The vampire

I had a secret relationship with a married man.  I am not proud but I am also no longer ashamed. The word regret is not big enough to describe how shocking it is to wake up from such a terrible dream. I regret the six wasted years of my life and am still working through the anger I have at him and also at myself. It was only too late that I realized that my situation was not unique. That the words, the stalking and the acts of service, were all identical to the behaviors of countless men living duplicitous lives.

Instead of going into detail about why I let him come back so many times and why I couldn’t seem to see the obvious plays and tricks, here are some things I learned. If you are under the spell of someone, whether married or otherwise completely unavailable, you may want to sit with these:

He likely tells you that you are special. He may say that you are his favorite person in all of the world, his best friend, or that you are the most important person. He may even say that he is in love with you. He may say this all of the time while asking for hugs or for sex and commenting on how you should wear your hair in a pony tail because he likes pony tails.  These are all just words. Dumb ones and not original. You are special and important, but not to him. 

He may get deep and tell you that he feels guilty for lying to his wife. But when you push him to fess up he has countless excuses for why he can’t tell her and then promises that he would never lie to you. Don’t believe this. He is lying to you right now.

He will go to great lengths to do favors for you and then you will soften even more towards him. This means you are more likely to let him have more access to you.  And once you give in and let him, you will feel used because that is exactly what you are. He will acknowledge that you are upset and remind you that you are special and his favorite person and that he would never do anything to hurt you. This is all part of the trap.

He may ask for sex and you may say no. He may press you for it until you just let him do what he wants. He may even acknowledge later that it was “a little rapey”. You may feel ashamed about this and very confused. 

He will be jealous if you go on a date with someone else. He will sulk and ask detailed questions. He may even crash your date because you have no boundaries and tell him things you should not tell him. You will remind him that he is the married one but it won’t matter. Your allegiance to him is strong and he knows it. 

If he is married he will likely tell you that his wife is crazy and that she could not survive without him. He will describe himself as the family man keeping the dream together. He wants you to see him as the strong man that protects all helpless women, including you. 

He may even remind you that he will not be able to have sex with you if you sleep with anyone else. You don’t realize it but you will sabotage all other interactions with men in order to keep open the possibility of connection with this person because you believe that he is the only one who will ever truly care about you. This is just not true.

You may ask yourself how you got here. You may know that what is happening will not end well and that you are contributing to your destruction and likely hurting others. You may tell him all of this and he will say that he knows but what other choice is there with a love as important as this. You are ultimately responsible for ending things. I repeat, you are responsible for getting yourself out. The sooner the better. 

You may ask him to come clean and tell the truth or to go to therapy but instead he keeps lying, even to his closest friends and therapist. When you tell him that he needs to go away he may act surprised and even accuse you of being cruel or crazy or mean. He may throw a fit and stomp around or cry. Don’t fall for this act. Walk away.

You feel handcuffed by all of the lies and eventually these cuffs will become so tight that they will cut off your circulation. Seek out stories from others. You will find that they are all much the same. It may shock you to realize that every single line out of his mouth is recited from an old script. He is not original and neither are you. Come back to life.