My Week

Yeah, so this happened this week…

                If you are acquainted with me at all, you know I am a walking, talking, relationship disaster.  Some of that is related in my semi-autobiographical novel The Playground, where I explore the reasons behind the phenomena; alas, I also think luck plays a part and I am decidedly unlucky in love.  (I’m not lucky in cards, either, which is completely unfair).

                My last relationship took place over a span of a year.  We met in October of 2016.  It took me until October of 2017 to decide I was completely done with him.  It basically followed the same trajectory of my other relationships.  He was completely, head-over-heels crazy about me the first month or so, then minor chinks began to appear in his devotion.  Just like C&C Music Factory, Things that Make You Go Hmm.  They must have known the same kind of men.  I found myself in an oft visited and reviled place-having to justify shitty behavior to my closest friends who began to nag me about breaking up with him.  Deep down I knew they were right, but I held out hope that with time he’d straighten out.  And I blamed myself.  Despite the fact that not only had I been in this place a million times before, had even written about in depth, I still thought I could fix a relationship with an asshole.

                We were on and off for months.  We would have horrible fights.  During one of them, I had blocked him on my phone, so he resorted to e-mailing me.  On one of the e-mails, I noticed he was CCing other people.  Yup, that’s right, others were being given a front row seat to our fight.  The equivalent of having your buddy listen in on an extension in middle school while you fight with your crush.  So, I made sure to hit “Reply All,” whenever I answered.  I thought we were completely done that time, but as with all the previous times, he crawled back contrite and filled with apologies.  Only to immediately resume acting like an asshole.

                Then October came.  He had been pressuring me about “officially” getting back together.  I was resisting.  He took me out to lunch on Columbus Day and afterwards complained he felt rejected.  He said I looked revolted when he touched me.  I admit that my skin crawled.  Things weren’t looking so great, but I agreed to attend one of his MeetUps the following weekend.  MeetUps, for those of you not in the know, are groups you can join online that have frequent gatherings.

                Throughout our relationship, MeetUp had caused a lot of fighting and stress.  He was the main organizer of thirteen groups, and he was obsessed with numbers.  How many people were in his groups.  How many people attended his events.  We actually broke up after we went to another leader’s MeetUp and his was well attended and everyone seemed to have a good time.  That sent my guy into what can only be described as a meltdown.  Why didn’t the same number of people attend his events?  When they did attend, why did they all act like they were stuck in the dentist’s waiting room? 

                He responded to this stress by lashing out at me.  It was the same thing, over and over again, why didn’t anyone like him?  I would say, I like you!  But it just wasn’t enough.

                So fast forward to October, after a veritable year of this bullshit.  We were at Mickey Spillane’s in Mamaroneck.  As usual, he hadn’t planned the event very well.  He was sitting at the bar when I entered, and all the other attendees were scattered.  Since the point of the event is for people to meet one another, this wasn’t good, but he seemed oblivious to that.  Instead, he was focused on his phone, texting.  I dismissed this, since often members that are arriving text the organizer to find them.

                We eventually joined a few other members that had snagged a table.  It was noisy, and service was slow.  I wasn’t having a good time.  People kept trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear them and even if I shouted they couldn’t hear me.  I wished I was home, writing with my laptop across my knees and 48 Hours Mystery on the television. 

                I ordered dinner.  The food was expensive.  I could have bought a promotional spot to sell my books with the amount of money wasted on a few pieces of greasy fish and a drink.  I tried to put a happy face on it, though.

                He was next to me, still texting.  It suddenly hit me that I should look over his shoulder and read what he was writing.  I had never done anything like that before (I’m serious) in my entire dating life.  I was taught to respect people’s privacy.  Never had I demanded access to a boyfriend’s phone or asked to read a text.  This time, however, was different.  This guy wanted to get back together and I needed to know if I could trust him.

                You know where this is leading.  He was texting another woman, with me sitting right next to him in the crowded bar.

                He recoiled when he realized I was reading the texts.  It honestly took him a lot longer than it should have, probably because I’d never done something like that before.  Basically, the woman was brushing him off and he was entreating her to give him another chance. 

                Don’t give up on me.  I can’t believe you’re already giving up on me.

                You’re just like every other asshole guy out there, she wrote back.

                I nodded at the phone.  “Who’s she?”

                He deserves a C for creativity and a F on believability.  This was the same old story throughout our relationship.  At least every week a woman would pop up who thought she had some sort of claim on my guy.  And he always dismissed it the same way: She’s crazy. The first couple of times I bought it.  After all, I’d met quite a few odd people in MeetUp.  It seemed plausible that he could have had a few innocent exchanges with a woman about the group and she took it to mean something more. 

                Then it kept happening.  Around about, oh I don’t know, the tenth woman, it occurred to me that all these women can’t be crazy.  He must be fueling them somehow.

                I hadn’t even agreed to get back together with him and here we have another crazy woman already. You have to be fucking kidding me, excuse my language. 

                I stretched out my hand.  “Let me see your phone.”

                He yanked it out of reach, reddening.  “Why?”

                I shrugged, “Because if you’re not doing anything wrong, and she’s just crazy, that should be apparent from your entire exchange.  So, I want to see it.”

                He covered the screen with the palm of his hand.  “I’m not letting you see my phone.”

                “Well, we’re not getting back together then.”

                “We’re not together.  I don’t owe you anything.  I’m not doing anything wrong.”

                “Yup.  You’re right. You don’t owe me anything and you’re not doing anything wrong.  But I don’t like this behavior, so we’re not getting back together.  We can be friends, but any possibility of us having a relationship is now off the table.”

                He shrugged, still holding his precious phone in a death grip.  Like a baby with a baba.

                A few days passed.  He texted me a few times in a neutral tone, which I didn’t trust.  He was vindictive.  I didn’t believe in this mild-mannered, “sure, let’s just be friends,” exterior.  I was anxious, waiting for the inevitable meltdown.  Reminiscent of so many other past relationships.

                Tuesday rolled around.  As per usual, he was sending nasty e-mails out to his Meetup groups about their low attendance at events.  He didn’t seem to grasp the connection between the nasty emails and people dropping out of the group and/or not attending events.  I had tried, to no avail, to help him with this, even writing emails for him to send that were more friendly reminders.  He would then send the email I’d written with revisions that transformed the tone from friendly to nasty.  I gave up.  He just didn’t get it.

                I texted him when I received notice that I now had to pay a fee to belong to his group.  Unbelievable.  No one wants to go to his events already; he thinks charging a fee would help?

                I was met with one of his now familiar tirades about “these people” in his groups needing to get off their asses and start going to events.  For some reason he felt all these strangers owed him.  I didn’t understand where all of this was coming from.  His last event at Mickey Spillane’s had been well attended.  There had been over a dozen people from the group there.  In fact, so many that we couldn’t sit together.  Several times, people had requested that we move to a table outside (it had been an unseasonably warm night) so we could all sit together, and he ignored them, focused on texting the mystery woman.

                “It’s so cheap,” I said.  “People are going to stereotype you.  Don’t be a stereotype.”

                “What stereotype?” he asked. “I don’t know what you mean.”

                “You know, the stereotype about Jews,” I said.  “That they’re cheap.  People are going to say you’re being a cheap Jew.  I don’t think you should charge people.”

                He went ballistic. 

                He threw me out of the group, then emailed all thirteen hundred or so members to let them know that racism would not be tolerated in his group and that he believes people who are racist should be socially shamed and held up to ridicule.  He then went onto say that “this” person was an Anti-Semite and said Jews are cheap.  He wrote, “a lot of you will be surprised and disappointed, but this person is…Shannon Heuston.”

                Yup. One remark I said during a private conversation was twisted around as evidence that I was anti-Semitic (although I had once been hoping to MARRY him, so anti-Semitic am I) and then e-mailed to over a thousand people.

                I was finally done.

                After the initial shock wore off, I realized that of the 1300 people, very few of them probably open their MeetUp emails.  Most emails are probably deleted, unread.   And the members that read them are aware of his insanity.  But he had made his point, that he was such a toxic individual that it was detrimental for me to have contact with him.  The smallest offense was enough to motivate him to seek my utter destruction.  And I had no illusions about the true source of his rage.  This wasn’t about my possible anti-Semitism, this was about me rejecting him.  It just took him a couple of days to come up with a punishment.

                Months passed, and I held strong.  I blocked him on my phone and set his email address to spam (my ancient AOL email does not have a block option).  After about a month, he figured that out and created a new email address.  I still didn’t answer.  I was proud of my resolve.

                Then my mother died, and my resolve went to hell.  Both my sisters had significant others to cling to, while I was all alone, a fifth wheel.  I wanted someone to hold my hand and prop me up and fuss over me.  I didn’t want to be alone.  I caved.  I called him.  He came right away.

                Hope began to blossom in me.  Maybe this could work.  Perhaps he’d matured during our months apart.  He was attentive and considerate.  At first.

                It took only a few days for the cracks to appear.  He began sexting me.  I flat out told him that I had no interest. 

                “My mother just died,” I explained.

                He acknowledged this, but continued.

                Insert eye roll here.  Talk about the me too movement and men who will not take no for an answer. 

                Then, Tuesday night rolled around.  My mother had been dead one week.  We were talking about the reasons our relationship had failed before.  One of my prior issues was he would not let me go to his apartment.  He made all kinds of lame excuses for it at the time, claiming that it was messy.  And to be honest, parking was at a premium where he lived in Hartsdale so hanging out at his place wasn’t exactly convenient.  But it became an issue for me because he clearly didn’t want me there.  It was one of the chinks in our relationship, something that I knew wasn’t right.

                Guess what.  I still can’t go to his apartment.

                He had a new excuse.  “My ex-girlfriend lives in the next building and she thinks we’re still dating,” he said.  “If she sees you, it will cause a huge scene, and I just don’t want to deal with it.”

                WHAT!!!

                “How could she think she’s still dating you?  Do you have sex with her?”

                “No,” he said.  “She’s delusional.”

                Another alleged crazy woman that thinks she’s dating him.  I’ve lost count of how many that makes now.  Not to mention, I have a sneaking suspicion that I am, also, A crazy woman who thinks she’s dating him. I would be a fool to believe otherwise. Although, let’s face it, I’m already a fool for thinking anything could ever work with this guy.

                I hung up the phone, completely shocked.  Shocked that I believed all his apologies over the months when I wasn’t speaking to him.  Shocked that I thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d learned his lesson.   Shocked that I thought he’d step up and be there for me at one pf the lowest points of my life. We didn’t even make it through one week without a crazy woman who thinks she’s dating him showing up.  What the hell is it with this guy?

                So yeah, this was my week.  Moral of the story is assholes will be assholes.  It doesn’t matter what is happening in your life, they will still be an asshole.  It doesn’t matter that you didn’t speak to them for a few months and they begged you and said they were sorry, if you give them another chance they’ll revert to being an asshole again so fast your head will spin.  People only change in the movies.