I’ll Keep You My Dirty Little Secret

I will never look at a cute heterosexual couple again without wondering how many demimonde-level concubines the guy hurt, used, and screwed over before he ended up with his “take-home-to-mother” trophy. I know I’m not the only woman who has experienced this – two other girls who are my friends have been experiencing something similar, thus inspiring me to write this – but I will cite only my personal experience as an example.

This segment from an email that my ex-boyfriend from high school (Fox) sent me eight years ago pretty much sums up everything I’m about to go into:

Oh, and by the way. I’m still keeping you a secret. And if anyone asks who my girlfriend is, I’ll just nod off and say “We choose to remain anonymous.” Anyway, have a good evening! and Sleep tight!

So, Fox was the first of my long string of heartaches to pull this crap, but far from the last. Next, if I recall correctly, was probably my ex-husband, as ironic as that sounds – after all, we were legally married, so what was there to hide? Well, apparently his initial attraction to me was shallow – had I not lost control of the situations I let myself get in with him and allowed him to take advantage of me without realizing what was going on, I would have left him long before we had the chance to get married (though a lot of this I blame on trying to live up to my shitty family’s standards without even knowing what it was I was striving to accomplish). He was reluctant to introduce me to family and friends, and was quick to try and get rid of me for stupid things that any normal couple would talk over and forget within five minutes of being brought up. Nevertheless, I refused to let go, and eventually, I got what I wanted…I even had something of a family for a while before I stopped kidding myself that I was happy.

But even after we separated and divorced, there were times that we tried getting back together – partially for the kids, and partially because neither of us wanted to be alone – but I quickly learned that even though he made it clear that he wanted me to change my need to be seen by the outside world, he refused to change any of the traits that made him a horrible marital companion (marijuana addiction, immaturity, financial irresponsibility, being disrespectful, etc.). On every one of the occasions that we tried to reconcile, he made it clear that he did not want anyone to know we might be getting back together – if his mom or his best friend came over unexpectedly while I was there, he made me hide in the bedroom until they were gone. But at least he made it seem like he wanted a relationship with me. Others wouldn’t even grant me that much.

Then there was my ex-FWB (Doug), whose story I’ve already mentioned. That in and of itself is an example – some privileged neckbeard wanted the satisfaction of female attention without disappointing his parents, and the white girl next door that he lost his virginity to (presumably so he wouldn’t have to waste it on a poor Hispanic single mom, i.e., me) wasn’t kinky enough for him, so…there’s where I come in. We had an on-and-off flirtationship for some time, and I thought he was legitimately my “friend” even if there were no longer “benefits” to be had. Now, I won’t judge him too harshly, since we both made an equal amount of mistakes in this involvement, but the biggest one that I made was thinking that he would still be interested once I began to develop a larger attachment to him. When I confessed said feelings and asked him if he’d like to make our relationship more substantial, like a perfect gentleman, said, “Well, I like what we’ve been doing, but I don’t feel like we’d be compatible outside of the bedroom. If you want to discontinue our sexual relationship, I understand completely, and I’ll continue being just your friend unless you’d rather I got out of your life completely.”

Nah, just kidding – Doug ignored my message (while continuing to make his presence known elsewhere on Facebook) until two days later, when I guess I annoyed him enough to get him to say, “well, I guess I really just don’t feel that way,” which he could have just as easily said right off the bat without making me lose my respect for him. But I guess some lessons are better learned the hard way…

Which is why when I made the same mistake again last year with another ex-boyfriend from high school (Matt), I was ready to call BS right away. Instead, I gave him the benefit of the doubt because he had been something of a friend to me in high school (even though he rarely contacted me until his own divorce and the day he happened to be coming back to my area), and even he admitted he was uncertain about developing feelings for me after our brief encounter…but instead of acknowledging that he wanted to make up for the time wasted in a marriage that ended in heartbreak and failure (which is exactly what I did, so I would have understood completely even if I didn’t approve), he suddenly started ignored me after weeks of leading me on to think that maybe he did want something more to do with me, and then replied a few days later with this half-assed Dear John message:

 I am going to be honest with you. I just want to be friends, like we agreed before. I’m sorry if that hurts, but I have to tell you the truth. You are amazing, but I don’t see myself coming back to California for any period of time. Know that I love you as a best friend, but nothing more.

 I think that what really pissed me off is that he had the audacity to call me a “best friend” and then proceed to pretend that I didn’t exist, block me from chat, and try to form serious relationships with other girls and complain to me about it when it didn’t work out. Wait, what?

And then there is the aforementioned “John” in that dialogue – John Barclay, a piece of Nazi fodder so utterly despicable that I could write an entire book on the brief-but-traumatizing moment of hell he put me through. Yeah, the fact that he was friends with Matt did make me skeptical at times, but obviously, not skeptical enough – he became my steady boyfriend only to lie to me about being in legal trouble to make me gain sympathy, cheated on me, and pretty much abandoned me until out of the blue he decided I was being “clingy as fuck” and “obsessive as hell” (although the next day, he proceeded to harass me on Facebook under a fake account):

And of course, here’s what old Matt “Bros Before Hos” Reynolds-Hollon had to say regarding all that:

(And just to clarify: Matt and I have known each other since he was a freshman in high school. He and Barclay met in their junior year. If anyone is “entitled” to be defended under the “bros before hos” sentiment here, it should be me. But whatever.)

And as it currently stands, he’s sending his groupies to harass me and accuse me of “hacking his shit” – same as he did to the ex before me:

 

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I didn’t grant them the courtesy of censoring their names, but I’m just following the Golden Rule: I don’t want to be anyone’s dirty little secret. If you’re fucking me, dating me, or I’ve ever been a part of your life, for better or worse, I’m no longer going to honor anyone’s wishes to “remain anonymous.” And all you ladies out there who have been swept under the rug, kept in the closet, hidden in the bedroom – I encourage you to stop honoring your beaus’ pleas for relationship anonymity and reclaim your self-worth. And all you men out there who have ever done anything I’ve openly accused these men of doing, take note – your hooker’s heart of gold will eventually be replaced with one of stone, or even ice.