I’m starting this thread with permission from Skald the Rhymer. I’m interested to know why he would say that he went into a relationship with the intention of being hurtful. Has anyone else done this? I’m interested to know why.
Here are some posts from another thread:
This ought to be interesting…
Hmmm, when you said “interesting,” did you picture something like this?
Because, based on those quotes, he’s a complete piecEDITED FOR MPSIMS. Does that answer your question?
Maybe, I don’t know. The Pit would be the place to explore that.
At least he’s honest about it, apparently trying to reform, and some of us can probably learn something from him.
That was my hope in starting this thread.
I’ve talked about this before. Just for the record I cleared bringing up some of these issues with my wife.
About fourteen years ago, my high school girlfriend, "Micky,"left me, not to mention the state we lived in, taking her daughter and our son with her, to be with a guy she’d met on AOL. It was a fairly ugly breakup, and I felt betrayed and exploited; I was also angry that I was not going to be able to see my son, who had been born ill; I’d dropped out of college so I could get a full-time job for the health insurance. But all I ever contributed was health insurance, and maybe playing with the kids; I was never a dad to him during this period in any real sense, that is, I was never truly supportive or responsible. I’d always prioritize my desires and whims over the kids needs.
Anyway, in the wake of Micky’s leaving, I decided that to just fuck as many women as possible, but never to get involved again. I did that for a while. Then my son got ill, and Micky returned to the south for his treatment and for family support. I realized then that I didn’t have forever, that my son needed me, so for a while I threw myself into being a dad and trying to be more than health insurance and the occasional $100 for a month’s groceries. I guess on some level I wanted to get back with Micky. So I worked hard to win her again, but my son died anyway, and Micky told me that she blamed me and never wanted to see me again.
I fell into a deep depression, and the way I got out of it wasn’t good. I decided that it wasn’t enough to fuck around. All women except for my mother and sisters were lying whores, so I wanted to hurt them as well as fuck them I proceeded to do that just. I lied for the sake of lying; I cheated for the sake of cheating. I’d seduce women by pretending to be their friend, and stretch that out for as long as possible, so that when they finally realized I was betraying them, it would hurt more. I was never physically abusive, but that’s not because I was a mensch. Partly it was because I was a cowardly pussy who didn’t want to risk getting arrested. Partly it was because being just psychological abusive was the heart of the plan–making the woman doubt herself and her worth and sanity.
At the zenith (or nadir) of this I met a woman I’ll call Lynn. I met her at an AA meeting, though I am not an alcoholic; I used to go to 12-step meetings to find vulnerable women. Lynn was a lesbian, but had been raised to believe that homosexuality was the worst sin imaginable; self-loathing was probably part of the root of her addiction. To my way of thinking back then she was very good prey, because she was trying so hard to be straight that she would put up with endless shit in pursuit of that; also she was very pretty but didn’t believe she was pretty, which meant I could enjoy the sight of her for its own sake but also could exploit her poor self-esteem for my own amusement. Lastly, whenever she finally got a clue, it would be all the more devastating for her, I thought.
So we started going out (incidentally I was violating the terms of our group by dating someone I was supposted to be sponsoring) and eventually moved in together. I was attentive and faithful for long enough to make her feel at ease, and then I started cheating. As you might guess, it was a festival of emotional and verbal abuse that involved her doing a lot of things she didn’t want to because she was terrified I would leave her.
Something strange happened in the course of this. Because, while Lynn was in many ways unwell, she was GOOD in many ways: compassionate, multi-talented, beautiful, funny. I became more and more aware of what a great person she was when we lived together, and I stopped seeing her as pinata. I fell in love with her, which involved hating myself (or, more accurately, realizing that I hated myself) because of the cruel things I was doing to her. When she eventually got healthy enough to decide to leave me, I was equal parts devastated and relieved. Devastated because at that point I no longer intended to abuse her, but relieved because I was afraid that I might if she stayed, and afraid that that abuse would be physical as well as the other stuff.
After she left I went into therapy for sexual addiction and other issues. I have never cheated on my wife, and I plan never to do so. I phrase it that way because I believe it’s dangerous to say I WILL never do so, as making such a blanket statement ignores my history and my strong tendencies towards addictive, abusive, and manipulative behavior. So I say I PLAN never to, i INTEND never to, because I must be cognizant of destructive and evil patterns in my life and history.
ETA: I no longer believe that all women are lying whores. When I used such phrases above, i intended to capture my thoughts and belief back then. Please don’t take anything I wrote above as an attempt to justify or rationalize my evil behavior. Grief for my son cannot justify it; nor can being dumped, or being depressed, or being an addict. I am responsible for everything I did, and what I did in those days was wrong.
Damn…
Thanks for sharing that. It was fascinating.
I have more questions if you don’t mind.
Did you plan this all out like a script in a show? And you were moving toward a goal? If so, wow. . . that’s pretty successful. . . you must be very focused.
Or did you just figure all this out in hindsight and realize what you were doing later?
Was it very easy for you to find women? Was it easy for you to be with women you didn’t necessarily like? Did it give you pleasure when someone was hurt. . . like you felt that vengeance was served every time you hurt someone?
As I posted in the other thread, I knew a guy who went on a kind of rampage because his fiancée cheated/dumped him while he was at sea with the Navy.
My question is, how does it “generalize?” E.g. the woman in question for him was a tall brunette, and if he wreaked havoc on tall brunettes, that would kindasorta make sense. But I’m sure he went after all kinds of women, some of whom probably had zero physical or other resemblance to the woman who dumped him.
Any insight into how that leap happened, skald?
ETA: IIRC in “Tombstone,” Doc Holliday said of Johnny Ringo that a man like that had a hole in him that no amount of killing could fill. Seem parallel?
What? How to be hatefull? Know all about it. I’m sure it’s more about Skald getting personal relief.
How you get yourself right is between you and yourself. Speaking the truth to strangers is like AA. And Skald, don’t think I’m trying to diminish your statements. But we both know where the truth lies.
What is done, is what has been done. Just another piece of the puzzle that is ones self. You carry it with you untill the end.
The callous-but-not-actually-abusive fucking around part didn’t take much planning. After I decided to be a full-on abusive shit, there was quite a bit of planning. I’m a planner. I had to decide, for instance, what to do about bar girls, because I didn’t want to be a rapist. Not because I was being a good guy, but because I was protecting myself legally. And I was definitely planning ways to do as much evil to Lynn as possible; I would have been happy if I’d driven her back to the bottle, because that would have been a maximum exercise of power over her, in my mind.
Yes, I got pleasure from hurting them.
Very easy to find women? I’m not sure how to answer that; I didn’t want it to be all that easy, because that wouldn’t prove anything; it wouldn’t have made me feel powerful I mean, if you hang out in bars or certain other venues, easy girls are easily found. Moreover, by taking a drunk girl home and NOT fucking her, I gained points in her eyes; I looked like a good guy, a gentleman, a mensch, so she’d be more open to what I wanted in the long run.
Not really. Most of the women I fucked back then were white, but that was true before all this all started too, simply because of where I went to college. I don’t think I was seeking to hurt white women; I think it was just women.
I’m not sure I know what you mean. If Holliday was saying that Ringo had to kill over and over and would never be satisfied, then yes, it’s true.
I rarely know what the frak you’re talking about, dude. It’s like you’re speaking Sanskrit.
No, what caused it, fueled it, what residual effects he feels, what aftermath he’s had to deal with, how he keeps it in check, why people got sucked in, etc.
It was to the effect that Ringo had so much hatred that it was like a hole to fill. He had to kill to relieve it, try to fill the hole, but it was never enough. I’m probably reading into it some, but I think he also meant that the addiction feeds itself and grows rather than going away.
Maybe it’s not my place to say this, but I think you owe Skald an apology.
Thanks for this thread.
I came very close to the behavior you described above at one point in my life, based on a similar incident of a woman blaming me for something that wasn’t under my control, even though I could probably have handled it better.
I’m thankful to this day that I already had a psychologist from my depression days and we got me into anger management classes pretty fast.
As a woman that’s going to enter the dating scene again soon, this is some scary shit to read. A couple of questions:
I’ve noticed that often, when a woman is done with the relationship, that’s when the man gets worried/scared and is ready to make changes, is this similar to what happened with Lynn?
Do you know how Lynn found her strength?
There’s some phrasing here that echoes what recovering drug addicts might say. IME/IMO from having dealt with a drug addict, I get frustrated or angry when I see posts that say “But it wasn’t me, it was the addiction”, because in my mind it just doesn’t grok. It sounds like they tell themselves this so that they can feel better about what they’ve done. In other words, I kind of agree with you in that I believe “Nope, he really *was *just being a complete shit” when I hear what I perceive to be the excuse for addicts.
Since the treatment for both addictions are similar, why do you think one addiction seems to be able to say “Yep, it was me being a shit” and the other “But, it’s the disease!”
Yeah, maybe not. Dude went to AA to find vulnerable women to hurt! Seriously, what the fuck?
I have a question for Skald. Your wife (Kim/Beth–not sure her actual name) is a lot younger than you, like in her early twenties, right? did that raise any red flags for you? Were you afraid that you were seeking out someone more inexperienced as you had in the past, or do you feel that you’re over all that, and that it’s no longer an issue in your current relationship?
Remembering the old me gives me pause when I think about my nieces, because they are all young and I fear what men may do to them. But don’t be afraid. I don’t think most guys are like the way I was.
I don’t think so. In part I was relieved when she dumped me, because I had come to the point where I recognized the evil of what I was doing but had not come to the point where I could have stopped myself. Had she remained in the abusive relationship I think the abusive asshole would have bee strengthened, and things would have gotten worse; after all, I’d have been reinforced in my belif that I could endlessly manipulate her without consequence.
I need to be very careful how I answer this, because I don’t want to imply that I am due any credit for the changes in her, or that I think I am due any credit. If it comes off that way, blame the infelicity of my phrasing.
I think part of the process of Lynn finding her strength was an unintended consequence of my mind-fucking.
While we were together, I strongly encouraged Lynn to come clean to her family about having been a lesbian and about things she’d done while drunk. This was, of course, a lark; I was doing it because I enjoyed manipulating her, and making her make such degrading admissions struck me as amusing; plus I’d get points for “turning” her; and, with any luck, her family might evince some revulsion at her confession, which would drive her a little further from them and thus more under my control.
But, happily (in retrospect), it didn’t happen that way. What happened was that her family was supportive and loving, and even overcame some of their prejudices. I think this helped Lynn see that homosexuality was not as repellent and evil as she had been brought up to believe, and thus that she didn’t have to self-medicate with booze or submit to an abusive boyfriend to be good with God. So, when she began feeling, ah, stirrings, she could follow them healthily.
I can only talk about myself. I don’t 12-step: partly because abusing the 12-step process is part of my pattern, but mostly because I don’t believe in a higher power. To my mind, saying that my addiction was responsible for the bad things I did is deceitful and counter-productive. Deceitful because my issues aren’t external to me; they are part of me, no less than the part of me that loves my wife, or the part that controls my cognitive and language abilities (i.e., the part composing this post). I’m not willing to absolve myself of responsibility for past misdeeds by blaming them an addiction because that is, I think, a step toward doing such bad things again, and I don’t ever want to do that.
