There's this guy. Let's call him D. He hangs around the senior apartments, sitting on a lawn chair he's put on a platform (which holds a large electrical switching box, probably used for phone or internet) above all the people who go outside the apartment to smoke. Mostly he hangs around the women.
I recognized him almost immediately. Not that I knew immediately who he was on a personal level, but I knew his ilk. I'd seen it up close and personal a number of times when I was much younger.
He likes to paint himself as just someone who cares. Someone who is always there for the weak and vulnerable. Someone who is a giver.
At first I thought he was homeless, because he'd come out early in the morning, and stay all day, sitting on his "throne". I spoke to him only a couple times, because on our very second meeting, I asked how he was doing today, and he responded "just here seeking a little warmth". The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I didn't talk to him much after that. The next day he was flirting with my neighbor, her giggles and blushes telling some of the story, but within a couple days, I found out he was sleeping with another resident. Now he's a young man, probably in his mid-30's, and good looking, so some of the lonelier women are flattered by his attentions. One woman, advanced in age and wheelchair bound, is pretty sure they're in love.
Most of the women will say he owns his own home and has a great job, and has lots of money. That he's a great "catch". But I've noticed while he starts out as an "aide" to some of these women, or a helper of some sort, sooner or later they are footing the bills and having sex, and there are a lot of tears involved. The mask slips, but by then some of the women are in deep.
For him, it's all about power and control, and they're easy marks. He's begun publicly exposing himself, but the women are afraid to come forward, especially if he's previously "dated" them. It's getting ugly, and even worse, he has keys to the building and several of the apartments. The management has banned him from the property in the past, but if he can convince one of the women to name him as an aide, there's nothing they can do to keep him out.
I've had too much experience myself with that kind of individual: one who feels the need to exert power. My first husband was less than subtle about it. I didn't see it at first, how my friends fell away (mostly, I thought, because we grew apart after I met him) and how the things I loved to do gradually got replaced with the things he loved to do, which was pretty exclusively gaming and sci fi. I never went dancing anymore, didn't window shop with my friends, never went camping or fishing. Oh, I thought that gaming and sci fi were fine, and that maybe I enjoyed those a little more because I was with him, but I still missed those other things.
I remember one day we were playing D&D in the dorms and he chipped in $1.50 for pizza and gave me a slice. The guys all laughed and said that I must be pretty special, because they'd never seen the inside of his wallet before. I took that as flattery. A few years later, I was supporting both of us and giving him money to buy my birthday present (which he then spent on other things). The deal was I support him through school, then he supports me through school. Of course, that never happened.
I remember one day at work a woman was telling me that her husband hit her, and had been for a few years, and she didn't know what to do. I felt pretty smug telling her if my husband ever hit me, I'd be gone in a flash. It wasn't too long after that that he started unplugging the phone from the wall and taking it to his summer internship with him so I couldn't call my old friends (not that I would have even thought about doing it back then), Within 6 months he became physically violent. I was with him for almost 7 years before the divorce after that.
Sometimes it's really easy to get sucked in. My second husband was also violent. Thing is, in both instances, I saw flaws. But I thought of them as "diamonds in the rough". They had problems that I thought just needed love and care. Many of us are raised on Beauty and the Beast thinking: that men have some great flaw that can shield their tender loving hearts, and we women must only bear with it lovingly until that goodness is revealed.
I had a friend, let's call her Darling, who saw my first husband for what he was right away. She refused to talk poorly about him, but also refused to come to my wedding. She was my first friend to "fall away". Later I found out that he had warned her off.
Years later, after we reconnected, she met a man who treated her like gold. He was young and handsome, but he gave me the creeps, and she said that he had a head injury from being hit by a car, and just needed a little understanding. I guess it's easier for those of us on the outside, because it wasn't too long before he started forbidding her doing this and that, and destroying her possessions (he literally peed on her family Bible), as I found out later. Of course until things got really bad, she excused his behavior (he loves me, he's just got this head injury that makes him a little unpredictable at times). Long story short, things got worse and worse, until she left, when he then tracker her to her cousin's house and took her at knifepoint in the car, and caused the car to crash. Eventually, the broken rib that pierced her lung healed, but the scarring to her lung, with the additional issues due to her health issues (she was handicapped from birth, spinal issues, as well as some other deformities) lead to the decline in her respiratory system that killed her at a young age.
Men who love control like that often come off at first as charming and helpful. They seek to make their targets (often women who are older, handicapped in some way, or who don't fit conventional standards of beauty) feel valued and cherished, while building dependence and stripping away outside connection, almost like a cult. They have a pathological need to be needed, and to express themselves as secure and caring individuals, until the need secures the target, at which point any show of real independence of thought or interest is quashed with increasing levels of anger, which is at first often seen as protectiveness.
The one thing I've learned, seeing my own experiences, those of Darling, and those of the women around me, is that pointing out red flags seldom if ever does any good, and is often met with resentment by women who are in the stage where they are willing to accept the flaws with full faith that their "beast" is not a beast, but a diamond in the rough. Often we think we don't deserve better. We do. Often there is no prince behind the head injury, the "stress", or what ever other excuse we give when our significant others fail to shine. It's not up to us to fix them. It's up to us to be true to ourselves, who we are, and to try to take off the rose colored glasses, to shake off the feeling of need, and to love ourselves enough to know we have value outside of what is being taken from us.
Comments
Post a Comment