I am writing this because women, especially vulnerable women, deserve the right to avoid dating and associating with someone who has a very recent past of being abusive.
On New years eve this year after spending the first part with friends I went to go see Henry. Uber shows I arrive about 1:30am. We smoke weed. I'll be honest, I am not great with bongs, I very rarely smoke weed at all and have not always been smart at inhaling the right amount. Henry right away points out I have done too much at once. He knows because he is aware of how much I can do from previous experiences. He is correct, I start to feel bad. I get spinning vertigo when I am too high and I feel anxious, disconnected and otherwise feel awful. I am not fully cognisant by any stretch.
This affect takes a few hours to wear off on average. I tell him I am not interested in having sex because I am too high. After a short period he gets frustrated and ignores this. He initiates oral sex on me. I couldn't even tell you how long this lasted. It could have been 5 minutes or twenty. I felt next to nothing. My focus is honestly on trying to feel okay because the room is spinning and I feel awful. I don't become aware of my surroundings until he is having sex with me and it is INCREDIBLY PAINFUL. The pain shocked me, my body was clearly not ready for sex, I expressed as much and I ran to the bathroom. There was blood and because I am pathetic with blood, I returned to the bedroom and laid on the floor, not the bed. I do this whenever I feel faint although the additional reason of not wanting to be touched was true. He made a comment about me being silly lying on the floor.
SOMEONE WHO IS TOO HIGH CAN NOT CONSENT. I ALSO SPECIFICALLY DID NOT CONSENT ANYWAY. This is against the law in a lot of countries for good reason. What he did was wrong and an incredibly selfish decision that has had a pretty profound psychological impact on me.
Recently he made the claim to me that I sent messages before I arrived saying that I wanted sex. This is actually false and is completely irrelevant because consent can be revoked. He also claimed that I lay down on the floor because I was drunk. Being drunk is literally an /additional reason/ why he should not have done what he did but no, I feel faint when I experience pain/blood which is why I laid on the floor (hence the reference to it not being my period). A 31 year old man should know these basic things about consent.
I spoke about this to him the day after on Discord and that is the screencap you see on twitter. You can see he doesn't disagree with me or call me a liar, he apologises.
For those that might wonder why I didn't speak out right away, I repressed it under the thought process that I was sure he cared about me. We met three times after in January/February. We did not have sex again and when he tried to initiate it and broke clear boundaries I had established, I nearly burst into tears. The last time I saw him, I also sat in the landing crying. I wasn't even sure why I was crying. I know why now.
I didn't process any of this properly until March-April. I sought a therapist, via BetterHelp and then recieved help via the NHS. The NHS therapist urged me to report it, the BetterHelp therapist asked me if I felt I had been assaulted. It was nice to be taken seriously and it helped me deal with a lot of these emotions.
Henry sleeps with a lot of women without protection and was not honest about many of the women he slept with. He knowingly put my sexual health at risk on more than one occasion. He lies when it suits him, which has increased over the years and not just to me.
He is also a self admitted(! rare, I know) narcissist. He cheated on his last partner, with me - and I had to force him to tell her when it was made clear their relationship was actually serious because he wanted me to stay silent. Last year he was seeing another Twitch streamer in secret the same time we were trying to see if we'd get back together. I embarrassingly found out via mutual friends months later. He invited me over *days* after she had left his flat. Fucking grim. According to mutual friends he also bad mouthed me to her and told her not to post anything on social media about being with him. I want it stated that I've never said a single bad thing about any girl I've met via Henry and I've liked many of them! I don't need to give evidence for these claims because he knows they are true and he will look like an idiot attempting to discredit me.
Henry was also verbally and emotionally abusive. These are examples of verbal and emotional abuse:
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/what-is-verbal-abuse
There are examples of him doing nearly all listed in the "reg flags" section. I'm not going to go over every single example extensively, it's tiring writing these but I wanted to give some examples.
Name calling & Criticism
For me, name calling and criticism go hand in hand because he would call me a victim over and over again both as an insult but also in an attempt to completely undermine and discredit my feelings. If I put the word "victim" into my whatsapp you can see just how often he would say it:
Don't ask me what the logic is behind doing shitty things to someone then calling them a victim when they point out the shitty things. Him continuing to do things after I said they hurt me was a repeating trend however.
Blame
Yelling and screaming at you
Intentionally embarrassing you in public
Withholding or isolation
He shouted at me (and this would happen over a fair length of time) several times in public (more so privately but I'm giving the public examples as there were witnesses to most), including his mothers birthday for "not being affectionate enough". In Cancun because he "thought I would destroy his phone" (I have never once destroyed or threatened to destroy someones property). In a casino after Eurogamer (because out of curiosity I asked why he hadn't mentioned someone was going to be there and he went ballistic so I had to get him to leave).
An example that includes all of the above: at Twitch Tours he started shouting, (because he felt like I insulted him - I made a comment about him promising weed pens to a lot of people). I tried to apologise to him to calm him down. He refused to listen to me and stormed out of the event without me. When I got home I requested I wanted to break up. A few days later we did.
Gaslighting
Emotional/psychological abuse
Emotional blackmail
Henry thinks I don't know what gaslighting means, but I do. I am aware it is different from traditional lying and it is an attempt to undermine someones sanity. "They tell other people that you’re forgetful or have emotional problems to solidify the illusion." Around six months ago I went to an event, I mentioned to an acquaintance who is a mutual friend that I cared about Henry a lot still despite everything. She expressed the same, then told me he'd said to her I had mental illness issues. This isn't true (I had Depression as a teen, I had stopped taking antidepressants years before I met Henry) and it was obviously implied to indicate that these were issues why we broke up (they weren't, I was tired of being yelled at in public among other things).
I mention this because he has attempted to undermine me on mental health issues (again I don't even currently have a mental illness!). The day of him behaving poorly at his mothers birthday he attempted to discredit my opinion based completely on me being "mentally ill" and implying I was crazy. I was stunned at that. The day before and the reason why I was not affectionate towards him at his moms (I was very polite though) was because he had become very angry and had tried to insult me any way possible.
Henry weaponised what I felt most sensitive/insecure/painful of, as a way to hurt me when he was angry. These things never had anything to do with an initial argument, if there really was one as opposed to him just being in a bad mood.Calling me crazy became a common theme to whenever I was reactive towards things he would do, especially lying.
One of the ways he tried to do that was use that I had been assaulted years before by a photographer. He said it is inappropriate to share a bed with a friend and asked what I was wearing when it happened, victim blaming me to hurt me because he was in a bad mood. I was dumbfounded by why he was being so unkind to me to say something like this and burst into tears. I confided in a friend when this happened:
He did a podcast with a mutual friend. He lied about being at the cinema whilst doing it. When I realised he had lied, I asked him why. He accused me of being jealous, when I pointed out this mutual friend has a long term boyfriend he continued to blame me for the reason he lied. He will opt to lie because it is easier for him and him blaming me for his lies was a pattern that continued:
To note, some time after he accused /that same mutual friend/ who also worked in CSGO Esports of being an "annoying feminist". The way she was treated because of that was abysmal. He snapped at me when I said I didn't feel she was and told me I never had to work with her (I actually had.. she had worked at Twitch). I didn't bother responding further to this. It was just another example of how badly women were treated in the industry and how insidious it is sometimes that I wanted to mention it. Fucking Hell, CSGO esports has a lot to answer for honestly.
If you read this Henry: stop taking the suggestion to see a professional for therapy as an insult, sort your fucking self out and stop expecting the (unqualified) women in your life to do it for you. Calling me self absorbed/self involved because I wasn't focusing on your "Depression and Anxiety" (two things you've never been diagnosed or treated for in the time I've known you) that centre around me confronting you over the shitty things you've done to me, is literally atrocious. Sort it the fuck out. Stop being shitty and hurting women.
The saddest part is if he had actually shown kindness and resolve to change recently, I would have never made this public. The last conversation we had he spent two hours insulting me, then blocked me. Threatened physical violence on my friend Tim that he never met just for accompanying me for emotional support. Accused Tim of fucking me/wanting to (I could write a separate post alone for all the times he has insulted my friends for no reason) which is not true and super gross. Called me trying to talk about this subject as "the rape bullshit". The last Discord call we had he spent the first part audibly shouting "RAPE" over and over until I was audibly upset. I've never once used that word in reference to what happened.
I gave him ample time (over two weeks) to reflect and apologise. He has not and so I do not believe he has changed positively at all. I hope he will, but he won't if he isn't held accountable.
Thank you to the other women in the industry and connected communities that have told their stories recently. Without your bravery I wouldn't have been able to tell mine.
