I really need to get this out of my system and sincerely hope that this will be a cathartic experience. I would have preferred to write on my personal blog but due to several reasons, I think it is safer to leave these thoughts in a place where I have peace of mind.
My first ever relationship began the night I turned 23. Due to my lack of guile as to the male-female attraction department and an introverted personality, I failed to see the signs that one of my university coursemates was attracted to me. I just assumed that we were very good friends even though I distinctly remember the deep sense of unease I had as I got closer to him emotionally. How I wish I’d heeded my internal alarm bells back then!
After the relationship began, I threw myself into the throes of it, probably in love with the concept of love. But my own personal, deep-rooted insecurity crept to the surface. He had many female friends, some of whom he met and kept in touch with online. He also kept a personal blog which was open viewing to the rest of the internet. I’d known of this blog of his even while we were friends but he expressly forbade me from reading it, claiming that he needed a private space to rant and it’s not appropriate for me to read it. In the early days of the relationship, I was using his computer at his place one day and found the blog site. I sat there, reading through the entries as he crashed on his sofa watching TV close by.
He referred to a friend by the name of Hazel Eyes and I wondered if he was referring to me or this other coursemate of ours (whom I was jealous of) as they were particularly close. Anyhow, he came in, saw me reading his blog and was livid. He never confessed who Hazel Eyes was.
Through the ensuing months of the relationship, I kept an eye on what appeared on his blog as I could not keep myself away. Sometimes I could, but it would only last for days before I gave in to the urge. On his blog, he wrote about our disagreements, alluded to his deep unhappiness (being in the relationship with me), bitched about me, and referred to me by name, even once publishing a photograph of me. A part of me was angry about all this because I had told him right in the beginning (and he had agreed) that I wanted our relationship to be absolutely private. I didn’t want any of our uni friends to know because I did not want the scrutiny or the gossip. I also feared my family’s response, in case they cut me off financially or forbade me from continuing my education. The problem with my family stemmed mostly from the fact that this man had been divorced twice, was 9 years older than me and was a different ethnicity (in that order).
As I mentioned earlier, while we were friends, this person always seemed to be dissing others. His first marriage was ‘forced’ on him by his strict religious upbringing, almost as if to have a relationship, one must be married. His first wife forced him to lose his virginity to her before the wedding. He insinuated that his second wife was less than bright and somehow he realise that because they only ever went on dates (he was still under clutches of religion at the time) and her relatives (whom she was living with) shielded her in such a way as to hide the truth. Basically, it’s always someone else’s fault.
I resented the fact that he was confessing to all and sundry on the world-wide web, primarily because his readers were mostly female. Even my ‘love rival’ (the suspected Hazel-eyes referred to above) and another of our uni friends were officially allowed to read his prose but I was technically not allowed to! What does that say about my ‘status’ as his girlfriend? I felt that his writing was often put in a way so as to elicit sympathy from the female friends (real life or so called ‘internet friends’) as well as to vilify me. Furthermore, the prevailing logic would be that if he could write so much online, what would he be saying to people either in person (over coffee, chatting on the phone or the internet or via email)? The possibilities were endless.
I confess that my sense of insecurity compelled me to monitor his emails, MSN chat history, even his cell phone history (call records and text messages). One specific example that comes to mind was when I was at Uni one tuesday afternoon and he came onto MSN, so we chatted for a while. I was glad because it showed that he was home that day as I knew that the ‘love rival’ person had some late afternoon lectures at uni. So in the late afternoon, he said he needed to log off as he wanted to concentrate on some uni assignment. Although all my inner alarm bells were ringing (as in saying ‘LIE ALERT’, I did not confront him. After all, what did I have on my side other than suspicions which he could easily turn into a huge argument about my lack of trust in him and perfect excuse to claim that he couldn’t tell me the truth because of my eternal distrust of his actions. I told myself that even if he was going to meet this person, what could I do about it? They could be meeting anywhere, not necessarily on campus. What can I possibly do about it?
I decided to go home and just let things be. He could really be studying after all. I took a short bus home and lo and behold, I was about to cross a thoroughfare road that most people use to get to my university campus and who do I see whizzing past me in the final throes of twilight in his off-white coupe second hand sedan with stickers on the doors, wearing his favourite green/yellow cricket hat? I was upset for hours and did eventually ask him about it a few days later. He claimed that he realised that he needed to go to uni to pick up some books. What a liar. I checked the text records on his phone. On that Tuesday, close to the time that I saw him heading to uni, he was confirming meeting location with that girl.
It’s not that I want to be insanely jealous much as it is well-known scorpio trait. I was in love with this person but wanted honesty from him. His blog and my spying told me that we had issues to sort out but he seemed to be always whining about it to others around us (our uni friends, possibly even our uni lecturers as well as his online female buddies) instead of resolving things with me directly. We went as far as seeking counselling, which was one of the only things he ever paid for during our relationship. He also paid for petrol but even that was somewhat sponsored by his parents even though he was already 33 at the time. He received disability pension from the government (for chronic depression) and his university course fees were not paid upfront (they’re deferred and then deducted from taxes when the person has full-work), even though they were much cheaper compared to the full fees that international students have to pay. He also paid his rent which was dirt cheap with utilities thrown in because it was more of a house sitting arrangement). I mostly paid for meals, presents (things he wanted like camera, clothes for small-built men, electronic stuff like earphones, shaver etc) and some groceries even though we didn’t live together per se. When we went on holidays together, I would pay as I knew that he didn’t have much money. Much as I didn’t mind doing it in the beginning, my paying for things became more and more like a habit that he was used to and I didn’t know how to break, especially because I was always on eggshells during the relationship, not wanting to rock the boat. So in the end, he not only saved enough money to pay off a loan he had during our relationship, he even had money to buy another second-hand car after trading in the crappy wagon he had.
We finally broke up two years ago and it very likely contributed to my work practicum falling apart. Ironically enough, I started a blog on MSN but was careful never to write about him directly especially because I had chosen my blog to be an open book place. For one thing, I didn’t want all and sundry to know I was in a relationship or had broken up. I remembered the humiliation and annoyance I had when he referred to me by name and visage on his blog, so likewise, how could I write about him in the same way without making it a pot-calling-the-kettle-black situation? Besides, I find that kind of he-said-she-said expose stuff very embarrassing because it reflects badly on my ability to make choices (e.g. why did I choose to be in a relationship with this person begin with?). I am so uncomfortable about publishing any of this on my blog that I have chosen to post this anonymously on a confession site!
I was to discover months later that he had been reading my blog and happily bitching and moaning away about how horrible I was for not respecting his privacy. I never told him to come and read what I wrote. I was vague in the extreme about him. My site was meant to be cathartic in a ‘get things off my chest before I implode’ way, not as an endless give-me-sympathy wagon. I was so vague that I think to most people, I would appear to be rambling and not making much sense. I had dignity so I did not want to feel pity from others for the indignity of the whole situation!
Right after the relationship ended, I found out that he created another blog (on MSN of all places). To make things more finite, I deleted him from my MSN contacts list, so I could no longer access this blog. Just as well. Now finally, two years later, I discover a horrible secret that I am truly repulsed by. This ‘man’ had finally decided to ‘fess up to the fact that he was a ‘woman’. Using a moniker that he’d always preferred, I looked him up on Google and found him asking if he could grow b**** via ingestion of herbs! I was disgusted, inasmuch as I try to be open-minded and understanding about s***** preferences and people feeling pressure to confirm, I found it difficult to be sympathetic to a person whom I consider to be a consummate liar and pretender.
No wonder he liked to wear my underwear! At the time, I didn’t think much of it because I remember reading something Posh Spice said about the fact that David Beckham wore her undies! I guess I put it down to the fact that it was a gesture to be more intimate with one’s partner. Another entry he put on the site said that he’d wanted to be a girl since he was a child and that he used to go to bed praying that he would wake up as a girl. He loved to get a Brazilian wax but I didn’t think much of it as I liked the hairlessness of it as well (not that I’d ever want anyone to wax me down there). He has quite a lot of hair all over his body, even with hormones giving breasts, it’s probably going to look more like manboobs. He did refer to the fact that he currently had a girlfriend who’s concerned about his transitioning process. Whatever it is, he is now transgender and I don’t know if his conservative family know about it. I was the 9th relationship he had up to that point. Goodness knows how much more lies this person has told all the women in the past even though he claims that he is tran-gender, it is because he loves women and that he wants to be a woman AND not because he wants to be with a man. No wonder he always had so many ‘existential’ issues. No wonder our relationship failed– too many secrets harboured between us. I always felt that he made things far more complicated than they needed to be. I acknowledge that he’s really intelligent and deep. I think the depression, the transgender issues, the constant mental games drives him mad, giving him chronic insomnia, anxiety issues, self-mutilation, migraines, food allergies (sensitivities that came about during adulthood) and depression. The classic tortured soul. Imagine the sympathy points he scores with all those afflictions?
I resent him for lying to me. If I’d known that he was transgender, I would probably never have been in a relationship with him. Even now, he will not completely live life as a woman. He does not have the guts to go all the way, he just wants to cross-dress, get rid of some of his copious amounts of body hair and maybe find some way to get some moobs. Just like he toys with the act of self-mutilation in a drunken stupor and resents it when his shrink (and other shrinks) think that it is nothing more than a deep-seated ploy for attention (his online friends have had to call the emergency services to take him to hospital. One time, an overseas friend had to call Interpol to intervene!) I hope that he never finds happiness or peace with himself or with a partner. This lying b****** doesn’t deserve it. Sometimes when I get angry about it, I even wish he kills himself during one of his self-mutilating sessions! I have to live with the shame of losing my virginity to this sorry b******, loving a transvestite and keeping the truth from my friends and family. Then again, good riddance!!! At least now, he’s someone else’s problem.