10 Signs Your Partner Could Be Manipulating You Under The Guise Of Caring

I've dealt with douchebag boyfriends, clingy boyfriends and clueless boyfriends, but the worst one I've dealt with can be classified as the controlling, manipulative boyfriend.

No one is perfect, but there's a strict limitation on emotional abuse.

I didn't think about any warning signs. I simply adjusted to this lifestyle my ex laid out for me because when you're in “love," you go into a total mind fog.

Here are some of the signs I missed while we were dating. If you experience any of these things with your boyfriend, you need to question his motives and possibly seek outside help:

1. He had to know every detail of my plans.

Any time I went out with my friends, he texted me every half hour or so to check in to see what I was doing. He was never happy when I went out without him. This was due to a mixture of not trusting me, along with fear for my safety. The safety part would've been slightly endearing had it not been extremely overbearing.

2. He kept track of whom I texted.

He always looked over my shoulder every time I texted someone. I never had anything to hide and I never cheated, but some privacy should've been given. If I texted a guy, he would freak out about it even though there was never a legitimate problem.

3. He talked sh*t about my friends.

From the start, I knew he and my friends wouldn't completely get along, and I accepted that. But when he started insulting my friends behind their backs and to my face, a line had been crossed. I specifically remember him bagging on some of my friends' physical appearances. That is never OK.

4. He made up problems just to get angry with me.

Since I never cheated on him or did anything untrustworthy, he had to make things up in order to make me look like the bad guy. He even accused me of thinking about other guys, as if he could read my mind.

His false accusations caused many arguments. It even got to the point where I was questioning myself based on his detailed lies.

5. He didn't give me space.

We saw each other every single day, yet he always claimed I never made time for him. I sacrificed my social life so much for him that after a while, he was the only person I spent my free time with. This caused me to lose friends, and it caused acquaintances to think the worst of me.

6. He didn't let me have guy friends.

When we were dating, a couple of my closest friends were guys. That changed during the course of this relationship because I wasn't “allowed” to have guy friends.

This is total bullsh*t because a guy cannot create rules for you. I was controlled so much that I cut off connections with people who were always there for me.

7. He always had people “watching out” for me.

He flat out told me he had a guy who rode his bike daily around my apartment complex to check on me. He had at least one person as his watchdog at almost every place I went to. He claimed that this was all to protect me, but I'm pretty sure a lot of it was because he didn't trust me.

8. He claimed to have personal connections with the FBI.

When he first told me this, I didn't believe it for a second. But then, he started asking me about specific emails and text message conversations I had with other people.

These were conversations that happened when I wasn't even around him, so he only knew about them because he had some secret person who could hack into my messages. This was one of the most f*cked up things I let happen.

9. He knew things that happened before I met him.

To this day, I still don't know how he knew things about me that I never talked to him about. They were usually random things, but it was creepy nonetheless.

10. He didn't let me break up with him.

We had an on-again, off-again relationship because every time I tried to break up with him, he pulled me back in. I would give him my breakup speech, and he would retort with, “Well I'm not leaving until we're back together because we're never breaking up." We only were able to officially break up when it was his decision, not mine.

All of these things might make me seem weak or stupid. I was a different person back then, and it scares me that I put up with all of this for such a long time.

The relationship did nothing positive, and it left me depressed. But since I lost everyone else in my life at the time, I was scared of being alone, so I kept him around.

In some ways, I don't regret this relationship, mainly because it made me a stronger person in the end. Once he was out of my life, I learned to think for myself, I learned how to see life in a more positive light and I learned my self-worth.

In other ways, I wish I had never gone through this. I wish I had never been so ignorant and naïve during that time in my life. You have to stop and think about what you're doing and what he's doing to you. Get yourself out of the situation before it spirals into something worse. Do it now, or you'll spend a long time being unhappy.