Just a quick note to let you know that the protest against the AVFM Conference at the Doubletree in Detroit is happening right now. You can check the hashtag #NoMRA on Twitter for live updates. Here’s a Ms Magazine blog piece with more details.
I’ll have some thoughts on it all later.
Photo from @Katie_Speak on Twitter.
Thank you, David and thank you, marinerachel for letting us know you are safe. My thoughts are with you.
@marinerachel, sometimes, when it’s all too much you have to stop fighting and let other people take care of you for a while. Let your friends and family and healthcare professionals take care of you and keep you safe, and you just be gentle to yourself and accept their help whenever you need it.
And thank you David.
I know he was very difficult with one ex, who left him after two years. Out of love for her, he got his life on track and won her back as well as getting into medical school. She is smart and kind and wonderful and challenged him and they were good together but they grew apart. Additionally, his emotional immaturity and immaturity in general exhausted her. Until he broke up from the next one she refused to speak to him because he’d conducted himself so appallingly after their break-up.
The one after that he hooked up with while he was still living with but broken up from the previous one. She was the one and he was going to get things right with her sinse they hadn’t worked out with the previous one. He quickly established a life with her. She was extremely young and dumb and didn’t know how to have a meaningful relationship though. It became a parent-child relationship. He proposed relationship therapy in a desperate bid to save the relationship. She never engaged. She just started dating someone else while they were still living together.
And with me, a year in, after I had let him take out all his anger at his most recent ex on me, after I had consoled him, made this man my entire life, given him my heart and done everything in my power to make him feel safe and secure with me, he told me let’s just be friends. He told me he wanted to be friends like he and the first ex are. No. He turned his whole life around to get her back. He invested everything in her and gave the relationship an honest try. Then, after YEARS of her being angry with him, only after his more recent ex gave him a taste of his own medicine, was she willing to hear his apologies. In my case, he decided he didn’t like me overnight after I gave him everything for over a year and he stripped me of my self-esteem. Of course we can’t be friends. He never put any effort into our relationship because he never cared about me. He never felt guilty for the harm he’d caused me. He never apologised or shed a tear. Of course we can’t be friends, not now and not ever.
As is my habit, I invested everything in this relationship over the last year. As a result, I have no friends. I have my big ex who loves me and is kind and supportive but we frustrate the shit out of one another hence our inability to be together. I have a friend from high school. I have a sister. I have a colleague I grew up with. That’s it though and I’m only close to two of them. I’m not close to my family at all. I’m very alone.
Hon, there’s “friends” and then there’s real friends. And the latter, I find I don’t need very many of because they’re so super awesome that each of them alone can lift my spirits. And I’ve found that as life moves on, the number of real friends goes up and down, but it always, *always* goes up eventually.
You’re sounding so much better. I wish I could be there in person for you, because you deserve happiness in your life.
I’ll give the cats some more pets for you. 🙂
Thank you. I love cats. I desperately miss the cat of the man who dumped me.
@marinerachel, make yourself a promise. Promise yourself that when you in the right place, when you are ready, you will have your own cat.
The emotions reading through this thread! I’m so glad you’re somewhere safe now Marinerachel. All I can say is what everyone else has said: you’re allowed to be hurt and angry over what this tool did to you but by all accounts you will be MUCH better off without him. He sounds like a pain in the arse and completely not worthy of you. Your health and safety is paramount and no one is allowed to make you feel otherwise. It’s going to be a long journey from now but I’m glad you’ve taken the first steps.
The neighbour cats send purrs and leg brushings.
I was in a very similar position about eighteen years ago – my ex’s big issue being ultra-possessive jealousy, whose irrationality I realised when her reaction to absolutely clinching proof that I was miles away from an alleged romantic assignation at the time that it was supposedly going on was anger rather than relief (“How dare you undermine my carefully worked-out conspiracy theory!”) – but once I’d taken the big step of ending it, the little steps of piecing my life back together turned out to be surprisingly straightforward.
Most crucially, the experience taught me what to avoid in the future – so when I had another girlfriend who showed similar tendencies, I pulled the plug in weeks rather than months. In her case it was because she told me a point-blank lie about something important, which was particularly ironic given the number of times she’d openly disbelieved me when I’d told her the gospel truth and insisted that trust was all-important to her.
Looking back, both those relationships would have been absolutely disastrous in the longer term, so although I hated having to break them off at the time, I absolutely made the right decision – and I’m far, far happier now than I was then. And I’m sure you will be too: not least because you’ve got plenty of virtual support right now.
I feel for you, marinerachel. It’s so bad when you know that someone is capable of so much and they’re giving nothing instead.
Giving is a choice. You chose to be brave and give as much as you could to someone you loved and cherished. He chose to be a coward and use his melancholy and hurt as a shield while he held onto his feelings like they were precious jewels. You tried to encourage the best in him, and he instead shoved you away so that he could luxuriate in his bitterness. It’s a sad narrative he’s written for his life; I’d hate to go through the next sixty years using people to feed my bruised ego and then tossing them aside the minute they asked for anything in return. I’d hate to have a great mind and body and accessorize them with eternal anger and no generosity of spirit.
It sounds like he’d decided that this was the way he wanted to lead his life before you came on the scene. And it’s supremely sad. I’d feel sorry for this misguided wounded man if he wasn’t using his past as an excuse to control and abuse a good woman who wants nothing but love and partnership. I only know you from reading your comments online, marinerachel, but you always have something kind or smart or funny to say. He’s lost someone kind and funny and smart, and it’s all his own stupid fault. Nothing you did made him like this. Nothing you could have done would have changed him. Because he doesn’t want to change. And that is his tragedy, his own personal hell.
I’m so sorry that you’re hurting so badly. This was not your fault. You deserve kindness and generosity and enthusiasm and kisses and sharing. You deserve all the love and help and understanding that you’re getting right now and that you will get in the future. Be kind to yourself, take care of yourself, and don’t doubt your own courage. You deserve all the good things.
@marinerachel
I am late to this discussion as well, but I am very glad to read you are safe and have a good friend looking after you. I share the sentiment of all the posters before me and while we don’t know each other as I am new to this site, I still care, as I’ve been reading your comments and thoughts on this site for longer than I have been active on here. You are a good person and deserving of all the love and care of those around you. Co-signing on flying mouse’s comment – You deserve all good things!
@marinerachel
I woke up about an hour ago and was so happy you are doing okay as it seems. You mentioned you were all alone. Well you are not now because apparently with all the love sent your way by the community here at We hunted the mammoth -you are now not alone. Keep your chin up and anytime your in distress you can always come on here to get support from your online comrades here. You will excel in life remember that and you matter in this world because people care about your well being.
One step forward, two steps back. He knows any communication he has with me at this point is profoundly harmful to me. I’ve begged him to leave me alone, to stop hurting me. Obviously, it’s fine to contact me if he’s dying or something but otherwise, no. I want to erase him from my life. The fewer reminders I have of him and the damage he’s done, the better. I blocked the vast majority of avenues for him to contact me via, leaving e-mail open for extreme circumstances. Otherwise, I’ll contact him if anything needs to be said, which it won’t. My final comment to his was a voicemail saying I’d begun to miscarry so he had nothing to worry about. He sent me a shitty little e-mail in response, pretending to be concerned about me and telling me he’d like to be kept informed, oh, but only until this ordeal is over for me. It’s not that he cares or wants me in his life. He never did. It’s that he doesn’t want to feel guilty while I’m suffering with something he’s in part responsible for.
And I’m right back to that dark place.
marinerachel,
I am so happy to wake up to the news that you are safe. Many purrs to you from my kitty and me.
My comment crossed posted with yours. I’m so sorry. So sorry he keeps out-shitheading-himself. But you’re right, you don’t need to be in contact with him.
You can be heard here. We will listen to you.
Continued internet hugs, from me.
You aren’t alone. You’re worthwhile.
I’m so sorry for your loss, and I’m sorry you’re in a dark place, but I’m glad you’re hanging on. You can do this.
I’m not safe. This is the third day I’ve been unable to bring myself to eat or keep fluids down. My sight is impaired. I’m calling an ambulance. I can’t expect my friend to care for me in this state. I need to be in hospital.
You’re on the right track in wanting to cut him off from your life for good. He has no right to keep hurting you like this. I’m confident that one day you will be able to live peacefully without a trace of him anywhere in your life.
I’m glad you are going to seek the medical attention you need. Take care.
Thank you for calling the ambulance. You are in my thoughts and I wish the best for you.
You’re in our thoughts and prayers as well. You’re doing the right thing.
Calling the ambulance is obviously the right thing to do. Take care of yourself, and make sure you get the care you need. We are all thinking of you.
Keep us updated, please, marinerachel.
Calling an ambulance is the right call, and I’m glad you’re making it.
marinerachel, I just want you to know that we are so proud of you. I know how it can be, to feel like you don’t deserve people to care about you, or to have pride in something that you think should be such a small action, but I’ve been in the dark place, and I know a lot of other people here have as well, and choosing to take care of yourself, in that moment, is damn heroic. Engaging in self-care can be a radical and difficult choice, and we are proud of you for choosing it.
Medical help sounds like a really good plan.
You are a worthwhile person, and as grumpycatisagirl said, we can hear you.