Harsh Words From a "Friend" and Former Romantic Interest
"I don't need to be scolded by you for not calling you. To be truthful, you haven't been on my mind. I don't mean to be rude, but that's the truth, and I've been busy." Those weren't his exact words, but pretty close.
This, from a man who claims to be a Christian. After five months of dating and a lot of emotional turmoil, that is how it ended.
"You have five movies of mine that I would like back. Let's just end this "charade" and stop the games. Just give me my stuff back," I said to him.
"I'll do that."
"Goodbye."
February, 2008 We Meet
Dave and I met on Yahoo Personals back in late February. Our first date went promisingly well. During our dinner conversation we discussed what each other was looking for, and among other things he said that he didn't want to be alone. Everything was pointing to him wanting a relationship; even his profile on the personals site seemed clear that that was what he wanted. During dinner he told me I was very pretty. That was nice. I like a man to give me compliments. Unfortunately, I was never to hear that again after that first night.
He counted off the important things in his life: His job, his kids, his music, (which he was trying to publish) and his pilot’s license and interest in flying. He seemed to have everything sort of neatly categorized.
After dinner, we sat in my car while he played a CD for me; it was his music that he composed and sang. He was very cute and we were having a good time together. I felt like he wanted to kiss me, and I wanted him to, but he seemed a little shy. I had some hand cream in my car (not what you're thinking) and offered to give him a hand massage, which he accepted.
The attraction, I believed, was mutual. He asked if I wanted to go to a bar for a few drinks, and we did. We were like teenagers, making out, rubbing each other’s backs; it was wonderful. I really felt like I had finally met someone I'd like to get to know better.
He told me again that I was very pretty and that he was sexually attracted to me. I guess the alcohol was working its magic. I was never to hear those words again.
We went out to my car when the bar was closing. We had been together from 3 p.m. that afternoon and it was now about 2 a.m., a very long and successful date, in my estimation. We made out in my car and for the first and only time in our relationship, I he said to me: "I want to make love to you."
I was very attracted to him, enjoyed his company and really wanted to make a go of things. But I didn't want to seem needy or desperate, which I'm not. Taking my mom's advice, which is "don't call a man," I would not call him, but waited for his calls. He began to call me fairly regularly after our first date. We had phone sex several times.
Bible College and Strip Clubs
At the time of us meeting he had only been divorced a little over a year. He had been married for 17 years and his wife divorced him. Right up until the end, he said, he didn't want it. Later, it would come out that he never was "in love" with his wife. He even went to counseling about that. He said that he loved her, but was never "in love" with her.
He had gone to Bible college and had pastored a church for a time. But it didn’t work out.
He told me about going to strip clubs a few times while he was married, saying his wife had “cut him off.” I had to wonder though, about a Christian, a former pastor, that would go to a strip club. I know Christians aren’t perfect. I'm a born again Christian too, and I’ve done some things I’d rather not talk about. But the kind of characters that go to a strip club? I know all about it, since my daughter is a stripper. We wondered if they had met each other.
His financial situation was bad; he didn't have cable TV and had only one channel, and did not have internet. He had three teenagers and was paying child support for them, plus alimony to his ex. He always accepted part of the blame for the divorce, saying he was drinking too much and wasn't doing what he should.
He'd had several dates and one relationship since his divorce, and that woman ended it with him. He explained that the "contact just ended." Her calls to him became infrequent, and she wasn't returning his calls. He never did get into the specifics of their relationship, but he did tell me there was never any sexual contact at all in the three months they dated. He also said he was not in love with her. This admission would come into play later in our relationship. You dated a woman for three months and there was never any sex of any kind?
For the second date, he came to my house and I cooked dinner. He brought a 12 pack of beer, and we each had a few. We got pretty cozy with each other, ending up in my bed naked, but we didn't have sex. We both believed, as Christians, that sex should be reserved for married couples. Obviously, being in bed together naked was not something God would approve of, not to mention it was only our second date. But I threw all caution and good sense out the window, because I was so attracted to him.
Three Strikes You’re Out?
The Easter holiday was approaching and I invited him over for dinner. He knew that my daughter, age 21, was in a lesbian relationship, and that she and her girlfriend would be coming over for dinner. He called me on Easter morning on his way to church to cancel coming over. His reason for cancelling astonished me.
"There's just going to be way too much sexual tension in that atmosphere" he said. He went on to say that he didn't know if I knew it, but men were turned on by the thought of two women together. "They'll be there, and then later on my hands will be all over you and I won't be able to stop." I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
There were two other incidents of him "cancelling" on me early in our dating relationship. We had talked about getting together on one Sunday, after I got off work. He was to call me on that day and we would finalize the plans. I got dressed up, took extra care with my hair and makeup, and really looked forward to seeing him.
I was getting off at 2 p.m., and by about 1:15 I hadn't heard from him. I called him, and he said he was still in bed and wasn't feeling good. Could he have not called me to let me know this? Apparently not. He had mentioned a few times that during the end of his marriage, he was drinking too much. As a person who sometimes drinks to excess, I know all about hangovers. I concluded he was hungover, as he had been out the night before. But he didn't want to admit it.
I was very disappointed. I asked if he just didn't want to see me and was using sickness as an excuse. "Why would I do that?" he said.
Not too long after both of those incidents, (which I should have seen the big warning flags then,) again we were talking about getting together on a Thursday evening, after I got off work, which was at 7 p.m. Again, he was to call me, to finalize plans. He never called. I left a message and said, "You're an even bigger dickhead then I thought you were before." Dickhead had kind of become my pet name for him after his other aforementioned inconsiderate behavior. It was kind of a joke between us.
When I spoke to him next, he said something to the effect that he had a family situation, and that I could not be a "priority" that evening. He didn't apologize, just stated that he "knew I was upset," which I found disconcerting because he didn't apologize for the other times he ditched me, either.
This was the third strike. It was obvious he was inconsiderate, and frankly, the reasoning for not coming to Easter dinner because of my gay daughter was kind of weird. I spoke to a few people about that particular incident, and they agreed. But, I wasn't giving up on him yet.
Confusion
Over the next few months, I went out to his place many times. He lived about 65 miles away, so it was not a short trip. With road construction and so forth, a few times it took me over an hour and a half to get to him.
He called me on a regular basis, but I noticed after we'd seen each other he would go two or three days without calling me, which always upset me. I guess this was his way of saying, "we're not in a relationship and I don't have to call you every day." I kind of hoped if we just kept seeing each other, it would fall into a relationship.
One night during our "non-sex" sex, in the heat of passion, I told him I loved him. He didn't respond. Later when he walked me out to my car, I said, "I do love you, I really do." He responded with a dickheaded statement. "You do? That's because you don't know anyone else." Huh? Later when I thought about it, I wasn’t so sure if I was confusing love with sexual attraction. After all, there were several things about him that bothered me.
Gay?
I was always the one to initiate the kissing and sexual contact. Was he not attracted to me? He certainly had no problem in getting aroused when I started kissing him. Then I thought about how he had never had any sex at all with his previous girlfriend. Could he be gay?
The subject came up once or twice because he joked about how he liked to decorate his house. He had done some creative painting in a couple of his rooms and seemed to enjoy it. Of course, that doesn't make a man gay. For some reason he did state a couple of times, "I like women," and, "I have never wanted to be with a man."
Also, he was not affectionate. I'm a touchy-feely kind of gal, and I like to give and receive lots of affection. He would never give me compliments, except during one of our conversations about him not wanting a serious relationship where he would tell me, I was witty and funny, and he enjoyed my company. But he also told me he wasn’t in love with me.
Interesting. He was never in love with his wife, he wasn't in love with the other woman he had a relationship with, and after several months, he wasn't in love with me. Was he even capable of falling in love with anyone?
No Relationship
I’m a giving person. One time, I brought him a few gifts, because his "bachelor pad" as he called it, needed things. I got him a clock for his wall, a coffee mug, a frame for a picture of him and his kids that he had showed me, and salt and peppers shakers. He put gas in my car several times on my trips out there, and always paid for our dinners out, so I figured it would be nice to do something for him.
After at least five times of me going out there, I should have insisted he come out to my place. But in that respect I almost felt like I was treading on eggshells. I rationalized that he worked full time, and did a lot of driving for his job. I only worked part time and didn't do much driving. At one point he said something like, "Let's not get all weird about this; how many times I've been out there or how many times you've been out here." Again, very inconsiderate.
After a few months of dating, I asked him to go to Delaware with me to visit my brother and his wife. He was very insistent that he would not, and did not, want to go. It is worth mentioning at this point that we'd had a few discussions about our "relationship," which he stated he did not want a "deep" or "serious" relationship. I guess he felt meeting my family members was getting to close to a “relationship.” At one point, I hung up the phone on him. We didn’t talk for a few days after that.
After his refusal to go away with me I was very upset. The next day I sent him an email, which was probably a lousy thing to do, but I did it. It said, "I'll save you the trouble of having a conversation you likely don't want to have. Obviously I’m not what you are looking for. Goodbye, Dave." And I really meant it.
He responded in the subject line, Huh???? He stated that even if we were not meant to be together romantically, that we still needed each other as "Christian friends and family." I ended up apologizing and felt guilty for trying to end things with him in an email. It was a foreshadowing of what was to come.
The Personals and the Police
All this time, now several months into dating, he was still on Yahoo personals every day. I would go on to check to see if he had been on. It really bothered me. He told me he wasn’t looking for anyone else, but I kind of understood it that we were only seeing each other. When I asked him about it, he said he just goes on there to check if he got any mail, that he was no longer a paid member. I'm not sure, but I think you have to be a paid member to read your mail, or at least to respond to it.
This did not make me feel very confident. If he really had any feelings for me, why would he still be checking the personals site?
Another interesting thing that happened during the course of this relationship was his arrest for fleeing from the police. He had been out drinking one March evening, when we'd been dating for a month, ran a red light and the police pursued him. He ended up with a shitload of police chasing him through a couple of counties, and were only able to put an end to it with stopsticks.
He did not want to tell me what happened; he hadn't called or emailed me for a few days, so I was wondering. When he finally did email me, he said he’d been away from his phone and a computer for a few days. He said that something had happened, but it would all work out, and someday he would tell me the story.
Doing a search on the internet, I found the story in the local Steubenville paper. I called him and left a message and said obviously he has a problem and that I would be there for him. He later emailed me and said something like, "I hope you don't hate me," and "I'm probably not good for a relationship right now." I should have listened more closely to that particular statement.
I had gotten my first and only DUI last summer, and had told him about it. While I thought it was pretty balsy of him to run from the police, I didn't pass judgement on him for it.
He had gotten another DUI several years ago. Luckily for him, with this incident, he got off pretty easy; basically a slap on the wrist.
Warnings
People were warning me about him and some didn't know all the details. My coworker heard about some of his behavior, and said I should end it with him. My mom was adamant in her opinion that he did not want a relationship and she strongly suggested I move on. But, not one to listen to others, I went ahead with continuing to see him.
Dave was an insurance salesman, and I had my daughter purchase an annuity from him: a $25,000 investment. I have power of attorney so I can assist her in investments, since she's not interested in it. He even gave me $50 for the referral. It was a completely legit investment although for a minute I wondered if I was giving him my daughter's money and he would disappear. I think anyone would have that thought, when it comes to that kind of money.
One night I brought over a bunch of movies to his place. We never did end up watching them, because as usual we ended up in his bedroom for a good part of the night.
The Last Time I Would See Him
We'd had discussions about not "going all the way" because we both agreed it was a violation of God's laws. However, isn't performing oral sex on a man sex? Well, Bill Clinton redefined that. Anyway, he wasn't willing to do it to me. When I asked, he said, he wasn't "ready" for that. Well, that night I was ready for all of it, and was getting frustrated. But, OK, I’d respect his feelings. The least he could do would be to stay over.
He didn't want to. "Did you think I was going to when I said I would come over?" he asked me. I said I really hadn't thought about it, but that I wanted him too. It was around 11 p.m. and he had a long ride home. "I won't be able to sleep," he said. Then he further gave the excuse that a buddy of his was supposed to call in the morning and they were going to go flying.
I was noticeably upset and he did something he never did before. Reached out to me and gave me a big, hearty hug. At that moment, I knew something was different; something had changed. I had the premonition that he was giving me that "friendly hug" to let me know that we really are just "friends."
The Dumping via email
After that night, for the first time since I met him, five days went by without a phone call or even an email. At this point, I was completely emotionally drained by this guy and his nonsense. On the sixth day of no contact, he sent me an email. I have since deleted it, but can recall the significant parts because I read it so many times.
After telling me some stuff about his kids and so forth, he wrote, "The other event in my life now is our relationship. It seems you want to be more serious than I do...there is nothing wrong with that...I'm just not ready." He went on to tell me he loved me "as a friend" and that I was witty and funny and great to be with. I'd heard that before.
"It would be a loss for both of us if we lost contact," he continued. To say I was angry, hurt and disappointed would be an understatement. But why hadn't I heeded the warning signs? And there were so many: me starting all the romantic advances, his inability to compliment me or spontaneously kiss me or hold my hand, his not coming out to my place, not to mention that every conversation we had was primarily about him. His kids, his music, his job, his flying, his karate, his working out. The most he could ask me after he was talked out was "Are you working tomorrow?" And then there were the three times early on that he canceled on me, and never apologized for.
Too Many Beers and too Many Responses
He called me once or twice, and I did not answer or respond, and he sent me another email. In it, he said that I deserved a good man who would take care of me. He wrote like we were still on a friendly basis and everything was just fine.
About a week later, I was home drinking, and I sent him the lyrics to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” I added comments to some of the lines, pointing out a couple of times how he dumped me in an email. I also wrote that I didn’t want to be just “friends.” He responded with two emails, one saying, “That song is bullshit,” which is equivalent to saying, “Your feelings are bullshit.” The second email he sent stated that he did not dump me, that it was in fact me, dumping him!
A week or so went by and one night yet again I had a few too many beers. I tried calling him at 2 a.m. It went into his voicemail, but I didn’t leave a message. A couple of days later he called me and left a message saying he knew I tried to call, but didn’t know what time it was at.
I ignored this call, and decided I would not contact him no matter what. However, he did have five of my movies on video, and a knife that belongs to a set that I had brought over when I cooked there one night. I wanted my things back. Again, my mom advised to just forget about it. I can now see why.
After another night of too many beers, I called him at 3 a.m. Funny the things we do, that we do drunk, that we would not do sober. I hung up before he answered, but he immediately called me back. I said I called him by mistake and he said he would call me at a better time to talk.
When a week went by without him calling me, I decided to send him an email. I asked for my things back, and told him he could mail the stuff to me if he liked, and I gave him my address. That was all I wrote. No pleasantries, now how are you’s.
About five days went by and he did not respond to my email or call me. I believe he did this to "get even" with me for not responding to his phone calls and emails, at least not in a timely manner. Because I wanted my things back, and yes, because I wanted some closure in this whole situation, I called him, breaking my rule yet again of not contacting him.
It was a Friday around 5:30 p.m when I called him and he was at work. His voice sounded friendly, almost glad to hear from me. He said he got my email. He was never clear why he didn’t respond to it. When I mentioned the knife of mine that he had, he made a joke about me using it on him. It gave me the opening I needed. I told him the last guy who dumped me in an email got castrated, so yes, he could expect me to use it on him.
Like before, he made a statement that he did not dump me via email, that I dumped him. I said something like, "You wrote me and told me you wanted to stop seeing me and just wanted to be friends."
"Well that's not what I meant." I was really confused now. Did the cyberworld somehow change the words that he wrote in the email? There was no way I misconstrued what he wrote. But now he was saying he hadn't wanted to end things with me in that email.
"Look, we'll talk, I have to get ready for this appointment. I will call you," he stressed, "and we will get together and we'll talk." OK, fine.
Eight days went by and he did not call me. I finally called him, furious. I knew it was over between us, because at this point, I absoultely no longer wanted to date him. I really felt he was playing games by not calling me. Plus, he knew that I wanted my things back.
His voice was strained when he answered. It was not the friendly voice of the last conversation. I would describe it as confrontational. This angered me, and it came out.
"I'm really pissed off at you for not calling me," I said. I was so angry, I was shaking. Everything negative that had happened in the five months of dating him was in my tone of voice.
"A friend would treat me better than that."
"We are friends," he said. Oh really. But you don't call me like you said you would. And then have the gall to say "You haven't been on my mind." That's some friend. It was a statement made to really hurt me, and it did. But after thinking about it, I don't believe it to be true. I'm sure in that week he did think about me, but was getting his "revenge" by avoiding me and making it a point to not call me. I did nothing to deserve this.
After making his statement about not wanting to be "scolded" by me for not calling, he went on to say life is too short to harbor negative feelings and animosity towards one another. He wanted off the hook for his stupid behavior, which I guarantee he thinks he did nothing wrong.
As was usual with him, he told me that he'd been busy with his kids, and I sat there barely listening, steaming, thinking how I would respond to him.
When I said it was time to end the charade, he said, "It's not a charade. Nothing I say to you is go to change your opinion."
I told him I wanted my things back and he said "I'll do that."
Goodbye.
