We Asked NZers About Their Terrible Relationships (And What They Did About Them)

Content Warning: Self Harm and Emotional Abuse

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Anyone in a relationship hopes that it’s gonna be an easy ride – weeks, months or years spent lying lazily in each other's arms, without anything to worry about. You hope for a partner who treats you right, can handle your baggage and bullshit, and loves you for it all. 

Wishful thinking aside, we don’t always end up in such aspirational relationships. Sometimes we actually end up in really terrible ones. And while it might seem obvious, in retrospect, that breaking it off should’ve happened before it even began, it’s worryingly easy to be swept up in a terrible relationship and never quite manage to call it off. 

VICE spoke to 2 people about their worst relationships, and how they managed to end them and get happy again on the other side. 

VICE: What was your relationship like? 

Faye: Well, I’ve been in two that were quite bad. The first one, Harry*, was very emotionally abusive. He was controlling, there was love bombing and withholding affection, he isolated me from my family and all my friends and essentially made it so that I relied on just him for everything.

I broke up with him and then we got back together… And then he broke up with me and told me that he only dated me again because he wanted to break up with me.

Oh, my God. Why did you go back? 

We were in the same friend group so it was definitely a matter of ease, and I relied on him so much, because, like, he made me feel like the only reason I had. That friend group was because of him. So I didn't really have an option to leave. Because I felt like if I did, then I was going to be on my own. 

But I knew that it was not good, because people were telling me it wasn't good. 

And when it did end, for real, how did you move forward from it? 

It honestly took me about two years to move forward from it. Not in terms of feelings, but in terms of, like, being able to see other people or developing feelings for someone else.

Because we were still in the same friend group, even after we were broken up, the behaviour continued. So I think the thing for me was about developing friendships that weren't inside that friend group. That was really important, so that I had somewhere else to go that wasn't in that group. 

And what was the second relationship like? 

The second one was with Eli*. I think that my sister actually put it best and she was like, 15 at the time, but she was like, “just because it's not bad doesn't mean it's good.”

So that was the big thing. It was not a good relationship, but it just wasn't abuse, he just put no effort into me. He would get angry at me over the smallest things and had a whole different set of rules around what I was or wasn't allowed to do. And I was always, like, looking after him. 

I kind of knew the whole time that it wasn't good and then it got to the point where he was like, Oh, if we break up, and I was like, You mean when we break up. He was like, I don't want to be with someone who doesn't see a future with me, and I was like, Well, I've never really seen the future with you. So it kind of was a mutual decision in the end.

After we broke up, I spent like three or four months trying to make it work. Then, after he slept with a mutual friend, I kind of realised that it was just not worth it. I was like, Hang on a minute, I don't even want this. So then I let it go completely. And that was a lot easier. 

In the years since both of those relationships, is there anything that you have done to make sure you didn’t repeat those bad experiences again? 

So I got therapy, first of all, which is great. 

We really push the idea that your romantic relationships are not the be all and end all of life, I feel like in high school in particular that was really pushed. And so the biggest thing for me, post dating Eli and which I didn't do after dating Harry, was reconnecting with who I am as a person and enjoying just spending time with myself. 

After I broke up with Eli I started pole dancing, I joined a D&D group with some friends of friends and I’d go to a pub quiz every week. I picked up a bunch of new craft hobbies, and then spent a bunch of time doing those. There's things that I do on my own and with other people, and I chose to really work on the friendships that mattered to me and on my relationship with myself instead. I realised I can get a lot out of these things and it doesn't have to come from a romantic relationship. 

And it was fucking scary, actively going to do things on my own, or with new people. 

So that was the biggest thing for me, reconnecting with who I am and realising that I actually like myself. Not like a whole, cringe, Oooh, love yourself thing, but just knowing I actually like my own company.

VICE: Can you describe your ‘terrible relationship’? 

Maddie: We worked together and then got into a relationship, and it started off rocky, but I didn't really realise it at the time. I kind of just took it as being passionate and intense. I remember we weren't even dating yet and we were already fighting. When we started dating I didn't even want to be his girlfriend and I told him that, but he would bring it up every single weekend and wouldn't leave it alone until I caved. So then I asked him to be my boyfriend, but because I was basically pushed into it. 

My friends all met him for the first time and they were like, not about him. But I was like, No, he's great. My flatmates are the most lovely people in the world who have no hate for anyone ever, but my flatmates hated him. And I feel like that says a lot. 

Then I moved in with him and my life just started to completely revolve around him. 

My mental health got really bad. I have a big problem with self harm, and it had put me in the hospital. He told me that I was worrying him by having that happen to me. We would fight to the point that I was like, sobbing and crying, and didn't even know what to do. It's so awful. It was just so stupid. 

He had so much trauma, but like, so do I, so it’s unfair on him to blame me for everything. It wasn't just him, but it just was a bad relationship. 

Was that fighting and the kind of “peak” with self harm what led you to end things?

Yeah, for sure. Around that time, there was a period where I went to be with my family and I was off of work and I started to get some space from him. 

I realised how much I missed my flatmates because I was always at his house and always with him, and like, realised that he wasn't actually good for me. 

How did you actually break it off? 

I remember telling them I was going to break up with him, and I was going to do it and they had, like, never been so happy, and they helped me write a letter to him. 

He ended up coming over and I was trying to read this thing out to him. Initially, he wouldn't let me read it. He just said that he didn't want to hear it, he was just gonna leave, type thing.  But I did get to read it out.  

So we broke up, and we were still working together, which was super awkward, but it was fine. But we had a staff party and got together and he wanted to come home with me and I said no. We had a massive fight and he left the party and didn't tell anyone where it was going. He was in a super emotional state and scared the shit out of everyone. I called him and he wouldn't pick up and was ignoring me. Eventually he did pick up and we had this big screaming argument on the phone and he was like screaming and telling me that I fucked him up and all this stuff.

After that was there a point where you stopped having contact with him?

Yeah, it was after that he fell off the face of the earth. He didn't come to work again, he ditched all of us and cut off contact with me and our friends and his own friends too. And then yeah, he disappeared. 

It really messed with him as much as it messed with me. And we know now that he's fine, like I see him around town. 

How did you get through that period of time when things were bad with him? 

I didn't really realise how bad the relationship was until I was out of it. My friends tried to tell me, I think, but they couldn't really get through to me. 

In the relationship I felt so alone and I'm such a social person. And I love my flat – we were like a little family when I first moved to Wellington. Then it was like, all of a sudden, I was not there anymore. They would be doing stuff without me and telling me about something fun they did and I'd be like, Why was I not there? And then they'd be like, Well, you're always with him. 

But when the relationship ended, they were there to give me support and tell me that I was doing the right thing by breaking up with him. They helped me reflect on the relationship and remember a lot about it, and explained to me how they saw it, and saw me change and saw how unhappy I was. So they were a really big help. 

And how do you cope with everything that has happened to you now? 

Well, my current boyfriend is so great. We've talked through everything. He is so good at having the type of conversations that have helped me. Yeah. He's always really honest with me and we talk about, like, every single little thing. So that's really, really, really helpful.

Own the Feels is brought to you by #LoveBetter, a campaign funded by the Ministry for Social Development.

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa.