He Was Emotionally Abusive
A woman I briefly dated had been a runaway bride. While her ex-fiancé never hit her, he constantly belittled her and was basically emotionally abusive. Your standard kit.
He would tell her that she was lucky he wanted her, that she could never find anyone better to be with, that she was ugly, but he dealt with it, etc. etc. etc.
She was a smart kid—was a medic in the military, saving dozens of lives in Pakistan—but emotionally manipulative people can get anyone, if given enough time, and he got her.
On her wedding day, her dad, who wasn’t usually in the picture, having divorced her mother when she was a teen, was having a conversation with her in the ready room and got concerned when she started repeating a lot of the things her fiancé was saying to her.
She said that she was mid-sentence when he stood up and said, “Let’s go to Dairy Queen,” out of the blue. When she was little, they often went to DQ and talked over ice creams.
She took a second, agreed, and they left to go to DQ. But he drove three towns over, and they sat and talked over ice cream for hours while her phone rang the battery dead in the car.
She said she felt like a huge weight was lifted and felt bad that her friends and family were waiting for her, but they would all understand later.
He eventually went back to the church and told the bridal party it wasn’t happening and got his buddies to come and move all her stuff out the next day.
She said that while her dad wasn’t the best father in her teens, he was the best dad anyone could ask for that day. We dated for a couple of weeks before we figured out that we weren’t a good match.
We parted amicably, but I haven’t talked to her since. faleboat