I'm the stereotypical girl who grew up in a dysfunctional home and went on to date an emotionally abusive man, resulting in untold emotional damage and baggage. The heaviest burden I've been carrying is that of strong distrust. My ex constantly lied to me; every day I waited for a new blow up. An admission of cheating, a new girl on his Facebook or MySpace, another hurtful comment. I was on edge constantly because something was literally almost always wrong.

I told all this to my current boyfriend early on. I thought I had made it clear how important trust is to me. Then he hurt me, too. For at least a month right after we began dating, another girl made it her mission in life to steal him from me. I started by telling him how uncomfortable it made me and that eventually became crying and then later outright fighting. He never offered to show me their communication – 2000 messages in the first month of knowing her – and deleted them saying he deleted all unimportant messages. He said he never thought to show me that their conversations were (supposedly) innocent. I was left with nothing, no proof, no confidence. All I knew was she was flirty and he never asked her to stop until I was about to leave. He didn't agree that she was behaving inapproriately until he cut ties and she flipped on him…or at least so he claims.

To this day, she still seems to have his phone number. Six months after they stopped talking, she messaged him again after AT&T changed how they blocked phone numbers and she got through. He blocked her again but never told me or gave me a chance to provide input. This kicked off a whole new fight because he broke his promise – to let me see what she was saying. He said he deleted these new messages without thinking and immediately regretted it. He said he'd been afraid to tell me because we were already in a fight over her.

I question what it is that she said to him that was so long it broke into three separate messages. I still have outbursts and I've begun self-harming and drinking to cope. I feel hateful of her and of myself for not being lovable. I feel like I'm always the joke, the least important person in the room. I think about dying a lot. Some mornings I wake up sad and don't know why. So now I wait for her to text him again – I told him to unblock her – so he can finally stand up to her. Because it's his silence making her believe she has a shot. She thinks that he's only avoiding her because of me, because he's never been even remotely aggressive with her. It's hurtful to feel alone.