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My (28F) partner (32M) and I had a great start, but long-distance brought a year of frequent fights, jealousy, and emotional distance. After a very hurtful incident before our wedding, he changed and became the partner I wanted—but now that things are good, I feel stuck, unable to move past the past and fully be present.
I feel really conflicted and I don’t know if I’m being unfair or if my feelings actually make sense.
My partner (32M) and I (28F) have been together for more than two years. In the beginning, when we were together in person, things were great. I felt close to him, things were natural, and I genuinely saw a future with him.
We got engaged in less than a year. After that, he moved abroad, and we entered a long-distance phase. This period wasn’t constantly “hellish” in every moment, but it was a year of major life changes, wedding planning, and me preparing to relocate — and it was punctuated by frequent conflicts, roughly every couple of weeks.
Most of these fights stemmed from his growing jealousy and controlling tendencies, while over time I became more emotionally distant and closed off in response. It created a loop: the more he pushed, the more I shut down, and the more I shut down, the more he reacted. That dynamic gradually damaged our connection.
At some point, I even told him he wasn’t my friend anymore. I stopped sharing things, avoided topics, and just tried to keep things from escalating.
Then about a month before our wedding, something happened that really broke me. I told him my makeup artist would be a man, and he completely snapped because he assumed the makeup artist might be physically close or “touchy” with me, or involved in helping me dress. He accused me of being “cheap” with my body, said really hurtful things about who I am as a person, and yelled at me for almost an hour. It was intense and very damaging for me.
After that, he spent about a month apologizing continuously, and even his family reached out and apologized as well. Even though I wasn’t fully sure anymore, we didn’t go through with delaying the wedding at that moment due to external pressure from both sides. Eventually, I made the decision myself to delay the wedding for about 7 months so I could take time to observe the relationship more closely, and meanwhile I moved in with him.
Since I arrived, it’s been… surprisingly good. The past two weeks have been the best I’ve had with him. He’s been kind, generous, funny, attentive — everything I used to wish for.
And yet, I feel stuck in my head.
I keep thinking about everything that happened before — the constant fights, the emotional distance, and especially that last incident. It affected me so much at the time that I even had physical symptoms like stomach problems and weight loss from stress.
Now that things are “good,” I can’t seem to enjoy it. I feel like something was taken from me — like I lost a version of myself and a period of my life that I can’t get back. And I don’t know how to move forward from that.
Part of me feels guilty because he really is trying now. But another part of me feels hurt and disconnected, like my emotions haven’t caught up to his change.
Has anyone been through something similar?
Can a relationship actually recover from this kind of past, or is it a sign that something in me has already shut down?
