When should you call it quits in a relationship?

There is this one woman I know. She is a sensible woman, not the kind you would expect to let a man walk all over her. But that is exactly what she did. She was in a relationship with a man but she did all the giving and got nothing in return. Maybe it was the way she went out of her way to make the relationship work, but the man did not seem to care. If you ask me, I did not see anything special about the man, but I am not a woman so I would not know what she saw in him.

The man took her for granted. How could he not, when she was practically babysitting him, letting him get away with anything he did however much he hurt her? She had shown him that she was willing to forgive him almost anything he did. He was rude to her, did not respect her and once shouted at her at her own birthday party in front of her friends and family. But she stayed with him, probably hoping that a day will dawn when he will wake up a different man. Every time he would hurt her, she would cry but then remind herself to be strong.

Often times, she would find a way of blaming herself for whatever made him angry. He treated her like she owed him something. Apparently, one time, she had “almost cheated on him”(whatever that means). He was now making her pay for that error over and over again. Well, once in a while, he would take her out for a nice meal, or be nice to her.

And that would make her forgive him everything he had done to her in the recent past. But again, he would also do something that would make her wonder what she meant to him, whether he even cared in the slightest bit about her.

Like this one evening, after her evening lectures, she needed to rest. She had a day job, lectures in the evening and she had an exam the next day. As soon as she got into her bed, he called and said he wanted to see her.
No reason was given. Normally, the patient goes to see the doctor.

But she went to see him anyway, and he stayed quite a distance from her. She got there, and the guy was not at his house. She called his phone, and he answered from a bar. He said he was with his brother. She let herself in and waited for him. He came in at about 4am, drunk and disoriented.
When she asked why he had called her and then left, he retorted that his brother was important to him and he could not refuse to meet him for a drink. He did not even apologise or pretends to be sorry. In her quiet way, she let that pass.

But what made her wake up was when she found him with another girl in his house. Under any normal circumstance, any man would try to wiggle out of this, maybe say silly things such as “babe; it is not what it looks like. I can explain”. But this man did not even look bothered. He simply got up, went into the showers and left the two chicks to sort themselves. She was terribly hurt, but she wanted to hear him say something. A part of her wanted him to at least pretend it was accident.

When he emerged from the shower, with the other chic gone, his girlfriend was still crying. Quietly, she asked; why? The guy looked at her and without any sign of remorse said: “If you cannot handle the heat, just leave. I mean, it is not like you have never done this to me.” But she did not, not even this time. She was too into him. It was when he started to physically abuse her that she realised that she did not need that kind of trash in her life.