A's Story

He found me and almost obsessively made it his mission to make me his. It was nice to be wanted so desperately, granted it was so over the top. My last relationship was with someone that was super aloof and distant, so a piece of me enjoyed the attention. After our first meeting, he would obsessively text me, email me, gchat me, and randomly show up at my house telling me how he just knew that i was the one for him and that if i would just give him a chance, i would see that we would be happy and perfect together. He bought me presents, lots of them. Not only that, aside from being totally unstable, he was FUN, SO FUN. Our dates were over the top. He would wine and dine me at the most beautiful restaurants, have breakfast waiting for me when i woke up in the morning, would whisk me away for extravagant trips on a whim (I know now that the money to pay for all of these things came from him writing himself checks for thousands of dollars from his unknowing and very sick father). He was the life of the party, had his hand in so many pots (hosted his own radio show, was in a successful band, wrote music reviews for the local paper, hosted a trivia night), and he was so entertaining and magnetic to be around. Everywhere we went he would immediately befriend everyone around us, buy them shots, give them recommendations on somewhere great to stay or check out. He kept insisting on me being his girlfriend and i kept telling him that i wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment just yet. I honestly wasn’t ready just yet and he refused to respect my boundary. When i wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he would respond by throwing tantrums, sometimes leave me stranded at restaurants, write me long drawn out emails about how if I didn’t date him he would make sure to ruin my life. Then 20 minutes later I’d get another email, a call, or a text with him telling me how in love he was with me and that he just got overwhelmed with his emotions. Our courtship was filled with him either being so incredibly loving, fun, giving, and over the top OR being manipulative, demanding, cruel, and abusive. He would also look through my phone and through all of my things and then berate me for anything that he found that he deemed unacceptable. I made the decision to get the fuck out of the situation and I moved to Oregon. Somehow he had already hooked me though, and I hadn’t even realized it.

When i arrived in Oregon there were flowers from him waiting for me with a note that said, ‘I love you’. Twenty minutes into me being in my new house in Oregon, I realized that i had made a huge mistake. I left my great job, friends, and life back in San Francisco because i was feeling so smothered and manipulated by this person and wanted to get away from him. But here I was, alone, and now in need of support. And there he was, ready to (sort of) give it to me. More flowers came, along with phone calls that were half “I miss you and love you” and half “You’re an idiot for leaving me and San Francisco. Look at how lonely and lame your life is now. I told you so. I bet you’re sleeping with dudes up there and doing drugs and are just a big ‘ol loser” I certainly wasn’t doing any of those things. I quickly became broke and even more confused and depressed, so when he offered to buy me a one way ticket back to SF I jumped on the opportunity. I flew back, immediately moved in with him, and made the decision: Okay, I’ll be your girlfriend. I’ll give this all I’ve got. It was right there in this moment that EVERYTHING changed on his part. The presents stopped, the dates stopped, the love and affection stopped. He would tell me that he loved me more than anything in the world and then turn around and disappear for a night and turn his phone off. He would exclude me from parties (sometimes ones that he would throw), his trivia night was suddenly “his thing” that I wasn’t welcome to anymore, if we went out to dinner I would pay for it and he would come begrudgingly. All the while, telling me that he loved me more than anyone in the world. But then things got worse, he suddenly broke up with me and asked me to move out because, “You’re not the kind of girl that will just walk in a room and grab my dick and suck it. I need a girl like that.” I was horrified and moved out. Not just three days later I got phone calls and texts from him stating how I’m the love of his life and that he just needs time, but that I should basically work on being more of what he needs if I want him to stay with me. I felt crazy. I knew how he was treating me was terrible, but I was convinced that yes, it must be me. I must not be giving him what he needs sexually. I’ll change. So i went to a sex therapist. We got back together and literally on our first meeting he managed to put me down multiple times and then follow it up with, “I love you. Do you love me? Do you really love me?” Yes! Yes! I kept saying to him. Why else would I be bending over backwards to be what YOU want. I was doing everything that I could to take care of him, keep him happy, make him want me the way that he initially did when he was courting me. A month later, he broke up with me again. This time it was because “You’re just not social enough. You’re too quiet when you’re out with me.” I thought I got along great with his friends. What?! And then we got back together and he broke up with me for various reasons about 25 more times. This has gone on for the last FIVE YEARS. In the last year, I finally looked into his computer, only to discover that even when he was courting me and so in love with me in the beginning, he was actively pursuing other women online and saying the same things to them VERBATIM. When i called him out on this he told me that it was my fault. He told me that if I had just given him what he needed or been more this way or that way, then he wouldn’t have needed to look for it elsewhere. And then he immediately broke up with me, again. HUH?!

We finally broke up for good about six months ago. Again, he was the one that ended it. This time his reason was because I wasn’t loving enough when we were on my 30th birthday trip that I (not him) planned and mostly paid for. He now has a new girlfriend and has taken her to every special restaurant he took me to, every exact trip, every exact hotel. He seems to be treating her like a princess. I have never felt pain like this. I did everything in my power for the last five years to make him treat me well, value me, and love me the way that he claimed he did but only showed me in the first six months of our relationship. I still feel this overwhelming need to “fix it”. I feel so much pain that he seems to be treated her so well and after claiming to love me more than anything in the world, is just recreating all of the good times we had with her and has completely forgotten about me. He has even blocked me. What did I do to deserve that.

I know that it’s crazy and I absolutely feel crazy, but I’m hurting so much after going through this for five years. Part of me thinks that I love him so much and that i can still “fix” it, when my head knows that it’s been broken from the beginning. It just doesn’t seem fair that he gets to be in a happy relationship and forget all about me after i tried and tried and tried, and i’m left incredibly hurt and broken. It just doesn’t seem fair.