We had been dating for a year and a half and he gave me $20 in a card for Christmas.

—Lauren

Aftermath: Pretty sure he is seeing someone else. If I’m only worth $20, I’d hate to see what she gets.

While going through my texts, I realized I deleted the ones from her first because she literally never had anything interesting, funny, or even very smart to say.

—CHT

Aftermath: We kept going out for about a month later, but we pretty much stopped trying after a couple weeks and had a very boring breakup. A fitting end to a similarly lackluster relationship.

A short time after moving in together, we were arguing and she flipped over a bucket full of Pine Sol water I was holding, getting it all over me and nearly ruining her loveseat. Later that day, she got in my face and clinched her fist like she was going to hit me.

—B

Aftermath: She hit me twice … a few months later. I had just broken up with her and, from three feet away, she through her phone at my face. Then she sucker punched me while I was tending to my eye, which was closed up. We don’t speak anymore.

We met through a friend and fell, I thought, madly in love almost immediately. He called me every night, and saw me almost every day. Then I went with my family for a 10 day trip to Melbourne over the holidays and he stopped calling me halfway through. Instead of telling me it was over he texted to my friend that him and his girlfriend were having dinner with his parents, while I was still away.

Aftermath: He tried to lie about it, I deleted his number and never spoke to him again

I graduated against the odds after the hardest year of my life (finishing my law degree from home whilst caring for terminally ill my father). Proudly, I asked my partner of 5 years to come to my graduation. He didn’t see the point in ‘celebrating me’ for a day, and when he saw how hurt I was he called me self-centered. I had to beg him to attend.

—free

Aftermath: We broke up a week later over this and various other belittling acts. He made me believe I was insignificant and unexciting so I would just stay home with him. I took him back twice more after he promised that he would change. Three months and a lot of empty promises later, I left him for good. I feel like me again.