So here's something interesting. I saw red flags in the beginning with BP, very early on in fact, but charged ahead anyway into a relationship. And for roughly 85% of that relationship, she treated me like crap and frustrated the hell out of me. And yet, when there aren't any red flags and everything seems pretty good with someone else, I hesitate. Why? Well, that's a good question. And the easy answer is because BP fucked me over and fucked me up. I can't count on one hand the number of times I felt like she genuinely liked me for me and not because of the ego boost I provided. And those times were almost all in the beginning of things. The more time went on, the more I felt I was there to serve as her whipping boy, not as her partner. If we fought and she asked to work it out, the conversation was a 30 minute rant about all I'd done wrong, and then she'd conveniently have to leave when it was my turn to speak. If I was honest and open about my feelings, she immediately pounce on what she didn't like and defend herself to the death over it. The problem with that is she rarely defended herself against what I'd actually said and instead went on the attack about what she'd allegedly heard. I confronted her about this many times and she admitted that she knew she was twisting things but claimed that's just how she heard it and she didn't know how to fix that. Eventually, I was too tired to care and stopped fighting. But it took a moment of clarity to get me to that place. I don't remember what prompted the conversation, but it was one I wish we'd never had. I rarely spoke to BP at night when we were apart because she always, ALWAYS, passed out mid-convo and unapologetically so. That and the fact that when she drank she got even meaner made me decide early on that I wanted no part of any of that (though she still got me a few times). On this occasion, she begged for resolution to something and I gave in. The convo was strained but decent and then she clammed up again and it was awkward and I just broke down. I was dealing with a lot in my own life and our issues on top of everything else really got to me. She asked what was wrong and I told her I couldn't explain because it require me to lower my shields and be vulnerable with her and I knew I could no longer do that as it had only ever bitten me in the ass. She asked again and I relented, explaining the stress I was under and how much I wanted us to just not be so damn hard all the time. A few minutes of silence elapsed and then she asked me the same question again, why I was so upset. I assumed maybe she couldn't understand me through my emotion, so I repeated it very clearly and we fell into silence again. She spoke some jibberish about not liking where things were and then, less than five minutes later, asked me yet again why I was so upset. This time I knew she'd heard me the second time because she acknowledged what I'd said as the words were leaving my mouth. My emotion cleared up in an instant as I wondered wtf was wrong with her that she was asking me the same question repeatedly when I'd already answered it. Then, the real stunner came when she claimed I'd never told her once why I was upset and that she'd just spent the last 15 minutes waiting for me to answer and I'd said nothing in that time. Like...WHAT. THE. FUCK. It was bizarre. And it made me sick because I felt like she was screwing with me and making light of my brain issues, she knew full well that I have trouble with short-term memory. The whole thing felt like one big mindfuck that she was doing for kicks and I said as much and then she backtracked and said she'd never claimed I hadn't told her why I was so emotional. By then, I was seeing her for what she really was and I ended the conversation soon after. That was the loudest and last big lesson about vulnerability that I learned the hard way.
It makes me sound like a beaten down wife or some ish, but post-BP dating was like a whole new world. The Youngin was into me and liked me and treated me very well, but I held back because of our age difference and because I assumed the niceness was a product of her having not been so jaded by life and relationships yet. Lu and I were quite casual, more a fling than a relationship, but I remember her being taken aback by how I went inside myself whenever conflict came up, no matter how small. I told her the reasons behind it and she went out of her way to let me know that she was not BP, which I found to be extraordinary given that we were just casual. Neither of them ever took advantage of me or made me feel stupid for opening up, albeit only slightly. They were kind to me, knowing the crap I'd just gotten out of (The Youngin compared it to me having been paroled). While I'm thankful to both of them for how they handled me emotionally, all involved knew there was no longterm relationship potential with either of them so I was never really compelled to open up all the way. But now someone's come into the picture who may have potential and I don't think I'm handling it all that well. I've been open about my feelings, maybe, twice and felt some semblance of regret each time, not because the feelings are bad at all, but because I'm so used to my feelings being met with a long pause and then some kind of insult. BP made me feel as if I were emotionally high-maintenance when in reality, I'm not. I think she just didn't want to deal with anyone's feelings but her own so no matter what I told her, unless it was something nice about herself, she tuned out but not before throwing in a jab or two. And that eventually wore me down until I became...well, what I am now. But these two times I've let my feelings out have turned out to be okay. I said how I felt, I had a moment, however brief, of vulnerability and I didn't get hurt and the world didn't end. And that was really nice and very foreign to me, sadly. Compliments have always made me slightly uncomfortable but I'm finally learning to say, 'thank you'. Hopefully, I can also learn that not everyone is out to throw my feelings back in my face or steamroll over them as effortlessly as BP. And maybe the key to learning that is having people around who couldn't even fathom doing half the ish she did.
