I met my ex online, on a hookup app of all places, in March 2020. It’s not the origin story, frankly, that I want to tell.
I couldn’t tell you exactly why but, at his say-so, we didn’t meet in person for another three weeks. I found this strange or at least it made me wonder why. In the interim before our flesh-to-flesh meeting, we FaceTimed. The conversation was all a bit frantic. From the beginning, he REALLY disliked being asked questions.
Instant red flag, right? 🚩 Correct! ✅
But continue with the charade we did. When we actually met in person, halfway between where we both lived, on the edge of the City of London, we nearly had sex in a public alleyway. No joke, more frantic behaviour. It was the hook frankly.
We went to a small park lining the banks of The Thames and, in a rare moment of intimacy and, even rarer public display of affection, I lay on the bench and rested my head on his lap. He stroked my forehead quite sweetly. This would be the last time it happened. I believe he knew what he was doing. He dropped the RULES because, as it would turn out, he wanted someone who he could offload on. Over and over and over.
The several breakups we had in the total of four years we offed-and-oned were basically when I couldn’t ignore being shut out anymore. But even in the periods of separation, I obsessed about him because I thought he was The One. Thankfully, with some proper distance, and a fabulous therapist, this believe is evaporating.
You have to be able to speak and be heard in relationships. Communication really is everything. Otherwise, you have one-sided relationships where the person doesn’t care about you.
I hold my hands up and admit totally that I allowed this to happen, not just with him but with everybody. I allowed myself to be used.
The instinct, of course, to imprison myself in these situations still lingers a bit. My feelings have not quite yet caught up with my intellect. Rationally, I knew very early on that things would not work out with this chap but I fell hook, line and sinker for this man. It was very quick and totally immersive, despite the fact that, from the start, he said he wasn’t looking for a relationship but somehow we both ignored our instincts and indulged the enormous gravitational pull we had towards each other.
Most of it was sex, I will admit and I have specific reasons for that, which I won’t go into now but once that wore off between us and, particularly, when he voyeuristically asked me to have sex with other men (which I did to please him – grubby! Pitiful but there it is), the understanding of how fucking (no pun intended) doomed this was became obvious to me.
If you allow yourself to be imprisoned, people, I’m afraid, will take advantage of it. We attract what we believe and the walls either go up around us or we use our courage and conviction to walk away.
I knew the truth, I just chose to hide from it, for a long time! Now, I choose the solitary path, for however long, to build myself up.
There is plenty more to share of this story but I wanted to be honest and I have.
Thank you for reading.