It seems that I am destined to learn the hard way.
My lessons in life are always shocking, almost pretentious. Not once but twice, did I have a go-around with Mr. May-December. After all, he was my soul mate. I was the one. Or so I thought….
After a long, arduous and heartbreaking split up, he persuaded me to go back. He convinced me we could try again…go slow…see how things unfold, and talk about a future again. He completed his very convincing and honorable appeal to me with a pair of diamond earrings. His charisma overshadowed a side of him that I never even thought possible…a very dark and almost wicked side of him. He thought he was invincible.
As the weeks went by, old routines and habits came to the surface
When you’re ‘in love’, you get accustomed to your everyday habits…things like you speak at certain times, you see each other on certain days, there are work schedules, family schedules, but in the end, the routine is just that, a routine. Mr. May-December in particular, was a creature of habit. So much so, that I got extremely familiar with his habitual nature….so much so, that I could tell the second he lied to me.
Now as you may remember from my other article about him
Mr. May-December is also married (yes, I didn’t practice what I preached), yet, something he said to me one night remained etched in my memory. One evening after enjoying a couple of bottles of wine together, he blurted out that the only way he could see me on any given night was if there was a line of truth to what he told his wife. For example, if we happened to go out for dinner and a friend of his happened to join us (let’s say Michael), then he would tell his wife he had dinner with Michael. So in theory, as long as there was this line of truth in what he said, he could get away with anything… well almost anything. Therefore, he didn’t have to worry about not remembering a lie, as there was a line of truth in it to help him retain the information. Help him memorize his lies without having to commit it to memory or was it conveniently forgetting in time that I was even a part of the evening?
Through the holidays the other woman doesn’t get to spend time with her man. She’s with her immediate family or otherwise alone. There’s a lot of opportunity to think back and contemplate things, things that may have had a line of truth to it. So I began adding them up. There were too many to keep track of. I began feeling a sensation of angst, but I didn’t know why until one particular evening. It’s 4 a.m. and he calls me from his home and says he was out with his friend Neil and they had gone downtown for drinks. Not much to worry about considering how his business and lifestyle supported the reason and time…but I instantly knew he had just lied. I instantly knew he had just given me a version of circumstances with his line of truth imbedded into it.
A woman’s intuition should never be underestimated
A woman should never ignore her gut reaction in that moment in time…that gut reaction is your intuition. It is a decision making moment, therefore you cannot and should not pretend you didn’t feel it. Don’t ignore that inner dialogue. Don’t sweep it aside and try to forget about it. It could mean you’re putting yourself in a very dangerous situation…it could mean life or death…it could mean something is about to happen…it could mean many things. It is one of the axis to our “sixth” sense that gives us that fight-or-flight reaction.
I made a very wise and split decision that night not to ignore my intuition. Instead, I worked with it and as it turned out, Mr. May-December was indeed downtown with his friend Neil, but he also had the company of another woman…another girlfriend which he had been seeing for a while as well. How did I work with my instinct, you may ask? I went to the extreme, even for me. I hired an investigator. What he dredged up was excruciating and painful.
There were various email accounts he used. We found emails, pictures and texts….all from many, many different women. All of them would come-and-go as he seemed to quickly lose interest in them…all except for me. As my karmic luck would have it, he set me apart. On top of the many women, there were many nights with strippers. Almost like clockwork, he’d be at some ripper bar every few nights. He randomly met up with the woman who worked for him. He randomly had one night stands with customers. Yet, he admitted to me that he set me apart from anyone else because he had never loved a woman as passionately as me. He said I was such an amazing woman, inside and out….so my only question was why?
When I finally confronted him
He wept like a child. In fact, he was physically ill. He blurted out that he had me in the net, how could he let me get away. “You meant everything to me. I had you in the net. How could I let you get away?” Those words haunt me now. He had me in the net…but what I feel now is that I was caught in his web…a web of lies, deception, sick sexual needs, and lies about what I meant to him. I’ve had to crawl out of a web filled with a barrage of a line of truths weaved into it.
Moving on is difficult when you still love someone. It’s like going through a grieving process for that person. Yet I wonder now if I ever really knew him and that the someone I loved never existed at all. However, I am relieved to know the truth however (the best money I ever spent), and will always listen to that nudge of intuition…that moment in time…that gut instinct. It’s a life lesson for me now, but it will give me the courage and strength to move on.
