Let's Put Some Labels on This Thing

I had made a mistake.  More than one actually.  My mistakes were morally questionable at best, downright sleazy at worst and there was also this great big potential career risk I had just taken.  Was I crazy!?!  Sleeping with someone who worked for me??  I could've lost my job and it didn't even register at the time.  It was the day after Sam and I had spent the night together and I was experiencing regret big time.  But, instead of facing up to my mistakes and dealing with them head on to stop the madness, I hid from it and sort of hoped it would go away without having to experience any conflict or other type of fallout.

Here is what I thought - I thought I was in control of what happened and what would happen in the future.  I thought I had taken advantage of a person who was vulnerable and I was feeling pretty bad about myself for doing so but could somehow rationalize it away and chalk it up to an experience and things between us would go no further.  Here is the truth - Sam knew what he was doing and playing it (me) pretty well.  In all fairness, I truly do believe that Sam was not/is not a "player" per se - not a cold hearted calculating person who can use others without thought or remorse.  I think he is able to convince himself that his feelings and actions are real at the time and it is only a matter of time until he is face to face with the reality of the situation and then he becomes aware that all those intense feelings experienced at the beginning of a relationship cannot be sustained.  As I found out much later, Sam had a pattern for relationships:

1. He jumped from one to another with no break in between.  All his relationships were serious/committed, not just dating or sleeping around.  They actually technically overlapped.  Sam felt justified in this because although perhaps he was still legally married to someone or in a relationship (like living together), she knew it was over (in his mind) and that made it OK to be involved with someone else.
2. He burned super intense at the beginning of these relationships.  He was all consuming with the amount of attention and adoration he put onto his women.  The phone calls, text messages, constant need to be together.
3. He was quick to emotionally connect, to fall in love.  The current relationship was "the one".  He was in love, he was happy.  The new girl in his life was everything to him, nothing else mattered.  He pushed for emotional and physical commitment very quickly.
4. He played the victim.  Everything was someone elses fault.  He thought of himself as a real honest and open person, someone that was always being taken advantage of and hurt.  There was very little responsibility for his decisions and actions.
5. He was needy, broken, just "needed a little bit of help" to move on or was waiting for the one lucky break in life.  For so many women, including myself, this was feeding into some Florence Nightingale syndrome and the desire to fix this person and make him into the great man we wanted him to be for us and our families.

In my quest for answers and understanding about this relationship, I have done lots of reading.  I found a website - www.baggagereclaim.com within a couple of weeks after the breakup and spent hours on this site reading her posts.  I bought her book and read it within a couple of days.  There was so much that I read that I could relate to and it made me feel better.  For the first time, I thought I was going to make it through this breakup just fine.  I wish that was all I needed to put this behind me, but I digress.

The most important thing that I discovered about my relationship is that Sam is what is called a fast forwarder or a future faker.  It was important because I learned that I was not alone and that how my relationship progressed and what eventually happened was actually not a unique occurrence.  Although my relationship lasted close to 4 years, that is highly unlikely for a fast forwarded relationship.  I am not or was not the "exception" to the rule no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise in order to add something more or some sort of validation to the relationship than what it really was.  There were other reasons why it lasted so long.  And boy, looking back now I was really fast forwarded.  Here are some highlights that define this type of person/relationship:

• Fast Forwarding is a technique where someone sweeps you up in a tide of intensity when they’re pursuing you and you’re dating them that you end up missing crucial red flags.
• Push for emotional commitment and often sexual intimacy very quickly
• Make you feel like the centre of their universe
• Distract you from looking too closely at them
• Can be emotionally demanding
• Refer to the types of plans that people who have been in relationships far longer would discuss – marriage, babies, etc
• Some will introduce you to friends, family (including their kids) very quickly
• Say stuff like ‘But it feels like we have known each other for X months’ when you object to something and mention how you hardly know each other
• Can be petulant and sulky when they don’t get their own way so you quickly learn to minimise conflict
• Even though they appear to respect an asserted boundary, often quickly try to recross it
• Are very persistent when you’re not interested in them
• Will privately and sometimes openly think you’re The One pretty much immediately
• Will be eager to ‘title the relationship’ and demand commitment even when you hardly know each other
• Often have strings of high intensity short dalliances that fizzle out quickly
• Overestimate their level of interest
• Often veer between deflecting questions about themselves, oversharing, or telling lies and using selective omissions
  

So, from the next day on after the night we spent together I was pursued intensely.  It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.  It was like he could not get enough of me.  He couldn't or wouldn't stay away.  If we weren't in each other's physical company, it was instant messaging or texts or phone calls.  And it was really annoying.  It was too much for me.  The alarm bells were ringing and my internal voice was screaming warnings at me.  I was embarrassed of him.  We went out once to a bar where people I used to work with hung out and I introduced him as my friend.  I denied any romantic involvement to anyone who asked or gave me that inquisitive look.  But still I continued to ignore all that messaging because it also started to feel really good when we were alone and all of the wrongness that surrounded our relationship could be pushed aside.  I started to believe in a whirlwind romance fairy tale ending where this man was so head over heels in love with me that this could be my true love.  I started to believe that this was the offer on the table, this intense feeling of love and adoration from someone so much younger than me that would always be there.  Who wouldn't want to be adored for the rest of their life?  Maybe by accident I had stumbled into the person I was meant to be with all along!  My self esteem was flying high.

We became inseparable.  He told me he loved me within days.  He told me he wanted to get married within weeks.  He was desperate to get out of his parents house and told me his woeful stories of having no where else to go to live.  He was going to be paying child support on 2 kids now, didn't earn much money, had issues with his credit (which of course were not his fault) etc, etc.  Just needed a "little help" to get going again.  And there I was.  With "IDIOT" and "SUCKER" stamped all over my forehead.

I don't know how else to say it but I let him in.  All the way in, emotionally and physically.  I opened my heart in a way that I had NEVER done - not even with my husband.  I believed, I trusted, I couldn't believe there was someone who loved me so much and I decided to grab on for the ride.  He met my kids and very soon he moved into my house.  Without knowing what I was really doing because I could not be honest with myself, I set out to "fix" this man into the man of my dreams.  I thought he was full of untapped potential and could become something great.  We made plans and started to build our dream.  We would be great.  We would be happy.