Dear Reader:

I am addressing this post to whomever would like to read it. I am not addressing it to the Original Poster (OP) because she deleted her account (“anonymous”) nine months ago and hasn’t posted since. Three members found interest in this thread this month, March 2022, so I thought I’ll see what I can learn today from the old June 2021 posts.

The OP’s story: she knew a man for 3 months and then found out that he had a girlfriend. He then told her how unhappy he was with his girlfriend: “he felt suffocated, how he had to cut off his female friends because she asked him…there was never any trust and so on“, and “He said he wanted to get out of it but just didn’t know how“.

The OP figured that his relationship with his girlfriend was toxic, which reminded her of a toxic relationship she once had, and she therefore empathized with him: “It reminded me of a toxic relationship I was in during my younger days, and I emphasized with his plight. I wanted to be there for him, so I stayed by his side“.

And so, she stayed by his side for one year and 4 months (January 2020-May 2021), being “too emotionally invested and head over heels in love with him… in a situationship, I never got to go on proper dates with him (for fear of being seen together by someone he knows/girlfriend) and it was just always hanging out at his place“.

In May 2021, his girlfriend found out about the OP, and a confrontation followed between the three where “He openly professed his love to his girlfriend right there and then… He never loved me, never meant any of the things he said to me”

At one point during the confrontation, “(his girlfriend) was all up in my face saying, ‘he can choose to tell you whatever he wants to, but why did you believe him?’“. The OP answered this question in her post addressed to me: “And as to why I believed him, I felt that (his girlfriend) of all people should be able to understand that. She chose to believe him as well despite having suspicions throughout the course of their relationship… Because she loved him. And I did too“.

Back in June 2021, I didn’t realize that the above quote, starting with “And as to why I believed him“, is brilliant. The OP was not stupid except for when it came to love. In her otherwise brilliance, she made an excellent point: it is the girlfriend (or shall I say, the other girlfriend, the one with more seniority) who should have been able to understand because she herself believed him again and again.

How does it happen that many women (and men) are stupid when it comes to love? My answer: because as children, when the people we love most, our parents, lie to us, we believe them because we love them, and unless we re-evaluate their lies, we proceed to build our lives based on their lies and contradictory messages, remaining confused, dysfunctional and… stupid. This has been the story of decades of my life, lots of stupidity and it started with the lies my mother told me, the contradictory messages that confused the wit out of me… leaving me… well, stupid.

anita

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