Confessions of a libra

“Bad Dreams” by Cho Gi-Seok

17.11.24

Ladies and gentleman, I’m gonna tell you ’bout

One of the many men, name is irrelevant, height is irrelevant

He was a one out of ten, I wish that I knew it then…

What if I told you that at the ripe old age of 25 I found myself in couple’s counselling with a boyfriend. Not my husband, not my fiancé, but my boyfriend. Granted, I thought we would marry at the time. I found myself at 25 craving a serious relationship, believing myself to be mature enough. I can remember how tangible it felt back then. Having already had glimpses of the kind of union I craved in my past relationships, I was ready to no longer have near misses. Why couldn’t I get the full package? I was deserving, surely. Enter this man. I want to go into detail about how we got together but I’d rather save that for another time. All you need to know is, going into it there were a few things that made the prospect exciting. He knew my achilles heel for reasons I will fail again to mention. He postured his intellect, he was attentive, he was shameless about his interest and agreed with me on all the core values. He bid his time, becoming my friend first, gaining my trust and comfortability.

I saw it as a practical romance. Yes, I fell for him but really I fell for the idea of what we could have. So, we began with a bang. We went hard and fast. Inseparable. I found myself pouring every bit of myself into it. In typical libra fashion being in a relationship can add colour and lifeforce to the everyday. Creatively, I was working on a business and it was occupying so much of my time. Well where did it go wrong, you might be wondering. If your mating strategy is to tell someone everything they want to hear, how quickly do you think you would be rumbled? We lived together pretty shortly after meeting. Up until then the long-distance romance was budding with virtual dates, phone calls etc. From this point on we will be referring to the man in question as Rascal. Rascal’s dependence on his parent was the very first ick. It’s a hard one because as a woman, you want to be with a man with good family values. However, there is a clear distinction between that and a Mama’s boy. I told myself that since we were raised in different cultures, what I was missing was the cultural element. To give an example of the level of dependence, I am talking while his parent recovered from invasive surgery, he thought it pertinent to ask her what he should eat for dinner. A wave of embarrassment washes over me as I write this.

Home is where the heart is and this man slowly made the home a nightmare. I set it all up for us. All he had to do was come into the space and respect it. I managed to do the bulk of the chores, in typical woman fashion. Except, my patience for a partner who will not act like a grown man is quite limited. Oh, I tried to ‘train’ him. I would do little tutorials on how to do the separate tasks that I required. I would clean the half of the house that I thought was harder and allocated him easier tasks. I meal planned for several weeks and his job was just to state whether or not he approved of the flavour combinations. There is something so fucking dejecting about waking up every day and thinking you have a partner in crime before realising you’re merely acting it out. I could see within a month of living together that serious work needed to be done. While all these things were happening, I felt very confused. I felt largely happy except for just these little things. All I wanted was for those little things to not be things anymore. That was too difficult.

So I’ll take this front row seat

And baby, baby, you can go ahead

Cry those Oscar winning tears…

Emotional manipulation is defined as the altering of realities, or statements in order to confuse you. It took me time to accept that I was being manipulated, even after being told by one of his family members. It truly hit me when he started using his tears to get out of conflict. “Honey, please stop waiting for the bins to overflow, when it’s one of very few jobs you have.” Imagine the response being, “nothing I do is ever good enough for you!” He would proceed to cry, and I would end up comforting him. It was common for me to say things like; you’re twisting what I am telling you, I am not trying to treat you like your dad treated you before he left, I’m sorry for making you upset. The internal rage I hold at my empathy being abused like that. This ball of resentment built and it built fast. He wasn’t the only man to try and emotionally manipulate me. He’s just the one that did it the most blatantly and with no finesse. Somehow, that arose in me a rage and a hate that I had never felt before. I felt that he insulted my intelligence by believing he could continue using those tears to absolve him of adult responsibility. How dare he have me comforting him about his father leaving as though that was unique to just him. The empathy I extended to this man is far from what he deserved.

I learned in that relationship that I am capable of great coldness and apathy. Once his little pattern set in, any time he would start crying, I would have to act out the empathy that normally comes naturally. Sometimes I wanted to burst into laughter because he cried in the most comical expressions you’ve ever seen. There’s a toddler on google images who displays the same expressions as that grown man did. That man, born a whole year before me but wanted to be my baby.

You can miss me with the bullshit

I can see right through your tears (Tears, baby)

Nine o’clock entertainment

Oh, man, I wish I could tape it

Sit down, no tissues

No string section, no tiny voilin

For the last time, I’m your audience…

I still remember the day we broke up like it was yesterday. I started off by warning his mother about what I was about to do. It felt right for the relationship that they had. She tried to stop me, of course. She said she couldn’t understand my decision because she wouldn’t make the same one in similar circumstances. She then told me that she believed he truly had issues that a month in a psychiatric ward would go a long way to resolving. I was floored that she would say that so flippantly with everything that man had put me through. Why she had not had him admitted is beyond me. I’m not sure if I should blame nature or nurture for how he turned out. I walked into the apartment and told him we were going to have a chat. We sat in our loungeroom and I stated my case. Immediate tears. My heart felt like stone. I have never been so scared of my own disposition. I patted his shoulder tentatively (as you imagine a robot would) in comfort as he screamed at me with saliva going everywhere.

“Just admit it, it’s obvious that you never loved me.”

“How can you just look at me like that emotionless.”

“You’re so cold.”

I agreed with everything he said wanting it to end quickly. After a failed discussion of me explaining my position and him rebutting every point, I told him I would go shower and go back to my best friend’s house. I went for my shower and when I opened the door to come out, there he was by the wall across from me, having slid down dramatically and holding his head in his hands. He was still crying but dramatically like one would in a drama. The revulsion I felt. So then we started another back and forth and by then I had had enough. I started recording because when you have been dealing with the behaviour for as long as I had – and in anticipating the drama that would come once we broke up – it seemed like the right move. For the purposes of illustrating, here’s an excerpt from the recording.

Him: “It really feels like you are trying to run away from something horrible. Like I am some sort of abuser. That’s how you’re making me feel.”

Me: “It doesn’t really matter because you don’t see the things that you do to me as malicious, but I see them as malicious-“

Him: “In what manner?”

Me: “I just feel like you have manipulative behaviours especially when we converse.”

Him: “Bring receipts because I can’t see the way I am manipulating you.”

Me: “We have enough receipts in the context of the relationship and at this point there’s no point in me explaining anything.”

Him: “So, you’re telling me I’m still manipulating you right now?”

Me: “I think you try to, yeah sure.”

Him: “How?”

Me: “Just in your refusal to accept that I can have a difference of opinion to you.”

Him: “I can except that you have a difference of opinion to me but I cannot accept the blasé attitude and just complete disregard and disrespect- “

“Me: “-and why can’t I when I’m a grown woman and allowed to be blasé ?”

Clearly the conversations were now going nowhere. We still spent another two weeks living together after this conversation. The trauma of our post-breakup interactions, I have hidden in a secret locker in the recesses of my mind. I thank him for teaching me that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. He wasn’t ready to face his childhood trauma, that was the crux of the issue. He was still emotionally connected to his boyhood. He wanted a grown relationship in his fantasies. In reality, what he wanted was the benefits of a relationship without the responsibility. If he could have employed his mother to do the heavy lifting for the relationship in order to save it, he would have. I’m sure he tried to in his own way. I refuse to be anyone’s scapegoat, least of all hers or his. I realise in retrospect, all the things I admired in him, was me projecting my own personality onto him. I had all these real tangible things that I was working on and wanted out of life. What I wanted was a level of depth he couldn’t attain. A level of passion he’d never experienced. A future brighter than his gaming monitor. Wherever you are, know that I wish for you the best. May you grow into the man that you deserve.

And after his Oscar winning performance

I left the room and never saw him again…

xox