Last Monday, (April 10th) she invited me over to her house after yoga, wanting me to spend the night.
2023-04-10, 12:18 p.m. – E: Depending on how the rest of today goes with work and whatnot, and how you’re feeling later, do you want to come over for an episode of Picard or something? I’ll be home at 9:40 if that’s not too late.
2023-04-10, 12:19 p.m. – E: I’m hoping that doesn’t seem like scrap time….if things are going well and feel good, we could try for a sleepover and hang out for a bit in the morning?
I showed up around 10:15 and we made small talk for a few minutes, and before long, we were bickering back and forth as always seemed to happen. I remember very clearly being calm, and asking for clarification around some stuff that had been residual from a previous argument a day or two prior. The conversation was almost entirely centered around the fallout from a huge incident a couple weeks ago involving Hinge and her breaking a promise and an agreement we’d made back in December. (more on that in an upcoming post).
We fought, argued, and “emphatically discussed” things until a little after three in the morning. Finally, exhausted, we crawled into bed together.
We woke up around 9 the next morning, and were very slow to get out of bed. We snuggled, made out, got a bit intimate, and then she encouraged me to go have a shower.
“You love my shower and it’s always so therapeutic for you!” she said as she literally started the shower for me and pushed me in. She brought in a towel, dropped it on the floor and then told me to take my time. It’s worth noting that E NOT joining me in the shower is not really the norm.
So, I get done my shower, get out, dry off and get dressed and head downstairs. She was chipper, bouncy and in a pretty great mood. We wanted coffee, but her Espresso machine was in need of a cleaning and in pieces on the kitchen island, so I started in on scrubbing it and cleaning off all the built up coffee grime and crud in it so we could make a better tasting latte. We get all that done, put the machine back together and I start the process of making her a latte. (I’d recently learned a bit about making better coffee so I was trying to show her what I learned and how it made for a better shot.)
Anyways, I pour her shot, but (as I always do at home) I stopped the pour 3 or 4 seconds early when I see the shot turn from black/dark brown to watery and clear. It makes for a better, more concentrated shot if you don’t dilute it.
E is instantly pissed. She’s super mad at me because I didn’t do it like she does it – despite the fact that the way she does it results in bitter, shitty coffee. Which is exactly WHY she asked me to help clean out her machine in the first place. But, she likes the extra hot water. I try explaining that the shot has peaked, and now we’re just thinning out the shot with bitter coffee flavored water so she’s better of adding hot water from the tea kettle. She’s being shitty about it, I feel humiliated, chastised and embarrassed. She keeps going on about it, mad as hell and refusing to let it go until I….? Apologize? Validate her espressotrauma™? Ask for forgiveness and promise to not do it again?
I get defensive, and boom. We’re fighting. And we continued to fight until almost 1 pm. Bringing up old shit and “kitchen sinking” each other.
Eventually, we figure it out, and start to get on with the day, which I found out right about then, was to involve me working on her jeep and fixing it up for her. It’s had the seats out of it since I took them out and built a bed platform in the back for her, for road trip she went on last fall. (There’s a fight story there, too.) Real quality time, me working on her Jeep.
I ask her about maybe going on a long bike ride and she gets mad. Real mad. “I told you already I have plans tonight and am busy after 5!” This despite her saying that we had no clock and all the time we wanted, despite what it says in her text above. She told me that morning we had lots of time.
Red flags and alarm bells are now going off. Body tingles. Hot flush again. I can feel it coming. I can sense that she’s in deception mode. She knows I can see it, as she starts to avoid eye contact, her neck and face get all blotchy red, she looks down at her phone, and her body language screams the truth.
So I ask flat out, “you have a date with HIM tonight, don’t you?”.
She takes a deep breath, lets out a long, exasperated sigh. “YES, I have date with him tonight. But it’s just dinner!”
Yes. I got mad. I reacted.
Because she has a date with someone? No. Her and I aren’t a “couple” anymore (despite always doing couple things), so what say do I have, really? What I am mad about is that WHILE I was in her house, during OUR time together, and during a really strained and difficult rupture/repair stemming from a previous rupture, wherein she told me that I meant the world to her, and how much she was going to be there for me, and moments after getting out of bed where we were just intimate and vulnerable with each other… She’s on the phone to make a date with the guy who she met while breaking one of the most important promises of care, consideration and respect she ever made to me. And again, tried her very best to hide it.
She made so many promises to show care, to be open, to discuss, to be transparent and up front. She promises she’s not going anywhere, that she’s going to be there, and all the rest. She shows up at my house unannounced and uninvited and puts sticky notes all over the windows of my truck a week previous, love-bombs, care-bombs, makes promises, and reassures me that she’s going to do things differently and show care…then she stabs me in the heart and makes a date with my replacement while spending time with me, trying to repair the damage caused by the last time she tore my fucking heart out with lies and deceit.
Yeah, I was pissed. I stormed out and went home. I sent her some texts and audio memos calling her a monster. I called her a monster because for the umpteenth time, she was making promises with her fingers crossed behind her back. I called her a monster because she sleeps comfortably at night knowing that hurting people is just the cost that comes with getting what she wants. Because she promises to stop lying, and then lies, with zero regard for the deep, mental and physical impact it has on people.
For the better part of four years, I was asked to be complicit in her lies, deceits and carefully curated and constructed alternate realities. I was a dirty little secret that brought great thrill to her life, until the shine wore off. I was conditioned to be quiet, not to talk about her among my circles, to lie to everyone about the nature of our relationship, and to always BE SILENT. I’m done with the lies, I’m done with the omissions, and I’m done with the secrets. I promised her more than once I would maintain her lies and secrets in order to protect her, but if she doesn’t have to keep her promises, neither do I. Especially if doing so hurts me and my loved ones.
To be continued…
~R
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