I didn’t include this detail, but… things had been very difficult/bad for several months but we were still hanging on to it. I finally snapped one evening when he left the front door open for several minutes while I was in another room. I have a cat who could have gotten out and gotten lost forever. That was the moment I threw him out and never let him back in. Hated him ever since.
Sattua, that showed such a lack of respect, I’d have been sooo furious.
In my case, it took about 5 minutes. I’d been dating a man I thought was perfect. He was kind, considerate, thoughtful, great in bed, generous, he even brought me catnip instead of flowers. We were talking about moving in together, or at least renting a place half way between our homes for the weekends. (6 hour drive)
So, one day, 13 months after we started out, I was bored at work and thinking of him. I thought I’d google him and see if I could find some silly highschool pics to tease him with.
OMG!!!
He was a convicted child molester. The Wednesday evening “bible study group” was actually court ordered counseling sessions. A whole lot of minor “I must have misunderstood” moments suddenly came clear.
Its been over 3 years now, and I still hate him. I think I could have gotten past the lieing had it been something like probation for beating someone up (not a good thing, but child molestation? a 14 year old girl with a 40 year old man)
I don’t think about him much, but those times I do…like now…make me seethe with rage and fury. If you will excuse me, I think I need to go puke now.
What conflict? You see, it wasn’t a conflict, it was “ninety to zero in zero seconds” - no distress, just a mild irritation at myself that I’d been stupid enough to go on dating this selfish git for so long, and that I’d been berating myself over “not being understanding enough” and “different cultures” and “meeting him halfway” when the only halfway he was interested in was the middle of my bed - or of any other bed, toilet seat, car backseat, tiny garden…
A lot of the “things women are supposed to want to hear” were already in my “Og no!” list (“I don’t know what would I do without you”… uh… you lived just fine without me for 30 years, don’t you dare make me responsible for your continued existence/happiness/whatever, my mother does that and I can’t stand her). The experience made the list of red flags bigger, but it didn’t make me feel greater distrust of men in general or anything like that.
ETA: I don’t regret having dated him, liked his Mom and sister a lot (that was one of our sources of conflict, for some reason it made him angry), some of the writers his Mom introduced me to are still among my favorites. But yep, he was a git.