It probably all started when I was thirteen years old, and I began "dating" a sixteen year old guy who wanted to take my virginity. I ignored the signs of his creepiness and mistook them for gestures of passion, or jokes. Him telling me that "Once you decide to do it, 'no means yes, and yes means yes'" flew right over my head. The media had convinced me that this type of language was common, and not to be taken seriously. That it didn't make him a sociopath, or a crazy person, or a potential rapist. He was "my friend, my confidante, my boyfriend". He would never rape me.
This pattern of ignoring the warning signs of potentially violent, abusive, or maladaptive men continued with me for the next seven years. When I was fifteen, I ignored the physically, sexually, and verbally abusive signs of a man twice my age for so long that by the time I did, it was too late and he had already stabbed me in the hand, raped me several times, and created so much internal emotional damage that it may take me a lifetime to heal. The whole time I just thought the world had wronged him. That it wasn't his fault. That his father and mother beating him up as a child was why he was this way. That he wasn't a monster, he was just hurt. That he wasn't a sociopath, he was just diagnosed with bipolar. That he wasn't an addict, he just liked to do drugs a lot. That he wasn't a pedophile, he just liked younger girls. Denial, denial, denial. Codependency, codependency, codependency. I thought I could be a beacon of light in his dark time. I ignored the initial warning signs, the signs screaming at me from the message boxes of my computer screen. I ignored it all and chalked it up to maladjustment and the abuse he suffered growing up.
Two years into a relationship with another man when I was nineteen, who was few years older than me as well, I had continued to ignore his warning signs too. The drunken outbursts. The fact that we started talking when I was a teenager. The fact that he used to be a heroin addict shooting dope when he was my age, but he had "changed." Now he was just a binge drinking alcoholic. I chalked it up to his mother being an alcoholic who abandoned him. Blamed his upbringing; the lack of care in his home and the way life wasn't "fair". Him being sexually abused as a child. I thought I could be a beacon of light. That things would get better. That with enough love and care, I could transform him into a respectable member of society. When two years into our "relationship" he raped me, I started to realize that would never happen. We were just two fucked up people being fucked up together, but one of us was "worse" than the other.
This year, I got tired of this cycle. This unexpected cyclone of men wreaking fucking havoc on the entirety of my being. Leaving grubby handprints on my soul from when they were greedy. Causing irreparable damage to my internal self.
I broke up with that man in January of this year, and he knew exactly why. You can't rape someone and then expect things to be the same. You can't have a "lapse of judgement" and lose yourself in a fucked up moment. That's not how it works, and I was learning that. I was slowly getting stronger.
During this time, I had also been dating another man for the past year and a half. I was in an open relationship, so I was allowed to. With this man, the signs were a bit more subtle, but they were there. He was forty years old and started sleeping with me when I was eighteen. He had problems with drinking until he blacked out, and when this would happen, he'd send me text messages in gibberish about how I didn't really love him, was just using him, etc., and then would apologize the next day. He liked girls specifically eighteen to twenty-five years old. He would blurt phrases like "I can't drink vodka because when I do, I get 'crazy'", but wouldn't elaborate on what that meant. I stayed because he never hit me. He never raped me. He never verbally abused me. I just thought he had some problems, but nothing more than "the average person." I thought maybe things could work out. Maybe there was time for him to change, to get better.
Two and a half months ago we reached our breaking point when he picked me from my house, nearly blacked out drunk and being a complete asshole. It was like a modern-day Jekel and Hyde. Once moment he was being nice, the next moment he was being a piece of shit. He kept blaming me for things that weren't my fault. Began to belittle me and my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I saw a side of him that had always been lurking under all of the symptoms and warning signs that I ignored.
And I let him go. I let him go and it was one of the hardest things I had to do, getting up from that couch and ordering my Uber and telling him that I refused to be treated like this. I didn't go back, and I haven't looked back. It is one of the first times I've stopped the abuse before it became abuse, if that makes sense? If you've been in these types of situations, than you'll know what I mean.
I didn't want to wait until he laid hands on me. I didn't want to wait until I was running out of his house, screaming for help. I didn't want to wait until he was holding me down and raping me. I wanted to, for once, see the warning signs that screamed blatantly in front of me, and make a logical fucking decision. And I did.
And now it's been two and a half months of singledom, like I said, and it started to get a bit boring. Even though I initially thought "I'll take a year off from dating", sexual frustration and loneliness started to become a problem. So last night, I decided to kind of have a date thing with this guy I had briefly chatted with at an event a few months ago.
Warning sign #0: His Facebook page is covered in BDSM, witchcraft, and generally dark and sadistic imagery. I initially chalked it up to an interesting personality, because I'm normally attracted to the dark and macabre. I try not to immediately equate that with crazy, but maybe I should.
Warning sign #1: He was late and when he got to my house, he didn't message me, he just walked in because the door was open. Rude/entitled, much?
Warning sign #2: He mentions that he's a Trump supporter, and when I try explaining to him that Trump has rape allegations pending from raping a thirteen year old girl in the 90's, he basically ignored it.
Warning sign #3: He mentions that he was fighting a lot of court cases last year, and that had a felony armed robbery on his record.
Warning sign #4: He makes light of things that I don't find funny, such as things that are a bit sadistic and life-threatening.
Warning sign #5: He begins telling me he was a meth addict for a year, but he's been clean for 5 years. He also used to sell drugs in high school.
Warning sign #6: He tells me he has to watch his drinking, because sometimes he gets violent when he's drunk.
Warning sign #7: We're swapping dark music, and mind you, I'm not even showing him the darkest music that I know of because that's not what you do with people you barely now. He ends up showing me this VERY dark song by Immortal Technique about a man who ends up raping and killing his own mother.
I let him stay for a few hours because obviously he was a crazy person and I didn't want to see what would happen if I kicked him out, but when he left I felt an emptiness inside that I hadn't felt in quite a while. The old me would have said, minus him being a Trump supporter, "Wow, what an interesting guy. I wonder what his story is. I wonder how I can change him." The new me is wrapping my brain around the fact that I can never see this man I thought was so intriguing before, again, because he's obviously a lunatic who at best, will not treat me well, and at worst, will rape me, physically hurt me, or kill me.
These are the signs I never paid attention to. These are the things I would ignore before. This is, what in the past, I would chalk up to a shitty childhood, drug abuse, and the possibility that he could change.
As I get older and healthier, I am learning that there is a very thin line between people who have been through things, and people who have actually risen above them.
Many people do not, and it's not my job to help them learn how to do it. When I see the signs, I must continue to run in the opposite direction and not look back on what could possibly be. Most people are not all that well-adjusted, and if they're not, they're not worth the sanity I've worked so hard to build and will continue to work on.
You have been through a struggle, but I'm glad to see that you're doing what you can to learn from these bad experiences.
This is powerful content and might be hard to share, but I want to compliment you on your ability to write. I like the structure of the posts I've read so far; first relating your experiences and feelings but then ending on an uplifting note with some really good and positive words about how you plan to change.
I feel you can both inspire and help people. Thanks for sharing your posts!
Shot you an Upvote :)Nice @iamwoman
Thank you! :)