Letting the Cat out of the Bag: Contacting the Other Woman

December 20, 2012

(with this post I am breaking format and including the letter I wrote to the other woman instead of a letter I wrote to M)

A,

     I have been M's lover for the past nine months (with an exception of July-Sept). I met him at [his band’s] show and I thought things were going great until he left me because things were going too fast for him. He came back a few months later after dating you for a short time. During these nine months I have believed him to be my soul mate and a very important person in my life. I have listened to him talk about how he doesn't trust women and I felt special that I was the woman he could trust. So it turns out there is more than one woman he can trust.

     I had asked him about you and he spoke as if that was in the past. Apparently it's not. I lowered so many of my expectations to stay with him as long as I have, only asking that he tell me if he took on additional lovers so I could make the choice to leave if that grew to be too much for my heart to bear. He obviously does not respect me enough to grant me that.

     I hope none of this comes to you as much as a surprise as it did to me, or that you at least had not deluded yourself as thoroughly as I have. I know he loves to praise the ways of polyamory, but as I understand it, all the participants are supposed to know that is what they are a part of. I hope I have it wrong for your sake, but in case this is important for you to know I wanted to return the favor you did for me. I was able to figure it out by your Facebook posts on his wall, but I only saw them one week ago.

     I know that if he finds out I contacted you he will probably never speak to me again and that thought hurts my soul. I understand if you feel the need to confront him though. That's what I did. I'm willing to talk on the phone or in person if you feel the need to discuss this more thoroughly. I will be completely honest with you as that is the virtue I praise above all others.

Sincerely,

D

***

     I had spent the previous week going back and forth on whether or not I should reach out to A.  I wasn’t sure if my inclination was motivated by sincere concern for her, my own pressing desire to know the truth, or my wounded heart’s need to lash out at M in some way.  I analyzed all the possible ways I could approach her.  My ego wanted to ask her pointed questions without revealing my own entanglement in the situation, but my brain knew this would only make her suspicious and not lend itself to any meaningful discourse.  In the end, I decided to put myself entirely out there with my first contact and place the power in her hands.  I wanted her to know the truth and hoped she would communicate with me, but I was terrified of her reaction. 

     I sent off this message via Facebook right before heading out to my company Christmas dinner party.  She responded within the time it took me to walk the five blocks to the restaurant.  She gave me her number and asked me to call.  It was only during that first telephone conversation that I found out she was his girlfriend, but I still thought maybe she had just slapped the title on their relationship without consulting M on the subject.  We had a tear-filled chat for about half an hour and we made plans to meet up later that evening.  I spent the company dinner in a daze. 

     A few hours later, she and I met up at a local pub and compared notes.  We bought round after round of Irish Car Bombs, commiserating over what an asshole M turned out to be after we were both duped into thinking he was the most perfect man on the planet.  I got drunker and drunker, crying my eyes out and revealing to A the entire timeline of my relationship with M, giving her the sordid details of how he and I had been sending each other sexually explicit texts up until I found out about her.  A’s best friend was also at the pub and when she got wind of my involvement with M, she became incredibly hostile, making it clear that she believed that I only revealed myself to A after being dumped and that she thought I  knew M had a girlfriend the whole time. 

     The culmination of that evening was when A suggested that the most reasonable course of action would be to take a photo of the two of us kissing and post it up on Facebook and tag M in it.  It worked.  Within minutes he had unfriended her and we had a tremendous laugh over imagining what must be going on in his mind in that moment. 

     She thanked me again and again for coming forward to her.  M had begun the process of a long, cruel discard of her and she was already beginning to feel the ill effects.  She admitted that she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to escape had I not revealed myself.  After spending the previous summer near suicidal, I thought maybe I knew what she meant and was glad I was able to help.  I, for one, felt more able to walk away from him than ever before, but there were still some huge obstacles to overcome.  The largest of these was the tremendous cognitive dissonance that had been created with my discovery of A.  M had an entirely different life than what he had revealed to me.  He had a girlfriend that he wasn’t afraid to say “I love you” to and had introduced her to his family.  He spent holidays with her and they went on trips together…all the things he had denied me because he “wasn’t ready for a relationship.”  Everything I knew about him was wrong.  He was not the sweet, honest, empathetic person I thought he was.  He was not the wounded ex boyfriend of a girl that treated him roughly.  He was not my friend.  In fact, he told A nasty things about me and tried to make it look like I was the one in the wrong.  He would turn around and say the same things about her to me.  The way he spoke about A made me FURIOUS.  In fact, that was one of the biggest mistakes he made with me.  By letting me see him wrong her so repeatedly, he stirred up something in me that he couldn’t wrap his mind around…empathy for HER.  Watching his behavior towards her was the one thing that allowed me to see how he truly is: a heartless, manipulative monster.  Without empathy, you aren’t fully human, and that is precisely what narcissism is, a psychological condition caused by a lack of empathy for others.  You could say it’s a sort of brain damage. 

     It’s still so difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that perhaps M is not physically capable of love for another human…that never in his heart was there any love for me, but looking back on his behavior, everything adds up.  It is only my belief in this that has spared me from the devil’s hand for so long.  If for one second I let myself believe he had the capacity for love, I’d be right back in it, trying to win his affection.  This is how deeply the addiction lies, that is caused by the early stages of a narcissistic relationship. 

Harnessing Anger

December 19, 2012

     Today I have harnessed anger.  I double checked my text messages to see what I was doing the day of November 20th, the day she posted a photo of you with a banana in your pocket while standing in her kitchen.  The caption reads “Is that a banana in your pocket?”  The obvious sexual nature of the comment is only further enhanced by the fact that on that very same day you made love to me in your bed, I took self-portraits of myself in front of your house representing my longing for a family, for children.  I took portraits of myself sitting nude at your mother’s piano, of myself at your kitchen table, holding your pen hovering above your religious charts and studies.  I bet when I go to look at that photo of you that you will be wearing the same shirt I saw you leave in, as you rushed off to go “help your family move.” 

     All day I have been tempted to share this with her, to rat you out, to give her the same anger I have needed to walk away…the anger she unknowingly gave me.  Part of me wants to return the favor and part of me just wants to wound you.

     I’m glad she was brave enough to out herself as your lover, a strength I never possessed.  I was too filled with fear of rejection to stake any sort of claim.  I’m trying to wait a few more days before I make my final decision on whether to contact her, knowing that my doing so will probably burn a bridge with you forever.  I know it’s not something I should do in the heat of passion, until I know I am prepared to face the consequences.

      I hope I can stay this angry for awhile.  It is the most empowered I have felt in ages.  I fear the day you try to contact me, that I will fold to your will, but part of me hopes I will have the strength to declare, “I will not sacrifice myself for you any longer.”

***

     First off, I have a few things to admit.  In the blind rage of those first few days, I had misremembered a few things, namely the date I had seen on the above mentioned Facebook post.  The banana photo had not, in fact, been posted on the same day I had been at M’s house.  I was off by a few days.  However, the two events DID happen within the same week, right before Thanksgiving.  That being said, the depth of my blindness truly astounded me.  I literally could not believe the evidence that was right before my eyes.  He had even admitted to having a sexual relationship with this girl and I still could not properly wrap my mind around it.  I had spoken to him on the phone on Thanksgiving day and we chatted about his family.  I was at my father’s house on the other coast of Florida, sad that I could not spend the holiday with M.  I so desperately wanted to meet his family.  I imagined they would all be tall, blonde, blue-eyed and gorgeous, just like him.  That same evening, he went over to A’s house to play Balderdash with her friends and celebrate the holiday.  This was something that took weeks to sink in.  He treated A like a real girlfriend.  He introduced her to his family, he took her to public events with him, he spent holidays with her, he called her his girlfriend, he told her that he loved her and that he wanted her to be the one.  These were the things that hurt the most.  He was doing and saying all the things I wanted to do and hear, but with her instead of me.  My hurt and rage was unprecedented. 

          I immediately wanted to tell A everything, but I was afraid that she was already in the know and I was the idiot that didn’t know M had been fooling around with multiple people.  When I confronted him about A, M told me there were many other women and there would always be many others (later, he claimed he only said this so I would not specifically target A and tell her what was up, but I have a feeling there was some truth to his original claim).  I thought maybe she knew she was just a casual girl on the side and was fine with her role, and that by contacting her, I’d look like a crazy idiot.  On the other hand, even if she did believe me, SHE might go crazy and take things out on me.  She and I had a few mutual friends on Facebook, so I contacted one and asked him if she seemed like a down to Earth girl that could handle me approaching her with my side of the story.  He gave me the green light and said she was a cool chick.  Still, I waffled back and forth on which path to take.  The urge to destroy M was second only to my desire to be with him, no matter the cost.

     In the end, my lust for honesty and my pursuit of the truth won out over my sick addiction to M.  I decided to contact A, setting in motion the course of events that would finally open my eyes to the truth and begin the very long process of healing.

Slowly Opening Eyes

December 18th, 2012

     Today was day one.  It has now been over 24 hours since we last spoke.  I’m still feeling the effects of denial as I still imagine talking to you, seeing you, making love to you.  It was a fairly productive day; I tidied up my house a bit, finally removing the evidence of my recent illness.  I went to the gym and did a half-hearted workout.  I had my recurring daydream about training you, but this time with the bitter realization that it would never come to be.  God it hurts to think of all the things you said you wanted to do with me but never did.  You talked about making meals, getting drunk together at a party, going to a music festival, going to see The Hobbit.  Every time, I believed you had some intent of following through but whenever I pursued it, you were unavailable.

     Today is the first day it has truly sunk in exactly how unavailable you are to me.  You probably always will be.  Now that I’m so deeply associated with the break-up with your ex, seeing me will forever conjure those memories.

     I’ve been reading this blog today dealing with the subject of dating emotionally unavailable men.  It was already starting to dawn on me how little my needs have been considered this whole time when I found out about your other girls.  This blog has further opened my eyes to how I’m doing the exact same thing I was doing with my ex.  I’m carving out large chunks of myself in the hopes of being more satisfactory to you.  I’m stamping down my needs into silence to avoid rocking the boat.  I am abusing myself.  I’ve come to realize that I’ve sacrificed too much and I cannot stay.  I don’t need to see you one last time.  Our last night together was the most beautiful I could imagine.  That night it finally felt like you were there, in the present with me, and happy.  You approved of me and appreciated my art, my body, my presence.  It was what I had wanted these last nine months.  It was too much to bear to feel you pull back away after that level of intensity.  I can’t keep up with the hot/cold yo-yo game.  I feel pulled too thin.

***

     It took Natalie Lue’s blog Baggage Reclaim to show me how much I had been stifling myself to be with M.  With my ex-fiance, I was fully conscious of the sensation of walking on eggshells.  My ex would have a rage reaction to things that upset him, so I very intentionally tried to change my behaviors in order to limit those rages.  With M, the dynamic was much different.  With him, I was not afraid of rage, but rather of judgement and abandonment.  He had made it all too clear that jealousy and clinginess were unacceptable and he had proven to me by his first abandonment that he was not afraid to throw away what he had if I over-stepped my bounds.  For whatever reason, this did not feel like abuse at the time.  I saw it as a man expressing his needs to me.  He claimed to be in pain from his last relationship and in need of space to heal.  I saw his condemnation of jealousy to be a sign of his spiritual enlightenment.  He did not see people as possessions and felt everyone should be free to act according to their own will.  I now understand these to be tools of abuse designed to control his victims.  By creating feelings of fear and guilt, he was able to keep me quiet, so I would not express my discomfort with how he was treating me, lest I be branded as “jealous” or “needy” and suffer the consequential abandonment.  It worked like a charm.  My fear kept me so quiet that most of our phone conversations were me listening to him go on about whatever was on his mind and affirming every word out of his mouth so he would feel safe and accepted. 

     Lue’s blog and her book Mr. Unavailable and the Fallback Girl taught me about blowing hot and cold (acting in love one minute, and completely distant the next), future faking (making up stories about all the things we would do together in the future so that I would be emotionally reeled in without him ever intending to follow through), and the fallback girl (keeping me on the backburner so that if things went awry with his primary relationship, I’d still be on the sidelines to swoop in when he needed me).  It was the first step in seeing abuse in M’s pattern of behavior. 

     At this point, I still believed the root cause of M’s abuse was his break-up with his ex.  I was seeing him as a wounded, but emotionally unavailable man that had trouble with commitment.  I believed that once he finished grieving his last relationship, he would be capable of being with someone in a meaningful way.  I realized I had compromised myself and I needed to get out so I could begin respecting myself again, but I still had NO idea of how deep his pathology runs.  At the very least, Lue’s book had opened the door to realizing that I myself was not to blame for his poor behavior.  I was simply with the wrong guy at the wrong time and I needed to get out. 

Denial and the Other Woman

December 17, 2012

Dear M,

     A million thoughts have been swirling around in my head for days.  So far, a few things have become clear.  I don’t want you to leave me.  The last time almost broke me and I’m not sure that I’m prepared for such a test of strength.

     That being said, I have been a wreck this past week as I try to make sense of what I have learned.  I feel embarrassed.  It’s like we both caught me making up some cute little fantasy about how you and I had some sacred bond.  I believed I was enough.  I thought I was giving you the space you needed to grow and flourish as an individual, to pursue your hobbies and to succeed at work, but now I see that when you say you are busy and don’t have time, it’s not that you don’t have time for socializing and relaxation, it’s that you don’t have time for me.

     I used to believe you when you told me what was keeping you so busy but now I find myself wondering if one of those times “eating dinner with my folks” wasn’t the truth.  With your rigidly busy schedule, how on Earth could you find the time to pursue intimate relationships with numerous women?

     I also feel a bit compromised.  When I invite you to release semen inside my body, it’s based on the knowledge you have provided me with about your sexual history.  By keeping the complete picture from me, I feel that my right to make informed decisions about my health and my body was compromised by someone who claims to care about my well-being.  This I feel is unfair.

     My emotions have also been compromised.  With my limited view of the playing field, this situation with you looked a lot different than it turned out to be.  I allowed myself to believe in a dream where you and I were able to make each other happy with our infrequent trysts.  I thought what we had was special, that you had made an exception for me to be in your life when other women were not open-minded enough to respect your need for space.

     Now it looks to me as if I have been one tier in a redundant system of lovers, a system designed so that you are never left completely alone.  But here I am, alone, while you are at a party you would never invite me to, forced to view your life from the very distant sideline but never really allowed in.

     So now it’s time to make a decision.  I am an addict.  Do I keep using the moments you are willing to grant me as a way to get a fix, always tortured and longing for the next hit?  Or do I buckle down and try to quit cold turkey, fearing I may not make it out the other side?  Do I try to find the equivalent of a methadone clinic, in the form of another lover or in booze or weed?  Which pain is the worst, the slow torture of being kept low on your priority list and never hearing those words which I so long to hear escape your lips or the pain of walking away and turning my back on someone that I love with my entire being?  I don’t honestly know and I fear either may kill me.

***

      It’s still difficult for me to read these words that I wrote a year ago.  I can still feel the pain of my discovery slowly sinking in as I start to realize how much I had been lying to myself.  This letter was written before I knew the depth of his relationship with A, and none of the anger I came to experience in later days had presented itself yet.  I was still trying to rationalize a way to stay with him, knowing he had other women, because I had already experienced the alternative and it had nearly killed me.  I did not want to go back to not eating and feeling suicidal on a daily basis.  The only thing that had saved me last time was him coming back into my life.  Would I be able to make a clean break this time without sacrificing myself? 

     At this point, I knew M had been hiding some things from me, but I still had no idea how narrow my knowledge of him as a person was.  I had believed that I knew what he was doing with about 90% of his time, he was often at work, spending time with his family, or practicing with one of the three bands he was involved in.  I’ve come to realize I only knew about 20% of what he was up to.  I knew what he was doing when he was with me (sometimes…I think even then things were going on right in front of my eyes that I was not aware of, such as texting his other women) and I’m fairly certain he was at his job Monday through Friday from 7am-3pm, but once I realized he was somehow hiding these other women right in front of my eyes, I knew some of these other things must have been cover ups for his true activities.  I had been texting him every day.  He had always told me what he was up to, or so I had believed.  I started to understand that our text-centric communication style was only playing into his agenda, allowing him to lie to me as much as needed. 

     A large part of a relationship with a Narcissist is rewiring one’s brain to accept all the bullshit that he/she is putting you through.  One must really turn a blind eye to their bad behavior for the relationship to persist for any duration.  Once a Narcissist has you hooked, their behavior becomes abysmal.  They know exactly how much you are willing to put up with and they will take this to the limit. 

***

     An aside: This post has been difficult for me to finish.  I started writing it almost a month ago, but the memories it dredged up, along with it being the one year anniversary of me finding out about M’s true story was overwhelming.  I had to put everything aside for a few weeks and once again began trying to drown my pain in alcohol.  I knew it had to be a temporary solution just to get me through the holidays, but the pain had become so overbearing that I found it too difficult to remain sober.  Since the first of the year (my last big trigger date), my anxiety and the accompanying intrusive thoughts have been dying down, and I’ve been able to step away from the alcohol again. 

     A HUGE part of this journey has been finally reaching the place where my pain was too great to be numbed by alcohol.  Something had happened to me that was so devastating that attempting to add alcohol to the mix was taking me to a very dangerous place.  No longer was my addiction a safe escape from the everyday pain of life.  It became a scary place that I was no longer able to control.  I was afraid I’d get attacked or harassed while walking home from the bar, blacking out in the wee hours of the morning, drunk beyond comprehension.  I was afraid I’d get pregnant, or that I’d do something to hurt myself while in a drunken depressive fit.  I was afraid I’d call M. and harass him (which he was telling me A. was doing after she found out what he was up to).  I was afraid that I’d continue to cry in social situations, with the alcohol acting as an emotional lubricant.  I had to stop going out with my girlfriends on Thursday nights because I’d cry every time a man approached me to chat. 

     By giving up alcohol, I’ve slowly been able to learn healthier coping mechanisms that do not leave me in a worse emotional state than before.  The constant cycle of drinking/poor sleep/hangover was not allowing me to heal or to have many good days.  Since removing the alcohol from the equation, my emotions have become a lot more stable and easier to predict.  I know I tend to get hyper-emotional when I’m tired or hungry, so I can do what I can to prevent those things by eating and sleeping well. 

     I have also had to give up sex…completely.  I have found that the act of being intimate with another person, even as a fling is WAY too triggering to be worth it.  As a textbook Scorpio, this has been a difficult adjustment because my sexuality is very tied up in my personality.  By giving up sex, I no longer feel like myself.  That being said, I now have the room to heal, that I was not allowing myself before.  I was thinking I was ready to move on, so I joined some online dating sites and set to work.  I found myself meeting more Narcissists, liars, users, domestic abusers and even one of M's COWORKERS and after crying through many first dates, I came to the conclusion that I was not so ready to move on after all.  These people did indeed provide a distraction, but no healing work was being done, and with every successive jerk-off that I met, the wounds were just being cut deeper. 

     In essence, I gave up M cold turkey.  One by one, I cut ties with all my usual coping mechanisms until I was left with nothing but myself.  Stripped down, I was in a panic and desperately needed some new coping mechanisms to take the place of the old.  I sought counseling, knowing that for the first time in my life I could not handle this alone.  I took up yoga.  The violence in my brain was constant and I was desperate to find a way to quiet the turmoil for a moment.  Yoga provided me with almost a solid hour of distraction from my mind.  In the initial stages of breaking the addiction to M, this hour was a godsend.  It was the only hour out of my day I could chase him out of my head.  Now I can go about most of my day without thinking of him very often, sometimes I think I go a few days in a row without him crossing my mind.  The progress has been slow, and not all that steady, but compared to where I was this time last year, I really can’t complain.  Last January was spent drinking my face off and going for 3 hour long, rage-filled beach walks that still couldn’t calm me down.  I’m still angry, but no longer am I on the verge of destroying myself with my rage.

     I’m skipping a little bit ahead of myself in the story here.  Most of this rage and breakdown did not happen as of the writing of the above letter.  It came about 3 weeks later.  I included it here as it seemed relevant to my lapse in posting for the past few weeks.  So here I am, back on the wagon, and ready to finish up the rest of this story.

Where Fire Has Been

October 12, 2012

 

Where fire has been there is now only smoke. It curls off the end of my cigarette as I stare into the night, wondering what is real.

Everything is quiet, but I am filled with a sense of tension, as if the world is about to come crashing down around me.

 

 

 

The smoke obscures the truth, creating an illusion of peace with its beauty. In reality, the smoke is thick and hot and it burns my throat with each inhale. It casts a misty shroud over my soul.

 

Nothing seems real. It feels as if I have been transported to a parallel world where everything is duller, quieter, heavier. I move as if in a void. No matter which way I turn, everything looks identical, gray.

 

 

 

Where fire has been there are now burning embers. As the smoke lifts, I begin to feel the heat still burning angrily underneath the wreckage of my heart.

This burning is painful and unceasing. This is not the burning of passion and glory, but rather one of hurt and hate. Its purpose is to destroy, not to illuminate.

 

 

 

The pathetic remnants of hope stretch upward, like the charred stumps of trees reaching for the sky.

 

Their existence only aggravates my fury. I want to burn you out of my mind, out of my soul.

 

 

 

Where fire has been, I wish for fire to blaze again. I fan the smoking embers that remain, hoping that something will catch flame and rise back into that blinding inferno.

There is only one issue: there is nothing left to ignite. Everything that was alive has been incinerated.

 

 

 

Those little dried up pieces of my heart that were so quick to leap up in flame have now been exhausted. My heart feels like an empty husk. Surely there is still something left deep down inside that the fire couldn’t burn, but try as I may, there is no way to reach it with a spark.

I’m not one to pray, but I find myself calling out to a God I don’t believe in, begging for help, for relief from this agony, for release from you. In the same breath, I am begging for you to return.

 

 

 

Where fire has been there is now only ash. The tears of the heavens quench the parched ground leaving everything damp and gray. The torrential downpour seems unceasing as I gasp for breath, choking on sorrow.

Breathing is a luxury that you take for granted until your lungs can’t find air. It is hard to move under water, hard to hear. Everything is suspended and cold…so cold. I wonder if I will ever be able to move again, to feel warmth.

 

 

 

I realize I’m drowning as water begins to pour into my lungs. I can’t even scream. Those remnants of hope? They are gone, washed away by the flood of tears. My lungs begin to burn with a desperate need for air.

How can I still be longing for you when I am so close to death? Shouldn’t my mind be focused on survival? My vision begins to go dark as the oxygen in my blood is depleted. What is this power you hold over me?

 

 

 

Where fire has been, life finally begins to sprout anew.

Rising from the ashes like a phoenix, tendrils of new growth brazenly forge a path amongst the destruction. Somehow life finds nourishment in the ash.

 

 

 

The scars of the fire are still visible beneath the green, where they will remain for some time yet, but there is at last a promise of healing, of hope.

I am still unable to forget about you, but the searing pain has been reduced to a dull ache. I have only just caught my breath, but if you asked me to, I would gladly walk through fire again.

 

 

 

 

***

     Towards the end of the summer, I had become so unwell that I knew I wouldn’t be able to face returning to work for the fall season.  I decided to quit my job and return to school so I could have my emotional breakdown and only jeopardize my grades, rather than my professional life.  I knew I needed the ability to randomly call out sick, to let my emotions get in the way of my professionalism, and to fail.  I also knew that the only thing that would help me rebuild my self esteem and find any sort of meaning in life was to create.  Losing M had created a vacuum in my soul.  I felt like a black hole that happiness could not touch without being obliterated. 

     This book was the result of a project in my photography class.  The professor had given everyone the prompt “Where fire has been” and asked us to create a series of images that worked as a narrative addressing the prompt.  I immediately knew the assignment was perfect for acting as a catharsis for my devastation.  I felt like my fire had been put out.  After losing what I believed was the one thing in life that I valued more than anything (finding my soul mate), my daily grind became a soul-killing routine.  M had become my fire.  I had loved him more deeply and intensely than anyone before him.  I believed I had found the meaning of my life through my spiritual connection with him. 

      By mid September, M had reentered my life, and by October we had begun sleeping with one another again.  I was in the middle of this project when he came back on the scene.  When I first told him about it, he sounded fairly upset.  I desperately wanted to show him the finished project, but I was worried what effect the image of me standing with a flaming arrow pointed at his portrait would have.  I described the violent image to him, emphasizing that it in no way was meant to symbolize me actually killing him, it was just a physical representation of the anger I felt toward him. 

     I was finally able to show him the finished book in December after it had been returned to me by my professor.  He looked thrilled.  His joy did not appear to be tempered with the negative emotions I was expecting.  He viewed the image of me wielding a weapon at his likeness with a smile on his face.  I was relieved, yet confused.  Of course I wanted to be praised for my art, but what about responding to those words I had written?

     I had gotten what I had been longing for all those months.  M was back in my life and praising my art.  I finally felt like maybe I could live up to his artistry and genius.  That night, he told me he realized how important what we had together was.  He took me into his bed and told me I was the only woman he had ever wanted to have babies with.  I was hearing all the things I wanted to hear, but something felt off.  I just couldn’t buy any of it after how he had disappeared the last time.

     I tried to bury my reservations with memories of all the beautiful things that had happened that evening.  We had gone grocery shopping together.  It felt so domestic and wonderful even though we had only bought a frozen pizza.  He had laughed heartily at something I had showed him on the internet.  I had never heard him laugh like that before.  It was exhilarating to know that he shared my sense of humor.  He gave me a CD of his music from earlier in his career.  It had the first song of his that I had fallen in love with 3 years prior.  I listened to the album on repeat in my car for days.  The juvenile love songs seemed appropriate for this new turn of events.

     Looking back, I fear all of this was an act designed to lure me back in as he prepared to dump A.  I had finally bent so far over backwards for him that he thought I might be able to fill the role of his primary relationship.  I, however, had thought that battle was long won and I was the lone victor.  When I finally decided to unblock M on facebook later that week (ironically because I was beginning to trust him and not feel jealous of his lady friends anymore), I was shocked to see he was still friends with A on there.  Suspicious, I asked a mutual friend of ours if I could look at his facebook page on her computer.  I saw photo after photo of him with A up to a week prior to that date.  I was shocked. 

     I of course confronted him.  Knowing he was caught, he admitted they had been seeing each other but “I see her less than you.”  He told me that there were others, that there would always be others, that he couldn’t do monogamy.  I asked him if she knew about me.  His biggest mistake was telling me “no.”  I debated for a week and then I decided to contact her.  But that is a post for another day.

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.

The Final Discard

April 29, 2012

Dear M,

     Tomorrow is a big day for you and I can see how your life is about to change drastically.  More than anything I hope to accompany you on this next leg of your journey.  I can see how much your life is currently in upheaval and I can’t wait to see what it resembles once you seize it and make it truly your own. 

***

     Judging by the length of this letter, I can see that this is when my faith became truly shaken.  No longer could I write pages, pouring out my love in words.  M. was quickly receding from my life.  He kept telling me how stressed out he was with a major career shift on the horizon, but would push me away every time I tried to offer support.  I continued extending invitations to him to be a part of my life, he continued to decline them.  At the very end, I invited him out to a dance party at a local bar.  He arrived with his married, female friend.  He spent the entire night at the back of the bar conversing with her and ignoring me.  I invited him to come home with me but he declined, stating that he didn’t want to go home with anyone.  As proof, he offered the example of how he turned down his married friend THAT VERY NIGHT who also wanted him to come home with her.  At the time, everything about that statement bothered me, but only recently have understood the details of why.  At the time I only interpreted it as his married friend being a bad wife, and making an inappropriate comment.  She is my physical opposite in every way, so I felt in no way could he have even have been tempted by the idea.  Knowing what I know now, I see a couple possible scenarios, neither one better than the other:

     1) Perhaps she said it, and on any other day he would have but was feeling crappy so declined on this particular night.  (Which would also imply that this has happened before.)

     2) Perhaps he made the whole thing up to make me jealous. 

     The only possible reason he could have had for telling me (regardless of its accuracy) was to make me jealous, which strangely wasn’t my reaction, being as I thought he’d never even entertain the thought of sleeping with that woman.  But now I understand that physical attraction has nothing to do with a Narcissist’s game.  It’s all about who he can manipulate and trick.  He wants people that will follow and worship him to the ends of the Earth, and from what I understand, this particular friend fits the bill.  She puts up with and seems to encourage his shitty behavior, and I see her as his wing girl for all of his triangulation games with every new girl he comes in contact with.  Not only that, but it has come to my recent attention that she is actually his ex girlfriend.  Who brings their ex girlfriend on a date?!?! 

     This was the last letter I wrote before the grand finale of our “relationship”.  M. pretty much avoided me through May and June, and at the very end of June, the night before I left town to go to my cousin’s wedding, he came over to my house to break it off.  He told me that we obviously want different things and that he can’t be what I need, etc. etc.  He emphasized how he just got out of a relationship and that I was obviously trying to coerce him into another one.  He spoke about my “manipulations” where I use alcohol as a truth serum to get him to talk about his past.  He criticized my jealousy, my neediness.  He abruptly ended the conversation, telling me we would continue it another time.

     I went on my trip, devastated.  Within one week, he had a photo on Facebook, of himself, taken by a new girl.  He is looking at her with such open and loving eyes.  He looks as if he adores her.  It is the same look he has been using on me for the past four months.  The photo was posted in the morning and his hair looks mussed as if he has been sleeping.  It seems obvious that they had spent the night together.  My heart ripped in two.  I stopped eating.  I ended up spending a good portion of the wedding locked in a bathroom stall crying my eyes out.

     A few days later, another photo.  Now they are clothes shopping together at a thrift store (wtf, he wears the same black t-shirt every day of his life).  Again, she is the photographer and he is the subject.  Looking back, I can see the gaudy yellow jacket he is wearing is indicative of the funky style of A. (his new conquest).  The caption reads “yes and yes” meaning yes to the man and yes to the jacket.  I felt sick to my stomach.  He didn’t even need to say a word to make me sick and jealous, she was doing all the work for him…and she had no idea.

     I knew she had no idea about me.  The entire time M. and I were together, there were no pictures, no Facebook communication, nothing at all public.  Since M. was not willing to acknowledge me as a girlfriend, it seemed like it would push him even further away for me to be taking those types of liberties.  My more vindictive side laughed at A’s public enthusiasm about spending time with M.  It seemed obvious to me that she would for sure try to coerce him into a relationship if she was already publicly claiming him via Facebook photos.  I figured it would be only a matter of time before M. realized his mistake and realized how special what he had with me was.  I had essentially spent four months with him as his lover and had only asked if he ever saw himself being my boyfriend.  I never once demanded that we make things official. 

     I was trying to let it go.  He didn’t want me.  He had rejected me.  I needed to move on.  I came home from vacation and went into a deep depression.  I still couldn’t eat.  I spent most of my days in bed.  Occasionally I sent him texts letting him know how bad I was feeling.  He responded by telling me I needed to let go.  I tried to go no contact, but he and I couldn’t seem to go past 5 days without contacting each other. 

     When I was finally on the verge of passing that 5 day mark of no communication, I received the text “It feels wrong to go so long.”  I responded, but I received no message in return.