This is a true story of a young woman I have been working with. The agony and confusion she has had to endure and work through have been crippling, to say the least. Helping her see that she does not need anyone to empower her but herself has given her the strength to pick up the pieces.

I spent 6 years of my life dating a liar and I didn't even know it.

When you lay every emotion onto one person that you allow them to trap you into an emotional and manipulative cage to a point where you cannot think rationally for yourself anymore. You become so dependent on a single person that you're actually so far into their pathological lies you begin to believe them yourself. Only once I was no longer part of it did I actually realise the lie that I had been living. The hardest thing I have ever experienced was walking away from that cage.

I spent 6 years of my life dating a liar and I didn't even know it.

I remember the day I did it so clearly. I had to force myself to be the strongest I have ever had to be in my life and to take a stand against this lie I had been living. I knew the repercussions of that day would be hard, even harder than I could have imagined, but I just had to tell him: I am leaving and taking my life and sanity into my own hands. It’s scary to look back and realise how manipulated I was. It was so bad that he was able to convince me that what I saw in black and white on a bank statement was something I was making up in my head. This is when I began to realise I was a slave to his emotional games. I thought of how I would describe being in a relationship with someone that has a pathological lying problem. It’s literally like talking to a brick wall. Imagine trying to run into a brick wall, time and time again – each time a little harder because you are so desperate to get through until you are so exhausted and destroyed that you just give up. Well, that’s exactly how it was – any argument, any question, anything. I gave up fighting him because I would never get a real answer.

To everyone, he is a well-respected person.

People like this are very hard to describe and anyone that knows him doesn’t actually know him at all. He's very clever in the way he lives his life. He is so secretive and lives so many separate lives that no one really knows him as a whole, they only see the parts of him he chooses to show. To everyone, he is a well-respected person.

When somebody is so close to you, they are your best friend, your support, your go-to guy, they are the person you want around when you are sad and even more when you're happy. You would think you are the same to them, but one day reality hits and you find out it’s all been a lie. Your perfect person is not so perfect and this wonderful fantasy you have been living is suddenly a black hole you don’t know how to escape. Don’t get me wrong I saw the signs throughout our whole relationship but when you love someone you believe in them and kind of ignore the signs hoping it will be the last time it happens. He was my hero, we had started dating when I was pretty young - he was my first love. All I saw was stars in his eyes. As time passed I started to learn the real person he was but I could have never imagined the magnitude to which his lying would go.

It’s so hard to put into words the suffocating pain of finding out that “your person” could no longer be your person if you wanted to live anything of a normal life. For hours I tried to find a word to describe the hurt I felt, but I don’t think there is a word for such betrayal and hurt. Nothing can actually describe the intense feeling of losing somebody I thought was my world and for the first time seeing their true colours. Looking back at him now, I don’t even recognise him – it’s the weirdest reality in the world. I’m a well-educated girl and I still wonder how I could have been so blind. How did I not see the truth; or more how did I ignore it and believe in him for so long? I was so afraid of losing him… Until I realised he never really belonged to me in the first place. Because although my heart was with him, his was with everyone else. He was such a slave to his own addictions and living in his own lies that I didn’t actually matter at all.

He was my hero, we had started dating when I was pretty young - he was my first love.

Since the day I lost him it has been really difficult to get back up. I have realised the hardest part of this journey would be learning to accept. There are a lot of things, moving forward, that I have to accept and acceptance is going to be the biggest part of my journey. I now have to build a person that I had lost in all those years and have to learn to trust again because I question everybody's motive - even those who have never let me down. I blame myself for everything and I often allow others to walk all over me, because it’s almost as if I believe it’s what I deserve. It's going to be a long journey but I just have to trust that everything will be okay.

But still, I sit hurting and contemplating what I did so wrong to deserve this. In the meanwhile, he walks away a hero in the next girl's life.

So for all the people who have been used and abused in some form or manner, don’t beat yourself up even more. Stop and gather all the loose ends and start to tie them back together. We can certainly all improve our relationships and the way we manage them, so working on yourself is a very important part of fixing your broken heart. Never let someone so far in that they can take it all away at the drop of a hat. Protect yourself and follow your intuition because that is what it's there for. Trusting your gut is a sure way of knowing what you need. Don’t settle for second best - you know what you are worth and there will always be someone out there to appreciate you. You can't hurry love...