To The Toxic Men I Have Loved Before
0 / 0 / February 14 2019

Dear toxic men I have loved before,

It’s not me. It’s you.

I look back and wonder: Why couldn’t I go?

It’s hard to admit that I didn’t want to, but more so that I could never bring myself to do it — to leave you. I valued you far above myself; you were my metric, my tool for self-worth. I stayed and waited. I waited for you to get it, to understand, to finally apologize. I waited for a change. Everyone knew it wouldn’t come, including you and me, and yet I kept hoping. I stayed in the hopes that my beautiful fantasy of you, the one that I had worked so hard to construct, would not prove to be in vain. Doesn’t all that love have to go somewhere?  

From the beginning, your small mistakes and lack of consideration went mostly unaddressed. I didn’t want to seem crazy, I didn’t want to seem psycho. As I forced myself to play the Cool Girl™, my expectations of you plummeted while the fantasy grew. What could I do? Boys will be boys.

These signals soon turned into the first time you broke my heart. The second and third and fourth times were more of me breaking my own, unable to accept the truth of how you treated me. At some point it became normal. I started to think that these cycles and uncertainty were merely a byproduct of love or, at least, passion.

The hardest thing to accept was that I believed in a myth of you, not who you actually were. Time and time again you shattered my fantasy of you, time and time again I kept believing. Four years of an emotional roller coaster didn’t seem so bad because I was never taught that love should be a balance; an exchange or compromise based on the needs of two people. I was coming of age surrounded by reports of date-rape on college campuses. I shared the same adolescent development period as mandatory consent programming. The reality I saw not only within our relationship, but also in the world was far from the kind of love I had dreamed of. What I had believed in was Prince Charming — what I found was coerced sex on football bleachers and unsolicited dick pics. Where was the romance in that? I was sold a fantasy, but I got a fallacy.

I heard it all. Boys who tease you like you. He’s being mean because he has a crush on you. Where do we draw the line between flirtatious teasing and emotional manipulation?

It was these small details that helped to set the bar so low. Careless mistakes: always being late, flaking, forgetting — I get it. You missed my prom photos, didn’t bother to show up on time, or spend the night with me at all. You didn’t realize Valentine’s Day would imply a gift, or even a card. And I brushed it all off. What could I do? Boys will be boys. I let a few initial months of good behavior — basic decency, rather — excuse a downward spiral of gaslighting, hypocrisy, and, later, cold apathy. I would tell you how I felt and you would tell me I was being pushy, holding onto the past, guilt-tripping you. Why was it so hard to believe that I was simply telling you how you made me feel, that the things I shared with you were simply the consequences of your actions? Did how I feel really hold that little importance to you, or did you just habitually obfuscate your own blame?

Worst of all, if I left, I would have had to admit that I didn’t need you.

I couldn’t admit this because I didn’t believe it, and you loved it. You loved being needed — my savior, my hero, my landing pad. You thrived on always being the one to cut me down and build me back up. My pain, your toy, something you may never understand. These are our standards: Boys who tease you like you. He’s being mean because he has a crush on you. Boys will be boys. He’s never laid a hand on me. He’d never hit me. At least he’s never cheated. Why didn’t I go? The list goes on.

My first introduction to love revolved around a rationalizing of partnership as something healthy so long as there was an absence of bruises. A relationship that didn’t start with sending nudes on Snapchat seemed above average. Like those things could suffice. As long as it never got physical, as long as you weren’t predatory, you could be my Prince Charming.

Yet, you rarely, if ever, apologized for the emotional scars. You justified, rationalized, and explained — but so few “sorry”s. And, of course, the emotional abuse wasn’t abuse to you, it was logic. My reactions were some kind of variable to plug into your calculations of how to treat me. I adored you and you knew it. I knew it. I waited and waited for the feeling to leave, but it stayed, only fading, painfully slowly. It still oscillates between a strange feeling of indebtedness and a tragic sense of missing you, missing what I know I shouldn’t.

Now, I can see the absence of your empathy. I gave and gave and gave, showed you what I needed. I bent over backwards to try to love you in your language, when you never bothered to learn mine.

Now, I talk to friends and people around me who find themselves continuously loving the people that break them. I’ve begun to realize it’s much bigger than me or you. The way we are raised designates categories: those who will dominate and those who will compromise, those who will strategize and those who will empathize. I learned to equate someone, especially a man, gifting me attention or basic respect, to true love. But what about true partnership? Not just love or fantasy, but a partnership. As in a teammate, someone who is willing to have tough conversations, compromise, and collaborate.

I and so many others have had to pull ourselves out of broken, unhealthy love simply to say: I cannot stay. You are not my hero. I do not need you, and you do not deserve me. What hurts most is knowing that it will take so much emotional reflection, time, and help to actually believe that. It’s one thing to leave, it’s another to believe in my own worth. That’s the hardest part.

 

For the last time,

A

 

 

Photos by Alexia Garza Gomez.