My Boyfriend, my stalker

Things came to a head when one of my friends invited me to her hen night. He wasn’t happy, but said I should go, by this point we’d worked out coping strategies for him for when he felt out of control, and they were starting to work. He said he would pick me up after because ‘there’s dangerous men out there’.

So I went, and I got drunk. I got drunker than I’d ever been in my life. It was an all day, all night event (including cocktail making classes, a boozy lunch, bar crawl and a nightclub). I got so drunk that when I went to the loo I couldn’t figure out how to pull up my pants, so took them off and stuffed them in a sanitary towel bin.

Three of us got so drunk (including the bride) that we didn’t even try to get in to the nightclub. Instead we phoned M to come and get us. He was polite and charming, the perfect boyfriend, as he deposited my two drunk friends in their partners’ arms, before driving me back home.

As soon as we got through the door his attitude changed. He dragged me up the stairs by my hair (I tried not to scream too loudly in case I woke my parents. What an idiot) and in to the bedroom where he insisted on conducting ‘tests’ to see if I’d slept with anyone else that night. I failed: my missing underwear was ‘proof’ that I’d been unfaithful.