Hello all,
I’m posting this here because I don’t have any kind of support. I’m alone, lonely and just need someone to hear all of this out. It’s a lot and I’m going to number the BIG major parts, so bear with me.
I met my bf of 3 years, Kent, at the end of 2019 right before the pandemic. We met randomly online and he invited me to a New Year’s party. It was amazing and to me, it was love at first sight. We spent every day/night together after and just like that a month later Kent asked me to be his bf.
He’s 5 years younger, a gamer and was very manic but sweet and funny. We had great sex and fell asleep in each others arms every night. After many failed relationships and constantly being cheated on and having my heart broken, I finally found my love…
Event #1: his overbearing best friend Krystal.
I, being fairly new to the area we live in, sadly had no friends or connections. I honestly don’t care for the city and the people it holds so my time ended up split between overworking at a toxic job and going out to the cities seedy and shallow gay bars every night. Needless to say I found no deep connections… only trouble.
Because I had no people of my own to bring him around, our plans always involved his best friend Krystal and her group of trashy party friends. After each outing, dinner, camping trip, game night and party, I started to notice how terribly this girl treated her people. She was always cautiously nice to me though, of course. Having great intuition myself, I knew it was fake and could see what she was doing. I mentioned it to my bf and the other friends from the group we started to get close with, Max and Penny, how terrible a lot of the things she would say and do were, and slowly but surely they started to notice the same. It was like no one had ever thought maybe she was a bad person until I pointed it out.
(So there’s a bit of a pattern of befriending not the best people here…)
There was a few instances were I called her out and pulled her aside to “have words” regarding her “ring leader” behavior. I’m not big on people disrespecting the ones I love, but will handle the situation in a way that makes the person think about what they’ve done-never cuss out or fight, that’s never effective anyway.
Event #2: the death of his abusive and estranged brother.
Now, this truly is the core of this whole thing… it’s difficult for me to even type out, to be honest. It’s unfair and it’s painful and I believe it broke us.
It’s not one’s fault.
And there’s nothing anyone can do.
His brother passed of a drug overdose 7 months into our relationship, and a month or so after we moved in together. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve endured in my life and there’s been a lot of bad experiences prior. I was Kent’s rock, regardless… helped with the service, designed a memorial card, was there for his family, let him fall apart completely but was always by his side and held him when he cried. I don’t know of a lot of gay men who would stick around through all of that… especially in such a new relationship… but I did. How could I not?
The first time I met his mother was for the service. She was crying the first time I met her. It wasn’t even a “this is my new bf JJ!” dinner, like I’ve had in the past. It wasn’t celebratory, it was wrapped in disparity… in tears, in morning.
It was unfair.
A few months went by and life began to get back to normal… he started to “seem” ok and we started hanging out with his friend group again. Krystal continued to treat everyone the same way and she hated how close we were getting to Max and Penny. The 4 of us starting going on double dates and when Krystal found out… it wasn’t pretty.
She planned a bowling night and invited us to come. As we were the last to arrive, one of the group members stood up on chair and yelled “here come the f**gs”… as a “joke”. He was drunk and liked to fight people at Krystal’s parties.
We didn’t hear him say this, we didn’t even know but Max and Penny did and told us in confidence the following weekend. The whole situation ended in the friend group splitting and my bf, myself and Penny telling Krystal to go get bent. It was a huge fight between many people and in the end it was us vs. them. I couldn’t believe I was apart of this kind of “drama”.
I felt bad for my bf though, losing his brother and then his best friend in the same year. But he didn’t need THAT kind of friend and thankfully he was able to see that this was for the best.
Over time it became constant that Kent would game with Max and Penny, their banter and shit talking coming through the tv, so even I could join in as I did this and that around the apartment. It made me feel included and made us all form a nice little bond I thought was unbreakable.
Event #3: Corrective surgery.
After our first year together, Kent had to get corrective circumcision surgery. This meant no sex… for a while. We didn’t realize it would be “ever again”… in fact it’s been 2 years and we still haven’t had sex since. Neither of us know why… it just happened that way… and as many times as we talk about it, the bed keeps getting colder.
We had a few fights here and there, some big explosive ones, some little ones. Nothing we couldn’t work out. They always ended up being about how we don’t have sex, how distant he is from me and how lonely he makes me feel.
In the early stages of our relationship I drank the same way I did when I was single… A LOT. TOO MUCH. Out of control... I didn’t want to admit I had a problem, and I really had a problem.
Event #4: Sage the cat gets out.
One night, after lying about being out and coming home drunk (something I did too often), we had a fight and I slept out on the couch. I didn’t realize I drunkenly left the screen door open and his cat Sage, a sweet and very slow inside cat, got out. We live on the first floor but our apartment faces the parking lot. The cat could have been killed. Could have been run over. Lost forever. It was bad. Really really really bad! I didn’t realize the cat was gone until the next morning as I got dressed for work, pounding hangover turning to fear and panic as I notice the screen door is wide open. Sage no where to be found. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done in my life and was the “instant change” moment that had to happen. Sage is okay, thank God… and in April I will be 2 years sober. I gave up drinking for Kent, for sweet innocent little Sage, for myself, for his mom … for his brother.
But my lying and hiding the drinking (because I was ashamed and didn’t want him to think less of me) broke us further…
In enters Alice, a tell it like it is, rude and proud Hispanic new coworker and fellow gamer turned friend to Kent. She introduced him to all her gamer friends and even gave him her old play station. Her best friend, Liv (self employed and living at home with no real responsibilities) hit it off best with Kent. Eventually all of Kent’s time went to just gaming with these new people… most I had never met. To this day I still don’t know half of them.
Kent barley noticed when Max and Penny eventually broke up and stopped gaming with him. So there was no more fun gaming banter, just Kent gaming with these new people who wanted no bond with me.
Another year pasted and Kent and I are seemingly strangers… we barley talk, we barley spend time together. He doesn’t treat me like a boyfriend, he treats me like he hates me. Every moment goes to gaming with Alice and Liv. Most of the time it’s just Liv. Kent and Liv started working out together too and getting dinner after. I’d come home from a long stressful day at work to an empty apartment… my bf of almost 3 years (at the time) is out having dinner with someone else… and I’m not allowed to have a problem with ANOTHER one of his friends…
Event #5: Game night bickering and the apology back fire.
At this point in our relationship, Kent doesn’t really talk to me. The only time he does is to cut me down, PlayStation headset unmuted so the friends can hear. This just lets them know they can treat me the same.
He started dragging me along to dinners and game nights at Max’s house, now without Penny, and they didn’t feel the same. Penny was usually on my side and would playfully yell at Kent to “be nice to me” or to “shut up” when he’d pick on me. It was cute. But the new friends just made me feel awkward and invisible. I wasn’t welcome with these people, Kent included…
This last Christmas we got together to play board games and exchange gifts, when Kent started to get progressively meaner to me as the night went on. Eventually I shut down and stopped talking and engaging with anyone at the table… I literally couldn’t bring myself to even fake it. It drastically changed the atmosphere and when the game was over I got up, got my stuff and went out to the car without saying goodbye. Immature, I know, but I had to remove myself from the situation.
A few days later I reached out to both Liv and Alice to apologize for leaving without saying goodbye because I felt bad for acting that way. It backfired on me in a way I never say coming.
Now, I don’t text these girls regularly, I barely know them, they know nothing about me or try to know me. We don’t have long conversations, it’s all very surface level stuff the maybe once a month I see them for a get together. The kind of people that talk AT you about themselves, never following any thing up with “and what about you?”… Kent however talks to them every single day for hours.
It was paragraphs and paragraphs of how Kent and I’s relationship is terrible, we’re draining, the bickering is like Jerry Springer and Alice, who is “blunt and honest” AKA just flat out rude, was the worst of the two, called my apology fake. “What do you expect from this?” she asks. They both accused me of dragging me into my relationship drama but fully neglecting the fact that Kent snaps at me for no reason, constantly… yet this is my fault? And if they’re already so opinionated about Kent and I’d relationship, they’re involving themselves (in my opinion).
It caused a fight between Kent and I that ended in us breaking up that night. It ended any shallow friendship between me and Liv and Alice indefinitely.
Kent and I worked things out the next morning after I cried most of the night. And though we’re still together my heart is completely broken. Now he goes and has game nights and parties with them that I am not invited to because Liv and Alice say so.
How am I supposed to marry this man? No way in hell are those two coming to our wedding!
And they still get all of his time. Every night, the second he’s home from work it’s gaming with Liv until he has to go to bed… maybe says one or two words to me and that’s it. We’re just roommates at this point.
There’s so many factors here I never in my wildest dreams would have wanted in a relationship. There’s so many outside forces messing with what we COULD have. I love this man with my whole heart. I’m not ready to give him up… to let go! I can’t! And his single gamer friends don’t care about or respect our relationship.
Now he tells me that he’s going to their Saturday night game night… this Saturday, Valentine’s Day weekend. Leaving me home alone.
What the fuck do I do?
I’m posting this here because I don’t have any kind of support. I’m alone, lonely and just need someone to hear all of this out. It’s a lot and I’m going to number the BIG major parts, so bear with me.
I met my bf of 3 years, Kent, at the end of 2019 right before the pandemic. We met randomly online and he invited me to a New Year’s party. It was amazing and to me, it was love at first sight. We spent every day/night together after and just like that a month later Kent asked me to be his bf.
He’s 5 years younger, a gamer and was very manic but sweet and funny. We had great sex and fell asleep in each others arms every night. After many failed relationships and constantly being cheated on and having my heart broken, I finally found my love…
Event #1: his overbearing best friend Krystal.
I, being fairly new to the area we live in, sadly had no friends or connections. I honestly don’t care for the city and the people it holds so my time ended up split between overworking at a toxic job and going out to the cities seedy and shallow gay bars every night. Needless to say I found no deep connections… only trouble.
Because I had no people of my own to bring him around, our plans always involved his best friend Krystal and her group of trashy party friends. After each outing, dinner, camping trip, game night and party, I started to notice how terribly this girl treated her people. She was always cautiously nice to me though, of course. Having great intuition myself, I knew it was fake and could see what she was doing. I mentioned it to my bf and the other friends from the group we started to get close with, Max and Penny, how terrible a lot of the things she would say and do were, and slowly but surely they started to notice the same. It was like no one had ever thought maybe she was a bad person until I pointed it out.
(So there’s a bit of a pattern of befriending not the best people here…)
There was a few instances were I called her out and pulled her aside to “have words” regarding her “ring leader” behavior. I’m not big on people disrespecting the ones I love, but will handle the situation in a way that makes the person think about what they’ve done-never cuss out or fight, that’s never effective anyway.
- we’ll come back to her though…
Event #2: the death of his abusive and estranged brother.
Now, this truly is the core of this whole thing… it’s difficult for me to even type out, to be honest. It’s unfair and it’s painful and I believe it broke us.
It’s not one’s fault.
And there’s nothing anyone can do.
His brother passed of a drug overdose 7 months into our relationship, and a month or so after we moved in together. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve endured in my life and there’s been a lot of bad experiences prior. I was Kent’s rock, regardless… helped with the service, designed a memorial card, was there for his family, let him fall apart completely but was always by his side and held him when he cried. I don’t know of a lot of gay men who would stick around through all of that… especially in such a new relationship… but I did. How could I not?
The first time I met his mother was for the service. She was crying the first time I met her. It wasn’t even a “this is my new bf JJ!” dinner, like I’ve had in the past. It wasn’t celebratory, it was wrapped in disparity… in tears, in morning.
It was unfair.
A few months went by and life began to get back to normal… he started to “seem” ok and we started hanging out with his friend group again. Krystal continued to treat everyone the same way and she hated how close we were getting to Max and Penny. The 4 of us starting going on double dates and when Krystal found out… it wasn’t pretty.
She planned a bowling night and invited us to come. As we were the last to arrive, one of the group members stood up on chair and yelled “here come the f**gs”… as a “joke”. He was drunk and liked to fight people at Krystal’s parties.
We didn’t hear him say this, we didn’t even know but Max and Penny did and told us in confidence the following weekend. The whole situation ended in the friend group splitting and my bf, myself and Penny telling Krystal to go get bent. It was a huge fight between many people and in the end it was us vs. them. I couldn’t believe I was apart of this kind of “drama”.
I felt bad for my bf though, losing his brother and then his best friend in the same year. But he didn’t need THAT kind of friend and thankfully he was able to see that this was for the best.
Over time it became constant that Kent would game with Max and Penny, their banter and shit talking coming through the tv, so even I could join in as I did this and that around the apartment. It made me feel included and made us all form a nice little bond I thought was unbreakable.
Event #3: Corrective surgery.
After our first year together, Kent had to get corrective circumcision surgery. This meant no sex… for a while. We didn’t realize it would be “ever again”… in fact it’s been 2 years and we still haven’t had sex since. Neither of us know why… it just happened that way… and as many times as we talk about it, the bed keeps getting colder.
We had a few fights here and there, some big explosive ones, some little ones. Nothing we couldn’t work out. They always ended up being about how we don’t have sex, how distant he is from me and how lonely he makes me feel.
In the early stages of our relationship I drank the same way I did when I was single… A LOT. TOO MUCH. Out of control... I didn’t want to admit I had a problem, and I really had a problem.
Event #4: Sage the cat gets out.
One night, after lying about being out and coming home drunk (something I did too often), we had a fight and I slept out on the couch. I didn’t realize I drunkenly left the screen door open and his cat Sage, a sweet and very slow inside cat, got out. We live on the first floor but our apartment faces the parking lot. The cat could have been killed. Could have been run over. Lost forever. It was bad. Really really really bad! I didn’t realize the cat was gone until the next morning as I got dressed for work, pounding hangover turning to fear and panic as I notice the screen door is wide open. Sage no where to be found. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done in my life and was the “instant change” moment that had to happen. Sage is okay, thank God… and in April I will be 2 years sober. I gave up drinking for Kent, for sweet innocent little Sage, for myself, for his mom … for his brother.
But my lying and hiding the drinking (because I was ashamed and didn’t want him to think less of me) broke us further…
In enters Alice, a tell it like it is, rude and proud Hispanic new coworker and fellow gamer turned friend to Kent. She introduced him to all her gamer friends and even gave him her old play station. Her best friend, Liv (self employed and living at home with no real responsibilities) hit it off best with Kent. Eventually all of Kent’s time went to just gaming with these new people… most I had never met. To this day I still don’t know half of them.
Kent barley noticed when Max and Penny eventually broke up and stopped gaming with him. So there was no more fun gaming banter, just Kent gaming with these new people who wanted no bond with me.
Another year pasted and Kent and I are seemingly strangers… we barley talk, we barley spend time together. He doesn’t treat me like a boyfriend, he treats me like he hates me. Every moment goes to gaming with Alice and Liv. Most of the time it’s just Liv. Kent and Liv started working out together too and getting dinner after. I’d come home from a long stressful day at work to an empty apartment… my bf of almost 3 years (at the time) is out having dinner with someone else… and I’m not allowed to have a problem with ANOTHER one of his friends…
Event #5: Game night bickering and the apology back fire.
At this point in our relationship, Kent doesn’t really talk to me. The only time he does is to cut me down, PlayStation headset unmuted so the friends can hear. This just lets them know they can treat me the same.
He started dragging me along to dinners and game nights at Max’s house, now without Penny, and they didn’t feel the same. Penny was usually on my side and would playfully yell at Kent to “be nice to me” or to “shut up” when he’d pick on me. It was cute. But the new friends just made me feel awkward and invisible. I wasn’t welcome with these people, Kent included…
This last Christmas we got together to play board games and exchange gifts, when Kent started to get progressively meaner to me as the night went on. Eventually I shut down and stopped talking and engaging with anyone at the table… I literally couldn’t bring myself to even fake it. It drastically changed the atmosphere and when the game was over I got up, got my stuff and went out to the car without saying goodbye. Immature, I know, but I had to remove myself from the situation.
A few days later I reached out to both Liv and Alice to apologize for leaving without saying goodbye because I felt bad for acting that way. It backfired on me in a way I never say coming.
Now, I don’t text these girls regularly, I barely know them, they know nothing about me or try to know me. We don’t have long conversations, it’s all very surface level stuff the maybe once a month I see them for a get together. The kind of people that talk AT you about themselves, never following any thing up with “and what about you?”… Kent however talks to them every single day for hours.
It was paragraphs and paragraphs of how Kent and I’s relationship is terrible, we’re draining, the bickering is like Jerry Springer and Alice, who is “blunt and honest” AKA just flat out rude, was the worst of the two, called my apology fake. “What do you expect from this?” she asks. They both accused me of dragging me into my relationship drama but fully neglecting the fact that Kent snaps at me for no reason, constantly… yet this is my fault? And if they’re already so opinionated about Kent and I’d relationship, they’re involving themselves (in my opinion).
It caused a fight between Kent and I that ended in us breaking up that night. It ended any shallow friendship between me and Liv and Alice indefinitely.
Kent and I worked things out the next morning after I cried most of the night. And though we’re still together my heart is completely broken. Now he goes and has game nights and parties with them that I am not invited to because Liv and Alice say so.
How am I supposed to marry this man? No way in hell are those two coming to our wedding!
And they still get all of his time. Every night, the second he’s home from work it’s gaming with Liv until he has to go to bed… maybe says one or two words to me and that’s it. We’re just roommates at this point.
There’s so many factors here I never in my wildest dreams would have wanted in a relationship. There’s so many outside forces messing with what we COULD have. I love this man with my whole heart. I’m not ready to give him up… to let go! I can’t! And his single gamer friends don’t care about or respect our relationship.
Now he tells me that he’s going to their Saturday night game night… this Saturday, Valentine’s Day weekend. Leaving me home alone.
What the fuck do I do?
