A Roller Coaster Romance

Submitted by Lisa Steadman on May 15, 2007 - 2:12 pm

Comments (0)»

A Roller Coaster Romance
By Anonymous

I never liked roller coasters. The slow panic-inducing ascent followed by the fast, seemingly out-of-control descent repeated over and over until the ride finally ends. It usually leaves me with a big headache and a queasy stomach.

Then I met him. Seeing him across the room, I had my one and only Westside Story moment. I knew him, even though we’d never met. I was absolutely sure we’d get together. He was everything I wasn’t – confident, sure of what he wanted in life, flush with money working at a law firm. I was a 23 year-old college graduate still working for minimum wage while I figured out what to do with my life.

I was also still a virgin. He brought passion into my life. Once I finally got a taste of what I’d been missing, I was hooked. To keep my fix, I would have followed him anywhere. So when he suggested we get an apartment together after only three months, I enthusiastically agreed. That’s when my emotional roller coaster ride really began.

I was either the love of his life whom he wanted to marry or I was a fat cow and a bitch he couldn’t bother coming home to. He had an explosive temper. He threw things at me. He kept the checkbook for our “joint” checking account at his office. He wanted me at home while he stayed out late, supposedly at his office. I always wanted to drive there late at night just to see if he was actually there but I never did. Maybe I just didn’t want to know.

As controlling, selfish, and cruel as he was out of bed, he was generous and attentive when we were in bed. Which was a lot. Which is why I stayed for nine months, rearranging my life to try and please him, reading endless relationship books, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Then one day the bank called. Checks from our joint account were bouncing. They gave me a copy of our bank statement and I was shocked to learn that the money I put in to pay for household bills was going instead to finance his lifestyle. I packed up the little self esteem I had left and moved home with my parents.

Eventually I went back to school to earn my Masters Degree. That led to a career I love, and one that pays enough to support my own comfortable lifestyle.

I won’t lie to you. I haven’t had sex like that since I left him. But I have learned so much about how I don’t want to live and what I won’t tolerate from a man. And I wouldn’t trade those lessons for anything.

Maybe one day I’ll find passion again. Hopefully this time it will be more like a merry-go-round – slow, steady, with milder ups and downs. 

Isn’t it amazing how blinded we become when we’re in love? Whether it’s passion or a sense of obligation, or our caretaker ways, we sometimes get tangled in a tricky web that only we can extricate ourselves from.

Be Sociable, Share!

•