I TOLD MY GIRLFRIEND I WAS MOLESTED……………..( X- FACTOR!)

THIS VIDEO / SONG IS THE PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF THE FEELINGS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS BLOG

Lauryn Hill: X - Factor - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

So, I told my girlfriend ( Michelle ) about my sexual abuse after a series of visits with my therapist. The most logical question any rational thinking man that ever contemplated doing such a thing would ask himself would be:

1) Why the fuck would I want to do that to myself?
2) How the hell would that help me in my relationship?
3) How & what would this woman look at me & how would she think of me?
4) How would I handle the possible rejection or lack of support?
5) What will I do if this doesn't go well?
6) Will I still be considered a mans man in her eye's?
7) What exactly do I tell her & how? If she wants to know?
8) Am I prepared to keep it moving?
9) What if ?, What if?, What if ?, What if?

In order for me to tell the story I must fill you in on the background of the relationship that we had for almost 8 years. We met in college and at the time she had a boyfriend so we managed to develop & maintain a friendship for about 3 years before we got together. At the time she wasn’t the most attractive woman that I knew & she was somewhat sensitive about her looks/appearance ( she was a video girl hater, still is! ) She had self esteem & insecurity issues that would later be amplified because of what I did for a living as a barber/ hair stylist / eyebrow & make up artist. I'm not a bad looking guy, so for whatever reason beautiful women were always around me, this was never a big deal to me because I grew up around a bunch of women .

Initially, I was attracted to the way she walked, then the kind of person that she was on the inside, so the fact that she wasn’t a 10 didn’t matter. She was a nice person and was fun to talk too about the bullshit that I had going on. When we got together, it started out as a long distance relationship & I was dating other people (later she moved to the same city that I lived in but claimed it wasn’t because of me). Initially ,she was the only girlfriend that I had but never really acknowledged her as such. Other people knew, but for whatever reason I didn’t tell her. I know it doesn't make sense too you, then again maybe it dose if your someone whose been where I've been. I had a need to compartmentalize my relationships & the amount of space inside of me for whoever was limited to a particular amount of space. To acknowledge to her the status of our relationship would give her the room to allow her "feelings" to grow like a plant with an unlimited supply of water as needed. At the time I wasn’t prepared to tell another woman that I loved her or that I was in love with her ( those are 2 very different things) due to the previous relationship that severely damaged my concept of friendship & love. That relationship was the cause of the many security , honesty, respect, & trust issues that I've had in my life /relationships with other women.

In retrospect, Michelle was a comfort, reliable, & somewhat of a safe zone in the early to mid part of our relationship. In spite of my lack of verbal commitment to her, I was always there and more importantly she was there for me. We spent a huge amount of time together, damn near lived together, I spent more time at her house than I did at mine. It was one of the most dysfunctional relationships that I've ever been in. She unknowingly dealt with and absorbed all of the punishment that a sexually & emotionally abused person can & will put you through. Being emotionally unavailable was a constant. I had more days than I can remember where I woke up and simply didn’t want to be touched, nights where I could hold her but she couldn’t hold me, and all type of sex with women that she wasn’t into. Having a sexual relationship with other women while I was with her was a constant and too me it had absolutely nothing to do with how I felt about her nor did it have anything to do with how I felt about her. If you ask her, I'm quite sure she has a totally different perspective. Bottom line she was my safe zone, the only person outside of my mother & family members that loved me more than I loved myself at the time, this was also a something tat caused me to resent her a great deal. I couldn’t understand how one person could love another person that didn’t love themselves nor what she saw in me that was worth while loving. On top of that she was very jealous of the relationship that I have with my mother. So the combination of all those things ( even though I was to blame for a large number of things) made it easy for me to cheat, lie, & be mentally abusive to her.

Anyway , she was there and she was supportive in a way that worked for me, shit …….. She had no clue about what was going on inside of me OR with me in our relationship. She was huge on communication & supporting her mans emotional needs & so forth. We were at a point where shit would fall apart & every time we would find away to get back together. We specialized in break ups to make up. Believe it or not , I got to a point where I was having more sex with other people than her, I'd just be there taking up space. We'd go weeks with out sex, part of the turn off for me was the fact that she wasn’t as sexually aggressive as the women I preferred to be with. We had sex when & if I wanted too. She was horrible at giving head & that was something that I almost had to have on a somewhat consistent basis, so I felt like I had no other choice sometimes. I never left and stayed in the relationship as long as I did because I simply had nowhere else to go, I didn’t know where else to go or be!

So at the suggestion of my therapist……………………….. I decided in an effort to better myself & our relationship that I would tell her about what has been apart of my life & was responsible in part for how I treated her & acted through out our relationship (particularly as it relate to my sexual escapades with other women). The reaction that I got was one that I did not expect at all……….. To me she appeared dumbfounded and at a total loss for words. She almost couldn’t look me in the eyes. I handed the 3 booklets that the therapist gave me to help explain to the partners of the sexually abused how & why we do the things that we do, she said that she would read them & that was the end of the conversation. Attempts to tall to her about it on several occasions was always met with some sort of stall tactic. It got to the point where I would just ask her out the blue if she ever read ANY of the booklets, only to get that she just didn't get to it yet. Keep in mind that this is a person that could /would read a 600 page novel in a night! If a stamp had something written on it she would read it! She loves reading that much…….. The straw that broke the camels back for me was finding the booklets at the bottom of the junk mail pile that was in the corner of her bed room. That shit hurt a lot, and it pushed me into the fuck it / fuck you zone with her. Not to mention how it made me feel as a man, a man that someone said they loved & cared about. ( I DON’T EXPECT THE READER WHO HASN’T BEEN ABUSED TO UNDERSTAND THIS TWISTED WAY OF THINKING & OPERATING IN A RELATIONSHIP) I always felt like she didn’t respect me as a man after that, like the image of me that she constructed in her head was destroyed in some way.

The relationship continued off and on for another year & a half to 2 years. We were basically at the point where we were either going to get married or go our separate ways. We've met each others parents on several occasions ect, ect, ect. In the process I found another person to transition into a relationship with who was able to handle what I needed to tell her about me. Even though I only told her enough to get by with, she showed me so much more support and found a way to show me how it was possible for someone to love me & for me to love myself. I wasn’t where I needed or wanted to be with her and things fell apart. I basically talked myself out of a great relationship, on top of a major complication, but I'm a much better person for it. I recently wrote Michelle a letter about our relationship, in an attempt to provide as much closure & understanding to our situation from my perspective as possible, plus apologize and offered her a chance to share with me how she felt …… she said that she would respond but has not to date, that was almost 2 months ago. In a lot of ways she feels like a person I just know now, we don’t really communicate anymore. Were facebook friends, but so are a lot of people you don’t really know!