First, I should recap my view of lies:
A liar either believes I’m too immature to handle the truth or that they can fool me 100% of the time for the rest of eternity.
Lying is an underhanded attempt at trying to seem perfect to other people (or yourself), while we all know we are each flawed and imperfect by default. We can work on our flaws, but we will never be perfect, no matter how hard we try. And even if we were perfect, we’d lose all our soul, so to speak. It is through imperfection that hand-made art speaks. It is what makes it wonderful. Otherwise, it’s as good as machine-made.
Lying ruins your reputation. It destroys your trustworthiness. It undermines your value to society. It morally bankrupts you. It destroys your self-respect. It tarnishes you in ways that are difficult to come back from.
Some day, each and every liar wakes up and looks in the mirror and sees how they devalued themselves with their own actions, their own hollow promises, their own fake pretenses. They are faced with reality: that their fantasy life they made everyone else around them believe in is crumbling because they no longer have the energy to continue to fuel it, to feed it with new lies, to remember all their old lies in order to continue to preen and look pristine.
Today I realize I am lying to myself. My life is not okay. I trashed my entire support network and relied on my support animals completely and now I face the cold, hard truth: I need to put them down. All of them, together.
I’ve taken care of them all their lives (17+ years) which is a pretty good run for a cat even though I know they can lie to 33 years old in exceptional cases. I figured they’d get to be about 20 and that would basically be the end. I guess 17/18 is about 20. I had hoped for more time with them, certainly.
I can’t really take care of myself these days. It’s a struggle to get through sweeping, dishes, two rounds of litter scooping and floor sanitation, going to the grocery store for my daily bread, and making meals for the ancient ones I live with. I just don’t have the bandwidth and something has to give.
I fooled myself thinking I could come back from the depths of my illness… that I could take care of them again. I need a caretaker. How can I care for animals when I cannot care for myself? I don’t even get a daily shower, which many people consider normal. I can’t seem to ever catch up on my laundry; there are piles on the basement floor that never diminish, even when I get it close to taken care of. I can’t even make myself make food from scratch more than twice a day.
And yet, here I am, doing my best to juggle ancient ones, ancient cats, and my own health needs. I just hope I can find a veterinarian who will agree with me that they need to go together because they’ve spent their entire lives together in a family unit with me. I know for a fact that if someone else becomes their caretaker, they will simply allow themselves to perish. They will lose the will to live. I know this because someone took care of them for six months back in 2015 and the oldest cat looked ready to die, which is when I put my foot down and moved them in with my psycho ex.
I am afraid he has killed all of us. Indirectly, of course. His tools? Scorn, mockery, disdain, malice, contempt, spite, hatred, loathing, malevolence, derision, repulsion, disgust, condemnation, invalidation, antagonism, antipathy, hostility, jealousy… not to mention divide and conquer. He used this in juxtaposition of acceptance, adoration, adulation, tolerance, deference, and damn near deification to bait and switch me over and over again. To force me apart from my support animals and try to force me to end their lives.
What does he gain from this action? Nothing, really. He thinks it means less vacuuming, but honestly, he didn’t vacuum enough at all. Once a month is not enough. Daily is ideal, at least in the main concourse of a home, with a monthly deep cleaning if possible (of that main concourse – barely used rooms are an exception and the edges of rooms near the walls are typically safe to skip until the true deep cleaning occurs twice a year in spring & fall with the windows open… at least, that’s how I do it.)
He would destroy three living creatures, if not also me, for his own… what? Does he gain safety? Does he gain peace of mind? Does he gain anything at all?
So why did he do it? The only explanation I can come up with is that he’s a psychopath. In fact, I supposedly turned him into a cat person and a cat randomly showed up on his doorstep after I left, according to a former mutual acquaintance. That cat? It died very quickly afterwards of illness.
Or was it poison?
I’m speculating, of course, because of my own bias against him due to the mistreatment I suffered the entire time we spent together.
Then he did it again to force me apart from my entire support network. He drove all my friends away from me because I ‘did him dirty.’
That man promised me a future with just the two of us and then revoked it, telling me over and over again that he needed to see other people. That I was not enough. That I would never be enough. That it was out of the question that he stayed monogamous and with me. I encouraged him to have a boyfriend in case he was gay because I’ve failed to date straight people all this time. He lied to me and told me he was courting a gay man, enticing me to approve of him sleeping with that person. Seven times he told the same lie. After that, I decided he must be telling the truth. It’s quite the lie, to call a woman a man, you know.
I wonder how Jessica feels about that?
Yet, he did. He was dating a woman named Delilah. She looked just like me when I met him, too. Short, messy hairdo. Stylish spectacles. Fat as hell. She was well grounded and not mentally ill at all from his second-hand storytelling. A good communicator. And he latched onto her like she was his partner in all of three weeks, leaving me to realize he never wanted to be my partner. Ever. Not in 4 years. He threw it in my face, again and again. He told me he didn’t sleep with her after the one bedding he lied his way into with my consent. (I really don’t understand why he sought my consent. He was going to do whatever he wanted to. The fact he thinks he got real consent via a lie just speaks to his complete lack of maturity.)
The truth is, he knew I did not consent. And so did she, by the time I left. He kept trying to force us to meet, acting like it was an innocent request. I know what he wanted. Every woman knows. A threesome, of course. I’m not going to do that. He started calling my cats “our” cats. It was a slap in my face. It was indignant. He was finally treating me like a girlfriend because he had a second girlfriend. It made me want to destroy him, to be perfectly honest. The part where he called my cats that he tried to kill “our cats.” The cats he tried to get me to dispose of just to be with him. After four years, I was finally his girlfriend for real, y’all. But only while he was dating another woman.
I decided in that moment that it was more than over. He was rewarding me for succeeding in his coercion, for succeeding in undermining me in regards to obtaining a second girlfriend, for succeeding in lying to me long enough to obtain my ‘blessing’ to sleep with another bitch (which he had sold to me as a man.) The entire thing was built on a fucking lie, which means my actions are nullified. I consented to him having a boyfriend, not a second girlfriend.
And then he continued to see her for months after the lie was uncovered. How did I find out he lied?! He came back from fucking her and I asked him if he wanted to talk about his gay sex with the man he was supposedly dating. He said he wanted to talk about it but first he had to tell me it wasn’t a man he slept with. I cried for hours. HOURS.
And what did he do? NOTHING. HE JUST LAID IN BED AND WAITED FOR IT TO END. He didn’t even hold me or try to comfort me, not one iota. This is why I think he’s a psychopath. He told me a lie to obtain ‘consent,’ which I had given to him in a therapy session by telling him to do whatever the fuck he was going to do and see what happens, then rebutted my vehemence every time he brought up dating someone by telling me it was a man. By lying to me. He knew what he was doing.
In response to him perpetrating this specific lie, I gave him a list of rules to impede the growth of the relationship between him and Delilah. I gave it to him because I was of the mindset that he could fuck me or he could fuck her, but he was not going to get both. It was the same exact situation as when our relationship began. He did it to me… again. This was the fifth time and I had it with him.
In April 2015, he was openly dating another woman named Eva in addition to me. He told me around the end of March that I was enough, staring at me like a lovesick fool. I incorrectly interpreted this as him deciding to go exclusive. Wouldn’t you? Has a person told you that you’re enough? My ex-husband had a boyfriend when we met and he chose to go exclusive with me within months of going steady, so I thought it happened with Ben.
Apparently, what he meant was that I was enough in bed. A week later, he asked me for the fifth time if it was alright he continued to date Eva, knowing full well I’d already agreed to the arrangement four fucking times in two months. I cried for hours then, too, realizing I was not enough at all. Realizing how many times and how many ways people in my life implied I have never been enough. He just sat in bed, doing nothing while I sobbed, having a nervous breakdown in his shower as the impact of at least 100 times this was implied to me occurred to me all at once just like the scene in Memento where the character suddenly remembers what he’d forgotten in a complete rush.
In between these events where I had nothing short of nervous breakdowns, he spent time trying to support me or comfort me whenever I cried. It was mostly in the form of touch, such as hand-holding. I remember only one night that was questionable in between these two events (one happened in April 2015 and the other happened in February 2019). He had his hand over my throat as if to caress it but his fingers spasmed and his fingertips dug into my neck slightly. I felt so uncomfortable from that I got out of bed altogether, got dressed, and left.
Previous to this lie of a side dish, this ‘real partner’ girlfriend that made me feel like an unwanted impostor, I previously didn’t count experiences with extra people as non-monogamy as long as it was clear I was the main squeeze, so to speak. In fact, I suggested we go to Nevada to sleep with a sex worker for that threesome he wanted so badly, but what Psycho Boy Ben wanted was Sense 8 orgies. He never tried to hide it even a little bit and if he thought he did, he’s dead wrong. I’m starting to wonder if he just wanted to watch other people rape me, to be honest. He certainly enjoyed doing it himself.
He rejected my compromise of visiting a brothel and renting a lady of the night’s time because it required too much protection for his taste. He was obsessed with providing oral and didn’t like that they required dental dams in between themselves and the person providing cunnilingus. So, I hit him where it hurt when he revealed that he lied to me by convincing me that he was dating a man in December 2018 and ultimately coerced me into giving him ‘permission’ to fuck another woman when it was extremely clear that I was not at all interested in that scene. I consented to him having a boyfriend because he told me he had very limited sexual experience when we met and his family is completely religious and condescending toward anything abnormal.
He knew I was 100% monogamous ever since April 2015 because I gave him two choices: He could be with me or he could pursue open relationships around Eva’s life. Eva had a dedicated partner, whom he’d met, which apparently made him feel like an expert at open relationships even though he’d never had a closed relationship of any length of time. He picked me saying, ‘I’ve never had a girlfriend before so I want to try that.’
He didn’t even know the word polyamory until I said it to him, which he proceeded to read about for months afterward, each new title making me increasingly upset. I even made him turn one of the books he read over, so I didn’t have to see the title on his bedside table every time he invited me in to talk. There was no mistaking it, he was trying to figure out how to talk me into having the best of both worlds: he was trying to break me of a core trait… monogamy. After knowing for four years already that it was my deal-breaker. He decided to break the deal and pretend he didn’t know what he was doing. That was his M.O. — pretend he didn’t understand his actions. At all. Even after I explained at length what I had taken issue with,
Do you buy it? Is a man really that fucking stupid he can’t get the subtext of all this that’s going on around him? Or is he a motherfucking psychopath? I’m going to go with PSYCHOPATH.
I kept my own for years while I was less sick, but as time wore on, I became increasingly ill from ingesting dairy in his mold-infested house… so sick my brain was only half-working… and he pulled this shit on me, as if I was going to concede that I needed him in my life so badly that I would do anything to keep him. As if he was a God and I would worship him without question despite being vile, in a word.
He misjudged the situation completely. I was trauma bound to him in 2015 three times over. I couldn’t leave him… until it became clear to me he was not even remotely interested in being monogamous after years of trying to coerce me into some sort of relationship with more people. I told him before that I have no interest in it. In no uncertain terms, I am against risky sexual behavior. I did not mince my words. Even his therapist heard them. I saw her twice because this asshole told her for over one year he thought he needed to sleep with more people. She challenged him on that for ages until she also gave in and told him to do it. In fact, that’s when I told him to do it and find out what happens.
I’m also against having such a complicated relationship. I tried, once. My ex-husband’s boyfriend was a suicidal person that manipulated him day in and day out, which he eventually woke up to and left that person because he woke up to the manipulation happening. Additionally, my parents had an open relationship during my formative years. It fell apart on them, full of vitriol and poison, and it hurt the entire family because my father couldn’t keep his trousers on. It fell apart when they contracted herpes from the third party.
And that is why I gave Psycho Boy Ben a mile long list of no-nos. I told him to use a dental dam for oral, to use a condom every time, and shower before he came home. In fact, when he told me he had sex with a woman after clearly lying to me about her gender just to get my ‘consent,’ I kicked him out of my bed — I’d moved into his fucking guest bedroom a year before that, which he followed me to. I kicked him out so many times but he always ended up back in it, so I gave up trying to get him out before successfully moving out. I made him get up and shower and brush his teeth because I could smell her on him. And then I made him sleep alone.
Because I saw my parents’ relationship fall apart thanks to herpes, I gave him 30 or so rules for my own sexual safety. STDs are for life. I am already dealing with poor health and other complications. I do not need HIV or AIDs to finish undermining my health and kill me. He didn’t care. He will never care. I know that now.
Every day he slept with me after that day in January when he exposed he lied to me for weeks and clearly manipulated me to get my encouragement to fuck another woman, he raped me. I left him Thanksgiving 2019. I finally got my shit together to break the trauma bond and I limped away, thanks to the help of a love interest that was not Psycho Boy Ben. (Thank you, Jason.)
I was not proud of being bound to him. I didn’t have the words to even express myself until a bunch of trauma therapy books later, thanks to my therapist, Dr. M.
Angel-Sansara 
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