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The Rules Only Applied to Me: A Story About Love, Control, and the Cost of Abandoning Yourself
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: May 18 2026
Pages: 358
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.89 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Roman has spent two years trying to be patient, useful, loyal, and understood.
In Lena's apartment, love comes with rules that keep changing. His privacy becomes suspicion. His hunger becomes selfishness. His silence becomes guilt. His body becomes proof. His money, time, and energy become measures of whether he is man enough to stay.
But in the background, two children are watching. One who sees something is wrong and tries to say so. One who doesn't understand why the loudest voice in the room always wins.
When a simple plate of food turns into another trial, Roman begins to see the pattern he has been living inside. A screen-printing frame once given as a gift becomes a fight over ownership, then a symbol of the future he refuses to surrender. A second chair in his small apartment becomes proof that love can enter a room without taking his place.
Slowly, Roman begins turning pain into sentences, sentences into shirts, and survival into rules he can finally keep.
The Rules Only Applied to Me is a fictionalized, emotionally honest novel about love, control, masculinity, accountability, and the quiet work of finding yourself again after a relationship teaches you to disappear.
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