Red flags I ignored

These all happened in the first 6 months of our relationship:
- He wouldn't make small talk with people. I realised quite quickly that this was because he just wasn't interested in other people (though no doubt he's making an effort with his new little group of twenty something friends).

- We joined a book group. He decided that the books we read were "sh1t" and stopped going. The other group members thought he was weird and didn't feel comfortable around him. One girl nearly pulled out of a trip we made to the Bronte house in Yorkshire because she didn't want to be around him.

- He stood me up not long after we'd first slept together to go and take drugs with some people from work.

- He looked at other women in front of me and then would look at me with a grin as if to say, "isn't it great that there's such a babe in here tonight!" He claimed afterwards that he didn't know how to behave in relationships because he said he'd never really had a proper relationship before - the two previous g/friends he'd had didn't count apparently (and he'll be saying about our 6 year r/ship now too). However, he didn't ever criticise the g/friends at all.

- He'd come back from travelling and was living with his parents. (It took him 5 years to move out.)

- He was envious of all his "friends" (the ones he'd discarded) for having direction and earning lots of money.

- He placed value on earning a lot of money in a job rather than on having job satisfaction.

- He told me he'd never really loved anyone (only a few months ago I saw that he'd written that in a book that he started writing his anxieties in at his therapist's suggestion).

- He had no friends from his 2 years of travelling and he'd cut off all his friends from pre-travelling apart from one school friend because they "made him feel bad".

- He said to me that relationships work best when one partner adores the other person more. I tried to point out that relationships work best when both partners adore each other and support each other.

- He didn't like my dog. Everyone likes my dog! He had no warmth towards my cat and dog. He saw them as irritations.

- He kept spent money on clothes etc even though he wasn't earning any money when he got back from travelling. He got himself into huge debt.

- His mum paid £9000 for a new car for him.

- He lied to me about what he was doing so he could go out and take drugs. When I asked him why he lied, he blamed me and the reaction that I "would have had". Of course, by that time I was angry. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

- After the 2nd time we slept together, he went off to a friend's house for the day, and "forgot" to reply to a text message that I sent him that morning until I got in touch again.

- I asked him if he liked this girl he worked with that I was feeling intimidated by and he said that she "was out of his league so there'd be no point fancying her".

- Not long after this happened, he raged at me one evening because I was "getting at him" and, after shouting at me whilst I sat and sobbed, he left the house, but came back in again to shout "tw@t" at me.

- He wouldn't come and meet me for lunch one day but went and met his mum instead, even though he was living with his parents, because she "needed a boost".

- He would flirt with me by e-mail and text and be really cute but in person was cold and could barely make eye contact.

- The first ever present he bought me was a CD he'd liked from years before that he thought I would like too. (I didn't.)

- One night I asked him (over the phone) why he was being so horrible to me. He sneered back 'oh pleeease give me another chance!' in a very sarcastic voice.

- I sent him a long e-mail one day setting out how I was feeling about him. He didn't reply. When I asked him why he hadn't replied to my e-mail, he said, impatiently, "I didn't even read it!"

- One of our ex-colleagues, who was a trained MH social worker, told me that he thought XN had a personality disorder and his nickname for me was 'victim'.

When he wasn't being like this, he was being thoughtful and sweet and sensitive and kind. For example, the first ever birthday present he bought me was an acre of rainforest because he knew I was always nagging people to do their bit for their enviroment.