April 24, 2012
M,
So the honeymoon is over it seems, and now reality is setting in. No longer can we tempt each other to stay up all night making love, disregarding all Earthly responsibilities. Your aura seems less vibrant, dimmed by sleep-deprivation and mental pressure. I am also in a phase where I find myself needing to recharge.
I feel as if you are retreating into your headspace, which I understand and respect, though I fear you are pulling away from me. I want so much to help you through this transitional period, lending an ear or a shoulder as needed. I hope that my sharing of this book with you has not triggered unpleasant thoughts nor the distance I am sensing between us. I want to give you the space you need to grow as a person while offering all the love and support you are willing to receive.
I wish for your soul to be at peace.
***
We had finally gone on a real date. We went out for sushi and a movie and I made a joke about how now I wouldn’t feel like he was just using me for sex. That statement apparently offended him (due to it being too close to home, in hindsight) and he told me how much my words bothered him. I apologized profusely for giving offense. He looked as if he was in massive physical discomfort all through dinner. I kept asking what was wrong, but he had no answer. After the fact, I heard many different stories as to what was really going on that night: he didn’t actually like sushi (but apparently had to pretend to like it because I did…more mirroring), he was uncomfortable going out to dinner with someone that wasn’t his ex-girlfriend, etc. In reality, I believe this was the day his ex-girlfriend actually broke up with him. M. had told me that she informed him that she was dating our mutual friend, and he seemed a little bothered by it, but I didn’t think much of it since he had told me they had already been broken up for five months. M. had received the phone call from her in my driveway before coming up to my apartment. After the movie, he went straight home. He did not even come inside. I was crushed.
We had gone to see the Hunger Games. A few weeks prior, I had taken him out to the archery field to teach him how to shoot. We thought it would be fun to do that before going to see the movie. We had started a game of Cricket (like the darts game, but with a bow and arrow) but did not finish it. For weeks, M. would make mention about needing to finish up that game, but was never available to. It seemed like another way to keep me hooked, dangling the idea of a pleasant afternoon together in front of me, just out of reach. In a similar way, he always told me that he wanted me to take him to the gym and train him. Now it seems like it was a way to flatter me and mirror me at the same time. The few times I have talked to him since, M. makes sure to tell me about his membership at the YMCA and how he has been making a point to work out. I think he knows how much I was hoping he meant it when he said he would come work out with me, and continues to use it as a tool of manipulation to this day. He even told me what a great cook I was, after the one time I made him a meal, and told me how much he looked forward to us preparing meals together in my little kitchen, but he never again came over to eat. I think I only saw him eat 4 times in the course of the 9 months we spent together. I was aware I was being compartmentalized from the rest of his life, but I believed it was a way for him to safely heal from his last break up and learn to trust again. I never suspected that it was a way to keep all his lovers away from his “real life.” He had claimed that he told his mother about learning archery with me. I felt so gratified that he had mentioned me to his family. I thought it was proof of him letting me further in.
Up until the point where this letter was written, M. and I had been conducting a rather rigorous love affair. He was working a late shift at a diner as a second job, and often didn’t get off work until 10PM or so. He’d come over to my apartment and we’d make love all night, barely catching an hour or two of sleep before waking up early to go to our day jobs. Before meeting M, I had begun a new exercise regimen involving rather intense weightlifting, and I was feeling supercharged in a way I never had before. With all the endorphins from the exercise and the oxytocin from all the sex flooding my brain, I felt little need for sleep and stopped experiencing hangovers from drinking. I felt like Superwoman.
Within two months of meeting M, I was beginning to feel drained of my power. I was sleep deprived, strung out, and full of doubt. He appeared to be feeling similarly. He was cold and distant. He’d answer my phone calls and texts just to tell me he was unavailable. I believed I had done something wrong to push him away. He stopped wanting to come over after work, giving me excuses about how busy he was with life. He accused me of using alcohol on him like a truth serum, asking him questions about his past relationships when we were sharing a bottle of wine. He began calling me manipulative, essentially projecting his own shitty behavior onto me. If anyone was being manipulated here, it was surely the one that was being lied to about every little thing, not the one orchestrating a double life. He was going on many trips without ever inviting me. He took a past lover of his (who is a married mother of two) to the Salvador Dali museum so they could take LSD and wander around the museum all day. He went to Bonarroo and told me he had to go by himself because he had always gone with his ex-girlfriend and he needed to get over that. Sometimes we would go see some local bands’ shows together, but upon our arrival, he would socialize with everyone in the room except me.
My self esteem began to crash. I was exhausted and now I was being rejected by someone I had believed to be falling in love with me. He had always looked into my eyes in a way which I thought was unmistakable. You can’t fake the look of being in love with someone, can you? I wrote this letter ten days after having that addiction induced dream where M. took up every available space in my brain. It seemed the minute I was totally hooked, M. started to disappear. Still, I hung on. I held onto all those promises of working out together, of dinners together. He was telling me that everything was a result of him mourning the loss of his last relationship. With these words “I want to give you the space you need to grow as a person while offering all the love and support you are willing to receive” I had set up the dynamic that was to allow me to put up with so much of his future abuse. I believed I was a martyr, sacrificing my needs to allow him room to grieve and heal. In reality, I was a sucker, letting this parasitic man use me as an ego booster whenever his “real” girlfriends were not giving him enough attention.
As of April 24th, he had begun to devalue me, but he would not completely discard me until near the end of June.
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