When Lloyd friend requested Abbie on Facebook, she was surprised because she’d got the feeling that he didn’t like her. Awkward, shy and a tad antisocial, she gradually got to know him and saw him as a friend, so much so that she didn’t even realise that they were on a date.
Only a few months out of a devastating breakup with Zac who worked in the same company as her and Lloyd, despite telling him on this supposed first date that she was not ready for a relationship and apologising for if she had led him on in any way, this was ignored by both of them and she got sucked in by Lloyd’s devotion. He told people that she was ‘The One’ pretty much immediately.
Believing that it was a rebound relationship that became love, within months she was living with Lloyd, which was when she discovered that he was a gamer, something she gradually became second fiddle to. A year into the relationship and he was trying to get her to move with him to a gamer friend’s condo, which she declined. From there, things went rapidly downhill, resulting in them breaking up, only for her to discover that she was pregnant. Things went from bad to worse and by the end of it, she felt like a truly awful person. She’s ready to find out why they broke up.
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this story is so much like my first boyfriend, whoa took me all the way back to university. sorry if this is long
my ex was also a shy , gamer kid who had had a very toxic childhood and an absent father. he was an angry kid but with a really vulnerable and soft core that he only seems to show to me. our relationship was basically me unofficially earning a psychology major, we discussed all his issues while drunk and when sober he played videos games until i fell asleep and he would crawl into bed to make out/have sex. i did this for four months! the boredom was mind-numbing but i sort of felt responsible for him. he broke up with me on our six month anniversary cos he was scared about his feelings for me, he literally broke up with me the next breath after saying how much he loves me. i spent that summer in a coma, totally cut off from everyone and everything. this had been my first bf, my first sexual experience, and it just affirmed the negative things i had believed all along ,that someone like me doesnt get to get a normal relationship like everyone else.
we ended up hooking up drunk a few months after our breakup, we hadnt really stayed in touch it just happened one night when i was visiting his house that he shared with my bestie.we had had a condom break after our hookup , and yet afterwards my ex hadnt even tried to text or even check up on what happened after the condom broke after he had sex, nada. i only managed to get the morning after pill after 3 days , and i guess that is why it didnt work. i got pregnant and made the choice to terminate on my own. borrowed small amounts of money from about 20 different people , didn’t tell anyone about it and went through the procedure on my own. cabbed it home and just lay in my dorm room for 2 weeks. he had no idea what was going on while he was basically ignoring me after a traumatic sex accident but that just made me feel quite vindicated about my choice not to involve someone who i knew wasn’t going to supportive.
school started again and we had started talking cos he was depressed over his dad and grades, he was not going to classes and was about to flunk out of school. i told him about what had happened with the termination over the break. i had not told anyone on earth yet and it was all getting to be too much for me to handle alone emotionally. HE FREAKED OUT. he immediately blamed me for killing his “baby” and said i didn’t even give him a change to say goodbye to his baby( to the 6 week old cells) . he went on a mad political rant about how feminists are anti -men’s rights and how wounded he was by me choosing to not tell him because it was the equivalent of me saying he would have been a bad father like his dad had been. not once in his tirade against me did he inquire how i had been going through that , if anyone had come with me, how i was doing now, he didnt care at all. he proceeded to launch a negative campaign against me amongst our friends, painting me as a liar and villain and how could I have done this to him when he trusted me. i felt so hurt that he was throwing pro-life arguments at me when i had known him to be a pretty left leaning , atheist pro-choice guy. i didn’t even know who the guy standing in front of me was and whether he genuinely wanted to have a baby or was just going on a rant cos he felt powerless and the baby was gone anyways so he could get away with the glaring hypocrisy.
I lost a lot of people i had considered really good friends, who totally disregarded that all this had happened AFTER he had unceremoniously dumped me from his life and we were toxically broken up , still hooking up but hardly in a kind of relationship where i trusted him or he should have expected anything from me. my sense of self-worth hit rock bottom, i really internalized all the hateful things he said about me until one day i just decided no more. but that was after a few months of true clinical depression.
he ended up dating one of the girls in his dungeons and dragons group who was more his type anyways . she joined in the anti-Kookie parade emailing me some blerb from her church about the sanctity of life and she was basically nursing him back from the damage i had done him. it self-imploded itself a few months after that though despite their shared video game lifestyle and shared disdain of me.
that was my FIRST relationship. so you can see how i started a long illustrious history in unavailability after that. whoa, haven’t told that story out loud in ages. but i wanted to tell the poster in this podcast that this has happened to others too! you will look back on this many years from now and barely believe that girl is the same person you are now. don’t accept the negative labels about yourself from people who don’t even have the first clue about who they are let alone you. you have to understand how your unresolved issues led you to feel so comfortable around people with similarly major issues. i’m still working on it.
I’ve been running Baggage Reclaim since September 2005, and I’ve spent many thousands of hours writing this labour of love. The site has been ad-free the entire time, and it costs hundreds of pounds a month to run it on my own. If what I share here has helped you and you’re in a position to do so, I would love if you could make a donation. Your support is so very much appreciated! Thank you.
Copyright Natalie Lue 2005-2025, All rights reserved. Written and express permission along with credit is needed to reproduce and distribute excerpts or entire pieces of my work.
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this story is so much like my first boyfriend, whoa took me all the way back to university. sorry if this is long
my ex was also a shy , gamer kid who had had a very toxic childhood and an absent father. he was an angry kid but with a really vulnerable and soft core that he only seems to show to me. our relationship was basically me unofficially earning a psychology major, we discussed all his issues while drunk and when sober he played videos games until i fell asleep and he would crawl into bed to make out/have sex. i did this for four months! the boredom was mind-numbing but i sort of felt responsible for him. he broke up with me on our six month anniversary cos he was scared about his feelings for me, he literally broke up with me the next breath after saying how much he loves me. i spent that summer in a coma, totally cut off from everyone and everything. this had been my first bf, my first sexual experience, and it just affirmed the negative things i had believed all along ,that someone like me doesnt get to get a normal relationship like everyone else.
we ended up hooking up drunk a few months after our breakup, we hadnt really stayed in touch it just happened one night when i was visiting his house that he shared with my bestie.we had had a condom break after our hookup , and yet afterwards my ex hadnt even tried to text or even check up on what happened after the condom broke after he had sex, nada. i only managed to get the morning after pill after 3 days , and i guess that is why it didnt work. i got pregnant and made the choice to terminate on my own. borrowed small amounts of money from about 20 different people , didn’t tell anyone about it and went through the procedure on my own. cabbed it home and just lay in my dorm room for 2 weeks. he had no idea what was going on while he was basically ignoring me after a traumatic sex accident but that just made me feel quite vindicated about my choice not to involve someone who i knew wasn’t going to supportive.
school started again and we had started talking cos he was depressed over his dad and grades, he was not going to classes and was about to flunk out of school. i told him about what had happened with the termination over the break. i had not told anyone on earth yet and it was all getting to be too much for me to handle alone emotionally. HE FREAKED OUT. he immediately blamed me for killing his “baby” and said i didn’t even give him a change to say goodbye to his baby( to the 6 week old cells) . he went on a mad political rant about how feminists are anti -men’s rights and how wounded he was by me choosing to not tell him because it was the equivalent of me saying he would have been a bad father like his dad had been. not once in his tirade against me did he inquire how i had been going through that , if anyone had come with me, how i was doing now, he didnt care at all. he proceeded to launch a negative campaign against me amongst our friends, painting me as a liar and villain and how could I have done this to him when he trusted me. i felt so hurt that he was throwing pro-life arguments at me when i had known him to be a pretty left leaning , atheist pro-choice guy. i didn’t even know who the guy standing in front of me was and whether he genuinely wanted to have a baby or was just going on a rant cos he felt powerless and the baby was gone anyways so he could get away with the glaring hypocrisy.
I lost a lot of people i had considered really good friends, who totally disregarded that all this had happened AFTER he had unceremoniously dumped me from his life and we were toxically broken up , still hooking up but hardly in a kind of relationship where i trusted him or he should have expected anything from me. my sense of self-worth hit rock bottom, i really internalized all the hateful things he said about me until one day i just decided no more. but that was after a few months of true clinical depression.
he ended up dating one of the girls in his dungeons and dragons group who was more his type anyways . she joined in the anti-Kookie parade emailing me some blerb from her church about the sanctity of life and she was basically nursing him back from the damage i had done him. it self-imploded itself a few months after that though despite their shared video game lifestyle and shared disdain of me.
that was my FIRST relationship. so you can see how i started a long illustrious history in unavailability after that. whoa, haven’t told that story out loud in ages. but i wanted to tell the poster in this podcast that this has happened to others too! you will look back on this many years from now and barely believe that girl is the same person you are now. don’t accept the negative labels about yourself from people who don’t even have the first clue about who they are let alone you. you have to understand how your unresolved issues led you to feel so comfortable around people with similarly major issues. i’m still working on it.