At the beginning of the relationship, I listened with sympathy.

I heard endless stories about the previous partner.

According to them, she was the problem.

She was “crazy.”

She was violent.

She stole from him.

She hit him.

She tried to force him out of the house.

She was unintelligent.

She was lazy.

She was impossible to live with.

She was financially irresponsible.

Nothing was ever his fault.

At the time, I believed him.

After all, why would someone make up such detailed stories about another person?

But as time passed, something changed.

I began to recognise the same accusations being directed at me.

The same script.

The same pattern.

The same need to paint himself as the innocent victim while portraying his partner as unstable, dishonest, or abusive.

What once sounded like evidence began to sound like a carefully rehearsed narrative.

I wasn’t hearing two sides of a story.

I was hearing one person’s version—designed to protect their image.

That doesn’t mean every complaint about a former partner is untrue. Relationships are complex, and people do sometimes experience difficult or abusive partners.

But when every former partner is described in exactly the same way, and the storyteller never accepts any responsibility for the breakdown of the relationship, it is worth asking why.

Healthy people can usually reflect on what they could have done differently.

Manipulative people often cannot.

They need someone else to carry all the blame.

Looking back, I now understand something important.

The stories weren’t necessarily there to help me understand the past.

They were there to influence how I saw the future.

If I believed the previous partner was unstable, then it became much easier for people to believe the same accusations when they were eventually made about me.

The narrative had already been rehearsed.

The cast simply changed.

Today, I no longer judge people by the stories they tell about others.

I watch how they speak.

I notice whether they show empathy or contempt.

I ask whether they take any responsibility for their own choices.

Most importantly, I pay attention to patterns.

Because the truth rarely needs a character assassination.

And someone who constantly destroys the reputation of those they once claimed to love may one day tell the same stories about you.

Same script. Different victim.