Vol. 2, Post #56 Oh Really?

When you're right, you're right. My ongoing sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A dating odyssey for Young Olds, AKA, people with readers.

I stared at Instagram, sort of not believing what I saw, and then I dialed up the man I was dating.

“Hi, your fucking BANANAS crazy ex did an INSTAGRAM POST about you, and by extension, me, and I am beyond furious. What the fuck is wrong with her and WHY IN THE HELL DID SHE REQUEST TO FOLLOW MY ACCOUNT if this was her M.O.?” I didn’t even give him a chance to answer beyond a few sputtering gulps and an indignant “That’s awful. I’ll call her and tell her to take that down at once” before I just hung up.

Um, Abbe…what’s going on?

It was late summer 2022 and I had been dating (let’s call him) V. for about 3 months or so. It was the first relationship I had after Brian and I split earlier in the year, and I was determined to take it very, very slow, despite V’s almost weekly reminders that he was ready for something “real.”

Just ahead of all of this nonsense, V. had told me he was falling in love with me and his sincerity was apparent and unwavering, so when he mentioned that he had spoken with his ex (who he was with for a few years, including a stint during the pandemic which naturally brought them closer together), I thought nothing of it. I’m not the kind of girlfriend who begrudges my partner a connection with their romantic past and besides, it was clear that he and this woman were well over, at least in his mind. Which brings us to the IG incident.

Maybe a day or two after V. said they had spoken, I got a “follow” request from his ex. My IG is private, and while that may seem odd to you, Dear Readers, since I’m here spilling the tea on so many personal things, my son is a professional musician and occasionally has had some over-enthusiastic fans. Making my IG private was his request and, to his credit, my son was correct in his ask. I still get requests to follow me on IG from fans, along with DMs asking me if I’m mom to @wendigowendigo, and sometimes, even weirdo asks for things like baby photos, etc. Since my account is private, whenever someone wants to follow me, I get a notification to approve or delete. I knew who the ex was by name, and so I approved her request, sending her a note shortly after that read, “Hi, it’s nice to ‘meet’ you. V. has told me a little bit about you, thx for the follow.”

I meant what I wrote. I had zero interest in his ex as a lurker and since it appeared they were in each other’s life, at least peripherally, why not be cordial? She was not a threat to me, and I assumed she was interested in being friends with V moving forward. Again, this all seemed like no big deal and in fact, was pretty standard SOP for me.

The ex did not respond to my DM and I forgot about it, after I mentioned to V. that she requested to follow me – his response was “Very gracious of you. Yes, I think she’d like to be friends.” Life went on.

Imagine my surprise – that’s a polite way of saying it – when a few weeks later, a mutual friend of ours mentioned that she was she sorry that V’s ex had kind of freaked out. Whaaa?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told my pal. “She freaked out?”

“Um, yeah, sorry, I thought you saw.”

“Saw what?”

“Her Instagram post.”

(I’ll pause while you take another look at the header photo above.)

Besides calling V., I sent a message to the ex, ahead of removing her as a follower, telling her that not only did I think this was a classless move, but that rest assured, V. was doing more than just screwing me and to have a nice day. She wrote back some lengthy nonsense about how I had no idea what went on between the two of them, but I paid her no mind.

The specter of this ex seemed to permeate my relationship with V for the rest of the year, not with any regularity but because it turned out that she and I had a few mutual friends in common and apparently, she had plenty to say to those people about broken promises from V., how their breakup was just a trial separation, even something about how she was so angry and heartbroken that he was dating me and spending time upstate because they had talked about renting a place together, as recently as weeks before he and I met.

To all of this, V. vehemently denied any involvement, saying that when they broke up well in advance of us meeting, he had made it clear that he did not envision a future with her, that they wanted different things, and while I believed him, I found the snippets of stories that made their way back to me to be, well, believable too.

“Are you sure that you haven’t left it with her that there is room for a reconciliation?” I asked on more than one occasion, a tiny bit alarmed as this man was professing real love for me and I was slowly catching feelings too. He reassured me that he had not. In any way.

It was now early winter, and V. had it in his mind that he wanted us to spend more time together on a regular basis, asking me to pick a few days each week when we’d agreed that I’d be downstate with him at his place. We were going back and forth over what worked best, choosing the same days each week or just understanding that we’d spend a certain number of nights together. “I’d like to be a bit more settled,” he kept saying and I was giving this some serious thought.

One afternoon, while we were chatting on the phone and literally right after I agreed to spend the entire following week with him at his place at his request so we could do some stuff around his new apartment (he had recently moved from BK to my beloved Astoria and wanted me to show him more of the neighborhood and my favorite haunts), he seemed distant and distracted. I asked if anything was wrong and when he assured me that no, he was just tired from work, we said good night and hung up.

But the next day, he seemed just as distracted and after telling me that work was OK, he said he had a confession to make. “I ran into an old colleague of mine, a woman, and she said she wanted to take me to a dance performance. I must have expressed some interest in the show, because she got the tickets, called me to confirm, I panicked and said yes and now I feel guilty.”

“Why do you feel guilty? Sounds like an interesting evening,” I said, since he told me a bit more about the choreographer.

“I feel guilty because I think she thinks this is a date,” he said.

I was quiet for a minute before I asked, “And why would she think that?” To which he responded, “Because I’m not sure I told her I had a girlfriend.”

A lightbulb went off in my head, “Oh my god, your ex-girlfriend was TOTALLY ON THE MONEY!”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Suddenly this all made sense! “I mean, when she wrote that obnoxious IG post, and I told her it was classless, she said I had no idea what passed between the two of you. She actually tried to tell me this and I dismissed it. But now I think she was telling me the truth. I think you probably DID tell her at some point that you didn’t know what was going on with you and me, or similar. No wonder she was so hurt. That’s a really shitty thing to do, V. And now you’re doing it to me. Don’t give me this bullshit about ‘not sure’ some woman knows you have a girlfriend. Either she does or she doesn’t.”

The conversation went on for a bit, with V. insisting that he wanted nothing to do with this former colleague outside of being her friend, and that he would call her and tell her that he couldn’t make the show, etc. I listened but my mind was recalling the conversation with V.’s ex. Something seemed very off. Finally, I said, “You can do whatever you want about the show with your colleague. Fine with me if you go, fine with me if you don’t. But we need to have a larger conversation about this when I next see you because I feel like my trust is being betrayed a bit and there’s nothing you can say that will talk me out of it. I’m not coming to your place next week. I need some time to think.”

I hung up, went back and reread the messages between V.’s ex and me in my IG DMs. My god, yes, there it was, her saying “He promised me things. Told me we were still going to meet up and talk again. Then he met you and lost his head.” There was more. It was all ringing true.

V. called me incessantly, trying to smooth this over. I spoke with him but held steadfast to my decision not to go to his place the following week, adding, “Anyway, when is your Lincoln Center date? Didn’t you say it was soon?”

“Yes, it’s end of next week and please don’t call it a date,” he pleaded. “I told her that I’m not going and that if she can’t sell the tickets, I’d buy them from her.”

“V., you should go. I really don’t care about it. But I do care about the boundaries you set with other people when it comes to me, particularly because you’ve been asking me for a bigger and bigger commitment. I’ll see you after the performance.”

I spent the following week upstate enjoying the space and distance from V., not angry but not feeling so lovey dovey. On the night of the performance, he called me as he was leaving the theater.

“How was it?” I asked, coolly. I had no idea how I felt.

“It was fine, and now I’m heading to the subway to go home. Just wanted you to know that I’m thinking about you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not really in the mood to talk. How was your friend? Does she understand how things are now?”

“She does. But it doesn’t matter, because I think this was just a one-time meet up.”

Huh?

He reiterated, “I told her that I’d like to be friends, but she said it would be hard for her because she thinks of me as someone she’d like to date, so I told her I guess a friendship was off the table. So now you and I can just get on with our lives.”

But it wasn’t that simple. One on hand, I didn’t care that he went on a quasi-date. I cared tremendously that he was callous with another woman’s feelings and that he also turned a stupid scenario into a potentially damaging issue in our relationship. I couldn’t shake that feeling and I also couldn’t shake the feeling that his ex-girlfriend had not only been correct but had tried to warn me. V. kept insisting that this was a misstep, and further, kept pressuring me to spend more time with him. It felt wrong. A few months later, I broke up with him. He was devastated and begged me to reconsider. I did not.

Some time passed and I received several long, carefully worded apologies from him. Fine, all good, I wrote. He said he had learned a great lesson in all of this.

And then…he went out and did something very similar to another woman, someone I know and like very much. When we compared notes, which of course we did, I was shocked. He had learned NOTHING.

Which brings me to the moral of today’s post.

Yes, Abbe, what IS the point of today’s post?

Believe yourself. You know what you know and you saw what you saw and they did what they did. Sometimes you come to the party late on this (I did, with V.’s ex, even though I don’t love her method of outing him and dragging me into the bullshit), but once you’re there, you just can’t UNknow. Dear Readers, now more than ever: TRUST YOURSELF. Life is hard enough without you telling yourself a bunch of crap about why someone has disappointed you or left you scratching your head. To wit (she posted this on January 20th after the inauguration, but it’s still perfectly on point):

shop_aif

A post shared by @shop_aif

When I say “trust yourself,” I’m not even speaking to trigger-inducing manipulation like love bombing or gaslighting. You “feel” it with deep certainty? Most likely, there’s something In the case of V., I think he really didn’t realize this was his pattern until he got called out on it THREE TIMES (by his ex, by me, and by my pal who dated him after me, with my encouragement and blessing, by the way. I thought V had in fact changed, based on his apology about what he realized about himself).

I want to leave you with this thought, my darling Young Olds. One of the most beautiful aspects of living loud and proud at our age is looking back at what you have gleaned through life’s experiences. If you’re well-therapized, well-traveled, and/or well-read, I bet you’re pretty good at spotting something that rings off-key, aren’t you? Lean into that. The benefit of the doubt is nice but how often do you offer it? Think about it as you consider removing yourself from a situation or rescinding an invitation to the pleasure of your company. This doesn’t make you jaded. That simply makes you more embedded in your power pocket (call it what you want — intuition, knowledge, common sense). And don’t post dumb shit on social media xoxox

^^^^I took a few days off this week and went to see some friends in Florida, got some sun on my face, didn’t check news, didn’t get pinged by any clients with emergencies, and didn’t beat myself up for anything I willingly participated in via recent relationships (personal, professional, or romantic). In other words, it’s been a perfect escape.