A few months ago when RG and I had our initial split, but were still kinddddd of together just not really seeing one another, I went out with some friends. It was this girl’s birthday who worked with my friend Britt and we volunteered to take her out since she lost all of her friends to her baby daddy when she moved out of his house. Whatever – I am trying not to judge and it was an excuse to party.
So, Britt and her overly dramatic 40-year-old with six kids boyfriend come over along with her friend, Gina. We go out to the local bars by my house – which isn’t anything too crazy but if you want to get ripped and not have to worry about a long ride or an expensive cab … or not making it to your own bed, it is a realistic option.
Britt and her boyfriend fight … they fight A LOT. Every time we go anywhere they are in a fight about something ridiculous. Mind you, if I am 40 and doing the things he is doing – I will not be happy about where my life has taken me. This time, he gets some of his equally old friends and decides to try to make Britt jealous by flirting with some other women. I guess it worked because she was pissed. Really mature.
So we meet another older couple at the bar. The woman is pretty but seems a little crazy and then man is older in his mid-40’s and looks like he has smoked one too many Marlboro Reds in his day. But they were fun! So naive Holly that I am, I invite them back to my house for some late night drinking and give them my phone number. The more the merrier, right?
Um, wrong. 
These people come back to my house and seem to be having the best time ever. The man informs me that he is on the Executive board at the local school district and she is a Special Ed teacher. I proceeded to tell him that was “Awesome – my mom works in Fairfax schools! And I know a ton of teachers in the school district!!! Yayyyy!” This is when he decided that it was time for him to leave. He finds his Lady friend sitting on Britt’s lap in the living room – which was an odd thing to do but I did not really think anything of it at the time.
They leave and this is when things kind of spiral out of control. Spence decides that Britt was trying to sleep with this older couple and that she is a lesbian. He proceeds to yell at her until 5 am on my balcony and cry about her lesbian tendencies. After some begging and pleading for them to come back in, they finally did. But not after my neighbors (who probably really like me after the multitude of domestic disputes which have happened the past 1.5 years) heard the screaming.
I finally get everyone into bed. Britt and Spence are in the guest bedroom, which has no door due to an incident where I did not hang up my coat properly and RG decided my punishiment would be to rip off my laundry room doors and throw them around and then kick through the guest bedroom door – the room I had locked myself in to hide from him. Oh well, they didn’t need a door, right? Wrong again.
I get into bed and get a call from an unknown number. When I pick it up it is the woman who was here with her old boyfriend….
Me: “Hello?”
Chick: “Hi …. What are you doing we are trying to come back over and party….”
Me: “ Well it is 5 am so I think I am just going to go ahead and go to sleep but um, we are going to brunch tomorrow and we can call you then?”
Chick: “That would be great but we want to party now.”
Me: “Since everyone is in bed, I think I am just going to head to sleep and nobody else is up so that would be a bad plan …"
Chick: “My boyfriend thinks you are hot.”
Me: “Um, thanks ??”
(Gross!)
Chick: “We could come over and just play in your room … what are you wearing?”
This was totally unprecedented. What? Did I give off some kind of threesome vibe? She proceeded to tell me that Britt seemed totally into it and had lots of threesomes in the past (this ended up being true and that is why her boyfriend was so upset and thought she was a lesbian). I guess Spence was not making it up when he said that the two chicks were heavy petting on the porch. So I guess the chick assumed that meant I was into it too?
I finally got off the phone with this woman after I promised to call her for brunch about 4 times – which I did not. When I went to tell Britt that she has just called to proposition me, she and her boyfriend were mid makeup sex in my doorless guest bedroom.
I turned around, went back to bed and hid under the covers. How did my home turn into a brothel?
People can have their interests and if threesomes are one of them, that is fine … I just don’t want to be involved. Oh and if you would like to bone in my guest bedroom wait until there is a door – and PLEASE strip the sheets when you are done.
And if I was going to pick a couple to have a threesome with - it would definitely NOT be those people.
I know I have mentioned this before. But sometimes I just think that people are sluts. Women, men, old people, young people. It does not really matter. This bothers me. A lot. The Internet has also practically ruined dating for anyone … maybe I am a little jaded right now, but my feelings of hostility towards casual hookup sites and Criaigslist are ones that are accompanied by feelings of disgust.
Let me first put out there that the last straw with RG came not only with abuse, but with the discovery of many email and text correspondences that he was having with strange women he met on the Internet. Some of which had very questionable values. Don’t get me wrong, people can find love online – it’s 2010 and people are busy. But he was being highly inappropriate. And he had a girlfriend. Me.
I was always suspect of his overuse of the phone and saw a few things when we first started dating that were from girls he said he was seeing before – the occasional ‘hey sexy’ 2 AM texts or things along those lines. He always had an excuse and reason for where they were from. Then, last summer, I made a gruesome discovery. We got into a pretty heinous fight where more of my things were broken and I was pushed down and he threatened to call one of my best friends to tell her she was a horrible person (or something along those lines). He then got in the shower and I went to check his phone to make sure he had not dialed and she had heard our nasty fight … I was still trying to hide things at this point. This is when I found highly inappropriate texts to an unsaved number where he was texting about blow jobs and how he thought this woman should come to his work.
I confronted RG about this and he said he felt terrible – it was a woman he met years ago at the beach and they would sometimes dirty text… and oh yeah the other number on there he was texting was someone who used to try to date him. I didn’t even SEE that number at the time. So he agreed to change his phone number and I thought that he really must have felt bad and it was a one off. I was allowed to see his email and facebook and even found multiple other convos where he was trying to meet women while we had been dating but it was in the beginning and he swore it stopped.
Now I feel like an idiot. Odd things kept happening and I ignored it. Weird pics of himself sent to an unknown email. A few clandestine texts, he told me he could not chat at work but was ALWAYS online.
So we end up getting into it hardcore a few months ago and I go to check my email – on MY computer, mind you. And there it is. His email with all kinds of CL emails on it. I felt like a crazy person, but I forwarded myself all the evidence I would need. One even stated he cheated on me with an older lady on Valentine’s Day – a day he decided to be a HUGE dick to me. Another was an email about “roses” and how many it would take to get a blow job. Attached were pics of a woman who stated she was a 44 DD – and this mind you, was a LARGE lady. I later found out that “roses” were a secret term for dollars and this woman was a hooker. Good.
So, I decided to email some of these women and ask what their relationship was with RG. Mind you, this was not the first time I had seen suspect things and sent emails to strange women to see what they were doing with my boyfriend. I even emailed the hooker. It was a low point in my life. One girl came back and said that they had never met – all the girls I talked to had never met him – but he did send her pics of his genitals and she never knew he had a girlfriend. They would also have phone sex after work which was really nice. The strange thing is, it is not like he was not getting laid at home.
Everything came to a head when my girlfriends and I put on a charity event a back in March. A girl was in the audience and noticed large bruises on my arms. I had never met this girl. A mutual friend informed her I had a bad boyfriend who I had recently broken up with and it was probably from that. It was as I had been assaulted a few days prior for the last time. Somehow it came up this man played rugby my friend and her husband knew him. The girl admitted that she had been on a date with him and when their names came up (a long time ago ) – he said he had a girlfriend. (Me).
Of course he denied this, but the funny thing to me was – this woman was the polar opposite of me: A large black woman. The kicker was – he was a total racist! I am by no means against interracial dating but not when one party is the man who lives with me.
When I found this out, I made a retaliation CL post stating that since my boyfriend used this site to try to get laid, I could post too. And some CRAZY people responded. And let’s just say … they didn’t want to talk about the weather. I quickly closed that email account and have not discussed it since. But Really? What are these men hoping to get? And the emails that these women were responding to RG with were equally offensive and included pics as well. I don’t know about you, but if a strange man (who is not exactly packing) sends me genital pics, I am probably not going to talk to him anymore. Maybe he is right, maybe I am a judgmental prude? But if a prude doesn’t send naughty pics, I am quite okay with that.
Things have gotten a lot better for me over the past few weeks. My rage blackouts at RG have become few and far between and I have started to look to the future. It is a great feeling … I don’t know if it’s the new meds I ended up having to take or the fact that the abusive man I was involved at has moved out of my home. Maybe it is both?
Although, somehow I always find the crazy doctors. In my quest to better myself and get through this time, I have sought the help of a psychiatrist. A lot of women who have dealt with domestic abuse have suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and need some sort of mental health plan. So, of course I go the route where I can look for someone to give me some good pills. But I also want to make sure I never get duped into an abusive relationship again.
Let’s just say, that only I could find a psychiatrist this out of control. She is older with a shorn lesbian haircut dyed a bright, bright red. Her suits are always a bit too tight and missing a button or have some sort of McDonald’s snack wrap stain on them and when I turned around the other week to say goodbye, she was openly picking her front wedgie … I can honestly say that this is not something you want your mental health provider to do in front of you. Then again, sometimes she looks like she is stoned and about to fall asleep during some appointments.
Regardless, I am starting to feel like a whole new person. Going to the Domestic Violence group has been really eye opening. These women’s lives are ruined by abusive men. One woman, D, has been abused for 40 years (she is only 47) and her husband shot himself while sitting next to her on her bed – now she is homeless and just does not want to lose her cat – which attacked her. Even D’s cat is abusive. Another woman was assaulted at Disney World with her two children. A third woman is foreclosing on her home after she and her daughter were assaulted after 15 years of emotional abuse and she called the cops, resulting in her husband losing his job.
It is interesting because these women are all in different stages. Some are angry and bitter. Some are hurt and sad. Many are just plain scared. I can identify every single feeling these women are having and it makes me mad that someone could treat another human being like that. But listening to some else say it has given me so much perspective. My life is not ruined and I am not going to let it happen.
I am lucky because my friends supported me through all of this and helped me to get out of it. They even had a party for me last weekend and totally redid my condo to purge all the memories of RG and it looks AMAZING. I know it has been hard for them but they are the reason I can get through this and become a better person.
Some of these women have no friends and no place to go. I cannot even imagine how that would be.
Maybe I was supposed to go through this. So I can help someone. If I could help just one woman through something like this, it would be amazing. I know how hard it is and you cannot explain it. I don’t think that means I should adopt D and her cat just yet (although the thought did cross my mind). But I can assure you, I will never ever allow anyone to treat me like this again and I will make every effort to help other women who are in a situation like this.
It is also a little exciting to be single again. I can do what I want and when I want and not worry about anyone else. So I think that this summer is going to be awesome.
Anyone who knows me knows I am not really a serious person. I love tend to be a jokester and am pretty dry – some may say even witty. Recently I have been dealing with some things that ended up being pretty serious and I wanted to use this venue to talk about them.
I ended a relationship with a very abusive man a few weeks ago. This happened to be my first “real” boyfriend and the first person I ended up being intimate with. Let me first say, if any other friend, acquaintance, relative or anyone I saw on the street had experienced even 10% of the things I did, I would think that they were crazy for putting up with it. Why would a woman put up with someone who was physically, mentally and emotionally abusive? And on top of that would try to talk to strange women on the Internet? (This could be a very special and funny blog post of its own because some of it is pretty entertaining … and pathetic.)
I have always prided myself on being independent. I do not need a man! Anyone who would need one was pathetic – or so I thought before. Then this person came into my life and moved into my home and I saw that, for the first time, I was nurturing. I wanted a family and to spend the rest of my life with someone who loved me and I considered my best friend -Although not someone who would try to get a hooker for a blowie on Craigslist. I don’t ask for a lot, but the No Hookers Rule is a prereq for me.
So I am coming out of this experience with more emotions than I have ever had about anything. Some days I want to rage. Some days I am sad. And some days, I plain just do not care. Every day gets a little easier, but it’s hard to explain.
After months of trying to vocalize my feelings to my girlfriends, I have reached out to find other support. Don’t get me wrong, my friends are amazing and did exactly what I would have done in the situation. But explaining what you feel to someone who has not been through it is absolutely impossible.
This past Monday I went to a group for victims of domestic abuse. I hate saying the word “victim” but that is what it is. It is a small and only about eight women were there. The amazing thing to me was – you can get all these women in a room that are so diverse. Everyone had a different background and different socioeconomic situation. But the story was exactly the same, just in different places. The patterns and signs of abuse do not change and it manifests itself in the same ways.
The hard thing is – I still love him. Someone who would hurt me so much physically and emotionally should not be someone I care about at all. But I do. I know that will change one day and I am waiting for it!
On a good note, this experience has made me want to do something positive for myself and focus on me this Spring …. And losing this relationship weight. So I am going to start running and train for a 5k – then maybe more. I am not much of an athlete and except for cheerleading and a Zeta flag football team in college (which I only joined under the pretense that we would also be drinking), I have not really been involved in anything which requires any sort of skill or coordination, so it should be funny.
So here’s to Spring and new beginnings!!!!!!!!!!
