Back in my white knight, windmill tilting days I had the fortune and misfortune to be involved with a woman who was engaged to another man. Now, as you may guess, it wasn’t my idea to start such an ill-fated relationship. I know it takes two, but I was after all a pedestaler. Yes, I had unrequited feelings for this woman, but I never expected them to be reciprocated. I should rephrase that a bit. I had a crush on this woman, she was an ego whore who needed to make men (yes, plural) dance to her tune in order to fill some gaping whole in her psyche. The warning signs were all there, but like a teenager filled with testosterone and feeling the power of commanding a vehicle, I chose to dodge the crossing arm and play chicken with the oncoming freight train. The freight train won.
So what were some of the warning signs? Let me see. Well, first and foremost, here was a woman engaged to her high school sweetheart, but coming on to me (and many others) when he was not around. Flirting and more than flirting. When she took it beyond flirting with me I was excited and I suppose a bit flattered. Later I would find out that when her best friend found out about us, she would lie to her friend and tell her I was the one who initiated. We’ll get back to that in a bit.
Another second warning sign was about something she told me in a rather matter of fact manner. She sort of downplayed the whole thing. She said that her fiance’s parents openly disliked her. At the time I totally misinterpreted this signal through my own lens of experience. You see, my mother and her mother-in-law don’t get along at all. My grandmother is a royal…well you can fill in the blank… so I wrongfully made the assumption that this woman’s situation was similar to my mothers. One big difference. Both of her fiance’s parents openly despised this woman. In hindsight, it is obvious that they could read this woman like an open book.
Well, things progressed quickly enough and I thought I was in love. Maybe I was, I know for damn sure I was emotionally dependent on a callous, narcissistic bitch. Falling for a woman like that taught me a lot of lessons, the biggest being to choose to not ride the emotional rollercoaster. The second lesson was bros before hos. My friends were telling me what I didn’t want to hear about my relationship with this woman. That they are and were still my friends after I woke up and got out of this relationship says a lot to me about the strength and depth of male friendships as opposed to the shallow and wide friendships of women.
The last warning sign and the thing that made me wake up to reality was just an observation about this women. I watched her casually lie to all her friends, family, fiance, employer, etc. She’d lie even when she didn’t need to. To this day more than a dozen years later, I can remember the moment, the exact time and place, where it dawned on my that this woman was and always would be a habitual liar. It was like a veil had been lifted. I knew that everything she’d said to me, done with me, all of it was one big lie. I knew that she’d go through her life hurting everyone around her for her own gain and glorification. I was out. Broke it off clean.
That’s not to say she didn’t try to reel me back in. She did, but I didn’t have a relapse, so to speak. The spell had been broken and there was no way I was going to allow her to reweave her web. She moved on quickly enough. A couple of months later I was walking downtown in the Bigger City when I saw her with another man. No not her fiance, I had seen his pictures and had actually met him before we started our fling. Her new beau was besotted. He appeared to be a couple years younger than her and about as naive as I had been. The look of defiance on her face coupled with what appeared to be fear that I’d expose her still sit in my mind’s eye. Did I say anything? No. Judging by the look he gave her, he wouldn’t have listened anyway. Maybe I should have spoken up. I still wonder about that.
I was still a white knight pedestaler even after moving on. I thought she was an aberration. I at the time still believed that most women would rather tell the truth than lie. Little did I know at the time that Lying is an art and a way of life for most women. I came out of that relationship a little wiser, a little more cautious, but still not fully aware of just how much the sexual marketplace was not being played on the same field as my parents and grandparents had learned the game.
