The Hoover Maneuver

July 25, 2012

M,

     I found it ironic to find your letter in my inbox this morning as I have been composing a similar letter in my head for the past week. It goes something like this:

     Five months ago, I was more secure in myself than I’ve ever been in my life. I was in no way shape or form looking for a relationship or even feeling as if I wanted one. I went out to your show, excited to get there just in time for your opening song and stood there shooting the breeze with Alex as we listened to your music. After your set, when you approached me I was sure you would walk straight past to mingle with your friends but you came right up to me. I was shocked and glad that you sought me out. As the night wore on, I was ecstatic that you were interested enough to continue conversing with me and that we had much in common. When you texted me that night I was amazed that you were interested enough to even do that.

     When we started hanging out, I had no idea how recently your break-up had happened and at first you completely downplayed its significance. I had the impression that you had fully dealt with it and had moved on. You spoke of it as if it were in the distant past. It was not until much later that I saw your sadness.

     When we were together, I thought I could see you beginning to fall in love with me. The way you looked at me, the way you spoke to me, the way you touched me…I thought I saw how you felt. One day I asked if you ever saw yourself being my boyfriend. It was not an offer or a request. I was just trying to make sense of what we were to each other. You could say we were friends, but that did not account for the hours of passionate love-making. You could say we were lovers, but that did not account for the hours of intense soul-searching conversation. I wanted to understand what you were looking for with me…what I was to you…what you needed from me, but you were never really able to say what it was.

     As I saw you becoming sadder with every passing day, I continued to reach out to you. I thought being with me would make you feel better…make you happy. I wanted to be there for you in the worst way when I saw your pain. That night we went out to dinner, it was so hard to see you so closed off. You gave me a lame excuse for your discomfort. I tried to buy it. M, the night you came over to my house last, you told me the real story of that night and it broke my heart. I had no idea that you were in that sort of pain. I’m miserable at the thought of having contributed to it. It was only on that last night that I truly began to understand the magnitude of what you have been going through by being with me at all. It made me look back on the progression of events and really begin to see things from your side. I know you tried to tell me before that night, but I didn’t really get it until then. I am so sorry.

     After that dinner I felt you pulling away…perhaps even a bit before. I was confused as to why you suddenly didn’t have any time for me. You were always busy but that had not stood in your way in the past. For awhile I believed you and kept trying to reach out, thinking that the issue was merely bad timing. Eventually, I started to fear you were avoiding me. I finally reached out to you on facebook because I couldn’t get you to come over for a face-to-face conversation. I reached out to you because I had spent 4 hours sobbing non-stop over the whole thing and I felt I couldn’t go on that way any longer. I have been crying for over a month now. For the last two weeks my mornings go something like this: I wake up and cry for something between a half hour and two hours and I try to make breakfast. Thinking about making breakfast makes me cry and feel nauseous, so it takes me five attempts or more to get through the ordeal. I force feed myself for an hour against tides of immense sickness. Every 4-6 hours I break down and cry some more. For the past 5 months, you have been my first thought every morning and my last thought at night. I think of you during every idle moment of the day. These used to be the points of joy throughout my day and they have become points of torturous pain. This past weekend was the first time I’ve been able to eat and get through the day without crying. That ended last night. I spent the night with someone else and it felt so hollow and empty and I couldn’t help but think of you and how different it felt to be with you.

     I have only cried this way over two people in the past…my college boyfriend who I dated for four months when he graduated and moved to Texas to go to grad school and wouldn’t let me move with him. We were in the height of our love when he left and I still think of him often, ten years after the fact. The other is my ex-fiance.

     So why am I crying so much? I have this friend, his name is M, and he is the most amazing person I have ever met. I fell in love with his music a few years ago, and then I got to know him as a person. I think he is a brilliant musician, a great writer, a hilarious and insightful person, a beautiful soul and a kindred spirit. I’ve never connected with anyone on so many levels as I did with him. He knows what I’m thinking before I say it, he knows how to touch me and seduce me, texts me throughout the day just to say hello, and makes me feel beautiful. When he no longer wanted to be a part of my life, I felt a gigantic hole that I never had known was there as no one had ever filled it so completely before. I don’t think he is replaceable. I’m sure the pain will lessen in time, as it always does, but I feel as if there will be a dull ache for some time to come.

     Never think I was using you just because I needed some generic boyfriend. I wanted you in my life because of what and who you are. You gave me the desire to trust someone completely with my heart again…something I was unsure I would be able to do until I met you. I know we still don’t know each other very well on many levels, but I was looking forward to learning more about you every time we visited. I believe you are the type of person I would love more in a year than when we were in the initial stages of “in-loveness” for lack of a better word.

     I don’t know what I did that made you think so poorly of me, but I never intended to manipulate you or force you into something you didn’t want. I didn’t know what you wanted. I don’t think you did either. For better or for worse, I love you and miss you like hell.

-D

 

***

     After the last text I had received from M, “It feels wrong to go so long,” I heard nothing from him for days.  I began making up stories in my head about how he finally had realized the error of his ways.  “A” had obviously come on too strong and now he was missing what he had with me.  I spent the next week composing a letter to him in my head, but I was too afraid to send it.  I was afraid I would push him even further away.  About a week after that text, a message appeared in my Facebook inbox.  M was finally taking the time to explain himself to me.  I received the message while at work, and I sped to the bathroom to read it on my phone, while crying my eyes out.  I immediately left early so I could respond with the missive I had been developing in my head all week.  I knew I would not be able to refocus my attention on work related duties.  I was sure that this was the sign that he regretted his decision to leave me.

     The letter M wrote to me was in essence a letter explaining how I had pushed him away with my behavior.  Some choice excerpts from his letter are as follows:

          “I won't try to pretend that I haven't been avoiding you, although not always consciously. Part of this has been because I became distrusting of you and a little intimidated when I finally became aware of just how skillful you were in the arts of manipulation.”

     This line is funny, because at this point, he is one month into a new relationship with another woman, and let us not forget that he was in a relationship with his ex girlfriend when he began his courtship of me.  Yet I am the manipulative one…yes.

          “This weird new fear of you, coupled with a growing feeling in my gut at the time that you were basically only worried about your own agenda and expectations, ignoring anything anyone said that might speak to the contrary, fed into my unease at even communicating with you at any great length.”

     This line is also fun, because yet again, it is describing his actions to a T.  I believe that writing this letter to me while sleeping with another woman falls entirely under the category “only worried about [his] own agenda.”

          “Simply put, I just wasn't ready to start thinking of myself in a new boyfriend role, because I was still grieving over my last relationship. The thought of being in a new one made me uncomfortable and a bit overwhelmed.”

     Again, hilarious because he is already in a new relationship (within one week of ending things with me).

          “I guess the feeling I was left with was that of being alone, or feeling anonymous, when I heard you talk about me like I was your boyfriend. It sounded like you were talking about someone else, or you could be talking about anyone else.”

     Funny, because it seems this is how he treats women, as replaceable objects that he uses to make himself feel better with no regard to their needs or well-being.

          “Please know, that I'm chronicling my neurosis here for you so that you understand me and us; I am not blaming you or accusing you of things.”

     Interesting, because it sounds to me as if that is ALL that is going on here: blame and accusations.

     I want to make it clear, that my commentary on this is all hindsight.  At the time, I believed that M got in over his head with the new girl, saw the error of his ways, and was trying to make amends with me once he realized I would be patient and loving with him while he healed from his last relationship.  I wouldn’t pressure him into being my boyfriend, I would be ok with his mood swings, I would love him unconditionally.  I wrote that letter to him and sent it to him via Facebook with the intent of proving to him that he could trust me.  As he slowly began reentering my life, mostly through texts, I thought we were working through these fears and learning to trust one another.  This was around the time when I had decided M was truly my soul mate.  Why else would I be in so much pain over the loss of him?  I could NOT get over him no matter what. 

     From a more omnipotent perspective, something far more sinister was occurring.  As a result of M falling off the face of the Earth, I had learned two things: do not pressure him and do not ask questions.  His letter made clear that MY bad behavior had pushed him away.  I was too demanding of him, wanting him to spend time with me and treat me with respect, and I was manipulative, asking too many questions and wanting to know too much about him.  At this point I was trained to ask nothing of M, graciously accepting only what he would offer me.  Otherwise, he would disappear again.  Yet, even when he was disappearing, he still kept in contact enough to keep me invested.  He would not just tell me he wasn’t interested and give me peace.  Every time I told him I wouldn’t contact him any longer, he’d immediately want to talk about it, reeling me right back in.  I thought it was a sign of his love for me.  Now I see it as the power game it truly was.

     I now see this letter from M as the blueprint for what allowed me to accept so much emotionally abusive behavior from him in the future.  It was a contract outlining his expectations of me, and reminding me of what would happen should I not fulfill those expectations, i.e. disappear again.  I learned to keep my misgivings to myself, lest he label me as clingy or jealous. 

     At one point, I got brave enough to ask him about A.  He confirmed my suspicions: she had tried to pressure him into a relationship but he wasn’t ready.  She wouldn’t listen.  She was kind of a bitch.  It was over.

     Again, this was all lies.  They were 3 months into a relationship when M finally agreed to see me in person and told me that things with her were over.  At this point I had quit my job and enrolled in school to finish my Bachelor’s Degree in photography.  I was dragging myself to classes and crying through lectures.  We were studying war photographers and photographers that documented domestic abuse.  I felt raw.  I had been working on a photo book for class detailing the experience of losing a “soul mate”.  It was a pain I could not have imagined prior to going through it.  When M agreed to reenter my life, my health started to turn around.  I began regaining the weight I had lost.  (The above photo shows me at the height of my weight loss.  The contrast has been adjusted to show just how sunken in and dark my eyes and cheeks were at this time.)  I could feel hope again, although it was a hesitant hope at best.  I was still afraid he’d disappear again.  Some time down the road, he told me he had agreed to see me in person again in order to break things off.  He claims to have been seduced by me into reinstating a physical relationship.  The main flaw in this claim is that things had already been broken off.  There was no need to further meet in person if that were the goal.  He merely had to stop contacting me.  I sincerely believe that his only purpose in reintroducing me into his life was to reel me back in sexually so that he could continue a relationship with me on the side when his girlfriend, A was out of town for work or when he needed supplemental attention to feed his Narcissistic drives.

     Like a vacuum, he had sucked me back into his chaotic world.