I just remembered a conversation I had with an old flame that I had forgotten for a while. I guess I had convinced myself he lied to me the whole time and was never into me (because I haven’t thought about this guy in so long even though he’s the one I loved the most).

Background: We were long distance, and met romantically a couple of times abroad. He was, I have since then realized, a misogynist, and a LVM. Probably a narcissist too. He came from a European country where sex-pozy leftist feminists let men run wild with their misogyny. So a lot of his lack of boundaries was cultural. He was a backpacker and so far beneath me, but I was dickmatized (even though I was the better one in bed, lol).

The thing that stuck with me today, was how he acted before it ended. He would insist he never told a woman (not even his mom) that he loved her- he had only told her “Te quiero” not “te amo” (girl, I know! The emotional baggage!! Dickmatized!! Ok?). And he told me te quiero, when I asked him if he loved me, and he kept gaslighting me about him caring about me even though I saw the dozens of women he was texting at the same time during what he kept calling our “honeymoon.” I went to that trip without expectations, mind you, but he kept showing me and telling me things that were super intimate, and getting way too emotionally close to me. He told me everything about himself. He was textbook prince charming, like he made random strangers laugh, and loved spreading joy. Birds would fly our and rest on his broad shoulders type.

I flipped a lid when I saw the texts. It’s one thing to have a fling, and it’s something else to have interrupted my phone call with my important family member and ask to be introduced as more than a friend, and then do all that mess.

Be con👏🏽sis👏🏽tent👏🏽

Ugh. I decided to continue the “honeymoon” (because I was on my pick me shit, and had a week left of my vacation and I liked the sex 🤡). But here’s the rub. At the end, I said that we wouldn’t continue texting, and would only communicate when we made plans to see each other. Girls, I know we talk about how women are the ones who get emotionally over-involved- but when I tell you that he freaked out. He got so silent and acted hurt and furious. Like I had stabbed him! Staring at the sky all “Why me!!” The audacity.

He was about to go on the equivalent of the Olympics- you all know how incestuous and orgy-like it gets in events like that. He had dreamed about this his whole life. In a sense, I had also travelled to satisfy my own Dionysian desires before and did my own messes at a rugby thing, so I thought I was fine with it (again 🤡shit). But he didn’t even respect my necessary emotional boundaries to cope with the whole thing.

Men want your whole being to be dedicated to them. They can’t stand not having all these women fill their cup, because it never gets full. They are empty vessels. He was furious like a child. I did not give him access to all of me, which he clearly wanted and valued at some level- but he wasn’t even able to give me the satisfaction of saying “I love you”- even though he did love me in his own twisted way. This is why I love Taylor Swift’s All Too Well, and that part of “you never called it love”… because it’s so inherently misogynistic to not even recognize women mattered to them- they don’t even want us to have the most basic validation.

I can recognize this now as the characteristics of an abuser like Armie Hammer. I thank the gods for putting all these oceans between us to protect me from that. But I guess this final puzzle piece came back to me, now that I have had my self-esteem back for some years. There was never anything inherently wrong with me, and it’s not true that I never meant anything to someone who mattered so much to me, or that I “liked” to humiliate myself by giving my feelings to someone who walked all over them. I mattered to him. I meant something. He just never wanted me to have the power of knowing it. He deprived me of that satisfaction. It just wasn’t enough to have parts of me- he wanted to have a chokehold on my psyche and emotions. He wanted to own me, so he could discard me and feel more powerful doing so. No one would ever be enough to a person like that. I pity the therapist.

After that trip, we texted and talked a bit over the phone, but he was so disrespectful throughout I hung up and ghosted him in the middle of him yelling at me “what do you want from me woman!!” Because wait, you asked us to continue texting and me asking you why the fuck we are doing that if we’re not together and you don’t love me is me being needy? Lol. That was too much cognitive dissonance even for my love idled brain.

Again, this was years ago, so no worries, girls! I was just reflecting and looking back. Phew. Dodged that bullet, huh.

I just wanted to share in case any of you could relate. Or in case any of you guys are still trying to unclasp the grip of his fingers over your very soul. It will pass. It gets better. 💕💕