cheats probably couldn’t stretch to more then one Tesco value bunch of flowers and I’m ok with my hang ups from past relationships, I’m ok with the fact that I probably get viewed with baggage and I am ok to admit I have made some pretty bad choices when it comes to men. But what I am not ok with is repeating this again anytime soon, I am slowly learning I am capable of loving someone, I am deserving of love, and I am actually a really nice person to be around. Believe me I could list more, the weirdo, the lying army guy, the disappearing bloke but I reckon for now this will do.

Also if you feel like you need to talk to someone, escape a situation or are dealing with abuse male or female
National Domestic violence website is available
 refuge /
women’s Aid

Mankind