The men in our lives, are not Matt Mcanaughy from "Ghost of Girlfriends Past." In other words, there is no magical epiphany that he will have, he isn't just a player who is scared of being hurt again, scarred by the loss of his parents.
Though we want to think he is.
He's not the guys in "He's just not that into you." Speak of-the author of that book and movie, Greg Behrendt, also wrote a best-seller called "It's Called a Break-Up Because It's Broken." Both are fantastic books/guides to navigating an unrequited relationship. However-neither will work on dealing with a personality disordered person, a drug addicted or alcoholic person, or the toxic types of relationships that got you here.
Christian Carter's tricks to how to win the love of any man, Mimi Tanner's guide to the same-and any other internet authors who offer you sage wisdom and advice as to how to get your ex back, how to make him fall in love with you and how to be irresitable to men-how to be "the cool girl"-won't work, either.
Unfortunatly, all the "games" of love -including "The Rules" and even Dr. Phil-are geared and aimed towards the average man and woman. Sure, we all have "issues." Men are renowned for commitment issues, detaching sexually and often times, being "jerks." So, much of this advice is not only directed towards those types of "jerks", but also younger people who are trying to navigate the dating scene.
Even the course of how to re-ignite your marriage, tips on being that woman every man desires and wants and every woman wants to be-won't work.
In fact, I would like to think that the authors of all the above-if they truly knew the man and the relationship you've been involved with, would not only refund your money, but tell you do not pass go, do not collect 200.00-but get straight directly out of the game, period. LOSE HIM.
There is no "game" you can play, stragedies you can take, psycology you can use, to get your man to straight up, fly right, turn around and become the man of your dreams. There is nothing you can do to enchant him, captivate him and make him fall head over heels madly in love with you. Unless of course, abusing HIM is your thing. Then he may give you a shot.
All told-the things that are designed to help people figure out these things called relationships, get inside the minds of men and women-are designed to do that with the non-disordered folks, that yes, really do exsist. So, don't waste your time with this stuff, or your money.
The biggest thing they will tell you is that you need to play hard to get.
If you think these tips will work for you-go ahead and try it. Then see what happens-and it won't be what they tell you will happen.
So pass on that stuff-and stick to sources that can help you to identify and deal with the disordered people.
Just some friendly advice from someone who's been there, too.
29.3.10
and the story continues on.....
This was on 4th of July, of 05. He was working-and working OT, yet he had no money. And he told me that he needed this 200 because he and his buddies went down to the city over the weekend, and he had been driving his buddies car, which he parked in a yellow zone and the car got towed. It was either towed or ticketed, that I don’t recall. It costs 200 to get out, and now he owes that guy 200 cuz he was the one who parked it.
At the time I didn’t really think that one through. I should’ve known it was probably for coke. Anyway, I believed him and said I would do it if he could pay it back next time he gets paid. I knew he got paid every Thursday, and he was asking me on the 4th of July, a Saturday. Said there was no one else around to ask. I was working ER so stuck working the holiday but was off at 3. I didn’t have the money on me, because he said he’d come to my work to get it-but would meet him at my place.
While he was over, I made the fatal mistake of telling him all about the birthday that he had missed with me and my friend. We had a very good time-too good of a time, and there were pictures to prove it.
I tell this story to W and stupidly start to show the memory card with the pictures on it to him when he yanks it out of my hand. I’m like “What are you doing?” when he laughs and says “Its because you’re a slut.” I looked at him shocked and he says “What, its not like you are a whore, you don’t get paid for it”. And I asked to have the card back. He said “No.” He was really being insensitive and disrespectful to me, and the more I protested to have it back, the more adamant he got about seeing the pics, and then said “I’ll keep this just in case you get freaky again.” Joking or not-I think he meant that-and note that at this time, I had already given him the 200.00 bucks.
Maybe he knew he was going to fuck with me-and that’s why he kept this as an insurance policy. Maybe he felt bad and said “Lets go get something to eat” as I lived next door to a little diner at the time.
We went to eat when he told me that J was calling him and he wouldn’t call her back. I asked why, and he said it was because she was hot and cold. I laughed and said “Like you?” He said “she only seems to want me when she can’t have me. “ He seemed tired and lagging and he remarked, “I feel better when I’m on shit.”, half kidding.
We get out of the restaurant when he tells me what I want to hear:" I’ll probably see you before Thursday, but you’re okay, you’ll be alright until Thursday?" Because I had told him and made it clear that I can only borrow him this money if in fact, he can pay it back to me by Thursday. I didn’t want to get into why and that was none of his business. I wanted to help him but was trying to reassure that he understood that it was a very brief loan, to which he did and promised to repay-on Thursday. 5 days from that moment.
I didn’t see him before Thursday-of course-and Thursday came and went with no word from him. He called me the next morning though-Friday-”just to say hi.” Didn’t mention a thing about the money. I should’ve asked, but I felt he was a grown ass man, he knew he owed it, why should I have to? And he carried on a conversation, telling me about work, the house they were pouring a driveway for in a ritzy town that someday “I will have one just like it”, meaning the house-and no mention of the money. And I felt uncomfortable bringing it up. I don’t know why now other than to say, being around him was like dancing on glass-and he had those pictures.
He told me to call him over the weekend if I felt like it-and I didn’t-but I did feel like getting my money back so I texted him hi on Saturday-and got no response. By Sunday night, I hadn’t heard anything, and rent was already late. I had lent him the money out of the money I had saved for my rent. My rent being due by the 10th of the month, because I moved in on the tenth and that’s what my landlord and I did to make it easier. And I was PISSED. By Wednesday, he had not responded to my texts or returned my calls, and I had no other choice but to borrow the 200 myself in order to cover my rent. Finally, he calls me Thursday-the week after the Thursday he was supposed to pay me-and says to me very coldly “You need to relax. I have your money. Just tell me where you’ll be so I can give it to you.” No apologies, no explanations.
And I said as much. “You’ve been avoiding me for a fucking week and now you are going to act like this to me? After I helped your ass out? What the hell is wrong with you? How about an “I’m sorry”, asshole? “To which he responded “I am sorry, I will call you later.”
He didn’t.
And another week passed. I got a voicemail “Hey I’m not avoiding you, I’m not blowing you off, I have your money”-but it never appeared. Or I’d call back, and he wouldn’t answer. I’d get a text “I’ll call you later” and then later would come with not a call but another text “Hey, my ankle is fucked,can't do tonight, got it, see you tomorrow.” Setting me up to react again, put me off, lied to me, disrespecting me. I now owe my friend Pat the money-who didn’t have it to give at the time, either-who is mad at me for being so stupid to have lent someone who is so shitty to me money, didn’t I see that W didn’t give a shit about me, he is using me, and now we are both fucked? He wanted to go kick his ass. I was about to let him.
Instead, I called again. Please, I begged. Just let me know what the fuck. Don’t do me like this, if you don’t have it, fine, but don’t treat me this way. Don’t fuck me like this. Even if all you can give me is 10 bucks, fine, at least that is something, at least that shows that you are sorry and intend to pay it back. At this point I had totally forgotten about the picture card, just focused on what he was doing to me, emotionally, mentally.
And I’d get a text-” I will explain. Sorry. Call u tomorrow.” And there would be no call.
After 3 weeks had now passed since I first lent him the money-I was beyond pissed. I was crazy. And my friend was super irate that he still had this picture card as well-which had pictures of her on there, and she was going to have his ass kicked. I finally exploded on him and yes, I threatened him with that. I said if he didn’t at least give those pictures back, much less the money, that he would in fact, have his ass kicked.
And of course-he then called.
He finally came by with the pictures-but no money. And some sort of an explanation. He couldn’t even look at me. He had asked me “Cant I just leave the money on your car? Or on your door on my way to work?”
And I said “No.” Why, so he could run away and never explain what he did? I heard him out, because I was entitled to an explanation, I deserved an explanation. I wanted to hear what it was he possibly had to say. But I didn’t believe he was sincere. Remember, this is a man who is capable of telling me what it is he thinks I want to hear-by his own admission, to tell me things that aren’t true to “test” me and to make me react, to “make” me do things, I wouldn’t know what to believe out of his mouth now. He’s such a chronic liar that anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt. But yet, he still owed me that much.
He told me he didn’t know why he did this. “This isn’t me, this isn’t who I am.” He said he didn’t think I needed the money, which is bullshit and I didn’t understand since I clearly told him I did. It was then that he told me that the Friday morning he called-the day after he originally had agreed to pay me-that he had been testing me. At that point I felt like telling him next time to go borrow money from his girlfriend, test her ass. He said that I was the least of his problems. He said he didn’t know what to say, except that he hoped he had a chance to make it up to me, he hoped we could be friends, he understood if I didn’t want to talk to him again, but he hoped that I did.
Then he said something that deeply disturbed me. He told me “Last winter didn’t bother me, but this bothered me.” What the hell did that mean? That’s not what he told me when he told me all the shit I wanted to hear for 2 hours, that’s not what he said when he came calling after me after running into me at the bar. It had all “bothered” him them, “bother” being a pet word of his-and now only this was? I asked him why none of it bothered him last winter and he said “He didn’t have time then, didn’t have time to think about me or what I was about.” In other words, when J was around, I was the one who was now “chopped liver.”
He then said “Things were going good with you and I, and I fucked them up.” I agreed. I told him that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to have any self-respect and still be his friend. I needed time to absorb what he said, figure out if I even believed any of it, and if he or any of this was worth it. He just put me thru a huge emotional wringer, in ways he didn’t even know about-in ways I didn’t even know about-I needed to sort it out. I also needed him to pay me back, which again he said he would. He’d have my money tomorrow he said, when some guy at work gives him some.
And the next night-I get the call, and the excuses again. He missed the guy at work. But at least he called, and so tired from being so hurt and mad, I gave him that much. Pathetic that a bone like that would satisfy me.
He claimed his problems were stemming from lack of work in the winter-though he did say his ex wife worked with him that way and forfeited child support while he was unemployed-and poor financial decisions. He denied that it was coke that was the reason. I had asked him once how he had afforded the coke use and initially he said “I make enough money, I make like 70k a year” to “I just don’t pay for the things I should.” Clearly. He denied having a problem with the coke-”I didn’t use when I was married!” “I still have a job, I maintain.”
He told me during this “explanation/apology” talk that that he needed and wanted to sell the house. I told him to think carefully about that, because losing the house and having to move back in with his mother might really devastate his feelings about himself and I thought he should hold onto it because it’s an asset, an investment. If he didn’t want to live there, he could rent it out. But he thought that would be the solution to his problems. And he felt that J was the way to stop using coke because he also said “I don’t use when I’m with J”-another blow to MY feelings about myself. Though I now know that an addict is an addict and an abuser is an abuser but an addicted abuser is the worse, and it wouldn’t matter who he’s with-he’d end up using again, or abusing again.
But you know, its all me. He uses coke around me, and he’s an asshole only to me.
He told me he'd be going to a movie with a friend, and when that let out, he'd come by with my 200.00. It should've let out by 10pm. By midnight, I had not heard from him-so I called him, so sick of this shit.
He asked if he could just give me 100.00 right now. Then said "forget it, I'll give it to you all. Be there in a bit." Then calls me back "Yeah, I'm with my neighbors right now, we've been drinking, and he thinks I'm too wasted to drive." So now, at 1am, I said "Fuck this, you know what? I WILL COME GET IT." And of course, I had to go to HIM....and I did. He answers the door, hands me the money, I asked him "Can I talk to you for 5 mins?" He says that he would, except that he's too wasted right now and that I deserved his full attention and for him to have a clear head, so, we will talk soon, he promised.
I wanted to sit him down again, and tell him what I had absorbed and since he had wanted to know if we could still be friends, I was going to give to him what he couldn’t give to me-closure. And I had a book for him I had picked up all about cocaine addiction. I had given him some amino acids that were supposed to help with the come down. I called and asked him if he would give me just one hour of his time. He said he would, he’d call me later.
Later came-and he refused to see me. He said he didn’t think he could do it the following night (of course, it was a Thursday, payday, coke day) but he invited me over on Friday. Said he’d have the kids but could put in a movie and we could talk. He then called to tell me he forgot he promised to take the kids for a sleep over at his sisters. I had my kids on Saturday, so we both agreed that Sunday night would be best as neither one of us would have kids.
And then Sunday came-with another excuse. This time, he was fighting with his ex, and complaining about her mistreating him now that she was back with her ex boyfriend, and that she wants more money. So now he didn’t want to see me, he wasn’t in the mood. Said call him tomorrow.
I did, and he said that he couldn’t do it, he had to go help the neighbors mow their lawn. He asks “Cant we just do this over the phone?” and I suppose that I just gave in, because it was something. It wasn’t what I wanted, and you can’t give someone something over the phone, but okay, let’s talk. And he started going on a rampage about J. We never did talk about what I wanted to say-because he interrupted me and began talking about her. About what she means to him. This wasn’t supposed to be a conversation about him and her, it was supposed to be a conversation for me, about him and I, about him and his problem, and instead, he twists it to be about what HE wanted to talk about. He tells me she was the one. He totally loves her and he would’ve married her. “I want to marry her, and she wants to marry me.” She was “everything” except the only problem was her issues of commitment, which he forgave , which he forgave because she has A.D.D. He said “She’s been doing this to me for six years, and I won’t be kept any longer, and that’s why it’s over now. I lost number one, so I guess I have to learn to like number two.” (number 2 being me.) Told me that she’s better for him than I ever could be. I asked him why he didn’t tell me all this long before, when he had the chance, when I FUCKING ASKED HIM. I ASKED him if he was in love with her, what the relationship meant and that’s when I got the “If my life was more together I wouldn’t even want her” speal. I asked him how could he possibly minimize the relationship to me so much, and not be honest with me and give me a chance to decide what I WOULD WANT to do. He told me “How do you tell someone that likes you?” BECAUSE they fucking like you, dumb ass. How could he not? Told me that “You tried too hard.” (again, another reason he wasn’t into me) and that “You’re just not getting it!”
He continues on by telling me “You know that Staind song? That’s it!” At the time, the song “Right There” by Staind was getting a lot of airplay-it was hard not to hear it, and so I had to switch the station now because the lyrics are about a guy saying to a girl give me a second chance, can’t you forgive me, you’re the one, the one I am willing to bleed for, you always keep me waiting, right here waiting, you always find a way, etc.
Again, who does this shit? Who is so incredibly insensitive to another person’s feelings that they have to do that? Why did he have to consistently rub into my face that he was into someone else? Yeah, I GOT THAT. I didn’t need to keep hearing this over and over and hear the intimate details of all the feelings and thoughts he’s had about HER. Not once a compliment to me. Not once an interest in who I am. Nothing but what is wrong, lacking, uncool about me-and nothing but her being up on a pedestal.
Marriage? He was never even in a true relationship with her at that point, they were never boyfriend/girlfriend, it was six years of bullshit, not unlike this. They weren’t together, she puts him down whenever a new guy comes along, fine, whatever. He’s clearly as delusional as I had been. I said “what happened to needing to get your life together before you could do “this”, what happened to not wanting to let people get close to your heart because you don’t want to hurt them?” He replied “It just happened”.
And I should add, this whole time he is yelling at me and telling me all of this, there is a woman in the background laughing. When he started out being all haughty and arrogant, I could hear her talking in the background, interjecting something, and laughing. Further humiliating me, by doing it in front of another woman. Not even the woman he is talking about marrying. Some OTHER woman.
He then dumps all that on me-having just derailed the conversation I wanted to have by hitting me blindside with the TRUTH, throwing this woman in my face after knowing the torment of my own feelings for him-and then runs to quickly hang up, citing that he had to go help his neighbors again.
Always so busy helping others, never able to give me even fucking five minutes. Just simply decimated my self worth.
He then turned on me like the wolf to Little Red Riding Hood and twisted it all like an insane piece of licorice to make it seem like I was the one abusing him, and told people that he didn’t want me in his life and that I was just not getting that. A far cry from the “I hope you will let me make this up to you, I hope you will still want to talk to me, I hope you will still want to be my friend.” “She wont leave me alone, she wont stop bothering me, she wants me and I want nothing to do with her.” he now says.
I was crushed. The confusion, the using me, the manipulation, the lying, the gas lightening-and the kindness I showed him-even in the face of all of it, he still treated me with nothing but contempt, as an object, as someone to simply abuse. Even in the moments of when we were getting along-he was an ass. I remember I had some toys that my kids weren’t going to use anymore, unisex stuff like a National Geographic crystal growing kit, and when I offered it to his kids, he screamed at me “ I don’t have room in my house for it.” When I explained that it isn’t stuff that would take up too much room, and fine, just thought I’d offer it-because it was either his kids, goodwill or the garbage, he then yelled at me “Well just go have a garage sale!”
Whoever told him he was “too nice”, ought to have their head examined.
That's how it ended. He wouldn't see me, didn't care, twisted it onto me-so I SENT him the book on coke addiction, and that was it for us.
For now.
This, ontop of a friend's suicide, me getting hit in a car accident and a breast cancer scare, I was at the edge, on the brink, and I ran away. Everything weighed too heavily, my heart crushed in many ways. con't later
At the time I didn’t really think that one through. I should’ve known it was probably for coke. Anyway, I believed him and said I would do it if he could pay it back next time he gets paid. I knew he got paid every Thursday, and he was asking me on the 4th of July, a Saturday. Said there was no one else around to ask. I was working ER so stuck working the holiday but was off at 3. I didn’t have the money on me, because he said he’d come to my work to get it-but would meet him at my place.
While he was over, I made the fatal mistake of telling him all about the birthday that he had missed with me and my friend. We had a very good time-too good of a time, and there were pictures to prove it.
I tell this story to W and stupidly start to show the memory card with the pictures on it to him when he yanks it out of my hand. I’m like “What are you doing?” when he laughs and says “Its because you’re a slut.” I looked at him shocked and he says “What, its not like you are a whore, you don’t get paid for it”. And I asked to have the card back. He said “No.” He was really being insensitive and disrespectful to me, and the more I protested to have it back, the more adamant he got about seeing the pics, and then said “I’ll keep this just in case you get freaky again.” Joking or not-I think he meant that-and note that at this time, I had already given him the 200.00 bucks.
Maybe he knew he was going to fuck with me-and that’s why he kept this as an insurance policy. Maybe he felt bad and said “Lets go get something to eat” as I lived next door to a little diner at the time.
We went to eat when he told me that J was calling him and he wouldn’t call her back. I asked why, and he said it was because she was hot and cold. I laughed and said “Like you?” He said “she only seems to want me when she can’t have me. “ He seemed tired and lagging and he remarked, “I feel better when I’m on shit.”, half kidding.
We get out of the restaurant when he tells me what I want to hear:" I’ll probably see you before Thursday, but you’re okay, you’ll be alright until Thursday?" Because I had told him and made it clear that I can only borrow him this money if in fact, he can pay it back to me by Thursday. I didn’t want to get into why and that was none of his business. I wanted to help him but was trying to reassure that he understood that it was a very brief loan, to which he did and promised to repay-on Thursday. 5 days from that moment.
I didn’t see him before Thursday-of course-and Thursday came and went with no word from him. He called me the next morning though-Friday-”just to say hi.” Didn’t mention a thing about the money. I should’ve asked, but I felt he was a grown ass man, he knew he owed it, why should I have to? And he carried on a conversation, telling me about work, the house they were pouring a driveway for in a ritzy town that someday “I will have one just like it”, meaning the house-and no mention of the money. And I felt uncomfortable bringing it up. I don’t know why now other than to say, being around him was like dancing on glass-and he had those pictures.
He told me to call him over the weekend if I felt like it-and I didn’t-but I did feel like getting my money back so I texted him hi on Saturday-and got no response. By Sunday night, I hadn’t heard anything, and rent was already late. I had lent him the money out of the money I had saved for my rent. My rent being due by the 10th of the month, because I moved in on the tenth and that’s what my landlord and I did to make it easier. And I was PISSED. By Wednesday, he had not responded to my texts or returned my calls, and I had no other choice but to borrow the 200 myself in order to cover my rent. Finally, he calls me Thursday-the week after the Thursday he was supposed to pay me-and says to me very coldly “You need to relax. I have your money. Just tell me where you’ll be so I can give it to you.” No apologies, no explanations.
And I said as much. “You’ve been avoiding me for a fucking week and now you are going to act like this to me? After I helped your ass out? What the hell is wrong with you? How about an “I’m sorry”, asshole? “To which he responded “I am sorry, I will call you later.”
He didn’t.
And another week passed. I got a voicemail “Hey I’m not avoiding you, I’m not blowing you off, I have your money”-but it never appeared. Or I’d call back, and he wouldn’t answer. I’d get a text “I’ll call you later” and then later would come with not a call but another text “Hey, my ankle is fucked,can't do tonight, got it, see you tomorrow.” Setting me up to react again, put me off, lied to me, disrespecting me. I now owe my friend Pat the money-who didn’t have it to give at the time, either-who is mad at me for being so stupid to have lent someone who is so shitty to me money, didn’t I see that W didn’t give a shit about me, he is using me, and now we are both fucked? He wanted to go kick his ass. I was about to let him.
Instead, I called again. Please, I begged. Just let me know what the fuck. Don’t do me like this, if you don’t have it, fine, but don’t treat me this way. Don’t fuck me like this. Even if all you can give me is 10 bucks, fine, at least that is something, at least that shows that you are sorry and intend to pay it back. At this point I had totally forgotten about the picture card, just focused on what he was doing to me, emotionally, mentally.
And I’d get a text-” I will explain. Sorry. Call u tomorrow.” And there would be no call.
After 3 weeks had now passed since I first lent him the money-I was beyond pissed. I was crazy. And my friend was super irate that he still had this picture card as well-which had pictures of her on there, and she was going to have his ass kicked. I finally exploded on him and yes, I threatened him with that. I said if he didn’t at least give those pictures back, much less the money, that he would in fact, have his ass kicked.
And of course-he then called.
He finally came by with the pictures-but no money. And some sort of an explanation. He couldn’t even look at me. He had asked me “Cant I just leave the money on your car? Or on your door on my way to work?”
And I said “No.” Why, so he could run away and never explain what he did? I heard him out, because I was entitled to an explanation, I deserved an explanation. I wanted to hear what it was he possibly had to say. But I didn’t believe he was sincere. Remember, this is a man who is capable of telling me what it is he thinks I want to hear-by his own admission, to tell me things that aren’t true to “test” me and to make me react, to “make” me do things, I wouldn’t know what to believe out of his mouth now. He’s such a chronic liar that anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt. But yet, he still owed me that much.
He told me he didn’t know why he did this. “This isn’t me, this isn’t who I am.” He said he didn’t think I needed the money, which is bullshit and I didn’t understand since I clearly told him I did. It was then that he told me that the Friday morning he called-the day after he originally had agreed to pay me-that he had been testing me. At that point I felt like telling him next time to go borrow money from his girlfriend, test her ass. He said that I was the least of his problems. He said he didn’t know what to say, except that he hoped he had a chance to make it up to me, he hoped we could be friends, he understood if I didn’t want to talk to him again, but he hoped that I did.
Then he said something that deeply disturbed me. He told me “Last winter didn’t bother me, but this bothered me.” What the hell did that mean? That’s not what he told me when he told me all the shit I wanted to hear for 2 hours, that’s not what he said when he came calling after me after running into me at the bar. It had all “bothered” him them, “bother” being a pet word of his-and now only this was? I asked him why none of it bothered him last winter and he said “He didn’t have time then, didn’t have time to think about me or what I was about.” In other words, when J was around, I was the one who was now “chopped liver.”
He then said “Things were going good with you and I, and I fucked them up.” I agreed. I told him that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to have any self-respect and still be his friend. I needed time to absorb what he said, figure out if I even believed any of it, and if he or any of this was worth it. He just put me thru a huge emotional wringer, in ways he didn’t even know about-in ways I didn’t even know about-I needed to sort it out. I also needed him to pay me back, which again he said he would. He’d have my money tomorrow he said, when some guy at work gives him some.
And the next night-I get the call, and the excuses again. He missed the guy at work. But at least he called, and so tired from being so hurt and mad, I gave him that much. Pathetic that a bone like that would satisfy me.
He claimed his problems were stemming from lack of work in the winter-though he did say his ex wife worked with him that way and forfeited child support while he was unemployed-and poor financial decisions. He denied that it was coke that was the reason. I had asked him once how he had afforded the coke use and initially he said “I make enough money, I make like 70k a year” to “I just don’t pay for the things I should.” Clearly. He denied having a problem with the coke-”I didn’t use when I was married!” “I still have a job, I maintain.”
He told me during this “explanation/apology” talk that that he needed and wanted to sell the house. I told him to think carefully about that, because losing the house and having to move back in with his mother might really devastate his feelings about himself and I thought he should hold onto it because it’s an asset, an investment. If he didn’t want to live there, he could rent it out. But he thought that would be the solution to his problems. And he felt that J was the way to stop using coke because he also said “I don’t use when I’m with J”-another blow to MY feelings about myself. Though I now know that an addict is an addict and an abuser is an abuser but an addicted abuser is the worse, and it wouldn’t matter who he’s with-he’d end up using again, or abusing again.
But you know, its all me. He uses coke around me, and he’s an asshole only to me.
He told me he'd be going to a movie with a friend, and when that let out, he'd come by with my 200.00. It should've let out by 10pm. By midnight, I had not heard from him-so I called him, so sick of this shit.
He asked if he could just give me 100.00 right now. Then said "forget it, I'll give it to you all. Be there in a bit." Then calls me back "Yeah, I'm with my neighbors right now, we've been drinking, and he thinks I'm too wasted to drive." So now, at 1am, I said "Fuck this, you know what? I WILL COME GET IT." And of course, I had to go to HIM....and I did. He answers the door, hands me the money, I asked him "Can I talk to you for 5 mins?" He says that he would, except that he's too wasted right now and that I deserved his full attention and for him to have a clear head, so, we will talk soon, he promised.
I wanted to sit him down again, and tell him what I had absorbed and since he had wanted to know if we could still be friends, I was going to give to him what he couldn’t give to me-closure. And I had a book for him I had picked up all about cocaine addiction. I had given him some amino acids that were supposed to help with the come down. I called and asked him if he would give me just one hour of his time. He said he would, he’d call me later.
Later came-and he refused to see me. He said he didn’t think he could do it the following night (of course, it was a Thursday, payday, coke day) but he invited me over on Friday. Said he’d have the kids but could put in a movie and we could talk. He then called to tell me he forgot he promised to take the kids for a sleep over at his sisters. I had my kids on Saturday, so we both agreed that Sunday night would be best as neither one of us would have kids.
And then Sunday came-with another excuse. This time, he was fighting with his ex, and complaining about her mistreating him now that she was back with her ex boyfriend, and that she wants more money. So now he didn’t want to see me, he wasn’t in the mood. Said call him tomorrow.
I did, and he said that he couldn’t do it, he had to go help the neighbors mow their lawn. He asks “Cant we just do this over the phone?” and I suppose that I just gave in, because it was something. It wasn’t what I wanted, and you can’t give someone something over the phone, but okay, let’s talk. And he started going on a rampage about J. We never did talk about what I wanted to say-because he interrupted me and began talking about her. About what she means to him. This wasn’t supposed to be a conversation about him and her, it was supposed to be a conversation for me, about him and I, about him and his problem, and instead, he twists it to be about what HE wanted to talk about. He tells me she was the one. He totally loves her and he would’ve married her. “I want to marry her, and she wants to marry me.” She was “everything” except the only problem was her issues of commitment, which he forgave , which he forgave because she has A.D.D. He said “She’s been doing this to me for six years, and I won’t be kept any longer, and that’s why it’s over now. I lost number one, so I guess I have to learn to like number two.” (number 2 being me.) Told me that she’s better for him than I ever could be. I asked him why he didn’t tell me all this long before, when he had the chance, when I FUCKING ASKED HIM. I ASKED him if he was in love with her, what the relationship meant and that’s when I got the “If my life was more together I wouldn’t even want her” speal. I asked him how could he possibly minimize the relationship to me so much, and not be honest with me and give me a chance to decide what I WOULD WANT to do. He told me “How do you tell someone that likes you?” BECAUSE they fucking like you, dumb ass. How could he not? Told me that “You tried too hard.” (again, another reason he wasn’t into me) and that “You’re just not getting it!”
He continues on by telling me “You know that Staind song? That’s it!” At the time, the song “Right There” by Staind was getting a lot of airplay-it was hard not to hear it, and so I had to switch the station now because the lyrics are about a guy saying to a girl give me a second chance, can’t you forgive me, you’re the one, the one I am willing to bleed for, you always keep me waiting, right here waiting, you always find a way, etc.
Again, who does this shit? Who is so incredibly insensitive to another person’s feelings that they have to do that? Why did he have to consistently rub into my face that he was into someone else? Yeah, I GOT THAT. I didn’t need to keep hearing this over and over and hear the intimate details of all the feelings and thoughts he’s had about HER. Not once a compliment to me. Not once an interest in who I am. Nothing but what is wrong, lacking, uncool about me-and nothing but her being up on a pedestal.
Marriage? He was never even in a true relationship with her at that point, they were never boyfriend/girlfriend, it was six years of bullshit, not unlike this. They weren’t together, she puts him down whenever a new guy comes along, fine, whatever. He’s clearly as delusional as I had been. I said “what happened to needing to get your life together before you could do “this”, what happened to not wanting to let people get close to your heart because you don’t want to hurt them?” He replied “It just happened”.
And I should add, this whole time he is yelling at me and telling me all of this, there is a woman in the background laughing. When he started out being all haughty and arrogant, I could hear her talking in the background, interjecting something, and laughing. Further humiliating me, by doing it in front of another woman. Not even the woman he is talking about marrying. Some OTHER woman.
He then dumps all that on me-having just derailed the conversation I wanted to have by hitting me blindside with the TRUTH, throwing this woman in my face after knowing the torment of my own feelings for him-and then runs to quickly hang up, citing that he had to go help his neighbors again.
Always so busy helping others, never able to give me even fucking five minutes. Just simply decimated my self worth.
He then turned on me like the wolf to Little Red Riding Hood and twisted it all like an insane piece of licorice to make it seem like I was the one abusing him, and told people that he didn’t want me in his life and that I was just not getting that. A far cry from the “I hope you will let me make this up to you, I hope you will still want to talk to me, I hope you will still want to be my friend.” “She wont leave me alone, she wont stop bothering me, she wants me and I want nothing to do with her.” he now says.
I was crushed. The confusion, the using me, the manipulation, the lying, the gas lightening-and the kindness I showed him-even in the face of all of it, he still treated me with nothing but contempt, as an object, as someone to simply abuse. Even in the moments of when we were getting along-he was an ass. I remember I had some toys that my kids weren’t going to use anymore, unisex stuff like a National Geographic crystal growing kit, and when I offered it to his kids, he screamed at me “ I don’t have room in my house for it.” When I explained that it isn’t stuff that would take up too much room, and fine, just thought I’d offer it-because it was either his kids, goodwill or the garbage, he then yelled at me “Well just go have a garage sale!”
Whoever told him he was “too nice”, ought to have their head examined.
That's how it ended. He wouldn't see me, didn't care, twisted it onto me-so I SENT him the book on coke addiction, and that was it for us.
For now.
This, ontop of a friend's suicide, me getting hit in a car accident and a breast cancer scare, I was at the edge, on the brink, and I ran away. Everything weighed too heavily, my heart crushed in many ways. con't later
The psycho story, cont
He went on to ask ‘So do you feel weird about the other night?” and I answered honestly- yes. I said “I’m just wondering why you called me.”
Instead of being willing to answer that nicely and honestly, he replies sternly and shitty “Okay, talk to you later.” I said “Wait wait I didn’t mean it like that” though I did, and thought it was a fair question. He mimicked that thought by saying “No, that’s a fair question. I mean, it may sound weird, but I thought of you when I got horny. You were wondering what J had that you don’t. I didn’t see it like that. I sat here and asked myself, What is wrong with Psycho Bitch? And there is nothing. There is nothing wrong with you. Let’s just see what happens.”
I interrupted him with the mention of J and told him that he’s nice to the wrong people, he’s selfish with me, and that I don’t have feelings like that for him anymore.”
He says “Well, I’m kind of glad to hear that.” I asked “Why?” He said “Because this would be wrong then.” Wow, nothing like finding out how the woman feels after the fact. What if I had said “oh, I’m in love with you?” he didn’t seem worried to find out how I felt before he tried fucking me, if it was so “wrong.”
I ended up telling him that I felt uncomfortable when I called him, and I was. It was like walking on eggshells. I liked how I felt when I was actually with him, but the way the treated me and the controlling, the comparisons, the judgments about me, the yelling, his ego all took a toll on my self esteem. I was afraid to feel like I was myself, and I was starting to feel like I had to act like someone else or to do things he would label as “cool.” His feelings seemed to be conditional, and I was feeding into the belief that I had to be something or someone I wasn’t to please him. He told me “That’s crazy. I don’t want you to be anything BUT yourself, because I like YOU. And if you feel this way, then why do you want to be my friend?”
I still can’t answer that in a way that makes sense, but I know you women out there get it. That, and way to twist it back unto me.
He reassured me that I could call him and he wouldn’t get weird. I was hesitant-but I took the risk and called. I’d call to say hi-and he wouldn’t call back. One night I called HIM for a booty call-and he was too tired. Didn’t feel like it. When I wanted to talk to or see him, he was never available or up for it, but his sense of imposition, expectation and entitlement when it was the other way around was unparalleled.
If I called him, as I did on a Saturday afternoon once, to see what he was doing that evening, I would get no call back, not even a “Sorry, I have other plans.” Just would straight up not return my calls. He never offered to do a rain check and do another time. I remember I called him 3 weeks before my birthday, asking him if he’d like to join me and our mutual friend for a celebration of both of our birthdays, since hers is a week before mine. And when I did that, I got “We’ll see. Maybe if I don’t have other plans.”
3 weeks in advance and he’s telling me he might have other plans. He wouldn’t say yes. He was blowing me off, hiding something, not responding, avoiding me. He would be the one that reached out to me, he was the one that made it seem like he wanted to try and hang out and see what would happen, and now when I bit the bait, he’d withdraw and make me chase. And when I would ask why, I would be told that he’s “testing” me.
By this time it was now May of 05. His birthday had been in January, with the infamous dropping off of the book. And he was telling me that he hadn’t used cocaine since then. So then, what could be the reason for his behavior?? He also said that he wasn’t with J anymore at that time. So, what the fuck?
It was starting to all build up in me like a pressure cooker, and I couldn’t take anymore. I wanted to end it. But I wanted closure. He would never let me come over to talk to him-I tried. If I tried to talk to him on the phone, he’d find a way, an excuse to get off the phone, or hang up on me. I felt I had no choice but to write it, I wanted to confront him to his face, or at least via the phone, and he wouldn’t let me. I was sick of being a doormat. I freaked out, as his crazy-making shit was designed to do. He had made me feel so badly about myself, made me feel that there was something wrong with me-though he would SAY there’s nothing wrong with you, after telling me all that was, and his actions said otherwise-and finally I blew.
I photocopied about 75 cards I had from various people over the years thanking me for being their friend, thanking me for being a great person to them, and I copied them. Along with a thing from online about mental abuse. And I called him. I warned him. I said I wouldn’t ever go to his house unannounced, and this wasn’t unannounced. I couldn’t take anymore. He would set me up to react. I was doomed to fail from the get go. He’d be an ass, Id react like any woman would, then it would be my fault and he’s rejecting me because I reacted. Meanwhile taking NO responsibility at all for his role in it, or just what a selfish bastard he was being. He never really cared. He was just using me as a rebound, I wasn’t good enough when he wanted to be with J, but I was good enough to call at 1 in the morning. He didn’t know or bother to know anything about me but was sure to point out all the things he didn’t like about me, and how he questioned the kind of person I was, all because we had dropped off that book to him. He never failed to bring that up.
I was on fire and he was shocked. He had no idea where this was coming from, what he did or didn’t do to earn this wrath. I was now the one yelling at him. He was telling me “Stop, its not worth it” and then “Well if this is the kind of person you are then I am GLAD we never hung out.” Once again, making me the crazy one, the wrong one, the one not worthy, now I guess I don’t DESERVE to get fucked, gas lighting and playing every psychological game in the book. He warned me “Don’t you dare step foot on my property I’ll call the police.” I just laughed. I’d be gone by the time he dialed the last 1 in 911, I was just going to finally SHOW him the proof of his TESTS, he questioned what kind of person I am. See-they do make us “crazy”.
When I arrived and he answered the door-how scared could he be-I threw the packet at him, and said “THIS is the kind of person I am, now lose my fucking number.”
Yes, it was “psycho.” Yet I remember him asking me out of the blue one night “You’re not the type to get revenge, are you? And I asked him why he would ask me that. He went on to say “well, you know, I’ve had buddies who when they’ve had problems with women, the women have tried to do some crazy stuff to get back at them.” I’m thinking now that those “buddies” were probably him.
And I went on to try and forget the whole fucking mess, meanwhile, I was feeling guilty. Don’t ask me why. Except that I have a soul.
I found out through the grapevine, that W was calling around for coke. After telling me he now hadn't used it in almost 6 months.
It was then I was able to fall back into my denial, believing that this is why this all made sense now. He had never quit the cocaine, like he had said. I called and left a voicemail that I was concerned to hear this, I was sorry to hear this, he was better than that, but at least this all made sense to me now.
He called me back and denied it. “No, that’s not the case. I know you are concerned, and that’s cool. I actually called this guy about a business thing. We are friends too, its not just me getting stuff. It’s not a struggle to not use,” he said. “I mean, it was always more psychological than it was physical, but no, its not an issue anymore, you have nothing to be concerned about.” And while I was glad to hear that, I guess now I had to believe that he was either a lying addict, or a complete asshole. Neither of which I deserved. And as far as the being friends thing with this guy, this guy told my friend that I heard this from, that he didn’t even like W, and that W bugged the shit out of him all the time trying to get shit. And I met one woman who knew him who said “He’s no good.”
Me and my friend go out to shoot pool, where she was going to be meeting up with her sister’s ex husband. I go to the bathroom, one of those single stall types. So next thing I know, my friend is pounding on the door to let her in, she says “Fucking W is here” and I open the bathroom door to him standing there, his arms open to hug me. He was hanging out with my friend's brother in law. So I gave him the hug.. I didn’t want to be mad. I still felt sorry for him.
My friend was sorta harsh on him and so he turns to me to say “What, you turned my friends against me?” No asshole, you turned them against you. I don’t have that kind of power over people.
We all played pool and I wouldn’t be his partner, and he says “Oh, she doesn’t want to be my partner?” and he seemed shocked. And as he played and missed a shot, he seemed all pissed off that he did. And I straight up asked him” Why! Why were you mean to me like that?” and he replied ’I don’t know. There’s a lot of women I should’ve probably been mean to and wasn’t, but you aren’t one of them.” Then of course, he didn’t want to discuss it any further, yet seemed perplexed as we were all leaving why I didn’t want to give him a hug goodbye.
So he called me as soon as he got home. He told me that he knew on the way to the bar that I would be there, and he still wanted to go, he did want to see me. He didn’t want me to hate him, it bothered him, that the whole thing bothered him, that both me and my friend thought bad of him. He told me that it was nice to see me, even though it was weird, but that it was nice to see me again and couldn’t we just be friends? Can we just see? “Cant you just forget about it and forgive me?”
Foolishly, I accepted his apology, though he could offer no reason why he was shitty to me. And within a week, we were back to arguing. Because none of this was so easy for me to “forget” about. I wanted to talk about it. He wanted us to be “good” again, and the only way to do that would be to discuss some of this shit. He wanted no part of it. He snapped on me and wouldn’t not let me finish, much less start a conversation. Would yell “Maybe I saw stuff in you and I didn’t WANT to get to know you”, which stung me badly, but also contradicted his line to me the first night of being so intuitive, such a good judge of character, that I was someone he’d want in his house. He tells this to me the first night we hang out, and now he devalues me, but not having got to know me any better. He had once told me “It’s been a long time since I had to make room in my life for someone who wanted to see me” yet this totally contradicted his involvement with J.
I just didn’t want to see the truth, that he could find and make time for the people he wanted to, and I wasn’t someone he wanted to, though often times, he would paint the picture out that I was someone he wanted to be with, so much so that he was scared. He ended up screaming at me “ I don’t think I was mean to you. Mean is intentional. I’ve had people be mean to me, I know how it feels. I wasn’t intentionally mean to you.” So I said “fine your just an asshole then” this he was better able to accept. Jesus, semantics. Now I would say its more than asshole-it’s narcissistic.
The more I tried to understand, the louder he’d yell until finally he yelled that he didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I yelled back, What, right now or for good? I just want to be clear on this, you don’t want to talk to me ever again? And he yelled back “Yeah, right now, I don’t want to.” and I said fine and hung up, realizing that he said that right now he doesn’t want to talk to me ever again, but that’s right now. That could change in an hour.
The next thing I knew, he showed up at my apartment for the first time eve-as we had always hung out at his house, and ended up in my bed. I wasn’t going to sleep with him. He could spend the night, but initially, I told him no. He got kind of pissy and said “Oh, should I just lay here and tease you then?“ And I was tired and not up for a heavy discussion outlining why I might not be into sleeping with him. He then softly pouts and whispers “But I love being with you”. And I caved. Not before he asked to use my shower, though.Little did I know that his gas had just been turned off, and he just used me for that.
He shared with me shit going on in his life. I asked him just where it stood with him and J. My friend had recently ran into the two of them at a club, so I knew that it hadn’t really been over when he had said it was and now I wanted to know what the real story was, why he lied. This man had my head so confused and my self worth so contorted, I just wanted to find some sanity and normalcy in all of it. I asked if he was in love with her, he said he didn’t know.
He shared some things going on in his life-none of them good, and revealed to me that the longest he had actually gone without using coke this whole time was two months, the 2 months where he and J were actually “on”. And yes, he was high at this time.
He left, and we seemed to have some further understanding. For awhile, he’d call just to say hi, and things were fine. He had revealed that things in life were going badly. He hated his job and felt he was better than just working the trade job he had. His financial affairs were in turmoil, which I had already picked up on. In the past few months, his house phone had been turned off, his cell phone restricted to receiving calls only twice, his cable turned off, his gas shut off.
He had 2 BMW’s and said he would be paranoid as he’d look out the window wondering if they’d come repo it. Eventually, they did. He wanted to sell the other car. There was something he sold-maybe it was the other car, to someone who had only given him part of the money, and had been avoiding him and blowing off paying the rest. Someone had put a lein on him. Credit card companies showed up at the house serving him. His ex wife was after him for more child support or to pay it, period. He wanted to sell his house. Not just for the money to get out of debt, but for a fresh start. He said it was emotionally draining him, it was his marital house and with the kids and wife gone, it was hard and weird. His cat had just died-when the kids were there on the weekend no less-and obviously J was yanking him around to which he said “If my life was more together, I wouldn’t even want her.”
And I was sucked right back into feeling sorry for him, wanting to help him, wanting to help him get off the coke, believing that was the source of all of his problems. So when he called me with yet another problem, I was eager to help. He called to ask me if I could lend him 200.00.
Instead of being willing to answer that nicely and honestly, he replies sternly and shitty “Okay, talk to you later.” I said “Wait wait I didn’t mean it like that” though I did, and thought it was a fair question. He mimicked that thought by saying “No, that’s a fair question. I mean, it may sound weird, but I thought of you when I got horny. You were wondering what J had that you don’t. I didn’t see it like that. I sat here and asked myself, What is wrong with Psycho Bitch? And there is nothing. There is nothing wrong with you. Let’s just see what happens.”
I interrupted him with the mention of J and told him that he’s nice to the wrong people, he’s selfish with me, and that I don’t have feelings like that for him anymore.”
He says “Well, I’m kind of glad to hear that.” I asked “Why?” He said “Because this would be wrong then.” Wow, nothing like finding out how the woman feels after the fact. What if I had said “oh, I’m in love with you?” he didn’t seem worried to find out how I felt before he tried fucking me, if it was so “wrong.”
I ended up telling him that I felt uncomfortable when I called him, and I was. It was like walking on eggshells. I liked how I felt when I was actually with him, but the way the treated me and the controlling, the comparisons, the judgments about me, the yelling, his ego all took a toll on my self esteem. I was afraid to feel like I was myself, and I was starting to feel like I had to act like someone else or to do things he would label as “cool.” His feelings seemed to be conditional, and I was feeding into the belief that I had to be something or someone I wasn’t to please him. He told me “That’s crazy. I don’t want you to be anything BUT yourself, because I like YOU. And if you feel this way, then why do you want to be my friend?”
I still can’t answer that in a way that makes sense, but I know you women out there get it. That, and way to twist it back unto me.
He reassured me that I could call him and he wouldn’t get weird. I was hesitant-but I took the risk and called. I’d call to say hi-and he wouldn’t call back. One night I called HIM for a booty call-and he was too tired. Didn’t feel like it. When I wanted to talk to or see him, he was never available or up for it, but his sense of imposition, expectation and entitlement when it was the other way around was unparalleled.
If I called him, as I did on a Saturday afternoon once, to see what he was doing that evening, I would get no call back, not even a “Sorry, I have other plans.” Just would straight up not return my calls. He never offered to do a rain check and do another time. I remember I called him 3 weeks before my birthday, asking him if he’d like to join me and our mutual friend for a celebration of both of our birthdays, since hers is a week before mine. And when I did that, I got “We’ll see. Maybe if I don’t have other plans.”
3 weeks in advance and he’s telling me he might have other plans. He wouldn’t say yes. He was blowing me off, hiding something, not responding, avoiding me. He would be the one that reached out to me, he was the one that made it seem like he wanted to try and hang out and see what would happen, and now when I bit the bait, he’d withdraw and make me chase. And when I would ask why, I would be told that he’s “testing” me.
By this time it was now May of 05. His birthday had been in January, with the infamous dropping off of the book. And he was telling me that he hadn’t used cocaine since then. So then, what could be the reason for his behavior?? He also said that he wasn’t with J anymore at that time. So, what the fuck?
It was starting to all build up in me like a pressure cooker, and I couldn’t take anymore. I wanted to end it. But I wanted closure. He would never let me come over to talk to him-I tried. If I tried to talk to him on the phone, he’d find a way, an excuse to get off the phone, or hang up on me. I felt I had no choice but to write it, I wanted to confront him to his face, or at least via the phone, and he wouldn’t let me. I was sick of being a doormat. I freaked out, as his crazy-making shit was designed to do. He had made me feel so badly about myself, made me feel that there was something wrong with me-though he would SAY there’s nothing wrong with you, after telling me all that was, and his actions said otherwise-and finally I blew.
I photocopied about 75 cards I had from various people over the years thanking me for being their friend, thanking me for being a great person to them, and I copied them. Along with a thing from online about mental abuse. And I called him. I warned him. I said I wouldn’t ever go to his house unannounced, and this wasn’t unannounced. I couldn’t take anymore. He would set me up to react. I was doomed to fail from the get go. He’d be an ass, Id react like any woman would, then it would be my fault and he’s rejecting me because I reacted. Meanwhile taking NO responsibility at all for his role in it, or just what a selfish bastard he was being. He never really cared. He was just using me as a rebound, I wasn’t good enough when he wanted to be with J, but I was good enough to call at 1 in the morning. He didn’t know or bother to know anything about me but was sure to point out all the things he didn’t like about me, and how he questioned the kind of person I was, all because we had dropped off that book to him. He never failed to bring that up.
I was on fire and he was shocked. He had no idea where this was coming from, what he did or didn’t do to earn this wrath. I was now the one yelling at him. He was telling me “Stop, its not worth it” and then “Well if this is the kind of person you are then I am GLAD we never hung out.” Once again, making me the crazy one, the wrong one, the one not worthy, now I guess I don’t DESERVE to get fucked, gas lighting and playing every psychological game in the book. He warned me “Don’t you dare step foot on my property I’ll call the police.” I just laughed. I’d be gone by the time he dialed the last 1 in 911, I was just going to finally SHOW him the proof of his TESTS, he questioned what kind of person I am. See-they do make us “crazy”.
When I arrived and he answered the door-how scared could he be-I threw the packet at him, and said “THIS is the kind of person I am, now lose my fucking number.”
Yes, it was “psycho.” Yet I remember him asking me out of the blue one night “You’re not the type to get revenge, are you? And I asked him why he would ask me that. He went on to say “well, you know, I’ve had buddies who when they’ve had problems with women, the women have tried to do some crazy stuff to get back at them.” I’m thinking now that those “buddies” were probably him.
And I went on to try and forget the whole fucking mess, meanwhile, I was feeling guilty. Don’t ask me why. Except that I have a soul.
I found out through the grapevine, that W was calling around for coke. After telling me he now hadn't used it in almost 6 months.
It was then I was able to fall back into my denial, believing that this is why this all made sense now. He had never quit the cocaine, like he had said. I called and left a voicemail that I was concerned to hear this, I was sorry to hear this, he was better than that, but at least this all made sense to me now.
He called me back and denied it. “No, that’s not the case. I know you are concerned, and that’s cool. I actually called this guy about a business thing. We are friends too, its not just me getting stuff. It’s not a struggle to not use,” he said. “I mean, it was always more psychological than it was physical, but no, its not an issue anymore, you have nothing to be concerned about.” And while I was glad to hear that, I guess now I had to believe that he was either a lying addict, or a complete asshole. Neither of which I deserved. And as far as the being friends thing with this guy, this guy told my friend that I heard this from, that he didn’t even like W, and that W bugged the shit out of him all the time trying to get shit. And I met one woman who knew him who said “He’s no good.”
Me and my friend go out to shoot pool, where she was going to be meeting up with her sister’s ex husband. I go to the bathroom, one of those single stall types. So next thing I know, my friend is pounding on the door to let her in, she says “Fucking W is here” and I open the bathroom door to him standing there, his arms open to hug me. He was hanging out with my friend's brother in law. So I gave him the hug.. I didn’t want to be mad. I still felt sorry for him.
My friend was sorta harsh on him and so he turns to me to say “What, you turned my friends against me?” No asshole, you turned them against you. I don’t have that kind of power over people.
We all played pool and I wouldn’t be his partner, and he says “Oh, she doesn’t want to be my partner?” and he seemed shocked. And as he played and missed a shot, he seemed all pissed off that he did. And I straight up asked him” Why! Why were you mean to me like that?” and he replied ’I don’t know. There’s a lot of women I should’ve probably been mean to and wasn’t, but you aren’t one of them.” Then of course, he didn’t want to discuss it any further, yet seemed perplexed as we were all leaving why I didn’t want to give him a hug goodbye.
So he called me as soon as he got home. He told me that he knew on the way to the bar that I would be there, and he still wanted to go, he did want to see me. He didn’t want me to hate him, it bothered him, that the whole thing bothered him, that both me and my friend thought bad of him. He told me that it was nice to see me, even though it was weird, but that it was nice to see me again and couldn’t we just be friends? Can we just see? “Cant you just forget about it and forgive me?”
Foolishly, I accepted his apology, though he could offer no reason why he was shitty to me. And within a week, we were back to arguing. Because none of this was so easy for me to “forget” about. I wanted to talk about it. He wanted us to be “good” again, and the only way to do that would be to discuss some of this shit. He wanted no part of it. He snapped on me and wouldn’t not let me finish, much less start a conversation. Would yell “Maybe I saw stuff in you and I didn’t WANT to get to know you”, which stung me badly, but also contradicted his line to me the first night of being so intuitive, such a good judge of character, that I was someone he’d want in his house. He tells this to me the first night we hang out, and now he devalues me, but not having got to know me any better. He had once told me “It’s been a long time since I had to make room in my life for someone who wanted to see me” yet this totally contradicted his involvement with J.
I just didn’t want to see the truth, that he could find and make time for the people he wanted to, and I wasn’t someone he wanted to, though often times, he would paint the picture out that I was someone he wanted to be with, so much so that he was scared. He ended up screaming at me “ I don’t think I was mean to you. Mean is intentional. I’ve had people be mean to me, I know how it feels. I wasn’t intentionally mean to you.” So I said “fine your just an asshole then” this he was better able to accept. Jesus, semantics. Now I would say its more than asshole-it’s narcissistic.
The more I tried to understand, the louder he’d yell until finally he yelled that he didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I yelled back, What, right now or for good? I just want to be clear on this, you don’t want to talk to me ever again? And he yelled back “Yeah, right now, I don’t want to.” and I said fine and hung up, realizing that he said that right now he doesn’t want to talk to me ever again, but that’s right now. That could change in an hour.
The next thing I knew, he showed up at my apartment for the first time eve-as we had always hung out at his house, and ended up in my bed. I wasn’t going to sleep with him. He could spend the night, but initially, I told him no. He got kind of pissy and said “Oh, should I just lay here and tease you then?“ And I was tired and not up for a heavy discussion outlining why I might not be into sleeping with him. He then softly pouts and whispers “But I love being with you”. And I caved. Not before he asked to use my shower, though.Little did I know that his gas had just been turned off, and he just used me for that.
He shared with me shit going on in his life. I asked him just where it stood with him and J. My friend had recently ran into the two of them at a club, so I knew that it hadn’t really been over when he had said it was and now I wanted to know what the real story was, why he lied. This man had my head so confused and my self worth so contorted, I just wanted to find some sanity and normalcy in all of it. I asked if he was in love with her, he said he didn’t know.
He shared some things going on in his life-none of them good, and revealed to me that the longest he had actually gone without using coke this whole time was two months, the 2 months where he and J were actually “on”. And yes, he was high at this time.
He left, and we seemed to have some further understanding. For awhile, he’d call just to say hi, and things were fine. He had revealed that things in life were going badly. He hated his job and felt he was better than just working the trade job he had. His financial affairs were in turmoil, which I had already picked up on. In the past few months, his house phone had been turned off, his cell phone restricted to receiving calls only twice, his cable turned off, his gas shut off.
He had 2 BMW’s and said he would be paranoid as he’d look out the window wondering if they’d come repo it. Eventually, they did. He wanted to sell the other car. There was something he sold-maybe it was the other car, to someone who had only given him part of the money, and had been avoiding him and blowing off paying the rest. Someone had put a lein on him. Credit card companies showed up at the house serving him. His ex wife was after him for more child support or to pay it, period. He wanted to sell his house. Not just for the money to get out of debt, but for a fresh start. He said it was emotionally draining him, it was his marital house and with the kids and wife gone, it was hard and weird. His cat had just died-when the kids were there on the weekend no less-and obviously J was yanking him around to which he said “If my life was more together, I wouldn’t even want her.”
And I was sucked right back into feeling sorry for him, wanting to help him, wanting to help him get off the coke, believing that was the source of all of his problems. So when he called me with yet another problem, I was eager to help. He called to ask me if I could lend him 200.00.
28.3.10
The rest of the story, cuz then I'm done
I am going to finish posting my story. From there, I think it's all been said. I think the time has come for me to move on now, and continue on the road to my healing. New blogs are being created everyday-one of my blog readers just started hers. More and more woman are coming forward to tell their stories, to share their experiences, strength and hope.
For four months now, I have blogged almost every single day about the psycho(s) in my past. It has been a necessary process of my healing-but now it's time to let it all go. By continuing to focus on him, the relationship and my hurts-I am still giving him attention he doesn't deserve. The subject-DOES deserve attention. But no longer mine. Yet I am oddly grateful to him for the experience, because through blogging, I have made new friends, shared stories, received strength and support, and have gotten the satisfaction of knowing that it has done some people some good.
It will always be here, for those who are where I was-frantically searching the internet for answers, validation and support. I will pop in from time to time, to update, to say hello, to add anything pertinent that I think could help. And to continue to add links to those blogs that I feel are even better than mine.
Psychological abuse is real, it is rampant, and it is the first stage prior to any other forms of overt abuse. We can learn to avoid toxic and personality disordered people, by recognizing the games they play, and why. I don't know if there is a cure. It doesn't matter the diagnosis. What matters is that we need to heal the damage, we have to delete the abuse and not allow it to leave a permanent emotional tattoo on us that says we are worthless. We are anything but.
And that essentially-IS why they chose us. I no longer feel hatred, resentment and trauma. I do feel sorry for him now. I wouldn't want to know what it is like, to go through life as he does, I wouldn't want to be like him, having to resort to abuse to feel secure. To the narcissistic people I've encountered, and the other disordered souls-they too helped make this blog complete. The symptoms of these people are all very similar-just as we end up exhibiting very similar behaviors, thoughts and feelings after being with them.
I don't think there is a chicken and the egg argument. Their abuses came first, our reactions and coping skills-or lack thereof-came second. Nevertheless, the damage can cause us to continue on the same path, becoming self-destructive and as insecure and as f'd up as them-leading us into more of the same.
Please utilize resources available to you. You landed here, so you know the internet is one of them. There are many books, forums, workshops, blogs, audio tapes, dvd's, etc-on healing. Your local community has the Y, and other resources available to be educated on domestic violence and how to leave a physically abusive situation safely. There are ways that you can get rid of your history in your web browser and to make sure that you can research this safely online-as we know, abusers can be very nosy.
Don't stay quiet. Find people you trust to confide in. Keep journals. Document. Start a blog. Get it out. Buy or make a beautiful journal, and pour your heart out, even the secrets you don't think you could ever tell. Use pictures, drawings, stickers-whatever your heart desires, but GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD. It's like an exorcism. Even if it's just hitting your pillow really, REALLY hard, or putting a picture of your psycho onto a dartboard-you must get it out. Most wounds need air to heal. Band- aids don't work on a festering wound, such as what is left after these relationships.
Listen to empowering music. Read empowering books. Think about your spirituality and your purpose for being here, because you have one, my dear. We all do. God made no mistake in having you here. Even with the psychos-perhaps their only purpose is to show other's what they DON'T ever want to be.
And know it will pass, you will heal, the hurt will dissipate, and you will love again. You will be stronger, wiser, and a bit more appreciative of the good that you have, both within and without. You will value the people who love you more, and you will find that you truly do prefer nice guys.
You will then end up helping another in the same way you've been helped. Be it a friend, your daughter, niece, cousin or a stranger-you will bring strength and hope to another who may not ever thought she'd find anyone else who could understand. God bless you all on your road to healing, and I pray that you find the strength to go, if you haven't already. Peace, and peace to all the psychos.
OK...here it is.....my very unconventional psycho story, pt 2
I went over there a few nights later, after he called me at 1am. He knew I worked late and I often didn’t get out of work until midnight. Still, I should’ve seen right there that I was just a booty call. But it was different to me as he would leave the door unlocked for me, I was to just come on in, and there I would find him in bed waiting for me. I guess it trigged in me the times of being married, when I’d come home from work or being out with friends, and had someone to come home to, who was happy and excited to see me and I’d crawl into bed to and talk about the day, or life, or whatever. And that’s what happened this night. He must’ve been high again, as again performance was an issue. But I didn’t care, because I liked HIM.
The TV was on, the cat was at my feet when he tells me that his cat Buster really likes me, he didn’t like his last gf, and that was an indicator of something because his cat wasn’t a people cat. He said “I don’t let too many people get close to this”, as he pointed to his heart, “because I don’t want to hurt anyone, I know how it feels.“
Yet later in the evening, he told me that “Yeah, I used to be much more mentally abusive to women before therapy” and now as I look back, I really wish I had pressed him about that comment to elaborate and explain it. Because now I know-if a guy tells you he has a history of being mentally abusive-he is. But we laid in bed and we laughed. I asked him a series of stupid questions to answer about himself-like what was his favorite color, number, food-stupid shit that made us laugh. He would say really dumb things that would get most women’s shackles up, but I wasn’t bothered by it because I laughed at his verbal clumsiness about women. He joked that maybe he wasn’t getting it up “Cuz maybe its you” and then when I joked back that he just destroyed my self esteem, he grabbed me and was able to do it. And the whole time he looked into my eyes and smiled, as it was slow and nice, and it was then that I was hooked.
I remember asking him that first night if he was as selfish and self-centered as other coke addicts I had known. He said that no, he was nothing like that at all and he recounted the time some woman had told him that he was “too nice”-apparently someone he had liked.
A few nights later he had called again late at night-about ¼ to one, and I was on the other line so I didn’t answer. 15 mins later I called him back and I said “Hi, what are you doing?” and he barked really shitty “Trying to sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow” and hung up.
I was taken aback by that but brushed it off, and had no reason to believe at this point that he wouldn’t call me back. He had been “normal.” He called when he said he would. He had called me one Saturday night to see if I wanted to go see a band his friend was in, but I had my kids so I couldn’t.
And he didn’t call me the next day. Never called me back. For some reason, this rang a bell in my intuition. I don’t know why. It shouldn’t of. Things happen, sometimes people don’t call, and there is usually a reason for it. I should’ve just waited to see if he did call me, with an explanation and all would’ve been fine. But I knew. Somehow, I just knew. So much so that I called my buddy Pat freaking out, looking for advice. Pat had known me for 20 plus years. I wondered if I was just looking for an excuse to get out of it, because I was really starting to like this guy, and I was scared, had my own trust and intimacy issues. But I was ready to tell W that I couldn’t see him anymore. I suppose my subconscious had taken in all this information and data-gathering and it knew that this man was gonna hurt me. And so I had left him a voicemail, saying I wanted to talk to him. As I explained to Pat, I said “I know he’s gonna think I’m psycho, he thinks every woman is psycho”. Pat said “Well, if he’s going to think your psycho anyway, might as well be honest with him.”
W called me immediately the next morning, as I was on my way to work, and he on his way to work, pressing me to tell him why I was calling. He was really hyper and wanted to know what I wanted to talk to him about. I told him it really wasn’t a big deal and that it would be better to talk when we weren’t on the way to our jobs. I told him that I’d call him after I got home from work. I went over to Pats for some support and to make the call-when W called me. He just got his kids and was fixing them some tacos when he said “What is going on? I 've been freaking out about it. I was working and so distracted that I ended up driving to A instead of B where I was supposed to be. Are you going to get weird on me?” He asked. I told him “Well you will probably think I’m psycho and told him what Pat had said to me and he says “Yeah, my buddy Pat! See he’s right so you should just tell me, what, are you going to tell me you’re in love with me?”
There’s that red flag again. No, I wasn’t going to tell him I was in love with him, what the fuck? First of all, I just met him, second of all, you don’t do that over the phone. What was wrong with this man? How fucking arrogant is he? Instead I did tell him that I felt weird that the only time I saw him was late at night at his house, that we never go anywhere and that I didn’t want that to end up being the pattern, I didn’t want to be just a piece of ass. He said that he totally understood that, didn’t think it was psycho at all. “It’s not like that, I mean, am I sitting here getting all crazy, thinking you’re the one? I mean, I’m not there…..wait, that sounded wrong. Let’s just say that it isn’t a piece of ass to me and leave it at that.”
I said “ok.” He had the kids for the weekend, he explained, but he would be dropping them off i Sunday night. He asked if I was working, because I worked at a bar/restaurant in the same town as his kids, and that if I was, he’d stop in and see me at work. I told him I was and he said “Cool, see you then.”
And Sunday night came, and there was no sign of him. I called him when I got off of work, and I don’t remember what his excuse for not stopping by was. I was disappointed but I didn’t say anything. And it was not because he didn’t show, but because lately everything he told me he would do, he ended up not doing. I was beginning to believe that he was unreliable, undependable. My trust was crumbling, my fears activated. Seemed like one of those people that when they say they will call, or be somewhere, never are, something always comes up, some sort of drama is always happening, there’s always an excuse.
I was about to hang up when he said that I should come over. He said that he’d have to call me back in a half hour, though. I said okay. He then called back and said “No, not tonight." The excuse was his uncle gave him a huge TV and he had a buddy over who was helping him move TV’s around, so he didn’t want me to come over. I said okay.
Again I was disappointed as it seemed that ever since that last night we had together, he was starting to push me away. I told him that I wasn’t mad, when he asked, just what I was feeling, disappointed. He said “I don’t like hearing that, because its been a long time since I cared about whether I disappointed anyone or not. It’s been a long time since I cared. Let’s see about tomorrow night“, which was a Monday. I would be working, but not late.
He did call me, and he sounded shitty. Really crabby and pissed off, and told me he wouldn’t be able to see me. I asked him what was wrong, as I had never heard him like this, usually he was cheerful and jovial when we talked. He then replied “I’m driving and I don’t like to have to chase my money down.” Apparently someone owed him money. There always seemed to be some sort of weird covert deals he had.
Anyway, it was ironic because Pat was supposed to be stopping by my work as well, to pay me back money he owed me, and I told W this. He then snapped “Who is Pat?” and I was shocked. Hadn’t I just called him from Pat’s house, where he had said to me “His name sounds familiar to me, its on my caller ID, I wonder if I know him from somewhere” and when he exclaimed “My buddy Pat!” the night we talked about the message I left him-now he’s asking as if it’s the first time he’s heard of the guy.
So I reminded him “Uh, Pat, my buddy?” W presses on to ask me “Well why does he owe you money?” And while that wasn’t any of his business, I explained that Pat was in the trades, it was wintertime, when W interrupted me and said “I totally understand that.” So he said he’d call me later and we’d probably get together, depending on what his mood is.
And he didn’t call me for a week. I called him twice in that week-and he never called me back. I didn’t freak on him-but clearly there was something shady going on in his life, and I wondered just what the hell it was.
I stopped wondering when he finally called me and said that he was sorry for not calling me back, “I know that must’ve felt like shit to not have me call you back”-and he went on to explain that he was “distracted.” I asked with what. He said “Well, this girl called me that I used to see awhile ago, and it distracted me.” I asked him why he couldn’t of just told me that, and he said he was afraid I’d get mad. He went on to explain that she had called him pretty much out of the blue for relationship advice, telling him “I don’t think I make a very good girlfriend.” Apparently having broken up with someone she was recently engaged to. She asked W if he was seeing anyone, and he told me that he had told her about me. And he then told me “I don’t know what to think about anything, because you’re cool and I’m not sure I want to go back there cuz of you.”
I told my girlfriend that introduced us about it, and she was pissed. I asked her if she had ever heard of this woman I will call J, because out of all the women W had talked about and mentioned since I met him, her name never came up. She said she hadn’t, but she said “Who the fuck is this J? Sounds like she’s fucking rebounding to me.”
And she set out to call W. In her mind, she had hooked us up, we were a great match, and now he was fucking with me, because some chick came back to fuck with him. “This is bullshit,” she yelled, “what the hell is he thinking, and now he’s playing with you, fuck him.” And she called him. And he thought I was actually with her when she did. So he tells her that he liked me, liked my company, but that this was a friend and that people change. He told my friend that “this girl told me I wasn’t her type but people change.” So instead of being up front and telling me he didn’t want to see me anymore, that he was seeing her, he tells my friend, when he thinks that I am with my friend, and this hurt and pissed me off, that I am hearing this 3rd party through my friend like we are all back in fucking high school. Which is ironic because when I called him up after my friend tells me this, and I’m pissed off, he started screaming at me that “This is high school shit, you know I told her about you, and she didn’t react this way, so, have a nice life!”-instead of answering the questions that I had.
One thing I’ve learned about this man-he is totally unwilling to answer any questions that you might have about him, the state of your relation with him, or any bullshit that he has pulled. Only if HE feels like it. Which is rarely.
I ended up apologizing for my reaction-something he’s very adept at doing, which is to make you feel guilty for being angry with him when HE is being the shitty one. I called to apologize when he asked where I was at and “Do you want me to unlock the door or not?” So I go over there, not really knowing why. I guess I did feel guilty and I knew that I was reacting because I was scared of getting hurt. I just had a nagging feeling of knowing that I would. And again he’s in bed waiting for me, I let myself in. I walk in the room when he cutely asks ‘So are you still mad at me?” and I said “Did you miss me?” and he says “Yeah!” and you know we had the make-up sex thing. Afterwards he asked me who my contender was, because when he initially told me about J, I told him I understood that because I had a similar thing happen. Pretty shitty reaction, huh?
So I answered him and told him, so he responded with “Well, then why are you here with me?” and I looked at him funny and said “because I know that I like you better, nothing is even going on with me and that guy anymore, and besides, he’s a jerk.” When W asks ‘Well why do you want to be with a jerk?” And I got frustrated as I answered “I don’t, and I’m not.” Though ironically, I was laying next to the man, telling this to the man who turned out to be the biggest jerk to me I’ve known in my life.
So he starts to bring up the topic of J with me, and I didn’t want to hear it. Not now, while I was laying in bed naked with him. You know its just not cool to be discussing other lovers you have or other people you are seeing with someone that you are sleeping with, much less when that person is laying naked next to you, so I told him that I didn’t want to hear it. He said “Yes you do” and I said “NO, I really DON’T.” He said “Yeah, right.” I’m not sure what would make him think that I really wanted to be hearing anything that I have about anyone he’s been with or fucked, but it was tmi-too much information that I now look back and see, is totally inappropriate, unnecessary and not healthy in a good relationship. Its one thing as a relationship progresses to discuss past issues or hurts, its another to present this dossier of women down to details as he has done.
At this point, I was traumatized by it all and didn’t even really know it.
We were laying there, the subject changed, kissing and talking when he very seriously said “I have to get my life together before I can do this” and takes his index finger and gestures pointing to himself and me. I couldn’t argue that. And was in a similar position myself.
But neither one of us totally let it go and so for a few weeks more it continued with him constantly blowing me off. Finally I called him, and asked him to give me some closure. If he didn’t want to be friends, or talk to me I’ll have to deal but please stop blowing me off. Just talk to me.
So he finally called me back, and he was out in his garage doing something. And he was shitty. REALLY shitty to me. He yelled at me “If you hadn’t reacted the way you did, I’d be with you, not J!” Oh, now he’s with her? What happened to having to get his life together before he could do this?
He then starting passing judgment on me, pointing out my mistakes, being really mean. Started giving me the laundry list of things he didn’t like about me-as I feared that first night as he did with other women-he’d end up doing to me.
For example, we had talked about the fact that I loved wine. He didn’t. Said he didn’t like it. I had told him that next time I came over, I’d bring a bottle of wine everyone liked, usually the wine that turned people onto wine, to at least try, and if he didn’t like it, so be it. While I had been at the store to buy it, I eyed a bottle of red table wine that was called of all things, “Sweet W.” I thought this was the funniest thing ever, because I thought him to be anything BUT sweet, and so I bought it as a gag. The label had a sketching on it, that looked like someone had drawn it. But it was clearly a wine label. And he thought that me buying this wine was “weird”, and asked me “What, did you draw the label?” And I’m thinking what the fuck, okay, yeah, complete with the bar code and the surgeon generals warning on it, psycho. Crushed, I ended up saying to him “Well, I guess you just didn’t like me enough then” and he just coldly said “Well SORRY.” That was my closure.
Being that back then, this being 2004-I had a lot of tragedy going on in my life, and my self-esteem WAS fragile. Now this guy I liked and connected with is now giving me a list of reasons why I am not good enough-without even knowing me, and is being totally insensitive to letting me down easy. And it stuck. My self esteem very low, and my mind now twisted to believe that I somehow had to prove myself to him, that I am a good person and I don’t deserve this shit. And it occurred to me how much time we had spent focused on him-and how very little I talked, or what very little he knew about me. The scales were already so imbalanced-and I just didn’t see it.
The signs had been there. Not a phone call or even a text to wish me Merry Xmas. I texted him “Happy New Year”, and he didn’t respond. Here it was, almost his birthday-and notice I know his birthday, yet he knows nothing about me, much less mine-and I decided I wanted to give him a copy of my book that had just been published.
I called him and told him that I had a present for him. His reaction? “Well what is it, I don’t know if I want it.” What kind of a person says that when offered a gift?
Then he asks, “Did you make it?” He was very vague and non -committal about it and very reluctant to accept it. While we weren’t getting along, we were in some sort of a weird truce where I felt he would at least be receptive to a birthday gift. And he was denying it. Not willing to receive it. He had already shown me some pretty controlling shit, and this was no exception, and forced me to tell him what it was. I was tired of being put off, blown off, and made to feel like shit, and that everything I did was bad, weird, wrong, crazy, etc. I reasoned that at least if he had my book, he might know ME better.
I suppose I could’ve sent it-as I’ve ended up having to do a number of things now-but instead, my girlfriend and I called him and asked if we could drop by, to give him the book. We called all night, and left voicemails. A normal person would’ve answered, called back, texted back, knowing that we were asking where he was, could we come over, we had something for him. He did not. She and I, having had a few drinks, said “Fuck it, we will just drop the book off at the door.” So we went over there, to do just that. There was nothing sinister, psycho or stalkerish about it-he wouldn’t return our call-as he never did-and it was dropping off a fucking BIRTHDAY present for God’s sake. Its not like we were going over there to light a bag of shit on fire at his doorway.
So we went over, there was no car in the driveway, so we rang the bell. As we were standing, my friend very loudly exclaimed she had to use the bathroom “So if you are home, answer the fucking door”, she thinking he was avoiding us-and his neighbor across the street happened to be walking around outside, and invited us over to his house so she could use the bathroom.
He asked us how we knew W, and then asked us if we partied like W. My friend was about to answer when I said “No, and I didn’t think W did anymore, either.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s true,” the guy said. He hasn’t done any blow in a week!” “Yep, he’s actually got money now,” the other dude he was with said. I said ‘A week, huh? That’s weird, because W told me, he hasn’t had any coke for about 3 weeks now, since Xmas.”
The guy stammers and says “Well yeah, uh, yeah maybe it has been like 3 weeks.” Certain that he just threw W under a bus with some chick, he immediately called him the next day, and then W calls me, enraged.
First he started reaming me out for me and my girl coming by unannounced. Except it wasn’t unannounced, we called a dozen times. He freaks saying “Well, what if I was at home with my girlfriend?” and I’m thinking WTF, girlfriend? Mr. “I have to get my life together, Mr. I’ve had relationships move too fast and I don’t want that happening here”, now has a girlfriend?
He continues on with “I didn’t think you were this kind of person.” What kind is that, the kind that thinks of him on his birthday and wants to give a part of herself to him? Then he starts interrogating me further, “Well, what would you have done if there was a car in the driveway? What if the car wasn’t mine?” He just kept harping on me about it, and I started to get really annoyed. We didn’t come there to make a scene, this ‘girlfriend’ supposedly knew about me, so who fucking cares. Jesus-sorry already. And we sure didn’t come over to have a threesome with him, which was another thing he accused me of, “You didn’t come over to give me a book, you two came over to try and fuck me. “
Now I was pissed and about to hang up when he went on to coldly add “And oh yeah, I’m clean by the way” as he sat sniffling his nose like a 2 year old. I told him he didn’t have to explain that to me when he went on to bitch that his neighbors will yell across the street to him ‘Hey dude you got any whitey?” and make his business known all over the place. I was so put off by his attitude and this bullshit that I just wearily asked “Are you done now, was he done scolding me like a child, because I got the point about 20 minutes prior, he can just let it go now, it won’t happen again, I will never drop by again, okay?”
And the next night he called me again. He had been snowmobiling with friends and was drinking. He said he wanted to talk to me because he wanted to apologize and he felt bad for coming off on me. “I don’t want you to feel like I scolded you,” he said. And he went on to explain that he also didn’t want me to feel that any of this had anything to do with this other woman J, or that there was anything wrong with me. “I know sometimes I can get loud, and can be harsh. I don’t want to be that way. “ “I wish it wasn’t you,” he went on to say. “it’s the timing. I don’t want you to think that this has anything to do with her. Its not about that, it has nothing to do with her. And its not you. I want you in my life. I don’t want to end up a chapter in your book. You know me better in this short time than some women I’ve dated six months have. I don’t want you to fade away. J, she might fade away, I don’t want you to. I know I gave you reason to react, I know that I wasn’t always cool. You got too close. You were at my house because I wanted you there. It wasn’t the way you fuck or suck me, it was YOU. I liked YOU. I don’t want you to go away. I’m not asking you to wait around for me or anything, but maybe someday, who knows? Call me when you are thinking about me. Call me to let me know how you are. If your car gets a flat tire, call me and see how fast I’d be there. Call me when your book becomes a best seller. I don’t want you to think that it is about you, that there is something wrong with you. You are like me. You are different. I’d love to have you come over and be with me right now, but I just can’t. I just want to see where it is going to go there”, meaning him and this J.
He explained that she is someone that he met at a funeral of a mutual friend that died of a heroin OD. Because of that, she told W that he was not her type, because he did cocaine and she didn’t want to have another friend die on her. They went on a date and they slept together the first night, and remained fuck buddies. They became “great friends.” “I told her about you,” he tells me. “I told her you weren’t just a fuck buddy to me. I don‘t mind having two things on my plate, I just don‘t want those two things touching.“ After awhile, she had taken him out to dinner and told him that she had to stop fucking W, because there was someone else she wanted to fuck, and he thought this was cool. I thought it sounded whack. You sit people down and say that you want to see other people, you don’t say that there is a specific guy you want to go fuck.
And especially when he told me how it was so cool that while he was sleeping with J, he met the 3 some girl, and J asked him if he had fucked her yet and when he told her yes, she “high fived me.” Women who like men, don’t “high-five” them for fucking other people. But again, he thought this was "cool."
He told me that it would bother him for him to see me with someone else, so I wondered why he didn’t get my discomfort with any of his stories, past or current in relation to other women. You know I really don’t need to hear the details that he gives, he could’ve just left it without having to tell me that he wanted to be with someone else. You can end relationships with people without having to throw other people in their face, but since he seems to think this is so “cool”, he doesn’t see that to most people, its anything BUT cool. Its emotionally abusive. It undermines and hurts other peoples self confidence because NOBODY wants to hear that the person they like and are sleeping with, would rather sleep with somebody else. Its kinda implied when you end a relationship that is the case. No need for confirmation or the proof that the other person is already there in their life-and in their bed.
He continued on for 2 hours. He said that I really made him think about being in a relationship again, something he hadn’t considered in a long time. He again said that he wished I could be over there right now, but that he knew if we hung out “something might happen that shouldn’t.” He told me that it didn’t bother him, when I’d leave voicemails, usually drunk, wanting to know what the fuck when he was blowing me off. Said “I don’t think your psycho. It really didn’t bother me, the way it might’ve with other women. I’ve had other women leave voicemails and start bitching, and I don’t even listen. But I listen to you. I’m affected by what you say, I care about what you think of me. I’ve never had anything before like this in my life, where I was laying in bed with a woman and laughing and talking and not fucking her. It clicked.”
I asked him if he wanted to remain friends, and get together occasionally, do dinner or something, to which he replied “Sure! We just can’t hang out at my house” which he then started laughing.
And yeah, I was stupid. I didn’t think his “relationship” with J was going to go anywhere, I did think she was rebounding, and I didn’t want him to fade away either, so a few weeks later I called him to see if he “wanted to go grab a hotdog or something.” He didn’t call back.
A couple days later he did and left a shitty voicemail “Just calling to see why you are still calling, see what you need. If you are calling just to say hi, fine, if you are calling for anything else, DON’T BOTHER.”
I don’t think it needs to be explained, how that made me feel.
Pissed, I called him back. Clarify this shit for me then, since apparently, I received a mixed message about whether you wanted to be friends, if it was okay if I called, if it was wrong for me to assume we could hang out. I don’t know why I ever thought we could hang out-since we never had.
He called back, and he ends up screaming at me “I just told you all that I said because I wanted to end it. It ended icky. I didn’t want it to end icky. What if I run into you and my girlfriend (back to calling her his girlfriend) I don’t want it to be weird. I was just telling you the things that you wanted to hear, to make you go away.”
Again, I don’t think I need to explain the emotional trauma I felt hearing THAT.
I tried to let it go, with dignity. I ended up writing him a letter. I was as honest as I had ever been with him. I told him how he made me feel, good and bad, and told him I didn’t think I could be friends with him anytime soon. I understood where he was at, even though had had been controlling and manipulating me and just tore my heart out and did some sort of black magic ritual on it.
I owned my reactions which were often frantic and yelling back, and I apologized for them. I wished him well with J, hoped it worked out for him, and I did mean that. I really wanted him to quit coke, I told him so. I knew that he was doing the shit every 3-4 days, because he told me. He told me that Sundays were usually a big night for him to do it, after he dropped off the kids, he would sit at home-alone-and do cocaine. I figured his mood swings had something to do with this. He wanted to move on-and so I let him.
And I was being the bigger better person. I just didn’t want it to end in hate. I didn’t want to see what he had already done to my psyche and how I was already in the grips of being abused. It hurt enough knowing that he’d rather be with someone else. I accepted that, I respected it, though the way he handled it and treated me as a result was total bullshit. And I still believed deep down that he was that tormented, vulnerable boy I had a glimpse of, and that all of this was due to him being messed up. I sent the letter, and got no response.
Four weeks later he calls me. Said ‘See, I told you I would call you again!” But here it was, calling me late at night. He had just gotten back from an engagement party at restaurant for a friend of his. “I know its weird,” he described, “but I got super horny and I thought of you.” I said “Well I thought you were seeing someone” when he said “Not anymore!” I asked him what happened. He said “I don’t know. You know, you made a bigger deal out of it than it was, just like you did with me and you. It was never like that.” I protested that and said “Well maybe I made a bigger deal out of it because you kept referring to her as your girlfriend” and he remarked “I just said that girlfriend stuff to make you go away. I was never her boyfriend.” Here, the crazy-making begins.
And I foolishly ignored this. Judge all you want, but I didn’t want to challenge. Just wanted to keep giving it a chance. So, like a complete idiot-I went over to see him. Mainly I wanted to see if there was still anything there. Had it all been fantasy in my mind? Would I still be attracted to him, or had the month off and the weirdness changed it?
And as we laid together, he began to tell me that he gained about 30 lbs because he had quit coke. Quit to be with J. You know, she didn’t like it and that was the reason that he wasn’t her type. So he quit for her. Not for himself, certainly not for his children-for HER. And went on to say that the weight gain was also a result of “That, and all the carbs. When I’d be over at J’s house, we’d drink a lot of wine.”
Now, you tell me. Was that insensitive and designed to fuck with me, or am I crazy? Because notice that when I loved wine, he didn’t, and look what happened when I brought him a bottle. He wouldn’t drink wine with me, twisted and made such a weird production out of it-yet has the audacity to lay there while I’m in bed with him and tell me how he was drinking wine with someone else.
He then pouts “Women suck and lie.” Oh, so now I’m supposed to be the one who’s shoulder he’s crying on? In retrospect, I was the rebound. I was the security blanket, the booty call that would be used while he’s getting his heart-or ego I should say, pounced on. And threw in “Yeah, I waited to call you. I wanted to make sure my dick would get hard, because otherwise, what’s the point?”
Wow.
Then he went on to bitch about his ex-wife. He was at J’s house when his ex called one day and there was something wrong with her plumbing. He leaves J to go help his ex, and now she is bitching that he didn’t wash the kids clothes after a weekend with him, and how dare she act like that to him after he had just helped her out? he cries. This is what he’s saying to me. He told me that she kept calling to apologize, and “I’m just ignoring her calls.” But isn’t that what got him a restraining order? He would bitch that he was often helping her out, that he’d go out and have a beer with her, and he’d help her fix her motorcycle, but then when things were back on with her boyfriend, “I’m chopped liver.”
Hypocricy. That much, I saw. And it pissed me off. To placate me, he began to rub on me, seduce me, and I actually believed he was off the coke because now he finally had a normal hard on. But it reminded me of all the times we attempted to have sex, how he would just roll over if it didn’t work, and not even try to satisfy me in anyway. Never even attempted to please me. I can assure you it was the feelings I thought I had for HIM, not the sex, that kept me coming back.
Oddly enough, he had told me that one of the things his father had given him as advice about women was “Always make sure a woman is satisfied.” I’m not sure he should be taking relationship advice from the man that cheated on his mother-especially sexual advice, but its advice W sure wasn’t taking with me. And I don’t remember what night exactly it was that W told me he had been thirteen and molested by the babysitter, but one thing that stood way clear to me-some serious issues with women.
Anyway, I left telling him that I wouldn’t be calling him the next day, and it was on him, if he wanted to call me fine, if not, then I won’t be. I needed some time to clear my head because I knew being here with him was not good for me.
Five days later he called me and got loud and shitty on me saying “You know, it’s totally cool you didn’t call me the next day, but you could’ve called me the day after that!” Right there, I couldn’t win for losing.
Then he laid into me about the warming lube I had brought over last time I saw him. I mention this for a reason, too.It was just out on the market and I wanted to try it, so we did. Now he was freaking out. “What was that stuff?” he commando asked. I said “why” when he replied “Maybe if you tell me what it was, I’ll tell you why.”
Knowing this was a losing battle, I just answered him. He goes on to yell and complain that it gave him a reaction. And why wait five days to ask me? Apparently, I can’t even do that right. He explained that he had sensitive skin, couldn’t even use fabric softeners. So why didn’t he explain that then, when we were using it?
I thought about it and the next day called him and suggested maybe he had a UTI. He didn’t describe “reaction.”When I called and suggested that-(working my main job in the ER, things like that occur to me,) he exclaimed in a totally different, friendly tone “Oh, I was over it the next day. Didn’t even think about it.” Yes, I am talking about the same man The one thing I did know is that until that point, we hadn’t used condoms. Foolish on both of our parts. More example of my self-destruction at the time. to be con't.....
OK...here it is.....my very unconventional psycho story, pt 1
This will not be easy to share. As I wrote it, and now as I read back, I wonder why I didn't just run the very first night. There were so many signs in retrospect, that it really floors me that I got sucked into this. It is difficult not to beat myself up-and its even more humbling to share it with the world. However-I do so, because I hope that one other person may understand, or at least be comforted that they are not the only ones to be "stupid". My story is NOT traditional-we were not married, we weren't living together, hell, you could barely call it a relationship. Yet it happened, and I know that there are other people out there who have had similiar situations. I often wonder how I got sucked in, and why. Now I think that maybe it was because it was an experience I was meant to go through, in order TO share it-because one thing this story reeks of-is psycological abuse.
I met him, because my friend that I worked with, wanted to set me up with him. Her sister was friends with his sister, and they had all gone out one night.”You two would be perfect together” He’s a very good looking man- and he’s a really nice guy. But he falls fast. I think you two would be great together, he needs a good woman in his life who isn’t a total psycho. You two have the same goofy loud personalities, but I don’t like his mouth. Talks too much, and talks too much shit. I don’t think he’s really like that, though. I want to set you up with him.” After a description like that-I was in no hurry for her to do so, and I never pressed the issue with her further.
So we met when they were hanging out one night at a bar, and she called me. I will call him "W". W and I had a strange conversation where he told me that he liked women with kids because it meant they weren’t trying to jump in too fast in his life and settle down and make babies. But we also joked around and discussed strange things and I felt very comfortable with him, as if I had known him for awhile. It was not the usual “first meet” banter, and I should’ve seen the red flag when he told me of a time that a girl showed up at his house with another for a threesome, but he had to turn her away because there were kids in the house. It’s funny how in retrospect you can look back and see all the signs, the foreboding of things to come-but you shrug it off at the time as being drunk, weird conversation tangents-but that’s not usually the kind of thing you share with someone the first time you meet them.
Still, I chalked it up to being in a bar drinking, and not certain how the conversation even had led to that, it just seemed to be an indicator that he could be very open and we somehow clicked like that. But the biggest red flag I should’ve seen was when my friend told me they were going to take off for awhile to do some cocaine. I started to roll my eyes and said “Well, forget that idea (of him and I dating) no thanks.” She jumped in and said ‘No, its not like that. I would never steer you into that, don’t worry. He only does it on the weekends when he doesn’t have the kids. He’s got a job, and a house, he’s secure. If I thought he was a big druggie I wouldn’t set you up.”
As they were leaving, he told me not to take it personal, he’d love to stay and talk some more, and that we’d all for sure hook up again soon. A couple weeks went by and he called her at her work and told her to give me his phone numbers. She told me “wow, he must really like you, saw something he liked, because he told me to give you his numbers. He’s not like that, especially BOTH phone numbers. You have to call him!” She and I went out that night, and she tried calling W to come meet us, but he said that he was too tired and would love to, just had no energy. A few hours later, he called my phone (as she had called him from my cell) and left a vm that he wanted to know if we were still out and about, he got a second wind, and to either give him a call back, or call him tomorrow. By this time I had just gotten home and was tired. I didn’t call him back, but I did the next day.
We started out by making plans for again going out in a group, my friend wanted to go to a club, and I called W to see if he wanted to go. He didn’t seem too enthusiastic to go to a club, and said to call him back later to see what was going to go on. By this time, my friend actually decided she wasn’t feeling well and was just going to stay in all night. I called him and he still wanted to go out, so I said “Ok, what bar do you want to meet at?” He still didn’t seem up for that as he said “Why don’t you just come to my house?” By this time it had started to snow heavily and was Thanksgiving eve-which I had forgotten is the biggest party night of the year so the bars would not be somewhere I’d want to go. But this was another red flag and I should’ve listened to my intuition that told me that going there would send the wrong message about what I’m looking for, and considering I don’t even know him, is a strange first “date.”
So I resisted at first by offering to come by the house, pick him up and get a beer somewhere nearby where he lived. He somewhat agreed to this as he said “Ok, yeah, just come on over here, we can have a beer here first and then decide on where we want to go.” He offered me a beer and we sat at his kitchen table when the first thing he asked me was how old I was. When I answered, he said “Oh, I thought you were older than that!” I mention this for a reason.“Let’s go downstairs, its more comfortable”, to his basement den. After the 2 beers and the conversation I was relaxed enough to do so, though it was at that point I knew we wouldn’t be going out to any bar.
And he was doing cocaine. Not in front of me, but he was high. In fact his doorbell rang at 11pm-he ran upstairs, 5 mins later came down and told me "Oh, that was some buddy he wanted to talk about storing his boat in my garage." At the time, I accepted this. Now I look back and think that he had someone drop off some drugs to him. He kept running upstairs to use the bathroom-telling me that he didn’t want me to hear him pee, as there was a bathroom downstairs. And I suppose as a result, this is why he was so talkative, and shared so much information that now in retrospect, I should’ve really flagged-you know with that red one.
He told me about his divorce. He had wanted it for awhile before it happened, he claimed, and that they fought a lot. She came over to sign papers and they drank wine and had “goodbye” sex or whatever and it was really good then. He told me that he met a woman he started seeing, who ran a background check on him. A prior restraining order had popped up-and she asked him about it. W thought that this was crazy. I questioned that- as to why. In my mind, in this day and age-it didn’t seem to be so crazy that a woman would want a background of a man. He said that it wasn’t so much that she ran it, it’s the fact that she then told him about it that he thought was crazy. But in my mind, she was giving him the benefit of the doubt. She obviously had some interest in him to even be asking, and was willing to listen to see if there was a story behind it that made sense, if it was innocent. In other words, she didn’t just see it and blow him off. Knowing of him what I know now, I know that he was just pissed off that he would be put on the defensive and have to explain himself to anybody.
I didn’t ask him what the restraining order was about-he volunteered as he went on to tell me that he and his ex-wife were fighting during the divorce, and she would not take his calls. He had apparently been calling like 18 times, and she wouldn’t take one of his calls. Because they have kids together, and she was blocking him from information about the kids, he freaked. And according to him, the judge had dismissed it all as bullshit by asking “How many times did she answer?” as to say, that it wasn’t harassment if she wasn’t answering and wasn’t willing to communicate with the father of her kids.
He also eluded to, without going into any great detail, how she had “almost labeled me a sex offender for the rest of my life”-something in retrospect I should’ve pressed him for more of an explanation on. At one point through out all of this, he said “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all of this” but he went on.
He told me about his father and how he resented him and had no real relationship with him, his father had cheated on his mother, and he was an asshole, and that it was his uncle that was more of a father figure to him and he wished his uncle had actually been his father. He said that even with any temptation, he had been completely faithful in his marriage and never cheated on his wife. He talked at more length about relationships he had had, but in the context of the flings.
There was one girl that he ended up rejecting, and while he didn’t really say why, he pointed out that he didn’t like how she had driven by his house one night. I’m not sure how he knew that, I think he said he had seen her drive by. He said “I know that she didn’t mean any harm, and she probably just wanted to know where I lived, but still.” It didn’t occur to me until the next day to wonder why she didn’t know where he lived, or why she had never been at his house, yet here I was, sitting in it. I didn’t know but assumed that they were “dating” or were sexually involved because why would a woman want to know where a man is if she didn’t have an interest?
He explained to me that he was actually shy, though he didn’t appear that way, that he was often accused of being loud, and told me “I’ve been told that I’m too controlling.” In retrospect, it is truly amazing how people will tell you who they are almost immediately, if you are quick enough to catch it.
At this point, he had run upstairs at least 3 times so I then asked him about the coke use. He started to dismiss it when he then said “No, you know what, I’m glad you asked, I’m glad we are talking about this.” He joked that “I’m the fattest coke addict I know.” He told me honestly? that for the past year, it was getting to be a problem and a struggle to stop. I didn’t press on about it at the time-and why I didn’t see that as the biggest red flag of all is beyond me. Its when I think back to times like this, that I wish I could get into a WayBack machine and re-do, un-do and re-think what I’ve done.
He said to me that even when he’s not on cocaine, he’s been known to talk a lot then smiled at me, moved closer to me, and kissed me. As he’s kissing me he told me that he had a really big bed upstairs that would be even more comfy than the couch. At first, I hesitated. He pulled back and said “No, I like that. That’s a good thing.” And then kissed me again. I still said that I wasn’t sure I wanted to just jump into bed, when he joked that he’d still respect me in the morning. After the beers, the conversation-how could I not feel like I knew this man a lot more than I would many others on a first “date?” It was very comfortable. I thought he had opened up to me like he did, because he felt that too, especially as he’d look at me and wonder how it was he was opening up to me like this. I felt comfortable, despite all I heard that should’ve warned me-and he was adorable. We seemed to have had a lot in common. Except I’ve never used cocaine.
He took me upstairs. He then told me “I’m very intuitive. I’m a really good judge of character. You are the kind of person that I would want to have over, you are the kind of person I would want in my house, in my bed, to spend the night-you deserve to get fucked.” Which I should’ve seen as another red flag, because what is this “deserving to get fucked” thing mean? In retrospect, is sex something that you give to people because they deserve it? Does that mean you withhold it if they don’t? Is sex used as a weapon with this guy? You’ll see why I ask that later.
And he started kissing me and told me “This is all about you tonight.” But it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t get it up. And it wasn’t “about me”, because he didn’t do anything to try and satisfy me in any other way. Had “coke dick.” And I was actually somewhat relieved that we didn’t really have sex, because that wasn’t something I really wanted to be doing with people I didn’t really know anymore. I did know that I wanted to see him again-and not because he needed to finish what he started, but because for some weird reason I really just liked him. He was charming, and gorgeous. Even though he went on and on describing the things he didn’t like about this woman or that woman, and that’s why he didn’t go out with them-I still wanted to, even though I laid in his bed thinking “Well, what shallow superficial thing about me is he going to end up finding and reject me for?”
He had already on that first night, set the tone that he was incredibly picky, his standards impossibly high, and already presented a laundry list of things not to do if I wanted to keep his interest.
He called me a couple nights later, to come over to see him again. We talked a bit on the phone and I told him that one of my favorite shows was on, so if he wanted me to come by, we’d have to watch that. It was all in good fun though I was half serious. He told me “no problem!” and so I went over there, and we didn’t watch a minute of it. Again we sat and talked. I should say, now looking back at it-he talked, I listened. About the only thing he had learned of me that first night was that I had been writing a book about to be published. Essentially a fictionalized account of true stories-of my life. He had said “I really respect that you could write a book about your secrets, because I have some secrets that I will never tell.” That right there is concerning-as they say in pop psychology-you are as sick as your secrets.
In any event, he continued to talk and talk-again, being on cocaine. And he went further into his relationships with other people. I asked him who the big love of his life was. I think they had gone to high school together and it was right after his divorce that they hooked up. I’m not certain what happened in the relationship to end it, other than she moved to Arizona and he considered going except that he couldn’t leave the kids. He told me that he was great friends with another woman, and that they talked on the phone everyday. I think they had been more than friends, i.e., sleeping together-and I’m not sure why that didn’t turn into a relationship. I do know that she ended up showing up on his house one Xmas eve, wanting to sleep with him, and he told me that he had turned her down, because she was now engaged to someone else. Apparently she had told him that whoever he does get involved with, she would have to meet to give her stamp of approval. Like I’d want some cheaters’ stamp of approval.
He explained again about the woman and the 3some. A girl who he said “Was the shit”-where they had been discussing having a threesome together. “She finally got the courage to do it”, he said,” And showed up at the door with a friend, but kids were in the house, and so I said I couldn’t. And she never talked to him again. “I tried calling her a couple of times, and she didn’t respond, so I just let it go.” And now in retrospect, I wonder if that wasn’t just the icing on the cake for her. Because it seems unreasonable and illogical to not understand that kids were in the home, a buzz kill for anyone in terms of that sort of situation. So for her to completely cut him out of her life for that, seemed odd to me as I thought about it, and now knowing what I know, I’m sure that there were other things he did, said or didn’t do or say that made that situation the final straw. Because people just don’t stop speaking to you again forever over something like that.
He bragged to me how once in the same week, he slept with a 56 year old woman, and an 18 year old girl. “She had a nice body though,” in reference to the older woman. “Just her skin was sagging a bit.” I don’t recall how he met the 18 year old or what happened with that, but given that I have a 17 year old daughter now I’m a bit freaked about that, of thinking that he could be shitty to an 18 year old. And I’m not sure if this is the same older woman he was referring to when he told me at a later date that he was with, an older woman who got pissed at him because he couldn’t get it up. He explained that’s what coke did to him, and that he had used Viagra with a previous girlfriend to try and offset it. When I asked him why he’d used the coke at all, he said “Well, I can tell YOU this, but using coke made it easier not to be with women when they wanted me to be.” A statement to this day, totally confuses me.
He was really fucked up at this point-drunk and high, and then as I sat on his lap while we were kissing, he started muttering how stupid he was, how he always says stupid shit. He kept whispering under his breath “It’s just been so long, its been so long”. At that moment he seemed tormented in a way, vulnerable like a little boy almost, bruised and that he hid all that behind this incredibly arrogant and shallow egotistical shell. His self worth seemed low and that he beat himself up all the time. At that moment, I saw myself in him, and so I was highly tolerant of what I had been hearing, figuring that like me, he ended up in these weird situations because of all the issues he was having with intimacy, being hurt and getting close. It just made me want to hug him forever.
I dismissed all of my concerns-because I thought he was just “messed up.” I figured as I got to know him more and more, some of this stuff might make better sense. Now I know just how odd and weird it is, that after two nights-I knew ALL of this about him and all the women in his recent past.
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