Namaste Bitches
I met her in 2011 when I came to her yoga class. Yes, you read that correctly: she is a yoga teacher. Someone who is supposed to be an example of peace, serenity, and kindness.
In any case, I was fresh off of a breakup that was mostly a fling; I had made the mistake of dating a “party girl” – that is: totally benign, but the heavy-drinking, thrill-seeking type that never wanted to settle down – so I was intrigued by this woman, someone who seemed like she had it all together. I was single. She was divorced with two children.
Our first couple meetings were somewhat plutonic, but I felt almost manic around her. Our conversation sparkled, we finished each other’s sentences. She was electric: funny, intelligent, beautiful. Finally, late one night sitting in the hammock, she asked why I hadn’t kissed her yet.
That’s a moment that I will never forget, and I wonder if I’ll ever come back from. The biggest rollercoaster of my life had just exited the station.
Things progressed relatively quickly from there. We went on trips together, made passionate love like there was nothing else in the world to do, everything was a joyous occasion. We spent so much time together.
Two months in the relationship, she told me she loved me: looked deeply into my eyes after sex and said this. We were “soul mates”, she would say, “twin flames”.
I had planned on taking a trip around the world to southeast Asia by myself. I realized that I wanted her to come. I asked her if she’d accompany me.
That was a huge mistake.
We met in the airport: I with a backpack, ready to be mobile, adventurous, dynamic. She rolled up with an enormous suitcase and several carry-ons. I was confused. It was like she didn’t listen to a thing I said about the plans for the trip, and if she did, she disregarded them.
The trip hit the ground running with a bad tone. We arrived in southeast Asia and the first place we’d booked accommodations in she was not okay with, and made this known. I ended up blowing a week’s budget for housing on one night at a four-star resort. The entire time we were there she lay in bed moaning like she was sick, refused food, and acted like I was inconsiderate for not acknowledging how awful she felt (of course I did, I just didn’t understand how or why she was immediately so “sick”, as there was no explanation for it).
The trip progressed: on a regular basis, she accused me of “not acting like a man” because I wouldn’t take certain roles by the reins. We would see other couples happily having meals and she’d get angry we weren’t like them. She’d get mad because after a fight I wouldn’t approach her and initiate sex. It got to the point where we’d go to bed angry, she’d refuse my advances, and then be furious in the morning we hadn’t made love (this became a major part of the relationship in the future).
It got so bad I broke up with her. In a foreign country. I was miserable. She seemed miserable. She didn’t want to go along with any of my plans, she constantly was belittling me and chiding me, and I felt that I was seeing her true colors – and it wasn’t pretty.
We agreed to be amicable the rest of the trip. It was agonizing. On a trip I’d waited years to go on, I was counting the days to my flight home.
At the airport, she broke up with me, with much finality. I welcomed this. We were getting on different flights to different places, so I found myself nursing a beer in an airport bar wondering what in the world had just taken place, half thankful for dodging a bullet, and half sad because I had liked her so much.
I got off my flight a dozen hours later to countless emails from her. Apparently on the way back to the states she’d had an epiphany – and that epiphany was that we were actually meant to be together, and she admitted that she’d been out of line on the trip.
I returned home soon after that, and things progressed. We got back together. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly.
I really let most of her behaviors slide that, in retrospect, were absolutely asinine. She had a close relationship with a male friend that was completely inappropriate, and once we broke up and he shared his feelings of love with her. When we got back together (the breakup was a total of two days) she didn’t sever or change this relationship. In fact, she kind of kept it on the back burner as a bargaining chip whenever things got messy with us “I feel like HIS love is unconditional, HE understands me, etc, etc”
I was struggling with business at the time, because I spent the majority of my time trying to patch up our relationship and figure out if it was something that was long-term, or just a really big mistake. I had fallen in love. I told her I loved her regularly. It was never enough. Nothing was ever enough. She would state exactly what she wanted and needed from me in reference to affection, attention, and support. But she wouldn’t do the same with me, she stopped doing all the sweet and thoughtful things she’d done at the beginning of the relationship.
Our sexual intimacy that used to be mindblowing just got plain old weird. She’d stop me in the middle of it all, and accuse me of thinking of someone else. She’d get angry if I did initiate sex, saying I came over to her house, “just to get off”, but she’d also get angry if I didn’t initiate. Sometimes she’d be so tired she’d ignore my advances, we’d go to sleep together, and she’d awake at 3am, ready to go. If I wasn’t ready and willing to go at that second, she’d be furious and there would be a line of questioning as to whom I was cheating on her with/if I found her attractive at all.
Jealousy became the theme of the entire relationship. Waitresses, friends, mutual friends, women in general – they all were potential objects of my affection. I learned to not let my eye stray EVER when she told me that I had a “wandering eye”, and was always ogling the opposite sex. Then my male friendships began to disappear. I felt too guilty for not going out with her (she made sure of this) so she basically began to monopolize all my time. Of course, this was totally my decision, but based on the need for her to be happy.
Her children and I grew close, of course. When we’d argue she’d always talk about how awful it was I’d raise my voice in the house they were sleeping in. Of course, she would be the one to start the argument. Every time I tried to remove myself from the conversation she’d say that I was being abusive and hurtful (“just like my father,” she’d say, “he always just left”), so I was forced to sit and stare at her while she belittled me, my character, my upbringing, who I was as a person, and so on.
Then the writing started. She was a talented author and she finally was awarded a role at a notable online publication. I was overjoyed at first, and then it got strange. Every time we got in a fight or she found something she disliked about me, it somehow made its way into her newest posting or article. It seemed that she’d indirectly attack me publicly through this new means of leverage she’d gained. People couldn’t believe what an awful, unsupportive, unloving boyfriend she had. They validated and supported her. I began to realize people who hadn’t met me and followed her writing easily put two and two together (like I did): I was the subject of these writings.
I put my foot down. I asked her never to write about me. She feigned concern, told me that I was ridiculous for thinking that anything she ever published was even indirectly about me. Everyone I knew acknowledged it was, of course.
One night prior to a wedding I was in (that she was invited to) she went absolutely stark raving mad – slamming doors, screaming at me that I was a “lying, cheating prick” because I had been seated next to the maid of honor at the rehearsal dinner – who happened to be a close friend of mine. Of course, she was attending the wedding the next day – and this was ridiculous. She was there with me that night and I did nothing that would even suggest infidelity. Her accusations, per usual, were completely unfounded.
I became perpetually shell-shocked. My family began to worry about me. They asked me to distance myself from her for my own sanity and safety. Finally, I disengaged and went to stay at my folks’ for a week. Of course we got into a fight over the phone, she told me I had “mental problems” and she “felt sorry for me”, then hung up.
The next day, there was an article published about me, with tens of thousands of views. It was a list of gripes she’d had about the relationship. I was crushed, furious, beside myself. I told her it was completely over and I never wanted to see her again.
She denied that her writing was about me, again and again. Her friends treated me like I was a complete psychopath (of course, they’d read entire passages about how awful of a human being I was).
Somehow she convinced me to come back into the relationship, through begging, pleading, and promises of change. I found out at one point only two weeks post-breakup that she was sleeping with a married man with children (this happened to be another inappropriate male relationship she had while we were together). I was disgusted but somehow managed to sweep this under the rug. I wanted so badly to give it one last try. She said she’d change, that we would change, that we would work on it together.
Months later came the last straw for me. An entire weekend was spent with her talking about all the women she knew I’d cheated on her with in the past, all the lies she perceived I’d told, and how I hadn’t done what a man needed to do to make her feel loved, feel beautiful, and feel needed in the relationship.
What did I do? I should have just let go right then and there. I was so exhausted. But I so desperately wanted to make it work. I asked her out to dinner. Maybe one last date would bring back the woman I fell in love with. Her children were with their father on the weekends so we had the night to ourselves.
It didn’t. After she started drinking she began berating me again, this time with me starting to raise my voice, and her likewise, causing a scene in a restaurant we frequented. The night out ended in her screaming at me across a parking garage that I was “not a man”.
I told her it was over, asked her to get out of my car as I dropped her off. She wouldn’t get out. I was frightened at this point, because she was totally unreasonable. At one point, a close friend had suggested I record her whenever she flew off the handle so I knew that it happened and didn’t just ignore it anymore. I started the voice recorder on my phone.
She saw from a distance that I had my phone out. “Who are you texting?” she screamed. She promised to finally exit my car if I came inside and talked to her. Once inside her house, I tried to leave several times since the argument grew more heated and she’d push me and force the door shut. “You aren’t leaving” she’d say, physically blocking the door. I tried to leave over and over until she finally stole my phone, screen still lit, out of my pocket, and ran to the bathroom.
I beat her into the bathroom before she was able to get the door shut. But she started shoving me, hitting my chest, and pushing me out of the door – to the point where I was so taken aback she was able to get me out of the bathroom and the door locked.
There I stood outside her bathroom door as she perused my text messages, emails, and social media interactions. As you can imagine, this was greeted with an extraordinary amount of screaming, name-calling, and hideous behavior in general.
I absolutely lost it. As a man who has never been in a fight, hit any human nor animal, broken anything on purpose or damaged property – I kicked down the door.
She was so startled by what happened that I was able to pry my phone out of her hands and sprint out of the house, get in my car, and leave.
What transpired next was horrifying.
I called my parents, my brother, my sister, everyone, hysterical. I had never felt that way in my entire life.
I started getting voicemails from her, ranging from “I love you, please come home” to “I called my ex and told him everything, he wants me to call the police and have you arrested”.
She told me she’d shared my awful behavior with her close friends who held it in confidence but they still didn’t judge me. (yeah, right) I tried to pay for the door and told her I never wanted to speak with her again. She varied wildly in our conversations after that, moving between saying that I had violated the sanctity of her home, and that I needed to get help….all the way to saying we needed to go to counseling, and there was hope for us yet.
I shut down. I couldn’t ride the rollercoaster anymore. After celebrating one last birthday with her, I put in my month’s notice at my apartment, packed my things, and left. In one of her prior conversations she’d promised she’d never tell anyone about the night with the door, that was way too damaging to my character.
As a final hurrah she wrote an article about it for everyone we knew to see. She wrote about how I am an “emotionally vacant man”, someone who isn’t able to provide anyone with a decent relationship. The article currently has tens of thousands of views, with dozens of comments validating how great of a person she is, and how much of a saint she was for putting up with this awful, abusive, violent excuse for a man.
The prologue of this long-winded journey is this: trust your intuition. You really can identify these people immediately – not by the things they say or the way they act – rather, your reaction to them. If you find yourself constantly scrambling, defending your honor, trying to please them – all while they sit back and reap the benefits – YOU ARE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP.
I wish I knew then what I knew now. I hope my saga helps someone.
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