Power Couple

Three years ago, I met a charming, and very handsome man at a work event. He was an attorney and I was a lobbyist, so we had so many things in common. I however turned him down several times to date him. I have an eight year old son, who was five at the time and was so reluctant to start dating again because I was enjoying my life; I golfed, travelled, loved what I did at work. After a month of him begging me to go out on one date with him, I finally decided to go through with it. I was swept off my feet. Immediately. Everywhere we went, people would literally turn and stare, give us compliments of being a "power couple" , and I loved that. Everything happened so fast. He was staying at my place everyday, I stopped picking up extra assignmnets at work, my golf hobby was non existent, I started losing contact with the outter world, and stopped paying attention to my child. I made him my universe. We started making plans of marrying, and planning a destination wedding. This all happened within a three month time span. I knew he had a teenage son, but was never introduced to him. He told me he had been married and divorced but that his son was growing up and needed his space. I was happy, and didnt want to question anything about that situation. As more time went by, I found out that when him and I met he was living with his parents, not at an apartment like he told me, and that he was still married. I forgave him. I wanted to get married, and be happy, have a child and include my son in our family. He ended up proposing to me with an engagment ring that I bought (he was paying me back) and I felt like I was on top of the world. A few weeks later we had a falling out. He took my engagment ring back and called off the wedding. We did this three times with three different engagment rings. During this roller coaster ride, my son saw all this. Cried and didn't understand what was going on. The coming and going. Being the intuitive woman that I am, I started digging, and asking more questions about his background. During the times that he was leaving me he was going back to his ex and sleeping with her. And then abandon her and his child and come back to me. Every time he would leave and come back, I accepted him. Each time he would come back it would be one more promise, one more thing he had to tell me, or how sorry he was and couldn't live without me. I created an addictive cycle, and could not break away. He was not dependable, not stable (had eight jobs within a three year period) when he would leave he'd be dating sites or trying to hit on his legal secretary at his new firm. The coming and going lasted three years, I forgave him, felt sorry for him, kept him and my son on his health insurance never asking for a dime because I wanted to "prove" something to him of how much I could love him regardless of what he did to me. That I was the bigger person, the mature one. I've had two abortions, after him threatening to walk out on me if I had the baby. He was the one who initially would tell me he wanted to have a baby, this was of course at the beginning of each time he would come back. I lost an apartment that I was living in because he convinced me to not renew my lease and that we would get a home. That never happened. None of the promises he made ever came through. They were all empty promises. I've been divorced and remarried to him three times within a three year period. As time went by two years into the relationship I finally started standing up for myself, my son, and my family's sanity. I've been to therapists, and have been in meds to take the pain away and force me to sleep. I followed this website for six months and it has helped me tremendously. It's helped me recognize that I am not any of the things he has ever accused me of, or called me. That his issues are not mine. He's left me and my son again, a few days ago. This time I have felt nothing. I didn't even cry, I knew it was coming because it happened every two months, the rants, depression, the coldness, he would turn into a completely different human being. Each time that hes left has made me stronger. I have followed the no contact rule before and it helped and would have worked if I had followed through and not given in. I wanted to share my story in hope that someone out there reading this will know that this can happen to anyone. Get help, take care of yourself. It gets better.
TC- Dallas, Texas