Everybody has their own version of a horrible breakup story. Unfortunately, many of us have experienced being lied to, cheated on, taken advantage of, and even emotionally abused in a relationship. We’ve all been exposed to the countless horror stories that cut like a knife from either our own experiences or those of someone we know. I’m not trying to one-up anybody, but I’m pretty sure my horrible break-up story is worse than your co-worker’s, friend’s cousin, Amanda’s. Let’s just say that life gave me lemons, and I couldn’t make lemonade without asking for permission first.
Fresh out of my marriage, I thought I was finally on the greener side of the grass. Little did I know, that the grass on the other side wasn’t exactly green. If I had looked closer, I would have seen a field of mirrors, each held by a narcissist, reflecting only their own insecurities back at you—like a funhouse, but with more ego and fewer laughs.
My naive and extremely vulnerable self jumped right into a relationship that was pretty tumultuous from the start. I should have been able to see the events that happened coming from a mile away, based on the sheer fact that I was dealing with a man who validated his self-worth in selfies of his “good side” and conquests that consisted of women who wrote jokes on the internet, in 140 characters or less. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I truly believed that I was the exception and that the outcome for me would be different (Let’s all just take a minute to roll our eyes together).
Ignoring all the red flags that were punching me in the face as if I were the underdog in a match-up against Conor McGregor, I proceeded to not only let him into my life but actively pursue him. You see, when someone makes you prove your worth by comparing yourself to another woman, you find yourself in the middle of a sick and twisted triangle of jealousy, manipulation, and mind games. Each interaction felt like a silent competition, with him as the judge. It was a game I didn’t realize I had signed up for, and even though I ultimately “won”, the prize was a one-way ticket to emotional baggage claim.
The force of someone who possesses a manipulative personality is something you can only truly understand if you’ve experienced it firsthand. Before you can even question your own actions, you slowly become a shell of yourself being jerked around by invisible puppet strings like a helpless marionette. Some flags stand out more than others, but here is a list of just some of the red flags that I shouldn’t have ignored. Ladies take note:
- When a man posts more selfies than your 14-year-old niece who just discovered Snapchat, red flag.
- When a man still has a girlfriend when you meet him and he tells you he’s breaking it off with her for you and it takes him 3 months or more to do so, multiple red flags.
- When he describes all the women from his past as “crazy”, and blames them for everything that went wrong in their relationship, red flag.
- When a man won’t acknowledge or add you to his social media pages after a year of dating, MAJOR red flag.
- When a man gets up and leaves you at a restaurant (multiple times) for innocently texting a co-worker back about something work-related – red flag, but order a stiff drink.
- When the only time you’ve seen him cry was while watching a dancing three-legged dog on America’s Got Talent, get off the couch immediately and head to your nearest women’s shelter!
Under a spell of infatuation and the potential that things would improve, I began to settle into a lifestyle that was both comfortable and desirable not only myself but the outside world. Completely engulfed in co-habitative bliss, the sweet outweighed the sour in a lot of ways. Saturday mornings spent at the farmers market, long romantic walks through the aisles of HomeSense, and NASCAR Sundays curled up on the couch that took months to pick out. I always held on to the fact that this person really understood who I was and he knew how to make me happy – which was all part of his plan to control every aspect of our life. Our mutual love for fine wine and Turkish cotton towels was always the good that came with the bad. In my la la land of dodging flags and making mason jar salads, I became quite good at justifying his belittling and disrespectful actions towards not only myself but to my undeserving family and friends. Making excuses for someone else’s behaviour became my full-time job – one I never applied for, but I can now add “Master of Justification” to my resume.
A woman’s intuition is a powerful thing but we never seem to listen to it as much as we should. The feeling in your gut that someone is lying and projecting their own insecurities onto you to make you feel less than isn’t something we should ever take lying down. In my case, I was lying down on a king-sized mattress surrounded by ghosts of infidelity beside someone who claimed to love me but still felt the need to slip into any thirsty woman’s DM’s. As I got ready to leave on a much-needed girls’ trip to Naples, Florida, I had the rude awakening that my partner in crime had actually turned into my probation officer. Making me feel horrible regularly for treating myself was one of his favourite ways to deflect from the underlying truth at hand – that he was a selfish prick.
A lemon by most people’s definition is bitter, sour, and at times, even a little bit sweet. As a woman, my natural instinct when life hands me a dilapidated lemon is to bring it back to life by being a nurturing doormat (apparently). Funny that a person who gave themselves the nickname of a detoxifying fruit would also be the person who could benefit from said detox the most. Not ever having a substance abuse problem personally, it was hard for me to understand the need to blackout my emotions on a regular basis, but as I watched one of my decorative planters being thrown off the balcony of our apartment and into the side of a van in a drunken, irrational rage, I realized that my lemon wasn’t only sour, it was completely rotted from the inside out.
Surprisingly, the choice to leave wasn’t my own, my lemon ultimately sought out greener pastures which by his definition, meant the town “lush”. As I crammed as much as I could from our condo into the back of my 2 door hatchback, which included the rug that was ripped out from under me, half the furniture, and a set of mason jars that were completely replaceable that I took out of spite, I felt gutted, mostly to be leaving behind my access to the 5th-floor gym.
As I tried to piece together the remnants of what was left of my self-esteem, the whole situation, unfortunately, took a turn for the worse when shit started hitting the fan like a grotesque scene out of a Quinton Tarantino movie. Having a gut feeling versus knowing the cold hard facts, unfortunately, doesn’t change the outcome of your emotional state, but it does make you feel less like a crazy person.
Validation came when I received a message from a woman scorned in a neighbouring province. Radiating venom and heartbreak, her words were the ones that would finally make sense of it all. The pieces immediately fell into place with each exposed lie and the weight of my self-doubt was finally lifted from my betrayed shoulders. With every gruesome detail coming to light, including a charming little anecdote that he took both her and I to the same Blue Jays game, sneaking back and forth between innings (talk about a 7th-inning stretch, imma-right?!), I felt the overwhelming need for protection, which unfortunately meant cutting ties with the people who now represented a past life I’d sooner like to forget.
As each story started to surface from the bottom of the acidic sinkhole that was his own grave, I made the choice to take the high road…straight to my therapist. After an hour and a half of “can you fucking believe him?” revelations and coming to terms with the idea of dating again with newly developed trust issues (which lucky for me, happen to be trending right now), I spent the next year trying to recreate my own version of Eat Pray Love. Running from my feelings while sipping airplane-bottled wine in the emergency exit row, I realized turbulence was far more bearable in the air than the chaos I’d left behind on the ground.
Spending much-needed time with family on the West Coast, doing yoga in Tulum, being able to wonder at the sheer beauty of Athena Nike’s temple in ancient Greece, and even feeding giraffes while sipping Cab Sauv in sunny California, was really the only therapy that I needed. Not to mention, the drool-worthy Instagram photos that were revenge enough all on their own.
I’m not really sure how you ever truly recover from a traumatic experience of betrayed trust and being yelled at in public because clearly, I still have moments that I relive again and again in my mind, but just to know that my female intuition had been right the whole time, was pretty healing in itself.
I lost a lot more than just a cat and a set of Egyptian Cotton sheets from this experience, but I can safely say that what I gained from it was far more relevant. The life he provided felt priceless at times, but it ultimately came at a cost. Lemons may be a vibrant and refreshing fruit, but after being saturated in vodka waters at the local dive bar week after week, they start to become pretty transparent. I don’t know if I believe in karma, but I do think that what you put out comes back. If that’s the case, I hope I have a front-row seat…in first class.
Signing off from Naples, Florida ✈️👍🏼
xo
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