I was in love with a monster

As the reality of this long strange trip becomes more clear in the rear view mirror...I am finding it difficult to accept that I was in love with a monster. A dark heart. A malevolent spirit. A demon. A hollow shell of a person, devoid of emotion. A disordered creature lacking basic components of humanity and morality...a conscience, empathy, ethics.

I was so hungry for his attention...I would have done just about anything for him. I offered myself up body mind and soul to him, willingly. And he ravaged me. And I enjoyed it. At least for a little while.

He distorted my ways of thinking. Slowly stripped me of my moral code.

He had me convinced that I would never find anyone who made me feel like he did (oh dear God I hope he was right about that!)

I loved him. With everything I had. He was so...perfect...for me. Everything my mean-spirited, unloving, disinterested, lazy, impotent ex-husband was not.

I was so...perfect..for him. Everything his mean-spirited, disinterested, unloving, lazy, drunken wife was not.

My ex-husband was awful, and made more awful by having to live with someone like me...someone who actually expected to still be treated as a sexually desirable woman, after becoming a mother.

My ex-H's Madonna/whore complex destroyed my marriage. How dare I have "needs"!

My ex-N's wife...well, I've never really had a negative opinion of her...I've only ever dismissingly acknowledged what the N. has told me about her. I know the tendency would be only to share whatever evidence would corroborate his oh so sad story of why he needed my love and affection.

Let's just say that I see now that her inability to stay sober may just have a little something to do with who she is married to. I know it's not right to blame another human being for someone's alcoholism, however in this case, I might be inclined to make an exception.

I was with a man, who was not really a man. He LOOKED like a man, yet was not a man. He was a predator in the shape of a man.

Now, I am leery around ALL men...could they be predators too?

How could I have not seen this hideously savage beast for who he really was...until AFTER I had left?

Until AFTER I had given him SIX YEARS of tenderness, compassion, affection, love and sweetness...thinking he was a gift from God sent to heal me of the hurt of being in a passionless, platonic marriage with my ex-H?

HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS?

I think it would be wrong to compare how I feel to the feelings of someone who was raped. Rape is about abuse and power, not sex, and I would not ever want to appear to be diminishing the feelings of a rape victim.

I do not know what it is like to be afraid of someone while they are having their way with you. I only know what it is like to be afraid of a man after they've had their way with you.

I do not know what it is like to have a stranger force themselves upon you. I only know the person I was with, was not at all who I believed he was.

I do not know how it feels to be made helpless by a man...he made me feel empowered. I felt in control and empowered. I didn't realize I had succumbed to his abusive controlling tactics and been disempowered...I had been brainwashed into believing otherwise.

I enjoyed sex with the N. I enjoyed it thoroughly! I enjoyed it more than I ever enjoyed sex with any man I'd ever known before. Not that I'd been with many, having spent more than half my life until I met the N, married and monogamous.

I loved my N. with everything I had to give. I felt alive and desirable and like I was the most perfect woman in the world, when I was with the N.! I never lacked energy or enthusiasm or affection for him, I was whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. I was the Greatest Woman in the World, when I was with him, because I wanted so very much to please him.

And still, it wasn't enough. I still never was enough or had enough or could be enough to fill up this black hole of a man, this impostor of a man, who sucked everything out of me and anyone else who happened across his path.

HOW DID I NOT SEE HIM FOR WHAT HE WAS???

Why does it take so much pain and suffering before we even think of getting away?

How did I give this monster free range of my body, mind and soul and never sense that he was abusing me???

I thought he was being tender, gentle, loving, concerned for my satisfaction and eager to please me...I didn't realize I was just a mirror to him, while he gratified himself.

How could it have felt so GOOD then when I was actually in the moment and then feel so BAD now that months have passed???

I feel so...cheated, lied to, duped, tricked.

The man that I loved doesn't exist...that's awful enough.

If he had just gone away, I would be able to accept that.

He's not gone though, not really. He is still in my memories.

And those memories...those ILLUSIONS...of the sweet and tender man that I loved, are being replaced a little at a time, by the REALITY of the MONSTER that was underneath all along.

The monster keeps coming back, expecting me to forget that he has an ice cold soul and no emotions, and expecting me to take him back whenever he wants me to, and just because he wants me to...

I don't see his mask anymore, I just see what was underneath when his mask slipped...

I am angry. I am having doubts about my own ability to sense when people are BAD and should be avoided, if something obviously THIS EVIL could have slipped past my radar...

I want to wake up and feel as though it has all just been a bad dream that I am barely able to remember, instead of waking up and having my first thought be of him...because I could barely sleep through the night and am still feeling all of that residual anxiety I have from him projecting his emotional garbage onto, and into, me.

I wake up and feel so incredibly blessed when I have even a second of noticing how beautifully the sun is shining, or how sweetly the birds are singing, before thoughts of him and how fucking damaged I feel now remind me that there is still so much more sorting out to do.

How did I not see that he was a monster???

I mean, how do you conceal something like that...from everyone?

How does someone go through their entire life using and exploiting everyone around them, and NOT get called out for who and what they are?

How do these N's get away with this over and over and over again?

There are no laws against what they do, yet what is any different about what they do, than what the average criminal does? They lie, they cheat, they steal, they embezzle, they exploit, they blackmail, they coerce, they kidnap, they batter...yet if they appear as charming and respectable, they are therefore allowed to continue on their merry way...leaving a trail of destruction and devastation behind them, with no "hard evidence" that they did anything wrong...because nothing is ever their fault.

How did I not see this?

If I would have known that there was something this young, smart, pretty, outgoing, hardworking, and for all outward appearances "content and successful" woman that I am could have SEEN AND AVOIDED, I would never have given up time I can never get back to a man who could never love me back.

If I had known that the best that I could do afterwards would be to exchange that for sleepless nights and withdrawal symptoms and wading through a clusterfuck of cognitive dissonance and extraordinary pain for months after I finally crept away from him out of sheer mental exhaustion from going around and around in circles with him...I'd have run!

HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS MONSTER???