“I must not be good enough, that is why they treat me this way.” After that ended, we kept in touch for the whole time I was in another state. Every time I came home to visit, I would see him. I thought there was still something there. Even when I had found another love, I continued to keep contact. I was so confused by all of that. Later after my third relationship ended (I will go into that in a moment) I thought possibly this was the time for us to get back together. He wasn’t dating anyone either. I went back to visit and I thought there was something there. I went back a few months later to to tell him I was thinking of moving back.

Another devastating blow.

We were supposed to go out with a group of friends and we did. BUT he had made a date that very day and was supposed to meet her at the bar we were at. I was hurt, furious, confused. Other people may have understood this but I didn’t. I thought he wanted to be with me. I was supposed to stay the night at his house, my things were there. Needless to say I was drunk, I lost it, I got crazy and don’t even remember the events of the evening other than he left to meet the girl. And his close friend got all chummy with me so we started a long distance relationship. I needed to sever ties with my ex and this was the only way I could bring myself closure.

Come to find out my ex didn’t care anyway and no harm was caused to him, only me and the friend.

I wasn’t very nice to the friend. Back to the third relationship, even though I was stuck in a cycle with that ex,  I thought my new boyfriend was the greatest thing that ever walked the face of the earth. Well he is pretty great now and he is the one who truly cared for me but didn’t know how. He is now married expecting a child and very happy. We are very happy for each other.  Although he was  not the greatest while we dated. He was a social butterfly. He was always out, always surrounded by the ladies, always thinking of travelling. He caused me to have trust issues too. He wouldn’t come home, when he did come home he would have phone numbers and sometimes makeup on his shirt. He made comments about things I needed to change to “better” myself. Actually all of them did, that did not help my self image. Never good enough. NEVER!

He did a similar thing as my second boyfriend.

One morning I answered the phone and there was a Swedish man on the other end asking for him. My heart sank I knew something was going on. So once again I found myself in a position of being in an apartment by myself  struggling to pay for it. He went behind my back and decided to go off to Sweden to work. I stayed with him while he was gone. Long distance relationship is very hard for someone with trust issues. I did get to go to Sweden but that ended up bad also. We came home together that was not supposed to happen. He had left me on my birthday in the apartment he was staying at and did something that caused him to have to leave. It was nothing major but enough to get sent home.

I found myself using my credit cards to get him home and off we flew back to the States.

It didn’t work well when we got back. We ended up breaking up. I had trust issues. Along with many others by this point. These three guys helped to make me even more confused and unable to understand relationships even more. There is so much to these stories it is very hard to limit them to a blog post but the point of sharing these things is to show that I was not stupid, I just didn’t realize that what they were doing was wrong. I thought I was wrong. I saw other people in relationships and they were not treated that way so the conclusion I came to was it had to be me.

The weird thing is after the relationships would end, people would then tell me all of this stuff that was going on.

What? I had no idea they were doing these things. When they would talk to me in a certain way, other people would think it was horrible and I was oblivious. They would make fun of me and belittle me but when we were alone they told me they loved me. I was confused. I didn’t understand. It was like the bullies who pretended to be my friend and then would hurt me. I thought it was me. I was the one who wasn’t normal, I was the one who didn’t understand how relationships worked, I had to rely on people like them to guide me.

Because of that I spent years in pain, confusion, constant self hatred and doubt.

Go check out part III for the rest of the story…