The thing about relationship breakdowns, especially very difficult ones, is that often both parties at time behave very poorly in the lead up to the final split.
There are few relationship breakdowns more toxic that the "childhood sweethearts grow up and grow apart" one. It is charged with so much emotion. People who get together as kids become deeply enmeshed not just in each other's lives, but that relationship becomes part of their identity at the time their identity and personality is forming. They do a lot of formative stuff together; they will almost certainly be each other's first "serious" hanging-out-with-the-family partner, each other's first sexual partner, they go to prom together, choose colleges together... all that formative child-into-adult stuff, they take as a joint adventure. They did all that John Hughes teenage romance together. They talked about "when we are married" and they had kids' names and a place to live picked out. All that foolish shit we all did when we were young and we believed love could never die.
And then early adulthood hits, and their personalities start to harden, and they look at this person, who has been such a huge part of their life for so long, and they realise that all the bickering and tension that's been getting slowly worse for months now isn't because they're both tired and stressed from jobs and all that other shit. They realise something terrifying: they don't like this other person. But this is their lifemate! Their moms practically have a church picked out! What does life look like without this other person in it?
It's scary. And it's a type of rejection that's especially toxic: the person who knows you best in the world, the one who grew up with you, doesn't like the person you've become. Doesn't even want you around any more. Things get worse and worse and the hurt and anger build and build. You know exactly how to hurt each other worst, and you do. Somebody puts hands on the other. Shoving. A push. Holding on to them when they are trying to storm out. Throwing stuff. Shaking. A scratch. But this is your childhood sweetheart. You did worse play fighting when you were kids. You don't take the slow escalation of the physical stuff seriously, because it does not enter either of your minds that one of you will ever seriously, seriously hurt the other. And you both regret this shit so much after. By now you are either yelling at each other or both crying and frantically trying to make up, making promises to change, promises that you won't leave each other.
It's a cycle, and it's starting to repeat faster and faster. It's not months or even a few weeks between all out screaming and shoving rows now. It's a few days. You both start them. You both manhandle the other. You are both being cunts to the other one, and you are both drowning in guilt and somehow unable to stop it happening.
Now imagine all of this is happening in the back of a van, just you two alone and unable to be more than feet apart, trailing across America for weeks and weeks on end. A pressure cooker where the pressure is just building and building.
If he's alive, he will tell the police he never meant to hurt her. And the thing is, it will probably be true. He was blind with anger and hurt and so was she, and they were lifting their hands to each other again, and either he rattled her head off the van shaking her, or his hands were round her neck and he just squeezed so she would stop fucking screaming -
- and then she was dead. She was fucking dead, and he killed her. He loves her so much, how could he kill her? What is he going to do? How can this be happening?
And he dumps her body, and he just goes. He gets as far away as he can from the reality of what he has done. But domestic homicide is not a reality you can run from.
The overwhelming majority of domestic homicides occur in relationships where there has been some degree of mutual (note: I don't say equal here, because that isn't true) violence and without any premeditation. People do not, as a rule, wake up in the morning and decide "today I will murder my partner", even on the very day that they end their partner's life. The answer to "but how could you kill your partner" is "I didn't mean to, I love them" almost every time. And that is why high conflict relationships kill several people a week in the UK alone.
If you are in a relationship where you mutually put hands on each other when things escalate, this is legitimately very dangerous for you both and you have to leave. You are one fight that gets suddenly out of control, one hand grasping blindly for something to hit back with and finding a knife, one long choke of a neck, one shove at the top of the stairs or back against the kitchen countertop, away from a coffin and a jail cell. This is how people die of domestic homicide. If you recognise these patterns, start figuring out how to break this off as soon as possible, regardless of your gender or sexuality.
