#censoring the tag because i dont want m*linas to find this fml

[serpenteve]

I have been meaning to get this off my chest for a while, but...well. First, I am 100% "ship and let ship" type of person, and I'm also a big multishipper myself. But a certain percentage of M*lina fans have been getting to me because M*l is so very much like an ex who I will call Dave. We were friends, though I was taken for granted and overlooked tho i had low self esteem, so it didn't bother me at the time, and I crushed on him big time. Any scrap of his attention had me floating on cloud 9. Eventually I kinda gave up, got a good job, and started hanging out with a new man in our friend group. I guess Dave got jealous or was angry I no longer gave him constant attention because he then swooped right away in and asked me out. I said yes because i thought it was a dream come true but it was actually a nightmare. He didn't hit me but the emotional stuff...gaslighting, berating me, tearing me down, jealous my job was better than his and my salary higher, hated if I paid any attention to others, never wanted to talk about me only him, controlling, manipulating me so I always thought I was in the wrong and the one causing all the problems in the relationship, I apologized for something every day it felt like. I'm fine now, I left his bitch ass, but it shook me when I read the books because it was so like M*l! And I honest to god don't mind M*lina shippers, but the ones that act as if it is a purely healthy relationship kinda bother me because clearly it isn't...there are thousands of Daves and M*ls out there everywhere, it is not the worst abuse but it is abuse, and it worries me that people think it is acceptable or normal or say "he was just a dumb teenager he didn't know any better" because that is not an excuse, consistent patterns are behaviors that don't magically go away overnight you know? It doesn't need to be the worst blatant abuse to still be toxic/abuse. I adore our girl Alina but it makes me sad because that is my fantasy "what if" if I had stayed (ok that sounds a bit dramatic but that was my first thought haha) sorry for the long rambling, but like I said I just was thinking about all this for a few days and had to get it off my chest. I love your blog and thanks for reading !

I'm so so sorry you went through that 😔 No one deserved to be treated that way and I'm glad you are out of that relationship! Thank you so much for sharing because so much of your experience reminds me a lot of my own.

I grew up in a very cult-ish environment where it was basically expected that the highest role a woman could achieve was a wife and mother. The men were deeply insecure and felt 'emasculated' if their partners dare succeed at anything so they made it their job to constantly tear them down, gaslight them, and shame them for having goals and interests that didn't revolve around a guy. If you were unmarried, you couldn't be seen talking to another guy alone because then people would start talking shit about how you were obviously a whore and your future prospects were ruined 🙄 It was like living in a puritanical Victorian novel where your only value as a woman was to be somebody else's trophy.

I don't mind people shipping M*lina and after watching the show's version of the characters, I would also be a show!M*lina shipper because I really like how Archie has played him and the changes they made to his character. Hopefully, he will still be likable in Season 2, especially since the second book is where most of the problems emerged in full force.

However, people claiming that book!M*l and show!M*l are the same character literally triggers my fight or flight response 😂There was a time I actually considered blocking the ship tag because it's not a great place to be when you've been in a real-life relationship with an asshole like book!M*l and see a bunch of posts from people claiming he's such a great guy. If Alina was a real-life friend and I saw her being treated the way book!M*l treats her, I'd tell her to 👏🏽 DUMP 👏🏽HIS 👏🏽 ASS so fast and cuss him out for being a toxic asshole. No one deserves to put up with the crap Alina did in the books. It's like she did not know that relationships don't have to be that hard and miserable. If she had been allowed to explore other healthier relationships (and I'm not sure she really ever had that option), I can't imagine she'd have settled for M*l.