Dear lannawannabe:

A year ago, when you were 27 (never having dated before, never had a sexual experience with a man), a 29 year old man from your graduate program in school pursued you for a few months. Over time, you started to fall in love with him. His attention made you “feel good, powerful, desirable, sexy”.

You agreed to hang out with him, he was “lovely and sweet” at the time. You told him that it was your first relationship, asked him to be patient with you. But he wasn’t patient with you, instead, “he wanted to have, and you gave in. He “was very rough and unpleasant in bed”, and you didn’t enjoy it at all.

Sometime after he told you that he never dated someone as introverted as you, and he expressed his dissatisfaction with you otherwise. You cried and although you thought he was “brutish and mean… a complete jerk.. an ass”,  you “tried to be what he wanted”, and forced yourself “to open up more and be more sexual” while he “continued to refuse to just talk and hang out” with you like before.

Some time later, after spending the night at your place, he “broke it off”, commenting “I feel like I used you”, and that it is his mother’s fault because she pressured him to have a girlfriend.

Since then he at times ignored you, and the few brief conversations you had with him, were always initiated by you. Recently, you’ve “seen him, apparently newly infatuated, with an attractive woman in his classes”, and it hurts you a lot.

You wrote: “I’m not exactly looking for specific advice on this, although if you can relate let me know!”- yes, I can relate. Like you I had a low self esteem, and like you, I ended up as a very young woman with a man who was  “brutish and mean.. a complete jerk.. an ass”, and then another… Those were painful experiences.

If you want to communicate with me, please do. When you  post, I will reply.

anita