Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of the truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction. –Criss Jami

 This morning while I was winging my eyeliner, I randomly started thinking about my ex-boyfriend. I don’t know if it was maybe because sometimes my mind just randomly wanders off into nothingness or if it was because I had dressed up for work; I had worn some cute wedges and taken the time to really put together my outfit. Perhaps in the early mornings, when I’m all alone and left to just allow my mind to roam, I think about how when we were together, he felt that I represented him in some way. He wanted me to be dressed cutesy and attractive but not so attractive that I showed too much cleavage or exhibited too much leg. He wanted me to be pretty enough to make him look worthy of getting realistically anyone he so pleased but not so pretty that anyone else would ever want me.(The rumor going around at that time was that I was labeled the “Forbidden Fruit”. The “boys” could all look at me and remind my ex-boyfriend of how secretly attractive I was but talking to me outside of a planned social outing in which I was escorted? That was a big no no.)  

So a lot of how I put myself together was affected by this notion and to be completely honest, it still affects me to this day. I feel like as a lady, I’m representing my husband. I want to look good and in doing so, make him look good. I want to appear to be someone who knows how to put outfits together, someone who knows how to pair great shoes with a classy outfit. I want to look provocative in an elegant way but not to the point that I’m inviting other men to look at me inappropriately. I want to exude class and kindness, like one of those really pretty girls who just happens to be super cool and pleasant. (Think: Dr. Maura Isles from Rizzoli & Isles. She is basically my spirit animal.) All of this has some wild sort of reason to it. You have to trust me when I say that I am being pragmatic amidst the chaos.

Sometimes at work, when I’m trying to give references about domestic violence, I’ll call him my “abuser” rather than my “ex-boyfriend” because I feel like the latter just gives him too much power. It always seemed like too friendly of a word to just be throwing around when he had never really earned the right. I always kind of viewed our time together as more of a dictatorship than an actual relationship. I mean, calling him my boyfriend, ex or otherwise just didn’t really seem appropriate.

He wasn’t someone who I ran to with my problems because he would never care to listen. He wasn’t someone who held me at night when I would have bad dreams because he was irritated that I woke him up. He had lives in his hands all goddamn day; being exhausted wasn’t an option for him. He wasn’t someone that I was excited to talk about to my girlfriends and my parents because our life was embarrassing. The way he treated me was embarrassing. I look back on all of that and hate myself for how pathetic I must have always looked. Following him around like a lost pit bull, begging him for attention, praising him for all the awesome work he did, and hoping every day that he would look at me and hear the way he talked to me. I prayed that one day he would wake up and say, “Jesus Christ, this is my girlfriend. Why am I talking to her like a piece of garbage…?”

Sometimes when you’re young and full of hope, you feel like you can just take it. You can take whatever life throws at you because you’re young and you’ve got all the time in the world. I wasn’t planning an escape until the very end. For the majority of our relationship, I was under the misguided impression that this was all going to work out. I know now that all of our relationship, all of the things that he said and did were extremely abusive. Everything he did was part of his giant manipulation; all the insults and the knocking around were meant to keep me sedated, to keep me docile and unaware of the realization that he was a total shit bag. Everything he had done in those years had a purpose. He had the cruel, cold and calculated intent to hold me down. And for awhile, it worked.

But also sometimes I feel like the word “abuser” might be a little too harsh, like maybe I’m milking this whole domestic violence thing. I also tell myself things like, “It was a lifetime ago,” and “Everyone’s over it but you,” because sometimes I feel like I should just move on from all of it. All my acquaintances from high school are having beautiful children, opening trendy cupcake companies, and selling super cute clothes via Facebook and then there’s me: the domestic violence advocate; the woman who has literally made a career out of preventing shitty relationships like the one I had. (I’m also a big believer in self-talk and the power of positive affirmations. You should try that shit; it totally works. The power of positive thinking, friends. It’ll change your life.)

Sometimes I feel like a lot of this guilt and resentment that I hold for him is doing more harm to me than him. I mean, this man is perpetually running around Pasco County playing victim to all of his sympathetic friends and what is it that I’m really getting from all of this?  All of this harbored anger and unwillingness to forgive him is doing what to me? It’s making me look like a man hater, it’s making me look bitter, it’s making it appear as though I attract women who are just like me: wounded and abused, sour and scorned, proverbial grouchy spinsters.

Listen, I ain’t about that life, friends! I have too many amazing things to be happy about to allow all of this to eternally control me. If he runs around to everyone from my high school and says things like, “Is crazy Katie still married?” Let them answer: Well, yes she is! If he approaches my best friend at her place of employment and says things like, “She was a good girl and I let her get away,” let her respond with: Well, yes you did! If he bumps into someone I know and wants them to pass along some sullen message to me like, “I’ve had a kid and I’ve grown up. I’ve changed; I’m not the same guy I was anymore,” let them answer back: Well, that’s great for you, giant homie!

Because so have I.

It’s so hard to forget pain but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace. –Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

Lately in these moments, when he pops into my head my thought process is sort of intricate. I began to think not about our garbage life together, not about the things that he had done to me in the past to cause me pain and anxiety, but instead the way he reacted when he last saw me. Sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten what he even looks like because all of this happened so long ago. But his face that day, the last day I ever saw him; that I can remember so vividly. It’s almost like it all happened yesterday.

It’s something about the manipulation of all of this that absolutely sends me. Sure, maybe I’m the only one who isn’t over it (and I’m just giving those proverbial individuals the benefit of the doubt because I know that isn’t true at all) and maybe when he walked in that day and saw me, his face genuinely reflected his feelings. I have to say, he looked shocked. Shocked to see me, shocked that I had seen him with his family (his paramour and child), and maybe even shocked that I was gracious enough to politely greet both of them after all he had done to me. If I’m being really fair, he looked scared and maybe even a little sorry. It was a look that said, “Shit, what is she doing here?” That day, his eyes were as big as mine. And he wasn’t offensive, he wasn’t trying to slight me, he wasn’t there to intimidate me. It almost seemed like, in that moment, I had intimidated him.

But sometimes I go back and forth; sometimes I feel like that is all just part of his game. He wants me to believe that he’s just this unsuspecting, six-foot three-inch firefighter turned super engaged father who wishes me no ill will. I’m sorry but after all these years, after all the fights and the insults, all the lying and the cheating, all the isolation and the pushing around, I have a really hard time believing that nonsense. I have very little sympathy for him.

In that moment, it almost seemed like for a second he really was sorry. For maybe one second, it appeared that he remembered and he felt bad. But I’m smarter than that. Call me crazy but I know better; I know it’s feigned remorse. He just wants me to think he’s sorry; he wants me to believe he feels bad. And he wants the world to know it too. He wants them all to know how he “let me get away”, how I “didn’t deserve any of it” and how “becoming a father has really changed him”. But I won’t fall for the manipulation. I’m so far past all that. 

I have this terribly low tolerance for that kind of residual maltreatment. I know I’m hypersensitive to all of it, and given my occupation, if I wasn’t before then I certainly am now. I have this thing about being bullied, this absolute hatred for being manipulated, and this instant aggravation for people who try to guilt me into feeling a certain way. When individuals try to pull things over on me, it leaves an immediate bad taste in my mouth. It makes me begin to question the individual and wonder if they think I’m stupid. It makes me curious about the type of person they think I am; it makes me speculate if they value me at all since they’re so hell bent on twisting and manipulating our entire existence together. If you have any sort of pleasant feelings about someone, why on earth would you do that? I just don’t understand.

I know this woman in a relationship just like this. To be sort of brazen about it, she is getting played. I think that she thinks she isn’t getting played. I think she feels like she’s smarter than him, like she knows that he’s incessantly lying to her and because of that, she can be proactive in regards to his bullshit and stay on top of things. I think she believes that in granting him clemency, she’s really the one with the power. That in deflecting their issues, allegedly picking her fights wisely, and letting him think that he’s getting away with all sorts of things, she’s really the one with the upper hand.

I also think that she thinks he loves her. (And I can’t claim to know whether or not he does; all I know is that when you love someone, like really love someone, you don’t treat them like a caged animal that you let out when you’re bored. When you genuinely love someone, you don’t just keep them around for when your side chick is busy.) I think that she truly believes that they are in this alleged relationship for the long haul. I think she really wants things to work out and go well, sort of in the way that I did back then.

But the saddest part in all of this is the fact that she really wants this. She wants this garbage relationship to work, she wants things between them to just be normal (whatever that might be for them), and I think she also doesn’t want to be a failure. And what’s even sadder to me is that she would be under the misguided impression that his shitty behavior would somehow reflect on her. As if the fact that his treating her like a second class hooker would somehow make her a failure, as opposed to exposing what an enormous one he is. And honestly, it’s easy for me to sit back and sort of judge the whole situation because I’m sitting on the outside looking in. I don’t have to deal with her tool of a boyfriend everyday (thank Christ) and I don’t have to spend my nights wondering whether or not he’ll come home or spend the night with whatever other girl he’s banging.

In that regard, I’m incredibly thankful. Because I can’t imagine the amount of stress she must be feeling. I mean, I could reminisce back to my own experience but to be honest, I haven’t felt that warped brand of pain in years. For me, it’s a stretch. My life is just so calm, so peaceful.

The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. –George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

All of this sort of comes together in the sense that these various individuals, these men who feel like they’ve got everything figured out, they just want to manipulate their female counterparts. It’s almost as if they want these ladies to become subservient, docile individuals who never ask questions. And to be honest, besides how obviously insulting this is, there is something about it that I just don’t get. If you claim to genuinely care for and love someone, why would you want to keep them in a cage? If your feelings are allegedly so strong and you have both a sensual and intellectual connection, why would you want to stage-manage the entire situation and create all this unneeded chaos?

I mean, all the negligence and abuse aside, wouldn’t your relationship be so much greater if you were pleasant to each other? If you didn’t have to keep track of the multiple lies you told and worry about getting caught in them? Wouldn’t your life be so much more satisfying if your girlfriend didn’t flinch every time a glass bottle got dropped because she’s convinced you’re going to back hand her? Wouldn’t your relationship be so much less stressful if you used honey instead of arsenic when you spoke to your significant other? Wouldn’t you just sleep better at night if you only had to tuck one woman into bed? I mean, it just seems like common sense.

Moral of the Crazy: I have seen this brand of manipulation all over the place, in more places than just romantic relationships. It just seems like sometimes, when you’re intimate with someone, it tends to give them license to run all over you. It’s almost as if when you give away a part of yourself to another person, they tend to take it for granted, for whatever reason. Why bother with things like the truth and being faithful? Why take the time to show your real self to someone that you’re allegedly dedicated to? Why be selfless for half a second when you could just twist the situation and reap all the various benefits?  

Years and years ago, I was friends with this man who I honestly felt had feelings for me. I couldn’t be completely sure though because sometimes, he would randomly go off on me. It was sort of a weird situation, to be honest. I really wanted to maintain his friendship if he could somehow table his feelings temporarily but it was proving difficult. The problem was that he had never really come clean about how he felt and to this day, I’m unsure if they were genuine feelings or if I was just sensitive to whatever he was putting off.

It was sort of like sometimes, it seemed like he couldn’t get enough of me. He would blow up my phone with these sweet remarks, repeatedly ask me to come visit him at work, and talk about all these things we could proverbially do together. At first, I brushed it off. Coming from where I had romantically, I had a hard time thinking that someone was that attracted to me. Especially when that someone was handsome, really fucking smart, and employed at a relatively lucrative retail chain. I mean, his legal history notwithstanding, he seemed to actually have his shit together. He was really kind and flirtatious in a classy way, and it seemed like he went out of his way to make me feel good.

Sometimes.

But other times, he was explosive. And I don’t mean that in an abusive way because I have to be completely honest when I say that that man didn’t have a violent bone in his body. He would stand firm when he had to but fighting wasn’t one of his fortes. He was relatively cold when he got angry, spitting harsh words at me that he, for whatever reason, believed I deserved. He would resort to name calling but not cussing, trying to beat me at my own intellectual game. He was something of a class act, raised by good people, and showered with affection in adulthood because of his good looks and winning personality.

One minute, I was everything he wanted in a girl. The next minute I was just using him for attention. One minute, I was driving him crazy and leaving him intoxicated. The next minute I was acting crazy, blowing things out of proportion and refusing to meet him halfway. This “friendship” proved exhausting but that wasn’t what bothered me the most.

The most uncomfortable thing for me was how I could sense early on what was happening. I could tell from the very beginning that he was incessantly trying to manipulate me but given his sunny disposition, I didn’t want to believe it. I was, as I had been many times before, under the misguided impression that this guy genuinely cared. I was under the misconception that in light of everything, what was most important to him was our interaction, our friendship and the time that we were allotting to spend together.

The reality was quite the contrary, however. He had this habit of manipulating everyone he had major contact with, enabling them to believe whatever it was he wanted them to, whether it was accurate or not. He was relatively popular in his own group of friends (and probably still is) and it was almost as if none of them had any idea what he was actually like. He presented so well, it was hard to believe that he had been to prison, that he had literally run from the cops until he was gunned down, and that he habitually cheated on the one person that he had formulated a serious relationship with. When you talked to him, when you interacted with him, he put on a different front; he had spun a completely different tale.

To say that this chronic behavior disappoints me is an understatement. I would like to say that given all my years and experience with manipulative sociopaths I have learned to spot them rather quickly but I would be lying. I would like to say that over the years I have softened, that my education has enabled me to forgive all those people who have tried to influence and control me but again, I would be lying. It just seems like in these situations, you have got to just figure out the nonsense on your own. It can be unfortunate, knowing that the solution to this problem is easy: all you’ve got to do is not believe them. But in interpersonal relationships, especially in the ones that you really see going somewhere, that isn’t the modus operandi you want to live by. You want to trust the people closest to you and quite frankly, you should. You shouldn’t have to spend every breath wondering if what your loved ones are telling you is true. It just should be and that’s it.

The thing is that I think most people, even the manipulative ones, just want to come out on top. I don’t want to rationalize absolutely everything to death (even though it’s one of my favorite things to do) but perhaps even the manipulation is done with the best of intentions. Maybe people lie to you because they just want you to be dazzled by them. Maybe people are controlling because they realize how good they have it and they don’t want anyone else to pick up on it. Maybe people cheat incessantly because it’s the only way they know how to truly appreciate what they’ve got; maybe causing chaos and then earning redemption is the only way they’ve learned to be thankful. I mean, it sounds ludicrous but seriously, stranger things have most certainly happened.

I’m one of those people who are just ever trusting and although it gets me hurt sometimes, I don’t think it’s a terrible thing. My ex-whatever notwithstanding, I would basically believe anything that anyone tells me because I have no reason not to. I don’t want to live my life on guard. I don’t want to have relationships with people where I have to constantly be curious about whether or not they’re being truthful. Although maybe that’s what makes those really genuine, truthful relationships so much more amazing: the fact that so many of those other ones are not.  

My biggest thing is just that I want to have faith in people. And honestly, that can be the most difficult part. The truth is, like Bob Marley once said: Everybody is going to hurt you; you’ve just got to find the ones worth suffering for. And maybe, in my friend’s situation, she’s will to take the bad with the good, no matter how much he manipulates her. My biggest hope is that one day she can wake up and feel confident about the person she’s lying next to. But there again, that isn’t up for me to decide.

Be truthful when you can because the real reality is that you’re only hurting yourself when you’re hurting others. And once everyone catches on to your twisted words, you’re going to run out of people to hold close to. After awhile, you’ll be like the little boy that cried wolf; people will no longer absorb it.

Although, I guess you could always move to a new country and start over.

If I were to untie my tongue, I could use it like a whip and watch you run. –LeAnn Rimes, Spitfire