u/hollow_signal

I'm really in need of someone to loyalty test my bf.
All you need to do is start a convo with him on IG and send me the SS.

🙏🙏

We knew each other as friends first.

For about two or three years, we talked on and off. There was never anything particularly serious between us. We were just friends who happened to know each other and kept coming back into each other’s lives every now and then.

Then, somehow, everything changed.

At the time, I was going through a breakup with another guy. He was also coming out of a relationship with a girl—and, honestly, he had done her dirty. He had cheated on her.

I don’t even know what happened between us that day. Maybe I was lonely. Maybe I was looking for comfort. Maybe I was just emotionally vulnerable. Maybe I was horny. I genuinely don’t know.

He kissed me.

And I kissed him back.

That was it.

And the strangest part is that I never actually liked him in that way. I’m not saying that to make myself look better. I genuinely never had those feelings for him. I remember thinking, Whatever, man. It happened.

I was in my final year of college, and I had a lot more free time then, so somehow we started becoming a thing.

But from that very beginning, he was incredibly insecure.

It felt like he became attached to me almost immediately. I don’t know if it was limerence, obsession, fear of abandonment, or something else, but whatever it was, he was intensely attached to me.

He never wanted to leave me alone.

He always wanted to talk. He needed constant reassurance. He would call me and make me comfort him for hours and hours. Sometimes our conversations would go on for seven or eight hours. He was constantly afraid of losing me.

His first girlfriend had cheated on him, and I think that experience had completely changed the way he looked at relationships. He was terrified of getting attached and being hurt again, but somehow he got attached to me anyway.

He was available all the time.

He would reply almost instantly. He wouldn’t go on trips because he wanted to be there for me. He was available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It was as if his entire life started revolving around me.

At first, I could give him that attention.

But then I started preparing for a competitive exam.

And everything changed.

I didn’t have the time anymore.

I was studying constantly, trying to prepare for something that mattered enormously to me. I couldn’t sit on calls for hours. I couldn’t reassure him every time he felt insecure. I couldn’t constantly explain where I was, what I was doing, or why I wasn’t responding.

I told him again and again.

“I’m busy.”

“I can’t give you all of my time.”

“Please try to understand.”

But he couldn’t.

No matter how many times I explained it, he still felt like I wasn’t giving him enough attention.

And eventually, it became exhausting.

We started fighting constantly.

Not normal little arguments. Huge fights. The kind of fights where everything escalates and neither person knows how to stop. There was so much crying—from both of us. So much anger. So much frustration. So many things said that we probably didn’t mean.

And I wasn’t innocent in all of it.

I would yell at him too.

I would scream. I would get angry. I would become frustrated and say rude things. Sometimes I said things that were genuinely hurtful, and I regret those things now.

But at the time, I was overwhelmed.

I was preparing for a competitive exam, trying to hold myself together, and simultaneously trying to manage someone else’s constant need for reassurance.

I didn’t know how to do both.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I started talking to another guy.

It was completely platonic.

There was nothing serious happening. There wasn’t some secret romantic relationship behind his back. I didn’t have feelings for this guy. We talked about studying, exchanged normal messages, and had ordinary conversations.

But I think I was lonely too.

Maybe I wanted some validation. Maybe I wanted someone to talk to without all the emotional weight that had become attached to every conversation with my boyfriend.

I don’t even fully understand why I needed it.

But I did.

And eventually, my boyfriend found out.

To him, it wasn’t innocent.

He thought I was cheating.

And he completely flipped.

Something changed in him after that.

The things he used to do stopped.

The constant attention stopped. The endless calls stopped. The version of him who was always available for me disappeared.

And as painful as it sounds, I miss that version of him.

I miss the person who would reply instantly.

I miss the person who seemed like he could never leave.

I miss the person who would spend hours trying to make me feel loved.

I know that version of him wasn’t necessarily healthy either. I know how overwhelming his attachment could be. But when he suddenly stopped giving me all of that, I realized just how much I had become accustomed to it.

And then something happened that changed the entire relationship.

He went on a trip.

And he didn’t call me.

Not for one day.

Not for two.

Four or five days passed.

And those were some of the worst days of my life.

I cried constantly.

I couldn’t handle the silence.

I was terrified that he was finally going to leave me. I begged him not to. I begged him to stay. I begged him not to give up on us.

And he didn’t leave.

But somehow, that was the turning point.

Because something shifted between us.

I think those days taught him that I wasn’t going anywhere.

And they taught me the opposite.

They taught me that he could.

Before that, he had always been the one terrified of losing me.

I had always been the one being chased, reassured, begged for attention.

Suddenly, I was the one begging.

I was the one crying.

I was the one asking him not to leave.

And the entire power dynamic of our relationship changed.

Now I’m the one who overthinks.

I’m the one asking for reassurance.

I’m the one wondering whether he still loves me.

I’m the one waiting for his messages.

And when I ask him to reassure me, he doesn’t give me what I need.

Instead, he tells me to remember what I did.

“Remember how you treated me.”

“Remember what you did.”

“You were the one who hurt me.”

And whenever I try to explain how I’m feeling, he gets angry.

He shouts.

He yells.

He calls me names.

He tells me he doesn’t have time to waste.

He tells me he’s busy and has a lot of work to do.

And when I start overthinking, he tells me to shut up about it.

Sometimes I sit there and wonder how we got here.

How did the person who once couldn’t imagine going a few hours without talking to me become the person I now have to beg for reassurance?

How did I go from being the person he was terrified of losing to being the person terrified that he will leave?

I know I made mistakes.

I know I hurt him.

I know there were times when I was insensitive, angry, rude, and unfair. I know that talking to another guy, even platonically, became something that triggered all of his deepest insecurities. I know that the way I treated him during some of our fights wasn’t right.

I regret those things.

But sometimes I wonder whether regret is supposed to mean that I have to keep paying for the same mistakes forever.

Because I don’t know how to fix something when every attempt to ask for love is met with a reminder of everything I did wrong.

I don’t know how to move forward when the past keeps getting brought back into every argument.

And the hardest part is that I still miss the old him.

I miss the person who wanted me desperately.

I miss being important to someone in that way.

I miss feeling like someone couldn’t bear the thought of losing me.

But now I’m the one who can’t bear the thought of losing him.

And maybe that’s what changed everything.

Maybe somewhere along the way, we stopped being two people trying to love each other and became two people trying to recover from the ways we had hurt each other.

He was once afraid that I would leave.

Now I’m afraid that he will.

He once needed constant reassurance from me.

Now I need it from him.

And somewhere between those two versions of us, we lost whatever it was that made things feel simple in the beginning.
I know I was wrong. I know that. But I completely changed. I never made him feel insecure, and I complied with and obliged to everything he asked of me.
And yet, for the past four months, he still treats me like I’m nothing. Every single day, I’m left feeling like I’m paying for something that will never be paid in full.
I want to be happy too. I want to feel alive again. But this is killing me.
I can’t keep bearing the shouting, the coldness, the way he acts so nonchalant while I’m left crying and falling apart. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
I know I made mistakes, and I’ll always take responsibility for them. But how long am I supposed to keep paying for them? How long am I supposed to prove that I’ve changed?
I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t leave, but I can’t keep staying like this either. I feel completely stuck between losing him and losing myself.

We knew each other as friends first.

For about two or three years, we talked on and off. There was never anything particularly serious between us. We were just friends who happened to know each other and kept coming back into each other’s lives every now and then.

Then, somehow, everything changed.

At the time, I was going through a breakup with another guy. He was also coming out of a relationship with a girl—and, honestly, he had done her dirty. He had cheated on her.

I don’t even know what happened between us that day. Maybe I was lonely. Maybe I was looking for comfort. Maybe I was just emotionally vulnerable. Maybe I was horny. I genuinely don’t know.

He kissed me.

And I kissed him back.

That was it.

And the strangest part is that I never actually liked him in that way. I’m not saying that to make myself look better. I genuinely never had those feelings for him. I remember thinking, Whatever, man. It happened.

I was in my final year of college, and I had a lot more free time then, so somehow we started becoming a thing.

But from that very beginning, he was incredibly insecure.

It felt like he became attached to me almost immediately. I don’t know if it was limerence, obsession, fear of abandonment, or something else, but whatever it was, he was intensely attached to me.

He never wanted to leave me alone.

He always wanted to talk. He needed constant reassurance. He would call me and make me comfort him for hours and hours. Sometimes our conversations would go on for seven or eight hours. He was constantly afraid of losing me.

His first girlfriend had cheated on him, and I think that experience had completely changed the way he looked at relationships. He was terrified of getting attached and being hurt again, but somehow he got attached to me anyway.

He was available all the time.

He would reply almost instantly. He wouldn’t go on trips because he wanted to be there for me. He was available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It was as if his entire life started revolving around me.

At first, I could give him that attention.

But then I started preparing for a competitive exam.

And everything changed.

I didn’t have the time anymore.

I was studying constantly, trying to prepare for something that mattered enormously to me. I couldn’t sit on calls for hours. I couldn’t reassure him every time he felt insecure. I couldn’t constantly explain where I was, what I was doing, or why I wasn’t responding.

I told him again and again.

“I’m busy.”

“I can’t give you all of my time.”

“Please try to understand.”

But he couldn’t.

No matter how many times I explained it, he still felt like I wasn’t giving him enough attention.

And eventually, it became exhausting.

We started fighting constantly.

Not normal little arguments. Huge fights. The kind of fights where everything escalates and neither person knows how to stop. There was so much crying—from both of us. So much anger. So much frustration. So many things said that we probably didn’t mean.

And I wasn’t innocent in all of it.

I would yell at him too.

I would scream. I would get angry. I would become frustrated and say rude things. Sometimes I said things that were genuinely hurtful, and I regret those things now.

But at the time, I was overwhelmed.

I was preparing for a competitive exam, trying to hold myself together, and simultaneously trying to manage someone else’s constant need for reassurance.

I didn’t know how to do both.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I started talking to another guy.

It was completely platonic.

There was nothing serious happening. There wasn’t some secret romantic relationship behind his back. I didn’t have feelings for this guy. We talked about studying, exchanged normal messages, and had ordinary conversations.

But I think I was lonely too.

Maybe I wanted some validation. Maybe I wanted someone to talk to without all the emotional weight that had become attached to every conversation with my boyfriend.

I don’t even fully understand why I needed it.

But I did.

And eventually, my boyfriend found out.

To him, it wasn’t innocent.

He thought I was cheating.

And he completely flipped.

Something changed in him after that.

The things he used to do stopped.

The constant attention stopped. The endless calls stopped. The version of him who was always available for me disappeared.

And as painful as it sounds, I miss that version of him.

I miss the person who would reply instantly.

I miss the person who seemed like he could never leave.

I miss the person who would spend hours trying to make me feel loved.

I know that version of him wasn’t necessarily healthy either. I know how overwhelming his attachment could be. But when he suddenly stopped giving me all of that, I realized just how much I had become accustomed to it.

And then something happened that changed the entire relationship.

He went on a trip.

And he didn’t call me.

Not for one day.

Not for two.

Four or five days passed.

And those were some of the worst days of my life.

I cried constantly.

I couldn’t handle the silence.

I was terrified that he was finally going to leave me. I begged him not to. I begged him to stay. I begged him not to give up on us.

And he didn’t leave.

But somehow, that was the turning point.

Because something shifted between us.

I think those days taught him that I wasn’t going anywhere.

And they taught me the opposite.

They taught me that he could.

Before that, he had always been the one terrified of losing me.

I had always been the one being chased, reassured, begged for attention.

Suddenly, I was the one begging.

I was the one crying.

I was the one asking him not to leave.

And the entire power dynamic of our relationship changed.

Now I’m the one who overthinks.

I’m the one asking for reassurance.

I’m the one wondering whether he still loves me.

I’m the one waiting for his messages.

And when I ask him to reassure me, he doesn’t give me what I need.

Instead, he tells me to remember what I did.

“Remember how you treated me.”

“Remember what you did.”

“You were the one who hurt me.”

And whenever I try to explain how I’m feeling, he gets angry.

He shouts.

He yells.

He calls me names.

He tells me he doesn’t have time to waste.

He tells me he’s busy and has a lot of work to do.

And when I start overthinking, he tells me to shut up about it.

Sometimes I sit there and wonder how we got here.

How did the person who once couldn’t imagine going a few hours without talking to me become the person I now have to beg for reassurance?

How did I go from being the person he was terrified of losing to being the person terrified that he will leave?

I know I made mistakes.

I know I hurt him.

I know there were times when I was insensitive, angry, rude, and unfair. I know that talking to another guy, even platonically, became something that triggered all of his deepest insecurities. I know that the way I treated him during some of our fights wasn’t right.

I regret those things.

But sometimes I wonder whether regret is supposed to mean that I have to keep paying for the same mistakes forever.

Because I don’t know how to fix something when every attempt to ask for love is met with a reminder of everything I did wrong.

I don’t know how to move forward when the past keeps getting brought back into every argument.

And the hardest part is that I still miss the old him.

I miss the person who wanted me desperately.

I miss being important to someone in that way.

I miss feeling like someone couldn’t bear the thought of losing me.

But now I’m the one who can’t bear the thought of losing him.

And maybe that’s what changed everything.

Maybe somewhere along the way, we stopped being two people trying to love each other and became two people trying to recover from the ways we had hurt each other.

He was once afraid that I would leave.

Now I’m afraid that he will.

He once needed constant reassurance from me.

Now I need it from him.

And somewhere between those two versions of us, we lost whatever it was that made things feel simple in the beginning.

I know I was wrong. I know that. But I completely changed. I never made him feel insecure, and I complied with and obliged to everything he asked of me.
And yet, for the past four months, he still treats me like I’m nothing. Every single day, I’m left feeling like I’m paying for something that will never be paid in full.
I want to be happy too. I want to feel alive again. But this is killing me.
I can’t keep bearing the shouting, the coldness, the way he acts so nonchalant while I’m left crying and falling apart. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
I know I made mistakes, and I’ll always take responsibility for them. But how long am I supposed to keep paying for them? How long am I supposed to prove that I’ve changed?
I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t leave, but I can’t keep staying like this either. I feel completely stuck between losing him and losing myself.

He used to be completely obsessed with me. He literally couldn’t not talk to me. He always wanted my attention, wanted to know what I was doing, wanted to spend time with me, and being away from me seemed genuinely difficult for him. He never used to go on trips and be completely okay with being away from me either. Now suddenly he’s excited to go on trips, he’s okay with not talking to me, he can go hours without needing to speak to me, and somehow he seems completely fine with the distance. I genuinely cannot fathom how someone can switch so suddenly. He says he’s busy, and technically maybe he is, but I just don’t believe that being busy explains this complete change in how much he seems to want me in his life. I keep wondering if he stopped loving me, if he found someone else, if he’s doing this intentionally, or if I’m just overanalysing everything. I honestly don’t know anymore. What is driving me insane is that I can’t stop thinking about the difference between how he used to be and how he is now. I keep comparing every interaction to the past and trying to figure out what happened. I don’t even want to think about him this much anymore. I want to study, focus on my career and have a normal life, but my brain keeps going back to him and trying to understand this sudden switch. Please help me understand how I can deal with this because it is genuinely taking a serious toll on my mental health and I feel like I am losing the ability to focus on my own life.

Hi everyone,

I’m 21F and my boyfriend is 21M. We’ve been together for about one and a half year and I genuinely need some advice because I don’t know what the fuck is happening to me anymore.
So basically, when we first started dating, he was CRAZILY obsessed with me. Like genuinely. He would always want me to call him, ask why I wasn’t calling, why I wasn’t texting, why I wasn’t talking to him, etc. There were times when I would spend 6-7 hours just talking to him and comforting him because he was upset about something. Most of my time would basically go into him.
And I think I understand now why he was like that. At that point, he wasn’t sure that I would actually stay with him. He wanted to be with me, but he was scared that I would leave him. He constantly needed reassurance that I wasn’t going anywhere. And I didn’t leave him. I stayed.
And now I feel like I’m doing the exact same thing, just in reverse.
At that point, he was scared I would leave him. Now I’m scared he will leave me.
At that point, he needed reassurance because he didn’t know if I would stay. Now I need reassurance because I don’t know if he still needs me or if he would be okay without me.
At that point, I was the person who was certain about staying and he wasn’t. Now I feel like he’s the one who’s certain that I’ll stay, and I’m the one who’s terrified that he won’t.
At that point, I was in college and looking for a job, so I had a lot of free time. I was also just enjoying life, so I didn’t really mind it that much.
But then I got a job and everything changed for me. I was actually busy and it started becoming exhausting. He would want the same amount of attention, we would fight at night, sometimes he wouldn’t let me sleep, etc. At the time I genuinely thought he was just being immature. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just be happy with me and live his own life.
Looking back, I do understand that he was genuinely struggling too. He couldn’t sleep. He would constantly think about me and the relationship 24/7. He used to cry a lot. I know now that he was probably in a really bad mental state.
I did talk to other people during this time, but it was completely platonic. Like genuinely nothing romantic. I would just talk to people when I was bored. He actually knew about some of these people and initially didn’t have an issue with it.
But eventually he became insecure and jealous about it.
There were also some people I was talking to that I didn’t tell him about. I don’t even know why I didn’t tell him. I think I was scared that he’d get jealous and tell me to stop talking to them, and I didn’t want to stop because there was literally nothing romantic happening.
He found out and basically interpreted it as me betraying him/cheating on him. I swear to God, there was nothing romantic going on.
We had a huge fight about it and I felt extremely guilty afterwards. I convinced myself that I had broken his trust, so I stopped talking to basically everyone.
And then he changed.
He stopped being obsessed with me.
The constant calls stopped. The constant need for reassurance stopped. He stopped asking me why I wasn’t calling him. He stopped needing me the way he used to.
And initially, I was honestly relieved.
But I think there’s another part of this that I can’t stop thinking about.
I think he now genuinely believes that I won’t leave him.
He has literally told me this to my face. He thinks I won’t ever leave.
And I think maybe that’s why he doesn’t have those same reassurance problems anymore. He’s no longer scared that I’ll leave because, in his mind, I’ve already proven that I’m staying no matter what.
But then something happened that I still don’t understand.
One day he went on a trip for 3-4 days and barely called me. And something just fucking switched in my brain.
I felt like he had left me.
I had cried so much at that time. I literally begged him to stay, and somehow he just flipped. It felt like he suddenly realized that he was okay without me.
And I think that’s what fucked me up.
Because before that, I knew he needed me. I knew he was scared of losing me. I knew he couldn’t imagine me leaving.
And suddenly he was on a trip, living his life, barely calling me, and seemed completely okay.
So now I have this horrible thought in my head that maybe he has finally reached the point where he knows he can live without me.
And I think that’s when I became the obsessed one.
Suddenly I’m the person constantly thinking about why he isn’t calling me, why he doesn’t need me anymore, why he isn’t obsessed with me anymore, why he doesn’t behave like he used to.
And I know how ridiculous that sounds because I remember EXACTLY how frustrated I used to be when he was like this.
I used to tell him, “What the hell is wrong with you? Live your life and let me live mine.”
I used to get angry. I used to say things that were really mean. I regret a lot of the things I said.
And now I’m basically experiencing the exact same thing.
Except now he’s also angry with me. He calls me names. He says hurtful things to me. And I cry. A LOT.
Like seriously, I cry so much over this.
And whenever I tell him to stop or tell him that what he’s doing is hurting me, he’ll bring up everything I did in the past.
“You used to do this.”
“Remember when you did that?”
“You treated me like this.”
“You said this to me.”
And I understand that I hurt him. I really do. I’m not trying to pretend that I was perfect. I know I wasn’t.
But it feels like because I did those things in the past, he now feels like he has an open pass to do the exact same things to me.
And his justification is basically, “Well, you did it first.”
That’s what makes me question everything.
Because I feel like my reasons were completely different. I was overwhelmed with work and life. I wanted some space. I wanted to be able to focus on my own life without having to constantly reassure someone for hours every single day.
His reason now seems to be revenge.
And that’s honestly what hurts the most.
Because he knows what this feels like.
He has literally been on the other side of this. He used to cry all the time because of me. He knows what it’s like to be obsessed with someone and feel like they don’t care enough about you.
So sometimes I genuinely wonder, does he even love me?
Because if you know exactly how much something hurts, and then you intentionally do the same thing to someone because you want them to feel what you felt… is that love?
I don’t know.
And sometimes I genuinely wonder what he wants me to do.
Does he want me to leave forever for him to finally realize that he took me for granted? Do I have to actually leave for him to feel that fear again?
Because I think that’s what happened before. He was terrified I’d leave, then I didn’t, and eventually he stopped being scared. And I know I took his reassurance for granted at the time. I regret that.
But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I can’t exactly spend my life proving that I can leave just so someone doesn’t take me for granted.
I don’t know why this happened to me either.
Why did he stop being obsessed with me and then I became obsessed with him?
Why do I suddenly need the exact same reassurance that I used to hate giving?
I keep trying to stop thinking about him.
I’ll be okay for a few days. I’ll tell myself I’m not going to check what he’s doing, I’m not going to overthink, I’m going to focus on my own life.
And then eventually I just burn myself out.
I hold everything in for a few days and then I fucking burst.
I cry, I overthink, I want to talk to him, I want reassurance, we fight, and then I feel even worse.
And I genuinely don’t know how to stop it.
People might say, “Go out. Take a trip. Join a class. Meet your friends. Get a hobby. Focus on yourself.”
I KNOW.
The problem is that I literally can’t do most of that right now.
For the next 4months, I have to prepare for an interview and I can’t really go anywhere. I need to study.
And honestly, I’m scared I’m not even going to be able to pass because my brain is so fucking occupied with him.
I’ll sit down to study and somehow I’ll start thinking about him.
Why didn’t he call?
Why is he behaving differently?
Does he still love me?
Why doesn’t he need me anymore?
Is he doing this intentionally?
Does he want revenge?
Did I ruin everything?
And then an hour has passed and I’ve barely studied anything.
I have started resenting him because of this.
And that’s another thing that scares me.
Because I don’t even want to hate him. I don’t want to resent him. I don’t want to spend my entire life being angry at him for not loving me the way I want him to.
I just want OUT of this cycle.
I want to be able to love someone without making them the centre of my entire fucking existence.
I want to be able to study without thinking about him every five minutes.
I want to be able to sleep without crying.
I want to be okay when he doesn’t call.
And I want to stop needing him to behave the way he used to for me to feel okay.
I know people are probably going to tell me that this relationship sounds toxic, and honestly, maybe it is. I’m not denying that. I’ve also done things that were unhealthy and hurt him.
But right now I’m less interested in whether people think I should leave and more interested in understanding how the hell do I fix myself?
How do I actually break this codependency/anxious attachment cycle?
Because “focus on yourself” hasn’t worked. I’ve tried. I genuinely have.
I don’t want to keep living like this.
And honestly, I think I’ve reached the point where I don’t even know if I want anything anymore. I’ve started resenting him so much that sometimes I just want to disappear from the whole situation.
I just want my brain back.