Reading Kelli’s several descriptions of her ex and others’ laments of past relationships, the question comes to mind: What did you see in them to begin with?
Were you all just fooled by some charm that wore off on the way to the honeymoon, did your needs change, or how did you get involved with and even married to people who’ve done you no good?
“Where there is clarity, there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?”
I’ve only had one relationship like that. When I was in college I dated a guy for about four months. He treated me like crap for most of that time and I bitched about it.
The guy seemed really nice at first, then I found out something not-so-nice about him, thought I could deal with it, realized that I couldn’t but was too chicken to break up with him, dealt with it a while longer (bitching the whole time) and finally broke up with him.
Romantic relationships are like everything else. Trial and error. Hopefully you learn from the errors.
Some people believe they don’t deserve real love (at a subconscious level) and stay with jerks. But don’t get me started on that.
Most common question I ask: “What?”
Most common question I get: “Are you really hearing impaired?”
A person can be smart (an attractive quality) and still be evil.
A person can share many interests with you (which makes them interesting) and still relish taking advantage of you.
A person can say many sweet words (especially those you want to hear) and have poison in her veins.
A person can be a living Penthouse Forum experience in bed (wonderful at first) until you realize her bedroom desires are driven by anger and bitterness, and an attempt to escape internal problems.
A person can depend on you (which makes you feel useful) and end up taking and taking and taking without giving in return, and feel like that is her right until she has used you up and spit you out without a single ounce of regret.
Yes, it happened to me…my first ‘real’ experience, my first sexual partner, my first love. She had been married three times previously (you would have thought that would have clued me in!). I blame my own naivete and my basic nature which says you stick to your word and keep the promises you make, as much as I blame her.
Despite the tone of this post, I’m no longer bitter emotionally. I’m a happy guy with a very positive outlook on life. It’s just that I can remember how it was. That makes how it is now oh so much better! 
I have often asked myself this question, and I think DIVEMASTER’s answer is completely on track – it’s partly inexperience and partly the fact that these people can be very charming on the surface. I was 21 when I met Mr. Twisted and Evil, had never had sex or seriously dated anybody before, so I missed a lot of little things that would probably have clued in a more experienced person. (Besides, he said all the sweet things nobody had ever said to me before … yeah, I know, pathetic.) Also, he was genuinely intelligent and, up to a point, charming and affectionate – as long as I didn’t disobey him or disagree with him in any way. AND he spent hours crying in my arms about his miserable childhood, and I admit I get all weak-kneed around vulnerable men. Didn’t even notice 'til months afterward that he was using tears to manipulate me. Oh well, 'nuff said, I’ve learned my lesson now.
He said, “I need you.”
(He said that before he said “I love you.”)
Yes, that should have been a warning . . . but I was so thrilled to be needed and wanted and loved, I overlooked it.
Before it was all over, he needed me so much he was terrified he was going to lose me, so he had to keep me at home as much as possible. . .keep me from having friends . . . keep me away from my family. . . keep me in line with his fists.
Ultimately he DID lose me. When you hold someone down like that, love dies.
Many years later he told me, “I just knew you’d meet somebody better and he would take you away. And that’s what happened.” Yeah, but I was gone long before then, driven away by that bottomless pit of need and fear and physical violence.
your humble TubaDiva
Oh, you better know it, brothers and sisters. I was involved with the Queen of Manipulation, who fit the above description to a “T”. I knew she’d had a dysfunctional childhood, and I thought I could “help” her. HA! What I didn’t know was that she had more skeletons in her closet than a Roman catacomb. She was like a leech----she was constantly getting herself into the damndest messes, and I was expected to get her out of them. The best description I can think of to describe her is to call her a psychic vampire. She just sucked the vitality right out of you, and kept screeching for more; take, take, take, and never any give. The year we met, it was January; by July, I was a wreck. In October, the week before Halloween, I came down with a nasty flu-like cold, and I never got rid of it until two weeks after New Years. (I jettisoned her in November, right before Thanksgiving.) That shows you how run down I was; I was expending so much of myself trying to keep her afloat, I didn’t have anything left for myself, and I was beginning to go under. Thank GOD I broke off that relationship! Now I’m married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and we laugh about “the Spider Woman”, as we call her; but at the time, it wasn’t funny at all.
I’ve been sucked in to a relationship much like the one TubaDiva had, fists & all. All I can say now is I got out, and I learned from it. I no longer allow anyone to take advantage of me like that anymore, ever. I keep my personal BS detector on at all times.
My Dumbo was wonderful. He was wonderful until the day my water broke when I was due to give birth. He left that night. We didn’t fight or disagree or anything like that before, ever. I have no clue why he left. There was nothing to indicate that there was trouble. On the rare occassion that I spoke to him in all these years he didn’t have an answer for me.
I found out that he fathered 4 more kids after he left. They fool you, oh, they fool you. The major drawback is, I want to be married again. But if I get pregnant then, no matter how good he is to me, I will always wonder in the back of my mind if he will stick around.
It’s all I can do not to cry with mega jealousy when I see a newborn with his proud dad. When I see a family, I get angry that I was gypped out that wonderful experience and have to raise Greg on my own. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not bitter that I have to raise him. I love him to pieces. I get bitter that Greg doesn’t have the love of a dad and I don’t have someone to share the experience with.
Sorry! It felt good to get that out! I’ll shut up now :::slinking away:::
MaryAnn
Sometimes life is so great you just gotta muss up your hair and quack like a duck!
MaryannQ, I do that too…I get jealous when I see the ‘nuclear family’.
Ah…Shitboy. Well, my parents divorced when I was 15, and I have been on a self destructive spree from then on. I was always drawn to the bad boys, the badder the better. Shitboy had just gotten out of a federal penetentiary when we met. He was so grim, so bad, I get shivers just thinking about it! When we ‘clicked’ I swore it was just going to be for sex…I had been alone/celibate for a year and a half(since the flaming disaster of my first marriage)and I was ready for some male type attention. We were like wild animals right from the first. ^ months later, I broke it off. I was going back to school, and he was running with his old criminal friends, so we split. A year later, he was much more settled, I was too. We hooked up again, and things were really great, for a few years.Then he lost his job and spiraled into a pit of lies and irresponsibility that I just couldnt live with.Until that happened, I really though I would spend the rest of my life with him.I though he was my ‘soulmate’.His behavior as of late has shown me how very far off the mark I was on that!
Now the first hubby was not an ex-con, he was pretty straight, but he was older, and I was going through some stuff at home (I was 20,living at home and my mom caught my stepdad necking with some slut at a party) and I wanted OUT OF THAT HOUSE!! I hate conflicts (probably from hearing my parents fight when I was little) anyway, the older guy was there, he said all the right things, he was soooooo attentive, and he at 30 knew more about manipulation that I did at 20…so when he asked me to marry him,and I hesitated, he said: " If you love me enough to live with me, you love me enough to MARRY me" I could find no logic around that, and I wanted the home/ family thing, so we wed. Instantly afterward, he changed from attentive to possessive, caring to psycho. It was a nightmare.(Yeah, yeah, I know, there must have been signs before, but I was a dumb kid…I missed them!)
I like to think all these mistakes are behind me now. I have been single and living alone now for almost 2 years, the longest I have ever lived alone. The job I have now is the best I have ever had, and I feel better about myself as a person than I ever have.
I dont feel like I need anyone to complete me anymore…maybe I am cured.
Gail
“Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you, my friend–
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again…”
-Steely Dan
It would take forever to tell you about my SB. What it all boild down to is this: He reeled me in becuase he was smart, charming, witty, funny, knew where he was going career wise, all that good stuff. However, once we began to date, he lied and cheated on me all the time. He kept me hidden from his friends. He never wanted to do any of the things I wanted to do, so we hardly ever went out. If by some chance he bumped into someone he knew while he was with me, he introduced me by name, never said I was his girlfriend. (And to be honest, I never really was. More like a long term sex partner and doormat.) From time to time, the other girl he was dating would become suspicous (he lied to her too, she thought she was his one and only, only I was aware of the real situation), and he lied to her once right in front of me. He was crying to her, begging her to believe him, that I was a bitch who was just trying to break them up, that he never had anything to do with me anymore. I tried to tell her the truth, but of course she believed him, and I came off looking like the homewrecker.
I put up with this and more off and on for 5 years. I put up with it because no man before him had ever really treated me any better, so I didn’t know any different. Sad thing is, I still don’t. The first man to express any interest in me since the SB I just described dumped me with no explanations after dating me for 3 or 4 weeks.
Okay, here’s another question along the same line. To all of you who have made the mistake of getting into these horrible relationships (and I’m one of them), how do you trust yourself not to make the same mistake again?
This is the problem I’m facing–two years ago I made the mistake of falling for a real jerk. Long story–it wasn’t a physically abusive relationship or anything, but when it was over I felt like a complete idiot for having ever thought I could ever LIKE this guy, much less fall in love with him.
That really hurt my self-confidence, and I didn’t date at all for about two years. Now, I’ve recently met someone, and we’ve been seeing each other. I think he’s a great guy…things are wonderful. Except for that nagging little voice in my head that keeps saying, “what if you’re doing it again? Overlooking major faults just because you want to be with someone, anyone?”
It’s not that I don’t trust him, it’s that I don’t trust my own judgement.
So, anyone else have the same problem? How do you deal with it?
Per the OP, I’d say “hope” is what most originally saw in what could be termed “doomed marriages.”
My experience with a failed marriage was this:
I asked her to marry me 'cause, basically, I was lonely and didn’t think I stood a chance in Hell of getting another girl as beautiful as her. Strike one – superficiality on my part. Possible despiration on hers (need to be married 'cause her friends were married and having kids.)
She thought I was going to change. I knew she thought I was going to change. It worried me, but by then we were so wrapped up in wedding plans, I didn’t go with my gut feeling. Strike two – unrealized expectations.
Didn’t have enough in common, so that as we grew we grew apart. We knew this, but figured we’d figure it out and finally find interest in something together. Strike three – Stifled relationship development.
'Tis truly a recipe for disaster when one partner decides it’s over and the other is still comitted to the relationship.
I don’t think anyone is truly fooled into marriage. In retrospect most folks can identify an inkling of doubt or unease which magnifies over the course of the marriage to a blemish which truly damages the relationship.
So my answer, again, is hope. Hope for a life… Hope for a future… Hope that everything will be OK…
To bad we live in the real world.
Ryn, that is my situation. I don’t have much experience with men. The experiences I have had have been bad. All of them. I am 30 years old and have no idea what it is like to have a real relationship, to have a man truly care about me. This last guy I dated, I was sure he would be different. Maybe not long term relationship material, but surely somene who would treat me with respect, someone I could share some quality time with, stuff like that. I was wrong. So what is my answer to this problem? I give up. I am not doing this “thing” anymore because I cannot handle losing one more shred of my self esteem. I am sure that isn’t the answer you were looking for, but it is the only choice for me.
It’s truly amazing how much some of these sound like my own experiences, especially DIVEMASTER’s. My first “real” relationship went rather badly, to say the least. I was fresh out of high school, and about to enter college. I had also recently finally come to terms with my sexual orientation. She was younger and more agressive, and was also having a lot of personal problems that I thought I could help with. If I had been more experienced, I probably could have seen all of this coming, but I was not, and I gave up my college plans and got a real job. She didn’t have a place of her own, and was still living with her mother, so I moved in with them. Never, EVER, do this!
Shortly after I started working, she started hanging around with some new friends. I didn’t mind this at first, but she went out with them every night. I’d get up at 6:30, go to work, she’d be gone when I got back, and would not get back until really late. Her friends seemed not to like me very much. She became abusive, and always had a generous supply of tears on hand when nothing else worked. She lost interest in me in bed (this is the same woman from the “worst sex” thread, incidentally) and from the few friends who did like me, I heard rumors of flagrant infidelity on her part. Her mother was a rather needy woman herself, who saw me as trying to steal her daughter. I don’t think she was entirely comfortable with our relationship to begin with, even though she always said she was cool with it. She was always trying to drive a wedge between the two of us, which became more and more superfluous as time went on. Between my awful job and this shit going on at home, I was worn out. I had trouble sleeping, I got sick more easily, I lost weight. I seriously contemplated killing myself.
Finally, she met him. It was love at first sight for them, just like it was for us. I was out of the picture faster than you can say “dysfunction”. Shortly after I moved out, they added another woman to the ensemble and became a threesome, and then the other woman and the guy both dumped her and became a couple. I continued with my job for a little while, had other relationships, some better, most not, all short-lived. I am having a lot of trouble moving past this, the fear that the next relationship is going to be like the first is always there. Maybe someday I will meet the real Ms. (or Mr.) right, but right now, I’m just happy to be single.
I know I’m about two weeks late for this thread, but I feel the need to tell you about my ex-jerk…errr I mean ex-husband. I’m not going to give a long story, just going to list the various things he did that should have clued me in to what he was really like, but like an idiot, it took me eight years to finally get tired of it all and split for good.
He cheated on me with several different women, including one long-term that lasted for the last five of our eight years together. In fact, six year after our split, he is still with her (that’s 11 years he has been with this girl so far). He also apparently dabbled on the side with a number of prostitutes and bragged about the fact that he didn’t use protection (fortunately for me, HIV negative tests so far).
He was incapable of holding a job for more than a couple of months. He spent the majority of our relationship sitting on his ass, collecting unemployment.
Crack cocaine addiction (need I say more?)
He also spent the last three years of our marriage being an abusive jerk, and I mean the whole gamut of abuse including physical, emotional, psychological, and sometimes sexual. The last one is very hard for me to admit to. Believe me, I can wholeheartedly sympathize with Lorena Bobbitt. There were times when I seriously considered doing something very similar to him after a couple of these incidents.
The whole irony of this story is the fact that when the divorce was finalized, he got everything, including the house, the car, and the kids. He had me so convinced that I was a lousy person who didn’t deserve to live, that I willingly gave up my children to him because I didn’t feel I deserved them. Before you say it, please don’t think badly of me. You have to understand what I was going through at the time. I was this close to having a complete nervous breakdown and, in spite of his treatment towards me, he has always been good to the kids (surprisingly enough). We are still battling it out, six years later, over whether the kids should come back to live with me or not.
Oh, did I mention that he also stole my credit cards and pretty much destroyed my credit history? Or that he routinely cleaned out our bank account, usually just before the bills were due, so he could go out and get wasted with his mistress? And the best one yet, that he tried to sell me to one of his crack addict buddies because the guy offered him two 20 dollar rocks in exchange for a couple of hours with me?
Shadowfox
“I had plastic surgery last week. I cut up my credit cards.”
ShadowFox,
Coldfire
“You know how complex women are”
If he’s a crack addict, you need to get those kids out NOW!
What if he decides to rent them out to one of his buddies?
Shadowfox
“I had plastic surgery last week. I cut up my credit cards.”
I have been in two marriages, both of which have ended in divorce. I married the first man for all of the wrong reasons, got pregnant right out of high school and thought that I was in love. He ended up fooling around, and I caught him. I was on my own with two children, 15 months and 1 month when I was just 21 years old. He helped part of the time, but at first I never could count on his help. I raised these two small girls almost entirely on my own until they were 11 and 12. I then met a man who was completely different from my first husband. He was very responsible and upstanding. He loved the girls and we all loved him. He said that he wanted to marry me, and spend the rest of our lives together. We got married and were very happy for about 3 years. As I look back on it now I see quite a few things that I would have done different in that marriage. We just kind of drifted apart after our son was born. He wanted to go out, which was fine at first, but then he started calling me to say he was too drunk to drive, and that he’d stay with one of his friends. I should have realized what he was doing. He started having an affair with his secretary. I didn’t find out for 3 years. I knew something was wrong, but we had become so separate that I didn’t realize how bad everything was until it was too late. We’ve now been separated for two and a half years and are finally starting the divorce process. He didn’t want to be with me, but also didn’t want to get a divorce because it made him feel like a failure. Luckily for all involved we both make good money and we could support two different households very comfortably. We are going to a lawyer together and filing together. We have agreed on everything, who gets this who gets that, bills, child support and joint custody of our son. Even after everything that happened with both of my ex’s I have remained almost friends with both of them. I find it extremely hard to hate someone who I once loved. I also have found that being friends makes the children’s lives much easier. We all agreed to NEVER talk bad about the other parent in front of the children. Even though they were both bad husbands they have both been pretty good fathers, especially the second more responsible husband.
Six months ago I had a birthday party for a close friend, and she invited several of her old friends to come. It just happened that one of her old friends was an ex boyfriend of mine from before my second husband. We hit it off again, even though we hadn’t seen each other for 12 years. We have been dating ever since and it looks like I’ve finally done something right. We’ll see…
They’re not Hot Flashes,
They’re Power Surges!