My Story – Loving Someone Who Caused Harm
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Hello,
This is my first post here, and it feels like a big step. I’ve spent months trying to understand how to even begin telling this story. I never thought I’d be someone who had to navigate something like this. But here I am.
You can call me Ashford Vale. I was in a deeply emotionally intimate, four-year-long relationship with someone I’ll refer to as Jean. We weren’t technically “together” in the traditional sense—she didn’t want a formal label—but we were inseparable. We were emotionally exclusive, went on dates, held each other through our hardest days, and shared things that most couples do. I loved her. Truly. I would’ve married her if she asked. And I believed, at the time, she loved me too. She told me as much, saying that everything she told me is what she'd imagined only telling her future husband.
Jean had trauma. A lot of it. I knew that going in, and I tried my best to be patient and gentle and supportive. I wanted to be her safe space. But in hindsight, there were signs I overlooked—emotional manipulation, inconsistent boundaries, gaslighting, and a tendency to rewrite events. At the time, I wrote it off as trauma responses. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, because I loved her, and because she had been through so much. I believed that was what being a good partner meant.
But then everything changed.
Over time, Jean began confessing disturbing things about her past—namely, her involvement in harmful online behavior toward minors. She was apparently groomed online on a roleplay website which her and her friends used, but that she had also used to engage in NSFW roleplays with minors herself when she became an adult. I won’t go into graphic detail here, out of respect for this space and its rules, but what I can say is that it was extremely hyper sexual content and actions for any age, and deeply serious, and she admitted to me that she knew it was wrong, that she had deleted evidence, and that she feared it would destroy her if anyone ever found out.
What’s been particularly hard to reconcile is how Jean had always portrayed herself as solely a victim—of grooming, abuse, and assault. And while some of that may sadly be true, what she eventually admitted to me painted a far more complicated picture. She wasn’t just a victim—she was also a perpetrator. She confessed that she continued to engage in inappropriate and predatory behavior well past the point where she could claim ignorance. When I asked her when she stopped, she admitted it was only when she got caught—not because she recognized it as wrong. And even then, there were troubling signs that she hadn’t fully stopped, and that she had done far worse than she admitted to (exchanging photos etc) which made the entire situation feel even more dangerous and unresolved.
There were countless moments where her story just didn’t add up—clear contradictions that pointed toward dishonesty. For example, she told me she didn’t know the ages of the people she had been interacting with online. But later, she admitted that she had all of them added on social media, so she must have known. She then changed her story again, saying that she believed it was normal because it had happened to her at that age. These kinds of shifting narratives weren’t one-off mistakes—they were consistent patterns. They made it impossible to trust her version of events, and they made her actions all the more concerning. Over time, it became clear that she had developed a disturbing ability to rewrite reality whenever it suited her. I recognise now she was very disturbed, and to an extreme extent.
Perhaps most personally painful were the moments when Jean admitted to deliberately hurting me. She told me she picked up abusive behaviors from the website where she was groomed, and in a warped way, believed them to be normal. These included emotional manipulation, pushing boundaries she knew I had set, and even seeking out people who disliked me just to spite me. She confessed to doing these things intentionally, admitting they were meant to cause me harm. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to hear someone you love say they hurt you on purpose—and then to watch them pretend none of it happened when the consequences start catching up with them.
Another deeply troubling piece of this puzzle is the pattern Jean has of making false allegations against other people in her life. Over the course of our relationship, she told me numerous stories about men who had apparently harassed or assaulted her—stories that I, at the time, took at face value and fully supported her through. But in the last year of our relationship, she began to confess to me that many of those stories were not true. She admitted that in several cases, she had either been the one to cross boundaries or had simply fabricated the stories as a way to process her guilt or maintain control of the narrative. One instance stands out in particular: a former partner she falsely accused, apologized to after being shown overwhelming evidence disproving her claims, and then—years later—gaslit herself into believing it had happened after all. She even tried to tell that story again, only for her own mother to dismiss it outright. That incident alone showed me just how far Jean is capable of going to avoid accountability, even if it means damaging the lives of others with deeply serious and harmful false accusations.
I was stunned. It rocked me to my core. I tried to approach it with compassion at first—I wanted to understand what had happened, why she did what she did, and whether she was truly taking steps to make it right. But when I asked questions, gently, she shut down. She grew defensive. She stopped talking to me. And eventually, she turned on me completely.
When I asked about some of these inconsistencies and the abuse she enacted on me, She began spreading false accusations about me. Mutual friends turned cold. I lost professional contacts. My reputation began to crumble based on vague, weaponized language about “concerning behavior,” while she withheld the full context of what she’d done.
I reported her to the police—not because I wanted revenge, but because it was the right thing to do. The law says there has to be a direct victim who comes forward in order for charges to be filed. That hasn’t happened yet, but the police have flagged the evidence and assured me that if someone ever does come forward, her confessions will be used.
After I reported Jean to the police and informed the necessary contacts—primarily for safeguarding purposes given the severity of her actions—she became aware and tried to retaliate. She attempted to report me to the police for harassment. I received a phone call from a detective sergeant, who was very kind and reassuring. She told me explicitly that I had done nothing wrong. I was informed that everything I’d said and done was within both legal and safeguarding guidelines, and that no part of my behavior constituted harassment. The detective even emphasized that this call was not a warning, but a formality, repeating that phrase multiple times: “Jean has been warned, and you are being told as a formality because it pertains to you.” They made it clear that she had been formally warned, not only because her report against me was unfounded, but because of the evidence I had submitted regarding her past actions. It’s led to a strange legal and social stalemate—where I’ve done everything by the book, and she’s been cautioned by authorities, yet she continues to play the victim publicly, and somehow faces no consequences for the harm she’s caused.
In the meantime, I’ve had to live in a kind of limbo. I’m grieving a person I loved with my whole heart—a person who harmed others and then harmed me further when I asked for the truth. And because of her gender, I’ve watched people give her the benefit of the doubt in a way they never would have with a man. I’ve watched the same friends who once cut people off for far less remain silent—or worse, support her—even with her confessions in plain sight.
What’s perhaps most confusing is how quiet everyone has been. This isn’t speculative—it’s not a case of “he said, she said.” She has confessed to everything. I have screenshots of her saying so, and even screenshots she herself sent me from the website she used, which condemn her actions outright. And yet socially, it feels like we’re at a complete standstill. People don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to confront it. I get that this subject is uncomfortable—taboo, even—but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. In fact, it only makes things worse. We always say we want to protect vulnerable people, but when the perpetrator doesn’t fit the expected profile, we hesitate. That silence isn’t neutral—it’s harmful. And it leaves people like me stuck, grieving, isolated, and gaslit.
I’ve tried to keep things private, respectful, measured. I only shared what I needed to with people who needed to know—close friends, employers, theatres where children are present. I haven’t gone public. I haven’t posted her name. I haven’t retaliated. I’ve just tried to protect myself and others. And yet, I’m the one being iced out.
To make it worse, people in our community have started spreading rumors about me. People I once trusted. Some of them, I believe, are protecting Jean because they’ve also done questionable things—and my speaking out makes them feel threatened. I’m aware of what that dynamic is, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach.
It’s hard to explain what it’s like to love someone who has done something like this. To have shared a life with them. To have held their hand and believed in their healing—and then realize they were capable of something unthinkable. And then to have them turn that capacity for harm on you.
One minute she's saying "I'd only tell my future husband this, I've loved you all this time, you’ve always been so good to me". The next minute, it's "Your behaviours are concerning, this isn’t a safe space".
Some days, I feel like I’m losing my grip on reality. I question everything—was any of it real? Was I blind? Did I deserve it? And then I remember that I’ve been consistent. I’ve been honest. I’ve sought help. I’ve shared receipts, not rumors. I’ve stayed kind in the face of cruelty. I’ve set boundaries. And I’m still here.
Signing up for this support group is one of the first real steps I’ve taken toward healing.
I’m tired of surviving in silence. I need to start healing aloud.
As I’ve processed everything, I’ve often returned to the idea of Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.” I’ve tried—really tried—to believe that Jean’s actions, as horrible as they’ve been, are not rooted in calculated evil, but in deep psychological dysfunction. She didn’t grow up in a supportive environment, and she lacks the emotional tools many of us take for granted. She has confessed to deliberately distorting her own memories, saying that she rewrites events in her head to make them easier to cope with. There’s every indication that she may suffer from dissociative disorders or trauma-related memory loss, especially given how young she was when she was first exposed to deeply inappropriate content through online grooming. I don’t say this to excuse what she’s done—because the harm she’s caused is real, and ongoing—but I say it to explain why I’ve had to adopt a certain level of emotional distance and compassion to survive it. She’s very good at convincing others she’s the victim, but eventually, the cracks always show. Unfortunately, by that time, people like me have already been deeply hurt.
If you’ve been through something similar, I would deeply appreciate your advice. Or just your presence. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find here exactly—maybe clarity, maybe community, maybe just a place where I’m not alone in the heartbreak and confusion of this kind of betrayal.
Thank you for reading. And thank you for being here.
– Ashford Vale
This is my first post here, and it feels like a big step. I’ve spent months trying to understand how to even begin telling this story. I never thought I’d be someone who had to navigate something like this. But here I am.
You can call me Ashford Vale. I was in a deeply emotionally intimate, four-year-long relationship with someone I’ll refer to as Jean. We weren’t technically “together” in the traditional sense—she didn’t want a formal label—but we were inseparable. We were emotionally exclusive, went on dates, held each other through our hardest days, and shared things that most couples do. I loved her. Truly. I would’ve married her if she asked. And I believed, at the time, she loved me too. She told me as much, saying that everything she told me is what she'd imagined only telling her future husband.
Jean had trauma. A lot of it. I knew that going in, and I tried my best to be patient and gentle and supportive. I wanted to be her safe space. But in hindsight, there were signs I overlooked—emotional manipulation, inconsistent boundaries, gaslighting, and a tendency to rewrite events. At the time, I wrote it off as trauma responses. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, because I loved her, and because she had been through so much. I believed that was what being a good partner meant.
But then everything changed.
Over time, Jean began confessing disturbing things about her past—namely, her involvement in harmful online behavior toward minors. She was apparently groomed online on a roleplay website which her and her friends used, but that she had also used to engage in NSFW roleplays with minors herself when she became an adult. I won’t go into graphic detail here, out of respect for this space and its rules, but what I can say is that it was extremely hyper sexual content and actions for any age, and deeply serious, and she admitted to me that she knew it was wrong, that she had deleted evidence, and that she feared it would destroy her if anyone ever found out.
What’s been particularly hard to reconcile is how Jean had always portrayed herself as solely a victim—of grooming, abuse, and assault. And while some of that may sadly be true, what she eventually admitted to me painted a far more complicated picture. She wasn’t just a victim—she was also a perpetrator. She confessed that she continued to engage in inappropriate and predatory behavior well past the point where she could claim ignorance. When I asked her when she stopped, she admitted it was only when she got caught—not because she recognized it as wrong. And even then, there were troubling signs that she hadn’t fully stopped, and that she had done far worse than she admitted to (exchanging photos etc) which made the entire situation feel even more dangerous and unresolved.
There were countless moments where her story just didn’t add up—clear contradictions that pointed toward dishonesty. For example, she told me she didn’t know the ages of the people she had been interacting with online. But later, she admitted that she had all of them added on social media, so she must have known. She then changed her story again, saying that she believed it was normal because it had happened to her at that age. These kinds of shifting narratives weren’t one-off mistakes—they were consistent patterns. They made it impossible to trust her version of events, and they made her actions all the more concerning. Over time, it became clear that she had developed a disturbing ability to rewrite reality whenever it suited her. I recognise now she was very disturbed, and to an extreme extent.
Perhaps most personally painful were the moments when Jean admitted to deliberately hurting me. She told me she picked up abusive behaviors from the website where she was groomed, and in a warped way, believed them to be normal. These included emotional manipulation, pushing boundaries she knew I had set, and even seeking out people who disliked me just to spite me. She confessed to doing these things intentionally, admitting they were meant to cause me harm. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to hear someone you love say they hurt you on purpose—and then to watch them pretend none of it happened when the consequences start catching up with them.
Another deeply troubling piece of this puzzle is the pattern Jean has of making false allegations against other people in her life. Over the course of our relationship, she told me numerous stories about men who had apparently harassed or assaulted her—stories that I, at the time, took at face value and fully supported her through. But in the last year of our relationship, she began to confess to me that many of those stories were not true. She admitted that in several cases, she had either been the one to cross boundaries or had simply fabricated the stories as a way to process her guilt or maintain control of the narrative. One instance stands out in particular: a former partner she falsely accused, apologized to after being shown overwhelming evidence disproving her claims, and then—years later—gaslit herself into believing it had happened after all. She even tried to tell that story again, only for her own mother to dismiss it outright. That incident alone showed me just how far Jean is capable of going to avoid accountability, even if it means damaging the lives of others with deeply serious and harmful false accusations.
I was stunned. It rocked me to my core. I tried to approach it with compassion at first—I wanted to understand what had happened, why she did what she did, and whether she was truly taking steps to make it right. But when I asked questions, gently, she shut down. She grew defensive. She stopped talking to me. And eventually, she turned on me completely.
When I asked about some of these inconsistencies and the abuse she enacted on me, She began spreading false accusations about me. Mutual friends turned cold. I lost professional contacts. My reputation began to crumble based on vague, weaponized language about “concerning behavior,” while she withheld the full context of what she’d done.
I reported her to the police—not because I wanted revenge, but because it was the right thing to do. The law says there has to be a direct victim who comes forward in order for charges to be filed. That hasn’t happened yet, but the police have flagged the evidence and assured me that if someone ever does come forward, her confessions will be used.
After I reported Jean to the police and informed the necessary contacts—primarily for safeguarding purposes given the severity of her actions—she became aware and tried to retaliate. She attempted to report me to the police for harassment. I received a phone call from a detective sergeant, who was very kind and reassuring. She told me explicitly that I had done nothing wrong. I was informed that everything I’d said and done was within both legal and safeguarding guidelines, and that no part of my behavior constituted harassment. The detective even emphasized that this call was not a warning, but a formality, repeating that phrase multiple times: “Jean has been warned, and you are being told as a formality because it pertains to you.” They made it clear that she had been formally warned, not only because her report against me was unfounded, but because of the evidence I had submitted regarding her past actions. It’s led to a strange legal and social stalemate—where I’ve done everything by the book, and she’s been cautioned by authorities, yet she continues to play the victim publicly, and somehow faces no consequences for the harm she’s caused.
In the meantime, I’ve had to live in a kind of limbo. I’m grieving a person I loved with my whole heart—a person who harmed others and then harmed me further when I asked for the truth. And because of her gender, I’ve watched people give her the benefit of the doubt in a way they never would have with a man. I’ve watched the same friends who once cut people off for far less remain silent—or worse, support her—even with her confessions in plain sight.
What’s perhaps most confusing is how quiet everyone has been. This isn’t speculative—it’s not a case of “he said, she said.” She has confessed to everything. I have screenshots of her saying so, and even screenshots she herself sent me from the website she used, which condemn her actions outright. And yet socially, it feels like we’re at a complete standstill. People don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to confront it. I get that this subject is uncomfortable—taboo, even—but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. In fact, it only makes things worse. We always say we want to protect vulnerable people, but when the perpetrator doesn’t fit the expected profile, we hesitate. That silence isn’t neutral—it’s harmful. And it leaves people like me stuck, grieving, isolated, and gaslit.
I’ve tried to keep things private, respectful, measured. I only shared what I needed to with people who needed to know—close friends, employers, theatres where children are present. I haven’t gone public. I haven’t posted her name. I haven’t retaliated. I’ve just tried to protect myself and others. And yet, I’m the one being iced out.
To make it worse, people in our community have started spreading rumors about me. People I once trusted. Some of them, I believe, are protecting Jean because they’ve also done questionable things—and my speaking out makes them feel threatened. I’m aware of what that dynamic is, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach.
It’s hard to explain what it’s like to love someone who has done something like this. To have shared a life with them. To have held their hand and believed in their healing—and then realize they were capable of something unthinkable. And then to have them turn that capacity for harm on you.
One minute she's saying "I'd only tell my future husband this, I've loved you all this time, you’ve always been so good to me". The next minute, it's "Your behaviours are concerning, this isn’t a safe space".
Some days, I feel like I’m losing my grip on reality. I question everything—was any of it real? Was I blind? Did I deserve it? And then I remember that I’ve been consistent. I’ve been honest. I’ve sought help. I’ve shared receipts, not rumors. I’ve stayed kind in the face of cruelty. I’ve set boundaries. And I’m still here.
Signing up for this support group is one of the first real steps I’ve taken toward healing.
I’m tired of surviving in silence. I need to start healing aloud.
As I’ve processed everything, I’ve often returned to the idea of Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.” I’ve tried—really tried—to believe that Jean’s actions, as horrible as they’ve been, are not rooted in calculated evil, but in deep psychological dysfunction. She didn’t grow up in a supportive environment, and she lacks the emotional tools many of us take for granted. She has confessed to deliberately distorting her own memories, saying that she rewrites events in her head to make them easier to cope with. There’s every indication that she may suffer from dissociative disorders or trauma-related memory loss, especially given how young she was when she was first exposed to deeply inappropriate content through online grooming. I don’t say this to excuse what she’s done—because the harm she’s caused is real, and ongoing—but I say it to explain why I’ve had to adopt a certain level of emotional distance and compassion to survive it. She’s very good at convincing others she’s the victim, but eventually, the cracks always show. Unfortunately, by that time, people like me have already been deeply hurt.
If you’ve been through something similar, I would deeply appreciate your advice. Or just your presence. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find here exactly—maybe clarity, maybe community, maybe just a place where I’m not alone in the heartbreak and confusion of this kind of betrayal.
Thank you for reading. And thank you for being here.
– Ashford Vale
Ashford Vale, I've just read your story and felt I had to reply, if only to say I'm so sorry. Sorry you are here and sorry for your awfully painful story.
Whilst your story is different to most on here, the shame, the stigma, the fear, the hurt, the sense of betrayal, the isolation I imagine are the same for us all.
I hope you find comfort from this place, there are some amazing people here who will offer endless support and a hearing ear.
Sending you a hug and wishing you strength and peace.
Whilst your story is different to most on here, the shame, the stigma, the fear, the hurt, the sense of betrayal, the isolation I imagine are the same for us all.
I hope you find comfort from this place, there are some amazing people here who will offer endless support and a hearing ear.
Sending you a hug and wishing you strength and peace.
I'm so sorry you find yourself here Ashford. Your story was too heartbreaking to just not offer some words of support. The one thing we all have in common is the far reaching damage this behaviour has to those around the perpetrators and how their actions have hurt those they love. It sounds like you've had an awful time for simply doing the right thing. There are others here who have been manipulated by their partners and those who have had to report them so you are not alone. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like your person is yet ready or able to acknowledge their own harmful behaviour and that is really sad for you. I hope you find some comfort and support on the forum and any help and resources you need to work through this