Old Boyfriend

Hey, you remember Old Boyfriend?

You mean The Guy Who Always Wore Shorts, Even in Freezing Weather?

No, not him, the Young Republican.

Oh, the one who managed to find about three ways to insult me within the first 10 minutes of meeting me.

Yeah, that’s the one. He still sends me email.

It’s been what, 20-something years since you broke up with him? It was our sophomore year of college, right?

Yeah, that’s right. But I’m on his email list, along with, like, 40 other people. He periodically sends out emails to his list, with his thoughts and opinions on politics and movie reviews. I suppose if I asked him to stop, he’d remove me, but I don’t think any of us asked to be on this list.

And occasionally, I respond to one of his emails. I did a few days ago, and we engaged in an extended political discussion. The whole time, there’s something niggling at the back of my head, that there’s something not quite right about our discussion, not quite healthy.

What do you mean?

Well, I was having a hard time figuring out what I mean by that, until I was writing about it this morning, and it hit me. Old Boyfriend fits the classic profile of an abuser in many ways. He was never physical with me; he’s not really a physical kind of guy. But he was emotionally abusive; I just couldn’t see it back then because it felt too normal to me.

Why do you think he fits the profile?

He was always very controlling and possessive. Remember the time he tried to call me at college one weekend and he couldn’t get in touch with me? He started tracking down the phone numbers of all my friends he could remember and calling them to find me. He was angry at me for not being available when he wanted to call me, and suspicious that I was seeing someone else.

He also made it clear that when we married, he expected that I would become a Republican and a Methodist. To this day, he still tells me that I’m not really a liberal, that I’m really a conservative, just confused.

If I had friends that weren’t also his friends, he’d make disparaging comments about them. One time I went out horseback riding with another girl from my church, and when OB found out about it, he made it clear that he didn’t think she was an appropriate friend.

And of course, he was rude to you when I introduced you to him.

That he was. I remember thinking, what does she see in this loser?

He could also be very charismatic. He’s intelligent, well-read, and can be really funny. The only problem with his humor is, there’s a real mean streak in it. It’s funny if it’s not directed at you.

He was exciting to be around, when he wasn’t being a jerk.

That’s like saying a lion is a cute kitty, when it’s not eating you.

Well, yeah. I did break up with him, remember?

Yeah, I remember. I remember his friend showing up at Our College at midnight after you broke up with OB, driving from over an hour away after OB called him and told him that you had broken up with him. He tracked you down to find out why.

That’s right; I remember that, now. But he was a good guy; OB may have wanted him to track me down and talk me out of breaking up, but that’s not what he did. We just talked, and I told him why I was breaking up with OB. I told him the story about calling all my friends trying to find me, and I told him about the notepad.

The notepad?

Yeah, OB sent me one of those cube-shaped notepad thingies, with several hundred pages, and on each page, he had written a little note to me at the top. My roommate thought it was romantic; I thought it was kind of creepy. So even then, I had some kind of idea that maybe this relationship wasn’t the best idea for me.

Another time when he couldn’t reach me by phone, he sent me a telegram, which I also thought was kind of weird. Of course, this was in the “olden days”, before email.

I always thought he liked getting in your head. Remember when his first marriage was breaking up? Didn’t he tell you something like he wished he had married you?

Yeah, that did mess with my head. What he said was, that one time he and his wife were out with me and my hubby, and Hubby and I were holding hands and generally acting in love, and he was jealous. I thought he was going to say that he was jealous because he and First Wife were not lovey-dovey, though they’d been married only slightly longer than us, but what he actually said was that he was jealous that I wasn’t holding hands with him. I was too shocked to react; it had been 10 years then since we had broken up.

That reminds me of another instance that happened not too long after I broke up with him. I was back in our hometown, and had gone out to a movie or dinner or something with a male friend, not as a date or anything, just because we had a good time doing stuff. I had driven over to my friend’s house and left my car there while we went out, and when I got back, there was a note on the windshield from OB, saying he hoped I enjoyed my date. That pissed me off. It probably should have frightened me, but I didn’t know enough to be frightened. This was before being killed by estranged boyfriends became the crime of the week.

No kidding. So, he was controlling, wanted to isolate from friends he didn’t pick, and stalked you afterwards. Anything more?

He never laid a hand on me, if that’s what you’re asking.

Do you think he ever hit his first wife?

I doubt it. He’s not really the physical type. I mean, he’s big, but he’s not particularly strong or athletic. He doesn’t try to dominate people physically; he intimidates verbally.

Why did his first marriage break up?

I don’t really know. I know what OB told me – that First Wife was cold and distant, and was very insecure – but I’ve never talked to First Wife about it. I’m unlikely to ever encounter her, and I’m not sure she’d want to talk to me, anyway. After what OB said about being jealous he wasn’t my husband, I have this worry that she might blame me for the break up. It’s a shame; Hubby and I liked her better than OB.

So why do you think you’re noticing all this now?

I’ve always had this thing about our interactions. I’ve never understood why they bugged me so much, when I don’t really care that much about OB. Not that I wish him ill, but if he stopped sending me emails, I wouldn’t do anything to maintain the relationship, I’d let it go without much thought. But when I get in email discussions with him, I invariably end up feeling uncomfortable. It wasn’t because I was attracted to him or anything, because I’m not. But there was something there.

I think it became clearer now because I’ve started to deal with the other abuse issues in my past. I couldn’t see what he did as abusive before, because it was too similar to the type of abuse I went through growing up. Like being told what I really thought or felt, being expected to fit in some mold that I didn’t fit in. OB still tells me I don’t really think or feel what I say I do, but now I’m becoming able to say sorry, but no, I really do think that, or feel that. I still let him intimidate me sometimes, though.

The other thing I’ve noticed about our email discussions is that occasionally he’ll just suddenly blow up. We were having a political discussion a few months ago, and I must have hit a nerve, because I got a pretty angry email from him. The next exchange was back to being perfectly civil, just like the angry email had never happened. I showed the exchange to Hubby, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy or over-reacting, and he was surprised by the tone of the one email in the exchange. Because of my history, I’m pretty sensitive to unexpected and unpredictable blowups; just another reason why this whole thing has been niggling at the back of my mind.

Looking back at all of it, and in light of what we know about abusers now, I guess I was lucky that he wasn’t physical, and that he doesn’t drink. Who knows what would have happened if we had married, with my anger and drinking and his controlling? Could have been a pretty volatile situation.

Guess his mom did you a favor when she told OB you weren’t good enough for him, huh?

Yeah; think I should send her a thank-you note?