I dated a boy online was a teenager. A boy I liked quite a bit, all around, for ages. We had a great time exploring the depths of ourselves with each other. Or, I thought so, until he started putting me down. He told me my nose was too big and he had a problem with it. Then he told me he cheated on me, which I dumped him for and ultimately stopped speaking to him.
He didn’t just cheat on me. No. He gave me excuses for it. He went out of his way to confess many details, talking about how it was an older woman. He was under aged at the time, so I guess he wanted a pedophile’s love. He blamed his grandmother coddling him because he slept in her bed until he was a teenager.
He justified his behavior, in short, blaming others for his own infidelity and issues. I decided justification was evil soon afterward. In fact, justification is the root of all evil. I’m willing to bet he used Oedipus Rex and the Electra Complex to tell himself these urges were perfectly normal. Perhaps good ol’ grandma fiddled him while she let him sleep in her bed all those years, but I doubt it. I told him all about my own abuses and gave him wide open arms to speak on what traumatized him. He said nothing.
I’m also willing to bet his decision that my nose is all wrong led him to cheat on me, that’s all the justification he needed. Or maybe it was the one time he caught me picking my nose on webcam. Whatever it was that made him decide to sleep with someone else, all his behavior told me was that he wasn’t able to behave like a gentleman. I judge men on whether or not they are gentlemen all the time. In fact, if I see a man mistreat his lady around me, I silently decide to never date that person even if they do become available. I’m not about to submit myself to some abusive asshole and neither should you.
People do change. If they want to. Most of them don’t. They want to blame everyone else for everything they do wrong instead of taking responsibility for their actions (or inaction.)
Then, about a decade after I broke up with the dude, he made a new AOL Instant Messenger account to tell me he’d just gotten out of jail. He pretended he was Paul’s own past lover, of course, concerned about my health and well-being, telling me he was fixated on me completely. Then I did the unthinkable… I started asking this mystery person instant messaging me if they would be okay. If they were going to be in danger. I started empathizing with “the victim” he put out there in my direction rather than spending time on vitriol and emotional hand grenades involving Paul and his past behavior toward me.
That must have thrown him. He never messaged me again. I logged into his e-mail account, since he’d told me he still used it with the same password he’d had from the start, and I changed the password to something random and logged out. It had one single e-mail in it, this account. An e-mail from some chick in Australia, whom Crystal’s friend HOAD was into for ages. LuvBug23. A woman that HOAD had been in love with but was talking sexy talk with Paul. And that was years old news, honestly.
If he had no way to recover that e-mail address, that’s his problem. You don’t just tell a woman that your e-mail password never changed years after you cheated on her, telling her you’re obsessed with her, and then expect… what did he expect? That I’d e-mail the girl in Australia? That I’d cause some sort of drama llama storm? No, thank you. I’m no longer a child. I moved onward and upward, as Buzz Lightyear would say.
What else did he expect, anyway? Anger? Sadness? Sullen resignation? What was he going to do? Show up? Maybe he fantasizes about killing me for rejecting him and his negative bullshit. God tells me that is the case. He tells me he’s going to visit my parents for the fifth year in a row to look for me. Sunday’s the big day!
Lots of people justify mistreating me, sadly. I don’t understand why they bother. Isn’t it a better use of their time to be kind and work on their own hobbies and interests? Isn’t it a better use of anyone’s time? How many people justify mistreating you? All of them. Every person who mistreats another person makes up excuses to calm their conscience down and continue to misbehave. After they do it about three hundred times, the conscience stops bothering to signal the brain that it’s wrong.
Stop, drop, and roll. That’s my advice. You are on fire. Stop pretending everything is fine while you sow misery and mistrust all around you. You’re just spreading your pain without articulating your pain, which would actually make you feel better.
Articulate your pain. It’ll go away once you quantify it, label it, and compare it to the rest of reality. At least, that’s what works for me.
Good luck & Namaste.
Angel-Sansara 