Oh, Stainz, honey. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve had two relationships I’d like to forget ever happened, for different reasons, but ultimately, I have to be glad I had them, because they led me to my husband today.
Warning: Long and anecdotal.
The first: I was with a guy for four years. We were engaged for… well, almost four years. He proposed to me three months into the relationship. You know how? Over the internet. What a romantic. :rolleyes: I should have run for the hills then. But no, no, I was 18, and I was madly in love. As the relationship progressed, things just got worse and worse. He was mentally abusive, and I had extremely low self esteem - to the point that I wouldn’t argue with him, or he would flip out at me. “Flipping out” meant, at first, that he would throw things around, later it meant he would throw things around and tear at his hair, even later it meant he would throw things around, tear at his hair, pull the carpet up, howl like a dog, and take swings at me. Later, the swings didn’t connect until I told him I was going to leave him if he didn’t straighten out.
He lived off of my money, went in to work only a couple of times each week, wanted me to pay for school, refused to move out of his mother’s house, his mother also took my money and never paid me back, and what’s worse… the guy was filthy. At first, I think he bathed just to impress me. As he gained more control over me, he bathed less and less. He worked at a fish factory, would come home from work and sit around in his stinking work clothes for hours, finally change when his mother and I complained enough, but not shower. When he dropped his pants, you could smell him in the next room. Dis-gust-ing. I spent the last year trying to find ways out of his manipulative web, and just get the courage up to leave him. I wouldn’t let him hug me or touch me in any way, and kisses were out of the question. He repulsed me completely.
You know, looking back, I wonder why it was so hard, but I was a different person then, and I was scared. He was crazy. I thought he would hurt me or my family. I tried to end it as friends, but, yeah right, when does that ever work in a situation like this?
I ran, I ran, I ran. Straight into the arms of another man, who treated me better than the last guy (months after I’d broken up with guy #1, I began seeing Guy #2, and I got harrassing emails and phone calls, being called a dirty slut, etc). I never wanted to run into that guy on the street, because he scared me to death. However, Guy #2 lived in Federal Way, WA, and so I would come out here, hooray! I’d be far, far away from that nasty ex.
However.
Guy #2 turned out to be mentally abusive as well, always telling me I was so stupid, for so many things, not just the ex. Everytime I voiced an opinion about something, he’d tell me I was stupid. But, he said I was so beautiful, and he loved me more than life, and he was so happy we’d found each other. It was a deeply passionate relationship, with a lot of sex, and a lot of… “desperation”, if you will. You know, that young lovers thing, where you just can’t stand to be apart. We got engaged, too. I had a gigantic rock to prove it. Since the first guy hadn’t even given me a ring, well, rock = love, right? Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
The last thing Guy #2 said to me, while I was living in New Brunswick still and we were working on the paperwork to bring me into the States on a fiance visa? He says, breathlessly: “My love, I cannot wait until you are out here, in my arms! We will be so happy together!”
He calls me up the next day, honest to Og, breaks up with me (no warning whatsoever!) and moves in with a girl he was working with. I was beyond devastated. I was suicidal. I was shocked, stunned, horrified, angry, depressed. I had to go to counselling to get myself fully straightened back out. His response? “Just get over it? I love Desiree now.”
Murder.
I did not take that breakup gracefully, at all. I am ashamed of how I acted. I didn’t stalk, but I called and yelled at him (but only in the daytime, not at ungodly hours), I sent flowers, begging him to come back. All in all, a very, deeply shameful time of my life. I lost my pride, my dignity, and the thing I miss the most: my innocence.
Whew. Okay.
My husband used to be guy #2’s best friend. He was as shocked as I (and the rest of us!) had been by the breakup, and rushed in to my rescue. He called me everyday to make sure I was okay, and let me cry my foolish heart out onto his shoulder. His kindness and caring became something I relied on. However, in my eyes, he was my best friend. I had no idea he fell in love with me during his “rescuing”. In fact, he’s had a crush on me since the day he’d met me with my ex. I was clueless, of course.
About a year after the huge, messy breakup, he invited me out to spend Christmas with him, just to get away from everything. On Christmas Day, he gave me a ring and asked me to marry him… I sadly said “Look, I’ve been engaged two times already, you might want to avoid a girl like me.” He just said that the third time’s a charm, and put the ring on my finger. I did beat around the bush a while longer, but then we got married on February 19th last year. I married my best friend. He’s never held any of my past relationships, faults, mistakes, etc against me, and you know something? He’s got his own messy stories, himself.
Guy #2 has recently come back to haunt me, because the girl he left me for broke up with him, and he can’t move out, because he’s got nowhere to go, and he’s been calling and trying to beg forgiveness. I won’t. I’m still hurting from that one, and yes, still pretty embarrassed. In the end, my husband and I talked about it, and decided that there was no good reason to let him back into our lives. He’d screwed us both over royally (him in another way, money-wise, when he left me for the girl, he left my husband behind in a house they’d been renting together with no warning and all the bills, and with over $1000 of my husband’s money). He kept trying to weasel his way in, though, until my husband got fed up and told him off over the phone, demanding he never call us at home again, and that we didn’t want him in our lives.
I’m sorry that my post was largely anecdotal, but I did want to show you that you’ve got no reason to beat yourself up. We all have some interesting, sometimes scary skeletons in our closets, but we’re all older now, and, Og help us, that much wiser! If your boyfriend looks down on you because of past events, it might be time to find a new boyfriend.
