Pink Blinders

I hear so many people, fresh out of relationships, blaming their ex-partner for the entire debacle.  I hear (mostly women, but some men) casting blame like boulders.  I would say there’s probably only one instance when the demise of a relationship truly is NOT at least partially your fault, regardless your behavior, and that’s when you’re involved with an NPD. They’re an entirely different breed of monster and I’m not addressing them further in this post.  To learn more about them, read my other posts categorized under NPD.

Aside from that instance, I don’t think any of us can be totally absolved of fault in the demise of a relationship.  When we enter a relationship we make a choice to do so.  Some of us engage far too quickly when we think we’ve found the person of our dreams.  There are several issues with that:

1.  Sometimes what we think we want isn’t what we really want.

2.  Sometimes what we think we need isn’t at all what we need.

3.  Sometimes we are engaging simply to assuage the pain of a recently broken heart, thinking that having a new “love” interest will distract us.  It will.  It will also distract us from learning what went wrong in the preceding relationship and learning from our mistakes.

4.  Engaging too quickly, which means becoming physically involved, or taking ourselves off the dating scene after just a few dates with someone, usually spells disaster.  It’s essential to take the time to get to know the person, instead of attempting to force the individual to fit our ideals.

There are reasons that young women used to be chaperoned when they “walked out” with “gentlemen callers.”  First, these women were still girls, usually not out of their teens.  Even if they were older, their experience with men was usually limited to that of father, brother, uncle and/or elderly neighbors.  Cousins?  These women (girls) were chaperoned with their male cousins because cousins used to marry.  Here we are, in the 21st century, with a 50% or higher divorce rate, and a whole bunch of adult humans who can’t or won’t engage with a new potential partner in an emotionally healthy fashion.

Chaperoning provided a few benefits, regardless how stifling or old-fashioned it may seem. First, the chaperon would usually be someone older (but not always) and could observe interactions.  They would watch body language between the couple and listen to the verbal interaction.  Back then, because society was so “polite” people learned how to read body language and interpret language that we might, today, simply allow to pass us by because we think we have so much better information upon which to rely. We can do a background search on a potential partner.  Hey – I did that and he came up clean.  First date, he asked me for my panties AND since I wouldn’t oblige, asked me if I’d follow him home and lock him in a male chastity device.  The N I dated came up clean.  His divorce records were public, so I read them.  I didn’t read carefully enough.  PINK BLINDERS.

While I’m not advocating that you engage a chaperon for six months, I AM advocating that you watch and listen.  Pay attention to body language and if you aren’t well-versed in it, research it.  There’s a tool for that.  It’s called “the internet.”  If you found this post, you can find many on body language.  🙂   Listen, and I mean really HEAR what the other person is saying.  Over time, you will hear what you need to hear to know whether this person is right for you.

Observe how this person interacts with others.  If the way s/he interacts with others doesn’t jive with the way s/he is interacting with you, you should then ask yourself why there is a difference.  Ask the person why there is a difference and listen to the answer.

All of us have ideals and the danger of an “instant relationship” is that we don’t give ourselves time to get to know someone before jumping in, heart-first.  We meet someone who appears to fit our ideal for the right partner and because we’re human, ergo imperfect, we don’t remove the “Turbo-Charged Romance-Driven and Comes in Ten Shades of Pink to Coordinate With Every Ideal You Have Blinders!” (as seen on TV, and $19.99 will get you two pair, in different shades)

What if…and here’s a revolutionary new idea…WHAT IF you chose (because life is about choices) to take things slowly?  What if you chose to tell your prospective ideal partner that you’re willing to date him or her, but want to take the time for both of you to get to know each other prior to taking dating to the relationship stage?   What if you kept your options wide open?  What if you chose to do the emotionally healthy thing?  What if you decide to put yourself in control, as opposed to immediately handing that control to someone you barely know and have dated only a few times?

Fearful question, the “What if.”  Lots of things could happen, but ALL of them would be positive, even though they may not feel like it at the time.  Below are a few of the fears that prevent people from taking things slowly and empowering themselves by remaining in control of themselves and their relationships, with the upside of that fear in bold italics:

1.  If you don’t jump right in the man/woman of your dreams might get away.  If the man/woman of your dreams won’t wait for you, after you’ve expressed a desire to take your time about it, the odds are excellent that this isn’t the individual of your dreams.  Move on. Bullet dodged. Take the Pink Blinders off. 

2.  You’re lonely and feel as though you’ll never find someone else, so when you do meet someone with whom you click, you believe it’s your last chance for love so you’d better grab it now.  there is never a last chance for love.  The feeling that you’ll never find someone else is the hole in yourself that you are seeking to fill with the presence of another human being.  Fill it yourself.  That’s a huge burden to place upon another person, and the odds are good that if you place that burden upon them, you’ll be in another of those “I’m never gonna find someone to love me” situations very soon. Take the Pink Blinders off.

3.  You’re lonely, financially burdened, need help, and this individual presents a way out.  You convince yourself that they are the right person for you because you’re desperate for someone to take care of you and you feel overwhelmed at the thought of digging out alone.  Being lonely isn’t a good enough reason to jump at an instant relationship.  Learn to like spending time with yourself . Get a dog.  Borrow a dog.  Read a book.  Go to a mall and say hi to strangers.  If you are financially burdened and feel overwhelmed at the thought of having to take care of yourself for another moment, step back and assess the reasons why you feel that way.  If you’re in over your head, adding a partner is going to make it worse, not better.  If you feel you can’t take care of yourself, no one, and I mean NO ONE is going to be able to do that for you.  Learn to take care of yourself and you will be immeasurably more attractive to potential partners. Take the Pink Blinders off.

4.  You’re getting a bit older and you feel like you won’t ever have sex with anyone but yourself, again.  Ever.  In your life.  Ever.  And that thought is unpalatable to you.  Um, do you really want to take on another human being, complete with emotional baggage, engage with them on an emotional level (because you’re smart and you don’t have casual sex), and, as my good friend, Ana, said yesterday: “be willing to put up with a lot of shit…” just so you can ensure you don’t miss out on having sex?  If you’ve been sexually active most of your life to this point, what on earth makes you think you won’t have that again?  And if you don’t, is it really the end of the world?  Would you engage in instant relationship, risking your heart, your emotional well-being, and perhaps even your health, just to be certain you had full naked body contact with another human being?  Take the Pink Blinders off.

Ask yourself an all-important question when you meet the someone you think is the individual of your dreams:  “What am I willing to give up for this person?”  Relationships require sacrifice and if you’re thinking you’re “in love” with someone you barely know, please ask yourself that question, because there’s a chance the price you pay for jumping in with your pink blinders on will be an extremely high price, paid on credit, and with a high interest rate. You’ll pay, emotionally, for quite some time.

So, now you’ve made a choice.  Your choice is to jump in, regardless your intuition, regardless your common sense.  The pink blinders came with super heavy-duty temple adhesive (that the infomercial conveniently “forgot” to mention) and you just can’t seem to take them off.

You’ve spent a few months seeing this person and you thought you were their bestest and only.  You thought they felt the same way about you.  You just KNEW they did, because why else would  they be calling daily, emailing, asking you out?  But wait!  They’re not really doing that.  Check your phone records.  Check your email.  Review past conversations.  Oh no!  In the past month, you’ve  initiated everything and you didn’t realize it.  That’s because you can’t get those damned pink blinders off and it’s your own fault for buying them in the first place.

So, who’s to blame for the failure of your relationship?  Really?  Was there ever a real relationship?  What were you telling yourself that made you think that after a few dates you were in a relationship?  No, you can’t plead temporary insanity in this court.

You are the only person who has control over your relationships.  If you choose to hand that control to someone else, it’s your own fault.  You can’t blame anyone else.  If you see behaviors you don’t like, and allow them to persist, you are merely watering the garden of undesirable behaviors.  If you react to those behaviors with an “eye for an eye” doctrine, you’ve just proved your emotional immaturity to everyone, but yourself, because you’re probably still wearing those pink blinders (although, at this point, they may be sitting a bit askew on your face).

I believe that too many people are in love with romance.  I cringe every time I read a forum post or hear someone say that they are divorcing or leaving a long-term committed relationship because they “just don’t feel the romance and excitement anymore.”  Grow the hell up, people!  Marriage and committed relationships take work, and I pity you if you’ve bought into the pop-psychology that says “if the person is right for you, you won’t have to work at making it work.”  That’s bullshit.  Humans, by our very nature, are fickle and easily distracted creatures.  We want what we want and we’ve been saturated with self-help material that tells us we are entitled to have what we want, and that we can get it just by “thinking” it.  We don’t have to work for it, we don’t have to put forth any effort.  We simply have to think it into existence and et voila! there it is!

I have two ex  husbands who told me post-divorce, that they went into marriage thinking that if they didn’t like it, got bored, or it wasn’t “working” or felt like it was “too much work” that they could just jump out of the marriage.  That’s precisely what they both did.  The first ex has “just jumped out” of two marriages now and I believe he’s getting ready to do it with a third.  The second husband just jumped into a marriage.  He married me because all his buddies were getting married and he didn’t want to be the last man standing.  He jumped out of our marriage for an old HS girlfriend who dumped him a month after he left my son and me.  Karma can be a bitch.  🙂  Approximately two years later, after not dating at all, he met and moved in with a woman who is the best friend of his step-sister.  He lived with her for 3 years and bought a house with her.  He didn’t marry her until two weeks ago, and what I and many others see that he apparently does not see, is that the woman he married resembles me very closely.

Second ex is loaded, and the odds are good that he jumped into this one wearing his pink blinders and then by the time he finally got them off his face, he realized he’d been living with and signed a mortgage with this woman, so he may as well marry her. His family and friends would have expected it and he’s ALL about the expectations of family and friends.  The expectations of a wife don’t matter.  At all.  Second ex learned nothing from the mistakes he made while with me.  How do I know this?  Because HS girlfriend, who he left me for, and who is still “technically” single, just showed up as a friend on his FB page.  She wasn’t there for 3 years.  I know this story and I feel for his wife.

I’m certain she’s been told the same lies I was told about HS girlfriend.  New wife has her pink blinders on and has probably had them on the entire time.  It’s easy to wear them with Second ex.  He’s filthy rich, he’s Cary Grant-Gregory Peck handsome, he’s intelligent, articulate, and oh-so-attentive as long as life is going his way.  He’s also an unmedicated bipolar who relies on daddy to get him out of jams.  My guess is that New Wife hasn’t seen this aspect yet.

Lest you think any of this about Second ex is sour grapes, let me relieve you of that thought.  While I’ve stayed in touch with him over the years, and he showed interest in reconciling, I made certain he understood that I was NOT going there.  EVER.  The emotional damage he did to me can be forgiven, but never forgotten.  The emotional damage he did to my son will never be forgiven OR forgotten.

I was wearing pink blinders when I met him, when I moved in with him and when I got engaged to him.  I wore them up until 4:57 pm on a monday in August of 2004 when he came home and said:  “I didn’t sign up for this, I’m leaving.”   He was gone by 5:04, with just his car keys.  I was blindsided so badly my pink blinders went flying off my face and I saw him, within seconds of that statement, for what he was.

How many ways can you spell A N G R Y?  He told me later that he didn’t dare attempt to get past me when I blocked his path to the stairs leading to our bedroom.  He said he’d never seen me look like that.  Of course he hadn’t because until this point, I’d been wearing my pink blinders and though life was gloriously rose-colored.  I had my little family, I had a lovely home, I had a man who, by his accounting, daily, adored me, I had my every need, want, and desire promptly taken care of.  It’s amazing how fast an individual’s brain can react once the pink blinders have been torn off the face.

I have to own just as much accountability for the demise of my marriage as he holds, though.  I didn’t pay attention.  I didn’t give myself enough time to get to know him.  We moved in with each other within 3 months of meeting.  We got engaged within 9 months of meeting and were married 11 months after that.  Even when his brother attempted to undermine us by having a “secret” phone conversation with Second ex about my son the “problem child” (his brother has children now and one who is waaaaaay more of a “problem child), I didn’t see that as a red flag.

I was angry that Second ex didn’t tell his brother it was none of his business and to stay out of our relationship, and Second ex and I had a grand fight over that, but I allowed it.  That set precedent.  I should have gathered my son, my belongings and my life and moved on, right then.  A man who allows his family to be disrespectful of the woman he’s chosen to marry, and to denigrate that woman’s child is no man at all.

I reacted to bad behavior with equally bad behavior of my own.  I grew passive-aggressive, but no one could have told me that.  I wouldn’t have listened.

Second ex’s parents divorced when he was 5.  His mother raised him in a broken-down trailer, so poor they had to use dish soap for shampoo.  She did this, even though Second ex’s father was and is a multi-millionaire who would have provided.  She blamed her ex for everything, refused to accept any help from him, and raised her two boys in poverty, making them drink “Dad sucks” kool-aid daily.

When I came on the scene, she thought it was grand that I had an adolescent child.  She swung immediately into grandmother mode and my son’s favorite place to be for almost a year was with Second ex’s mother and step dad.

One day my son came back from their house telling me that he’d been disciplined harshly for something minor.  I called and asked about it.  I figured the truth would be in the middle.  It was.  I thought the situation was resolved.

Oh no.  Second ex’s mother called a “family meeting,”  a meeting that excluded me, and decided that if my son could “lie” about that situation (he didn’t lie, he exaggerated, and he admitted to the deed he’d done), then what were the odds he was going to accuse them of child molestation at some point?  WTF??????  To this day I have no clue where that came from!  So without a word to me, they, including Second ex, decided that my son wouldn’t be allowed to visit his favorite place any longer.

And still I did nothing but get angry and blame Second ex for being spineless.  Who was spineless?  Me.  I allowed that shit to happen and still didn’t pack my son and myself up and leave.  I indirectly gave permission for this kind of abuse to continue, and continue it did.

Even with all that, during the course of our marriage, I didn’t allow myself to believe that  I was truly seeing was WHO Second ex was.  I chose to believe that at some point he’d stand up for me.  I chose to believe it because I WANTED him to do it.  We don’t always get what we want.

There is more horror that I could write about, but you may be bored by this time, so I won’t.  The entire point of this missive it to simply say:  Stop and think about what you are doing before you do it.  The consequences to yourself (and to others) if you do not think, may be so massive you pay the rest of your life.

Remove the PINK BLINDERS now!

Sorry folks, I suck at brevity.  🙂

A Little Back Story by Stupid Affection-Starved Me

After reading my first post, I realized that many of you might wonder how all this started and why I was dating a man such as this to begin with.  I will keep this as brief as possible, which may not be possible.  It all started a year ago in april.  I broke off a relationship with a man who started out wonderful and turned out to be an alcoholic bully.  I’d met him on an internet dating site, which is where I meet most of the men I date.  I’m also beginning to wonder if this is such a great idea anymore, but I’ll address that in another post.

I took a year off from dating, but didn’t kill my profiles (I had three) until November of last yeat.  On May 10, 2011, a flood of emails from Plenty of Fish hit my in box.  I’d quit that account.  Totally.  So I highlighted all of them (or so I thought) and clicked “delete!”  Oops.  I missed one.  So I opened it – just out of curiosity.  Hey  – he was cute.  I’m human.  His email proved he’d read my profile and was interested in many of the same things I was interested in.  Still, I wasn’t certain I wanted to date.  So on May 12, I wrote him back, saying:  “Thanks but no thanks.”  Well, that didn’t phase him a bit.  He replies with something along the lines of “hey it’s just me, I’m harmless, give me a shot.”  Oh, this should have been a clue.  I replied with:  “I went out and re-wrote my profile.  I think POF burped and reactivated it and right now I’m not in a dating mode.  So I figure if my profile is to be reactivated without my knowledge, I’ll keep it up and let folks know where I am.”  So he read it, came back and wrote:  “ouch!  I’m sorry you’ve been so hurt.”  Stupid, affection-starved me.  I thought I recognized sincerity.  So the conversation began.

Two weeks of email.  Then he asks for my phone number.  So I hand it over without a second thought.  We talk.  For hours.  We’re both amazed at how much we are alike ,how much we can laugh with each other, at the sheer comfort level.  He goes to the beach over Memorial day weekend with his son and his son’s friend.  He calls me daily from there.   Oh, but he’s a talkin’ man!  I’m loving this.

He comes back from vacation, calls me and wants to meet me the next day.  I agreed.  Two hours later, I’m in email telling him I’m skittish and jittery because I’d just realized he’d said he was going to PICK ME UP AT MY HOME.  That shit’s not cool, not with a stranger. So I begged off, and asked for more time.  He replied, again, with another “hey – it’s just me.  Wed would work really well for me if you can stand the company.”  Did he not read my email?

So I replied with a thank you but that I might be able to do it in a week, but in the meantime, could we quiet our contact a bit, because I was feeling overwhelmed.  This guy was all over me in phone and email.  I should have KNOWN.   He replies with one word:  “ok.”

Yeah, there’s a clue.  Thwarted, unhappy, but knows there’s a chance so he’s not going to say anything too damaging, so “ok” is pretty safe.

Two days go by.  He doesn’t hear from me.  Then he emails something to the effect that while he likes the sounds of crickets, it’s pretty quiet and am I okay?  Stupid, affection-starved me, I reply with a gushing apology for being so negligent as to “ignore” him for two whole days.  Someone hit me with a sledgehammer.  NOW.

So it begins again.  Stuck to me like a limpet in phone and email.  We meet.  Instant, and I mean INSTANT comfort level for both of us.  And I really mean that.  I felt like I’d known him for years and years.  That’s because I had – in my ex-husband, my ex-boyfriends, my bad dates, etc.

I’m also somewhat of an empath and I was reading his energy.  It was a jumbled mess.  I sorted it out.  This guy really DUG me.  Totally.  What I didn’t sort out was that he’s desperate.

So we both left feeling great.  I asked him for a hug when we left, first because I really did want a hug, but as an empath, if I hug a person, I can really tell what their state of mind is.  This guy was feeling like he’d found his next wife.  Scary shit.  But apparently not scary enough for me.

He calls me that night and asks me to dinner for the weekend.  He says he’ll pick me up at my house.  We go to a fabulous little restaurant close to me and for three hours had a beautiful time.  He ordered, since I was unfamiliar with the cuisine.  Before the food came, he reaches across the table, brushes my hair back and palms my left earring – it was long and dangly – I’d made it – I’m a silversmith.  Okay – when a man does that, he’s totally interested.  Men don’t touch – and especially not that deliberately, if they’re not interested.

He told me how lovely I looked.  He made eye contact, but not deep-penetrating eye contact – he did the glance, look away, glance, look away.  Another man-signal.  He sat back in his chair, one arm on the back of the chair the other on the chair next to him, his legs wide apart.  Total male posturing.  Control posturing, but also: “I’m digging you” posturing.

As we leave, he puts his hand in the small of my back to “guide” me through the non-existent maze of people.  Another “i’m really into you” signal.

We drive around downtown in his convertible and then go back to my place and sit on the patio talking.  Then it’s time for him to go home.  He hugs me but doesn’t attempt to kiss me.  Great – a man who knows how to do things.

Email next day that he had a great time, really loved my company.  Called me to talk about it.  Called me all week.  Emailed all week.  Told me he saw long-term potential relationship potential in me.  This man really knows how to reel a woman in.

The following week he asked me to his home for dinner.  I arrive.  His son is there.  Now, I ask you – what custodial parent, in their right mind, is going to bring a woman home to be around their custodial special needs child on a third date unless he was positive this woman is someone he is going to be serious about?  Apparently this man isn’t in his right mind.

Apparently I wasn’t in my right mind.  He brews his own beer.  I asked him why.  His reply:  (are you sitting down?)  “So I never run out.”  Oh that should have been the toreador smothering me with the red flag.  I didn’t notice the flag, much less the toreador.

We ate, I drank two beers, he drank 4 while I was there and I now know he’d probably had a few before I’d arrived.   The entire time he’s moving around the kitchen effortlessly – he’s an amazing cook.  Each time he walks by me he touches me, he brushes his fingertips across my shoulders, kisses my neck, tells me I’m lovely.  Wouldn’t you be swooning?  Oh probably  not.  You’re probably smarter than I am.

Dinner was fabulous, outdoor conversation around a smoking firepit was amazing, and he’s still touching me.  I’m not touching him as much as he’s touching me – for some reason I didn’t think he’d welcome it.  I was already feeling his control issues.

Time for me to leave, so he walks me to my car, hugs me tightly, and gives me a hen-peck on the lips.  You couldn’t call it a kiss, it was like a rooster pecking at seed. I was in heaven.  Stupid, affection-starved me.

He tells me to call when I get home, so I do.  First words out of his mouth:  “I already miss you.”  Sigh.  Swoon.  Woweezowee!  I have been clubbed many times with the idiot bat but this time I think I was down for the count on the first swing.

He says he’s lying in bed, looking at the ceiling fan and “g’nite.  sweet dreams!”

So I go to bed, after posting on facebook about my totally FABULOUS evening.  Ugh.

Phone and email continue.  Wed of that week, I miss a phone call from him.  He leaves a message that says:  “you create beauty because you ARE beauty.”   Be still my beating heart.

Phone and email continue.

Thursday I went to volunteer with a concert venue.  I help the owner from time to time.  I’d emailed Mr. Man earlier in the week inviting him to come along but he never replied, so I figured he wasn’t interested.

He called me while I was on my way to the venue.  I couldn’t answer because I was fiddling with my GPS.  I forgot about his call until I got home at 2:00 a.m.  and then emailed telling him I was sorry I’d missed his call but was at a concert and didn’t get in until late.

His reply:  (are you sitting down?)  “What concert?  Who went?”

Excuse the hell out of ME?  We’re not in a committed relationship.  HE had been invited.  I chose not to tell him anything other than this:  “you were invited but I never heard back from you”  and then I posted the concert link.

No reply.

This is where I think it all started to go downhill.

Anyway, I’m a silversmith and I make sterling suncatchers (among other things) and his kitchen window was perfect for such a thing with the late afternoon sun streaming in.  so I made him one that I knew would have meaning for him.  I even hand-covered the box with special paper and hand made a card for him.

He loved it.  Hung it immediately.  So as we’re watching rainbows dance around his kitchen, he jumps up from his chair, pulls one of his lovely little Yixing teapots off a shelf (he collects them and they are his pride and joy), and goes to rinse it.  I’m thinking he’s going to make tea.  No.  He sets it in front of me and says:  “Only a very special person would get one of these.”  Okay, nice thought bub, but here’s the issue with it:

1.  there was no thought put into it.  He didn’t carefully go through his teapots to decide which might best suit me.  He just grabbed the first one he saw.  It was right in front of him.

2. As soon as he sat back down and saw the gaping hole on the shelf his OCD kicked in and he jumped up, got another teapot and moved it to that spot.

I didn’t notice any of this at the time.  I was too overwhelmed (stupid, affection-starved me) by the “kindness and generosity” of Mr. Man giving me one of his treasures.

This was my third visit to his house, BTW.  His son wasn’t there.  He was just as affectionate, but something weird happened.  We were sitting on the sofa and he was rubbing my bare feet.  OMG do I like my feet rubbed.  He was getting his thumb right in my arch and it was better than some sex I’ve had.  I was speechless.  I literally couldn’t talk.  So then he moves up to my calf and I’m thinking, “whoa, now we’re getting somewhere.”  And then stops.  dumps my legs off his lap.  Picks up his laptop and starts burning a CD.  Okaaay then.

We ate dinner – which was fabulous.  I’ll give him this – he can cook.  Then we went out to fly his radio-controlled airplanes.  I was excited about this because I hadn’t done it since I was 7.  I told him so.  I hugged him when he told me we were going to do it.  My face lit up like the national Christmas tree.  So did his.  So off we go.  Well, my plan crash-landed and the propeller came off.  So we’re looking for it and the entire time he’s being passive-aggressively critical of my skills.   Well excuse the fuck outta me, folks, but I hadn’t done anything like this for 43 years.  I’m allowed to be rusty.  So he flies his plane.  His nose-dives, the cockpit comes off and the batteries fly out.  Excuses all over the place but not a bit of “Well, I guess I need some practice, too, huh?”  Nope – it was the breeze, we never should have come out there, now he was going to have to fix it, yadda yadda, and somehow – SOMEHOW – his plane’s nosedive became MY fault!

We got back to his house and as it was 8;15 and I knew he had to pick his son up at 9, I told him I was going to get ready and go.  He says:  “No.  I want you to stay until I leave.”  I see this now for what it was.  Then, I thought it was because he wanted my company.

So we left together and this time, only a hug at the car, no kiss.  I called him when I arrived home.  No return phone call.

Next day he calls to tell me he’s sorry he missed my call.  Whatever.  By this time I’m beginning to see patterns emerge.

We email and call during the week and then we have the first phone call I reference in my first post.  The one where he calls while he’s preparing dinner and cuts me off.

We haven’t seen each other since.  Oh, we’ve talked, we’ve emailed.  the last straw for me, was on Tuesday.  He called me and I asked to get together this week.  He hedged.  He said:  “Oh, well, I need to see how my week is shaping up.  Some things are falling into place and I’m not sure.  I also think I’m going to go kayaking in WV this weekend with friends.”  So I said – “well, if we can, Thursday is a good day for me.”   He said that would probably work for him, too.

Wednesday I find out that he’s hosting a VIP.  He’s hosting someone who is a traveling social activist, and someone he KNEW I’d want to meet.  He was hosting him for the night, and he just drops this into an email.  He’d known he was going to do this; he’d known about it for at least two days if not a week.  I’d been busily setting up places for this man to stay on his travels myself, but Mr. Man and I hadn’t talked about this – we each did not know the other was interested in this man’s travels and work.  But he just drops it in, as an aside, in an email on Wed that says:  “oh, and after my eye surgery, I’m going to go pick up a wandering soul in search of America. I’m hosting him tonight.”  and sends me the link.  I was blown away.  I was furious.  There was no way he could have missed my comments on this man’s FB page, so he KNEW that I KNEW.

That decided me.  I emailed him back and said:  “Have fun with ______ and I hope your eye surgery goes well.  I think I’m going to take Thursday to myself and decompress from the week.  I’ll see you at some point.  Maybe this weekend if you don’t go to WV.”

He wrote back a pompous email that described all the “unplanned” diversity in his kitchen (total bullshit because he is a very careful planner) the night of his guest’s stay.

That was when I decided I was done.  That was the night I made the phone call at 12:45 am telling him I needed to talk to him because I was in a bit of a muddle and could we meet somewhere to talk?  And then he got ugly.  The rest of the story is above this post.

I think I dodged a bullet.  I certainly did feel comfortable with him.  He was just as manipulative, controlling and angry as my ex, my father, and every other ex-boyfriend i’ve had.  He fit my pattern so well I thought he was outside of it.

Next post will be on patterns.  🙂