the lessons I learned in 2 years

Submitted by broken heart (Turkey), Jan 19, 2010 at 13:23

I first found comfort in this site when I fell in love with a young moroccan man who charmed me beyond my control. The final result was that he was in it only for the money and would have continued with me as long as I continued to pay. It took a lot of degradation and lack of self respect before I woke up and realized this was self inflicted abuse. I stopped returning the calls and got through all of the urges to see him over time. In that time I found that all the memories shifted from the good times (which I exaggerated) to the negative times which were the reality of our "relationship". In a while he did not enter my thoughts and when he did it was negative.

But I had not learned my lesson.... A few months later I met another young man from a poor country who declared his love for me. He is gorgeous, kind and funny so I decided to throw caution to the wind and pursued the relationship which ended up with obtaining a visa for him to come to live with me in the UK. It was not long before his issues became apparent, the critical issue is that by moving to the UK where I had a job and he was unable to get one he felt emasculated. All of this negative sentiment on his part grew over the weeks with occasional outbursts of mistrust and anger and verbal abuse. In order to avoid the outrage I walked on eggshells and tried to live in a manner which I thought would please him. No matter what I did the outbursts came often with no provocation - just because. It came to the point where I could tell by the look on his face that he wanted an all out argument which was often held in public to humiliate me.

He had molded me into a scared and nervous person who my friends did not recognize and ended with a real threat to physical violence which I interrupted by calling the police and having him arrested. I was able to convince him to board a plane and go home, where he remains until this day.

I have learned many lessons, the main one is that having a man in my life does not instantly make me happy. I also learned that by taking a man from a poorer country and giving him an excellent standard of living even by UK standards, does not ensure that he will be happy. I will never compromise so much again, and charm can quickly turn as noted in the book how charming men can be dangerous lovers. I have finally recovered from the experience and am moving on to living a great life on my own, which I will only share if the perfect person crosses my path.

Please learn from me and don't give in to the charm, look for a life partner - as if it were a business partner because the passion will fade even with the most beautiful of men and you need someone to help you navigate through life on an even keel.

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