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The Beginning – and the Beginning of the End

I loved him like no other. He told me that himself time and time again. And it was true. And yet he couldn’t love me back. Not really. Not like her loved her.

She was not another woman, as it might sound, but a drug. An addiction to a drug he maintained for over 26 years. A drug which had all but completely destroyed his mind.

We reconnected online. I had known him 20 years ago when we had worked together. I remembered this gentle soul on which I had a crush. I had kept photos of him all these years – looked at them occasionally and wondered why I’d let him pass me by. And now he was back, having reached out on social media, wanting to reconnect with me and others we had known in common.

The first reunion he stood us up. But kept chatting with me on social media. I was entranced by his writing and his seemingly endless knowledge of this city we shared. He suggested we meet up separate from everyone else. I jumped at the chance.

I was drawn to him immediately. It was an uncanny attraction like nothing I had ever experienced before. We went touring downtown – he seemed to know this city inside out. I was impressed with his knowledge of the history, architecture, of the streets and buildings of this city I have lived in all my life but somehow never knew before. He made me laugh. We talked about music, books, old friends, old times – we had it all in common. We had such fun. It was like reconnecting with your twin flame after being forced apart for years. I was burning for him.

It started too quickly. I could accuse him of “lovebombing” and sucking me into a premature sexual relationship, but that would be a lie. Oh certainly where was lovebombing, but it came after I too quickly dove in myself. The rapid jumping into the relationship was my doing. I went to him two days after we had reconnected. We were supposed to watch a movie, hang out. He walked into the room in nothing but a towel. Ok, maybe that WAS a bit presumptuous. But it wasn’t like I scoffed and ran. No. On the contrary. I pulled him to me.

We had sex exactly two days after we technically “met”. But we had known each other all those years before, so it wasn’t like I hopped in bed with a total stranger. Was it?

It moved quickly. We were soulmates within a week. Spending every possible second together. There were no fights, no jealousies, nothing but pure love and lust for the first 5 months. It was bliss. I had never met anyone like him before. I had never fallen so fast or loved anyone so much. And the sex – amazing. He was everything I ever dreamed of in a man. The way he looked, the way he felt, the way he held me, made me laugh, made me want to talk to him all night long. I had never felt that way for anyone else. No one had ever ticked every single box the way that he did.

He said he was in recovery for meth and alcohol addiction. He worked a menial job in manual labor now, making minimum wage. When I had known him before, he had been in computers, so I knew he was capable of much more. Now he lived in a small room below the store where he worked. He had no car. I asked about these things and he talked about an abusive relationship he had been in where the girl, who he had been living with, had beaten him up and he had run from it and ended up here. It sounded suspicious. But I felt guilty for my initial doubt. After all, women end up in the same predicament running from abuse – why not a man? He even showed me the scar on his face where she had cut him. And I wasn’t looking for someone to support me at this point in my life. I own a home. I have a good job as an executive. What I need is someone to give me love and emotional support – the material stuff I can handle myself. Maybe he doesn’t have a great career, own property, etc. But do I need that? Every man I had been with before who was able to support me financially and materially hadn’t bothered, and had been emotionally unavailable which was worse. So I shrugged off these warning signs.

One day I noticed the pint of vodka under his bed. And i noticed it was full when I left the room to the bathroom and empty when I returned. I asked him about it. Yes, he acknowledged, he’s an alcoholic. He’s trying to cut down. But it balances the meth.

Wait….meth? I thought you were IN RECOVERY?

Well, what he meant by “in recovery” is that he was “tapering off”…for the past two years.

I rationalized. I had never had a long term relationship with a meth addict before. He assured me he had it under control. He described how the establishment dramatizes and creates a nightmarish vision of this drug that isn’t really true. People use the prescription versions for ADHD, after all. And that’s really what he uses it for. It calms him down. He has anxiety without it. How bad can it be? And indeed, he hadn’t given me any reason to think otherwise. After all, he doesn’t scratch his skin like bugs are crawling on it, his teeth are perfectly healthy, he’s never violent or impulsive – at least not that I could see. So maybe he does really have it under control. Maybe it really is less scary than the “establishment” wants me to believe. I let it go. I even supported his view of things. Supported him.

The first sign of meth psychosis came when we went out of town with my family. I have trouble sleeping with someone else, so we slept in separate rooms. In the middle of the night i got up to use the restroom and found his light was still on. I knocked – curious if he was ok. He had shut himself in the closet with a bottle of wine, rocking back and forth and complaining that someone was watching him through the window and they wanted him to hate me. I coaxed him out and into the bed. I held him and soothed his fears. He calmed down. In the morning, he admitted being sometimes delusional – claimed it was the result of frontal lobe damage caused by getting hit by a car a couple of years ago. He’s basically schizophrenic.

I’ve been brought up by my NPD mom to be a good little caretaker. As much as I hate to admit it, in a sick twisted way, I think this just made him more appealing. Sure, it occurred to me – isn’t frontal lobe damage what is caused by meth? But he had medical records to prove the accident and the brain swelling. Who am I to judge or doubt?

It was on this trip I began to see the impulsive irrational behavior also. When we were going to get back late due to an extra stop my family wanted to make, and I asked him if it would interfere with his work, he just shrugged and said don’t worry about it. I pushed and learned he would be late for work if we made the stop. I offered to drive him back since we were not dependent on my family for transport. No, he insisted, it’s not a big deal. He didn’t want to miss the opportunity to spend one more day with us. I convinced him to call his boss, but his boss was busy and told him to call back later. He never did. I kept insisting, but he told me to back off – I didn’t understand how the place worked. This is how they treat each other. Um…ok I guess.

When we returned, they fired him for not showing up.

The first full on psychotic break came about 5 months in, about a week after the job loss. I offered to pay him to do some work in my garden, as he said he loved doing stuff like that and he would need the money for rent. I had a hair appt, so left him to do this work for a couple of hours. We were texting back and forth while apart and everything seemed great until all of a sudden he started to text weird things like “why do you keep texting me? Is it so you can come back here and see that nothing has gotten done and have an excuse not to pay me?” He claimed I was making him agitated because he needed to get this work done. OK, I apologized and stopped texting.

When I came back, he started to show me what he had done. I thanked him, I praised him, I asked how much do I owe him. He asked if there was more he could do to earn the money – he didn’t feel he had done enough. I assured him it was great, and really it was. He had done more than enough. I told him I would give him more work for more money if he wanted. In the middle of this, I noticed a vodka bottle – appeared to be empty – on top of my AC unit inside my house. I thought it was an odd place to stash a bottle of vodka and also wondered where it came from given I had none in the house and he had no money, so asked “is that a vodka bottle up there?”

He flipped out. “You don’t notice any of the work I’ve done but you’re quick to notice the vodka. Yes, I’ve been drinking.” And then launched into a 5 minute lecture accusing me of setting him up by texting him the whole time he was supposed to be working so that I would come back and be able to accuse him of doing nothing but drinking. Which I had NOT done. Then it developed into accusations that I had some rental car company drop off a rental car for some guy from San Francisco I was having over to have sex with. And that I was “using” him to get out of a relationship with my ex husband (who I had been divorced from for over 8 years). And that he was just my whipping boy and my slave and since I think he is so useless to be good for nothing but grunt work why don’t I go fuck myself. Totally incoherent accusations. I started crying. I told him I don’t understand. He screamed at me that I am just like his ex who abused him. She also said she doesn’t understand. That’s what we all say when we are trying to ruin him. Etc etc. It was getting out of hand, so I told him I need a minute and walked away into the other room. I came back a few minutes later to find him walking out the door and down the street. I walked out behind him and asked where he’s going. He flipped me off from behind and kept going.

30 minutes later, I started getting incoherent texts from him. He hopes I’m happy – because of me he got fired. He hopes I’m happy – because of me he is sleeping in a dumpster tonight because he is locked out from the store where he lives. At one point his mother texted him and he sent me a pic of that text with the threat “Did you call her? If you called her or ever talk to her, it’s been nice knowing you, you’re DEAD!” He kept texting about how people around him were threatening him, that he had no place to go, that he was squatting downtown with the homeless people. I asked him if he wanted me to pick him up and he could sleep at my place. He answered “Sure, and you can leave all the windows open so your neighbor’s dog can more easily come inside and kill me.” And “So YOU can kill me. How do you plan to do it? With a knife? A gun?” This went on for some time. Finally he said “Come pick me up.”

I picked him up downtown. He was still raging. He kept calling me names and accusing me of cheating on him, trying to kill him. He called me stupid and ugly. He said stupid ugly girls like me always think they can get away with shit, get away with mistreating him. He ranted on and on. I was worried about him. I thought he was having a schizophrenic break. I didn’t want him sleeping on the street. Yet, he was scaring me. I didn’t want to take him back home with me either.

I took him to a hotel. He accused me of knowing about this hotel because I regularly bring men there to have sex with them. I left him in the car while I went in to get a room. The only one they had left was a $200 suite – but I took it. Trying to sneak him past the front desk while he was still verbally abusing me was nerve wracking. Once we got in the room, he lay down on the floor and acted pissed as hell. When he saw that I was leaving, he got really angry. But I left quickly.

A sleepless night. I came back the next morning to be sure he would leave the room. I was concerned how I might find him, how I might find the room. I was honestly worried he might destroy things, in his condition, and I would have a huge repair bill on my hands. Luckily, he hadn’t. I hoped maybe the delusion would have passed and he would be better, even apologetic. He was not. At first he wouldn’t even open the door.

When he did open it, he was still ranting. I offered to take him to the train. He said I better, I owed that to him at the very least. I should have left then, I know. Why didn’t I?

Instead I drove him to the train, being verbally abused the entire way. He threw the phone at me, which I had given him because he could no longer afford to pay for his own, saying “I don’t want anything of yours!” He threw his books, which he was meaning to sell to a bookstore, at me because “I don’t need to carry all this crap. Do some reading! It will do you some good, you’re such an idiot.” He told me he would like to see me “beneath the wheels of a car, bloody in the street.” He said I “deserve to be stabbed to death.” The onslaught continued when he got out of the car, he leaned in to continue to yell accusations and insults at me. He then walked to the middle of the street and threw a book I had given him into the street – a present I had received as a teenager from the father of my best friend. I was too scared to go retrieve it. I was scared of him. I just wanted to be away from him. So I drove off and left this bit of my history – and him – behind.

I missed that work day due to lack of sleep and being completely confused and upset. What had I done to cause this? What, exactly, WAS this anyway?

A few days later, he reached out. He was all apologies. He was mortified by the way he had behaved, the way he had treated me, his queen, the love of his life. He begged me to see him, to tell him all that he had said and done and everything it made me feel. He would understand if I didn’t want to be with him anymore, but please let him see me, please express myself because even if we aren’t together, he can’t bear the idea of me holding on to the resentment I absolutely MUST have for him after that. I caved. I agreed to see him.

It had been a meth delusion, he admitted. He had been convinced that I was bringing someone to my house to have sex with after he left. He saw a car parked strangely on the street outside my house and became convinced this was a sign of my plans to cuckold him. He was terrified by what meth had clearly done to his mind and how it had made him behave. He wanted to quit now. He hadn’t done meth since that day and he planned to quit for good. He needed to. He hoped I would be there because he needed my help to quit. He needed my love. Like a good little caretaker, I felt nothing but love and pride at being so deeply needed. I agreed to stay with him.

I demanded he enter therapy with me – he agreed. I insisted he stop meth AND alcohol right now. He agreed. I set some milestones with rewards for staying off the drugs – after two weeks clean I would get us a super expensive hotel room with a spa tub and sleep with him in the same bed (that was important to him and something I rarely did because I can’t get a good night’s sleep with someone else). After a month clean, I would take him on a trip. Etc.

We did start therapy. Every week he talked about how he hadn’t done drugs  or alcohol for another week. We were happy. Everything was golden. Then came the second meltdown – it took place during our one month clean trip away reward…

Ghost Requeim

Ice Sacrifice

My soulmate is a married man

His wife is addiction to meth and alcohol

I did not realize the strength of their bond

I was naive enough to think his passion and love for me would be enough to make him recognize the destruction she brought to his life and empower him to let her go

I pretended I didn’t believe this – I even convinced myself I wasn’t jealous of their relationship

But like any possessive female, she became a monster in the defense of her chains on her man

She saw a threat in me – she saw my secret underlying desire to break her hold on him, which even I did not clearly see

She began to work her spells, gradually convincing him that it was I who was the monster set on destroying his life

She is skilled in this endeavor – she’s done it before with his other lovers in the past

She has been victorious every time

I was a fool to think my love would ever be enough to come between them on this earthly plane

I was a fool to think I would have a truce with her and maintain a twisted threesome

I should have recognized her calculating stare when our bodies pressed together covered in sweat and love

I should have seen that she was quietly working on his mind, unraveling his love for me

The only recourse i have now is to let them be – admit defeat and step away, live the best life I can, knowing I will always remain alone because my soul mate is in the arms of another who is slowly killing him, but who he can never quit and who will stop at nothing to destroy me too if I dare to come between them

I will live my life as well as possible and take comfort in the knowledge that, while their marriage is the stronger bond in this lifetime, ours is the one that will endure through time and space

His soul is mine, bitch. We have loved each other for eternity

You can drown his current mind and body in delusions and destruction but your chains will fly away as dust some day and my soul will be there to welcome him back to our forever entwined hearts

Some things I don’t understand

confused

1. Why he takes any dissatisfaction from me as reproach. If I express that my needs are not being fulfilled in some specific way, or that I have any dissatisfaction with anything he does whatsoever, he accuses me of “reproaching” him. I can’t dislike any single thing he does without it being perceived as rejection of his entire being.

2. Why we are not allowed to complain. Every single time he expresses dissatisfaction about something I have done or hints that some need of his is not being fulfilled, he follows it up with “I am not complaining.” Yes, you are! YOU ARE FUCKING COMPLAINING! And you know what, that’s ok! It’s ok to complain once in a while, that’s how we make our needs known and get them fulfilled. If you never fucking complain how can I ever know when I am doing something wrong? And if you DO complain but refuse to own the complaint, well that’s just slimy. For the longest time, I felt somehow wrong and guilty for expressing myself because this litany of “I am not complaining” got me believing that somehow I am wrong and bad to have any complaints in this relationship. I have gotten over that and have now taken to following up any complaint I express with “and I AM complaining” just because it should NOT BE A FUCKING CRIME TO COMPLAIN!

3. His insistence that I am always assuming the worst of him. If I misunderstand, ask clarification, if something happens that I don’t like, I am “always assuming the worst” or always “accusing” him. Technology creates misunderstandings sometimes, and one of these happened the other day when the chat client we were using lost some of his messages to me. The responses I did get made it sound like he was basically telling me to fuck off. I got upset. Later, when the messages were clarified, he even said he understood why I would be upset based on what I saw coming from him in response to what I was asking. But it was only half his message, so it was inaccurate and my upset response was inappropriate. I admitted I was wrong, said was sorry, said I misunderstood. “You are always expecting the worst of me,” he says. “No, not always, but sometimes yes.” It’s a fact. We don’t always assume the best in our partners. And our partners are not always giving us their best. Sometimes I am an ass. Sometimes he is an ass. So why is it such an insult for me to sometimes think he is being an ass when he’s not?  The very next day he nearly broke up with me over it, claiming I hadn’t apologized for misunderstanding and that he is sick of me assuming the worst of him. He said something has to change. I admitted that I won’t always see him through rose colored glasses, so that’s off the table, and asked if this is a deal breaker for him, would he like to break up? No break up, he said, but something has to change. I asked him what, precisely, tell me now what must change. He said “you tell me” and “what do you think?” “You came to me with this complaint and you are the one saying something has to change,” I answered. “I was doing fine with the occasional misunderstanding and that we might not always see each other as blameless or perfect. I am not the one saying something must change, so I can’t tell you what should change here.” He backpedaled. “You’re right, I am sorry, there is nothing that needs changing. Please forget those phrases and that whole part of the conversation.” I might understand, if I really was constantly on his case about things, but I am not. I barely ever say anything negative or question him about anything. This little misunderstanding was the first occasion of any issue between us in 3 or 4 weeks. And the original issue really was little, taking barely 15 mins before it was clear and, I thought, resolved.

4. Why questions he can’t answer immediately must always be left hanging in the air. If I ask something he doesn’t immediately know the answer to, he doesn’t reply that he doesn’t know yet, or that he’ll get back to me in a while about it. Instead, he ignores the question entirely and talks about entirely unrelated things. It’s nerve racking. Sometimes, if I wait long enough, he will suddenly answer the question a few minutes or hours later. When I have asked him “why aren’t you answering the question?” he often answers that he doesn’t know the answer yet, so I know that’s what’s probably going on in most cases. But it drives me insane. When I ask him to please let me know when this is the case, he gets mad. Why should he have to? he asks. It makes me feel ignored, and sometimes he really isn’t answering because he didn’t get the message or is avoiding the question, so how do I know which it is if he doesn’t qualify his non-response? Alas, here I am assuming the worst again… It’s a vicious circle, so I just give up and wait, trying to forget that I gave a shit about the answer in the first place so as not to tear my hair out.

5. Why questions he does answer must always be answered by another question. It doesn’t matter how serious the question I am asking is. “What are you hungry for?” gets the same kind of response as “did you have sex with your ex yesterday?” The answer, if there is one, is always another question. “What are YOU hungry for?” “Why are you always assuming the worst of me?” Well, maybe because you have never given me a straight fucking answer in your life, so I have to assume you’re dodging something!

6. His reaction to “thank you.” It seems like such a simple thing – someone offers to do something for you or does something for you and you thank them. This is just my upbringing – I was taught to express appreciation for being helped or provided for. But it bugs the hell out of him. I think if I removed “thank you” from my vocabulary entirely, it would be ok for him. He accuses me of being “polite”, of responding by rote, not being genuine. For example, I am not feeling well, and so decline an invitation to lunch with him and his kids. He asks if I need anything. I say not that I can think of. He says let him know if I think of something. I say, “Will do. Thank you.” Uh oh – here comes the lecture. “It’s not something you should thank me for. I don’t offer just to receive appreciation. It is from my desire to help.” In the past, I’ve tried to explain. “Sorry, I am just expressing gratitude for your desire to help.” But that just gets more lecture. Desire to help isn’t something that should be thanked for, he says. Don’t be so polite, he says. Don’t be so fake. Jesus Christ, really? So how am I SUPPOSED to respond? And why is saying “thank you” such a goddamn offense?

7. His reaction to “you’re welcome.” Same thing. He made such a fit about my saying “you’re welcome” when he thanks me (because apparently it is ok for HIM to thank ME, just not the other way around) that I finally stopped using the term at all around him. Now I’ll say “hope you feel better,” he’ll say “thank you,” and I’ll just be silent. It feels uncomfortable, because I am taught that it’s kind of impolite to leave such a thing hanging. And sometimes it does get me an accusation of being silent or non-responsive, but I really have no idea what else I can say except “you’re welcome.” I’ve asked him what is an acceptable response, but he won’t answer – just says “you shouldn’t change yourself.” Well I sure as hell don’t want the result I get when I don’t alter my responses, so I see little choice.

8. His scrutiny on choice of words. For instance, the other day he was sick, but then decided he might be able to come out to lunch. Suddenly changed his mind, said he feels too sick, but maybe he can come out later for dinner. I said, “OK, if you’re up to it.” Oops, apparently the meaning of this phrase is too vague. He responded angrily, “I told you I am not now, but I don’t know if I will be later!” I just said “OK.” I really don’t know how to respond when he blows up over something like this. For a few mins, I thought it was dropped, felt a little relieved. But then here it comes back again. “What does that phrase mean? “If you’re up to it? Does it refer to desire or feasibility?” “It refers to your health,” I answered. And then commenced another 15 mins of questions and answers related to the meaning of “If you’re up to it” and how it does or does not differ from “If you want to” or “If you can.” I am exhausted.

Flawed

When I feel hurt or upset by something, I inevitably end up apologizing for feeling. Why do I do this?

We had a nice lunch today, everything was pleasant enough. When we parted, he even wanted to call and talk to me on the way home. We talked about his car, his business, and at some point I launched into some story, I don’t even remember about what – commiserating about something he had shared with me and I had a similar experience.

Suddenly in my mid-sentence he interrupted me: “I have to take a call, sorry” and abruptly hung up. I was hurt. And I wondered what was so important that he had to interrupt me mid-sentence to hang up. But I knew what it was – his ex-wife. I knew because there is always this same tone of panic and “jump” behavior when she calls. And I know that they have kids and probably he reacts this way because it could be, most likely is, some topic related to them. But does he have to hang up instantly every single time? When my ex calls, I don’t hang up. I let it go to voicemail and call back later. At the very least, I wait until he’s finished his sentence and then say I am getting a call and probably should wrap up and call them back – if it’s important enough to warrant breaking the other conversation.

I feel low priority, less important, and I want confirmation. So I ask…what was so important? Was it an emergency? Is everything ok? Everything is fine, he just had to take the call. I accuse him of being mysterious. Yes, because in my place I would say – “it was my ex, about the kids, I had to take it.” But he is vague. He responds with this admission…indeed, it was the ex, about the kids, he had to take it. And asks me what is wrong with that. So I tell him. I wouldn’t hang up on him so abruptly when my ex calls. Is it so urgent she can’t wait 10 seconds for you to explain your ex is calling and you think it’s about the kids so you need to take it? Would something horrible happen if it even went to voicemail and you let me finish my sentence and called her back 2 minutes later?

He is adamant. He has done nothing wrong. He is sure I have done exactly the same to him, remembers times. I ask him to remind me of when I have done the same. He refuses. I tell him I am sure it hasn’t happened because I have a pretty firm rule about this. Unless it is obviously urgent, I always let another call go to voicemail and get back to them later – I would consider doing otherwise disrespectful to him. He is more important. That he doesn’t do the same for me makes me feel less important. He accuses me of calling him a liar, tells me I am making things up (again), creating scandal, being hysterical. I am perfectly calm. I am not even worked up. I am just explaining how I feel and why. I don’t understand these accusations of hysteria. But they make me feel hyserical. I ask him – if I call while he is on the phone with her, does he hang up on her? He takes a long time answering, but eventually just says “yes.” And then adds that probably I am sure he is lying. He says it’s a matter of trusting your partner. And I don’t trust him. And this lack of trust affects him more and more each time I ‘make a scandal”. Well…probably he is right. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone.

He goes silent. Then comes back and tells me he is afraid to behave any way at all with me because he doesn’t know how I will react. That I will “make myself offended” by something that he says or does. He says he doesn’t know what to do. And I wonder if I am so difficult. It’s true I am sensitive to things – more sensitive I guess than most. But I also think sometimes the things he does or says are genuinely hurtful to anyone who wants to feel important. A waiter made a comment to him – “I guess that’s why you’re dating her” when we were bantering about something in a restuarant. He responded quickly “I’m not dating her.” He didn’t think I should be hurt by this response. It was just a joke. But he also tells people who ask that I am “just a friend” – he says it’s because he doesn’t want his kids to get confused. I hear my mother’s words in his – he’s not datin me, I am just a friend, you’re not the kind of girl men fall in love with. He accuses me of “always expecting the worst” from him, always “making things up” and making “myself” offended. And even these statements are themselves hurtful. Like nothing I feel is valid – it’s all in my mind. He can do no wrong. It is all me. I am flawed. I am. Flawed.

I ask him if it’s possible that he doesn’t put as much importance on this phone etiquette as I do, and that I could feel hurt by his behavior even if he didn’t mean to hurt me and maybe even didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just a different outlook. He can affect me without meaning to sometimes. It’s not a representation of my trust in him, it’s just something we do differently. He goes silent again. When I try to engage him in conversation, he responds in quick short answers. I become more and more terrified – I remember the things he said, that he doesn’t know what to do, he is afraid to interact with me, I am too sensitive, too difficult, I begin to fear he is going to leave. I feel still hurt and angry and still less important than others – but I feel more afraid of being abandoned, and willing to sacrifice my right to feeling just to close this gap and feel somehow safer again.

I find myself apologizing for my feelngs. “I’m sorry for my behavior. I was selfish and stupid. And I am sure you would not drop a call with me if I really needed you and was talking about something important.” And even as I say this last bit – to try to assure him (and perhaps convince myself) that I do trust him – that he will throw it back at me as accusing him of not considering my conversation important. But I don’t know how to end it — how to stop being accused of accusing. And part of it is my fault – because it’s true, I don’t trust him. Maybe I could trust him more, a little more, if he would not make me feel flawed for feeling at all.

Entrapment by shame

I cannot escape an unending feeling of impending abandonment, where the most important thing seems to be recognizing the abandonment beforehand – not being surprised – not being taken for a fool.

Not the kind of girl men fall in love with

I am the daughter of a mother with narcissistic personality disorder. When I was 15 years old, my mother told me I am not the kind of girl men fall in love with. I am, she said, the kind of girl who helps men get over the girl they fell in love with and who broke their heart, so that they can move on and fall in love with another girl. Internally believing every word, I spent the next 20 years trying to be the best “distraction” possible, carefully avoiding intimacy and denying myself the right to be loved. I jump back and forth between a dismissing/avoidant and fearful/preocuppied approach to relationships. I blog about my relationship experiences and feelings, which derive from my childhood experiences, as an effort to connect with and help others like me and to help myself through expression of things that are difficult to admit in my everyday emotional life.

“It’s the quiet of a storm approaching that I fear the most”

I felt like this through most of 1999-2006. It was a feeling very specific to that relationship. Sucks to have to sit through the ad first in this version of the video, but the techno version on the “official” video just doesn’t do the feeling justice.

Let’s start at the end

Our relationship endured, on and off, for 8 years. During the entire time, he had another, and he had many others. He would come sometimes to me right after one of them – I could tell because it would be more difficult to inspire the physical evidence of his excitement, and sometimes there was the residual smell and taste of the condom on him when he came to me. I didn’t care. At least, I told myself I didn’t care. We weren’t about monogamy, after all. He was engaged in an incestuous relationship that may as well have been a marriage. We were about sex. Yes, I was in love with him, but it didn’t mean we were in love. Remember, I am not the kind of girl men fall in love with :). I never looked him in the eyes – it would have been too much vulnerability. One day he said he was in love with me – but he couldn’t leave her. And then he tried to bring her into our relationship – make us a threesome. I did not reject her, I even felt badly for her, and in fact it was the moments sitting downstairs with him, caressing him and seeing that lust in his eyes, while I knew she was just upstairs, drowning in pain of what was happening in the next room, that made me unable to continue. In the end, I tried to break it off with him, but he seemed destroyed, so I came back. We engaged in a strange little dance for a few more months – he moving me further and further away, slowly. I let him let me down the easy way – easy for him – and one day I realized it had been over for a while. I had the conversation with him walking around the streets, crying, but begging him to let me let him go. And so he did. This is what I wrote just afterwards – things I never said to him:

You say one thing and then you say its opposite. I once thought you an innocent, and then I thought you a liar, and only now do I realize the depth of your neurosis. You change your mind every moment and forget what you felt yesterday because you are allowing others to choose your feelings for you. Your love for me was pure for as long as it was unknown by any others, for I never told you how to feel and no other knew well enough to try. Then you made the decision to end our relationship – whether you knew it or not, involving her was ending us. You have learned to believe that what she says of you is the truth. She governs your feelings on anything within which she is involved. Before her knowledge of our connection, you wanted permanence, not I. And once she became involved, you became certain that I wanted permanence, not you. And nothing will enlighten you, for your thoughts are her words. I did not before understand, but I believe I do now. You said things, walking around the block, as though they were just occurring to you then – old thoughts about what our relationship was. One moment asking me,, “What is over, anyway? We had nothing,” and the next telling me we treated our friendship like a monogamous relationship, that there was never anyone else for you. And I had though you confused, but now I see. Your will has been destroyed by your own decisions – decisions that you made when little more than a boy, but the consequences of which you must live with for the rest of your life. The decisions that you made will forever scar you – you can never evolve from them or change the direction of your life, for you made such permanent decisions, not realizing the terrible risk you were taking. A narcissist, you fell in love with the reflection of yourself, and now you are forever chained to that reflection. Even when you try to look away, to admit you feel no love, for it is to admit you feel no love for yourself, and that is unbearable. To betray it is to betray yourself, and to abandon it is to abandon yourself, for it has become you. You had to make it so in order to face what you had done. And worse, you cannot rest on a decision because you cannot face yourself, your true self and its desires and thoughts and wants, for long enough to really understand your feelings. Because to look at yourself is to see these horrible decisions and to view the cage within which you’ve placed yourself. The sad thing, darling, is your belief that I would claim you, another prison for your soul were you to finally break away from the one you’ve made. But I would never do so, for you are too scarred to love another and I cannot bear the neurosis. Your fear of entrapment by me is unfounded precisely because of that decision you made which created it. I wish that I could want you, but I know that the person you have become could never be the one I want. You should have been, yes, I believe if anything was ordained from above, it was this – but you have destroyed all possibility of its realization. And my situation, which once I believed a prison, I now realized was placed in my path to save me from hope, and to save me from this desire to possess you – to make it possible for me to live without you. For difficult though it is, though I think of you every night and every morning, cry for you when I’m alone – I can, and will, live without you.

Second Brene Brown talk: Listening to shame – 2012