Dear Shve:

As I was reading your original post, way before I got to the last paragraph, I thought to myself: what a cruel man he is! I also thought- he suffered no consequences for his cruelty! I then I read your last paragraph: “Everyone around him thinks he is a very good person“, and he “get(s) away with no karma“.

“For him it seemed normal to just go about life. How can this be?” – he doesn’t have a heart; this is the only answer I can come up with at this point. Thing is, his new wife got a heatless husband, and by now, she probably knows it, and tragically, his future children will have a heartless father. It is not that he was heartless with you, and then… he is a person full of heart with his new wife. She got the same person you got!

I can’t think of anything else to say for now. But if you reply to me, knowing myself, I will have plenty more thoughts to offer you. I do feel sad that you ended up with this being your first … love-like experience. Mine wasn’t better, no at all, so I can relate.

anita

Dear Shve:

It is Sat 6:17 pm where I am, USA (Sun 6:47 am in India). I want to post again in your thread in the morning, my time, when I am hopefully more awake and focused than I am now. I want to respond to everything you shared so far. If you want to add anything at all, before I return, please do. I hope you will soon feel much better!

anita

Dear Shve:

You are very welcome! I have so much to say, so I know that this will be a very long post. I hope that you have the patience. Take as long as you need to read/ re-read any particular part.

1) About Words: words are easy to say… for those who don’t care if their words hurt others (hurt others right there-and-then, or later). This is particularly true in regard to men who pursue women for sex, not caring if their words end up hurting the women: “he said he loved me and wanted to marry me” – how fast and easy it was for him to say these words, it takes less than a minute and a tiny portion of a calorie to move the muscles required to utter these words.

Later, when he was no longer interested in you and you confronted him, “he just said I loved you at that time, so I said that, now I don’t so I’m saying that“- When he told you that he loved you, he felt something: that feeling may have been, at first, a feeling of affection, but it became predominantly a feeling of excitement at the idea of sexually conquering a woman. When he told you I-want-to-marry-you, it was part of his plan to conquer you. Men have been suggesting and/ or promising marriage for the purpose of sexually conquering a woman since the invention of marriage!

What he said, in the sentence I boldfaced above is that he is ethically okay with saying and then unsaying whatever, his excuse: I felt it then, I don’t feel it now.

“He also did mention to me once that in our office the talk was that I was a girl that men could not ‘get hold of’. May be in his male brain this became a challenge“-

In regard to sexually conquering a woman/ sexual conquest, an online definition of the word conquest: the subjugation and assumption of control of a place or people by use of military force; sexual conquest: a seduction culminating in sexual intercourse.

2) About Pleading, Crying and Begging Persistently: “He was persistent, pleaded cried and begged and said he could not live without me. He said don’t leave me for these silly reasons, I will keep you very happy” – he said what he said as part of his sexual conquest mission. He pleaded to your reason (“don’t leave me for these silly reasons”), to your empathy, pity and guilt (“cried and begged”), to your need to feel that you are important and special to someone (“said he could not live without me”), and he promised you happiness.

Pleading, crying and begging repeatedly takes more time and energy than just uttering words once. What gave him energy was the excitement about the prize at the end of his sexual conquest mission, if it ends successfully.

“He asked me to ask my family about him if we could get married… He persuaded me and even was getting angry about why I’m not talking to my family about it… he said we should keep convincing them until they get convinced and then we will announce it among our friends and everyone” – he was making himself more believable in regard to his alleged intent to marry you, a non-existent intent. He was okay with you and your family getting hurt once his mission was accomplished.

3) About Promises: “he said… I will make you very happy… and he said I promise you I will not touch you before marriage” – again, these are only words, and uttering words is easy when a person doesn’t care about hurting another’s feelings; uttering words is the easiest part of the sexual conquest mission.

4) The Next Phase of his Sexual Conquest Mission: “One fine day he said he could not proceed with this because his family did not think this was suitable… I was shocked and cried to him. He said this will not work out. We met in office the next day and we talked, and he said he would drop me back home. He stopped on the way home and asked can I kiss you” – by persistently pursuing you for a long time, day after day, he got you to the point of emotional dependence on his Words, Pleading, Crying, Begging and Promises. Once he removed what you were dependent on, you were shocked and upset, and while shocked and upset, he arranged to be alone with you in his car where he went for the Prize.

“On hearing that I thought he’s back to normal he was just angry… I was just happy hearing that” – when he asked if he could kiss you, he was approaching the culmination of his sexual conquest mission, but you were not aware of it. Like a person dependent on a drug (his Words, Pleading, etc.), you were relieved and happy at the thought that you didn’t lose your drug, that it’s still available for you.

“I said no you can’t and asked if I could kiss him, I kissed him on his cheek” – When he asked if he could kiss you (on the lips), you felt a gratitude to him, for not taking away from you what you became dependent on. You did not want to say Yes to a sexual kiss, so you offered him a non-sexual kiss, a kiss on his cheek.

5) The Culmination of his Sexual Conquest Mission, going for the Prize: “I kissed him on his cheek, and he suddenly kissed me on my lips.  I felt something I never did before. From there it was downhill…  The next few weeks he would call me to come with him and this would happen… This continued for 4-5 months“.

“I would think… surely, he would not just throw me and go because he promised he would only touch me after marriage” – you were so confused at the time, that you still expected him to keep his promise, not being aware that he already broke his promise.

6) He didn’t need more than 4-5 months with the Prize: “One fine day he said his family found a girl for him… He stopped calling me to come with him“.

7) Post Mission for the Conqueror: “he said she was young and beautiful, and that he was the first guy for her…He was so happy…  kept flaunting her pictures and engagement to everyone at office… And then he got married… he had twins, a boy and a girl, exactly what he wanted… He did pretty well in his career too“.

Post Mission for the Conquered: “I felt very dirty, cheap, humiliated and shocked…  I could not figure out what was going on. I was like is this real? … it was very painful. I was still in a shock, slowly I started realising he had used me because I was a challenge and he wanted to show that I could be ‘captured’” – you became aware that indeed you were captured (or conquered, the word I used).

To capture, online definition: to take into one’s possession or control by force.

To conquer, online definition: to overcome and take control of (a place or people) by use of military force.

– the force he used was not physical, it was psychological.

Deceiving you (Pleading, Crying and Begging, and making false Promises to you, etc.) = using psychological force against you.

How does the conqueror feel (the one who deceived and took control of his victim)? Elated. How does the conquered feel (the one who was deceived and lost control)? Humiliated, shocked.

“He blamed it on me saying ‘why did you come with me when I called you’?” – he (the perpetrator) succeeded in his mission to deceive you (his victim), and then he blames you for… his own success.

“I hated myself for letting this happen to me” – the one deceived accepting the responsibility conveniently given to her by one who deceived her.

“All of this triggered my path to depression, weight gain… And here I am still unmarried, depressed, gaining weight and still have flash backs about the whole incident that make me cry“,

“Everyone around him thinks he is a very good person. I don’t know how to move forward, feels like I am still stuck at the time that he treated me like trash… For him it seemed normal to just go about life… I’ve shared about this to 2 friends of mine, one just said these things happen” –

– Lots of people passively accept the abuse of power; many admire those who successfully abuse their power.  In addition, people gravitate toward those who appear happy and powerful/ in control and gravitate away from people who appear sad and powerless/ not in control. So, in the office, people likely gravitated toward him and away from you. This gravitation tendency keeps the perpetrators powerful, and the victims… powerless.

“Yes, the person was cruel. He took advantage of my vulnerability, when I was at the lowest point in my life. But when such a long time goes by and nothing happened to him, I think maybe he’s not cruel, maybe I deserved this” – Nothing happened to him because much of society passively accepts the abuse of power, and many people encourage and participate in it, in some form or another.

“I could never share my story to my family due to the immense shame I feel even thinking of talking about it… I spend many sleepless nights just thinking that I betrayed my parents but could not bring myself to tell them about this. Tried so many times but could not…. I even thought of ending my life, but I can’t imagine my family going through that horror” – your immense shame does not belong to you. It belongs to (1) the perpetrator/ conqueror, (2) the many people who supported him along the way, starting with his parents who encouraged (or did not discourage) the idea that it is okay for a man to abuse his social-gender power against women, (3) the people who did not provide you with guidance in regard to this widespread and well-known practice of men seeking to sexually subjugate women, the people who failed to teach you how to detect men-on-a-sexual-conquest-mission and how to respond to them.

Power is successfully abused in many ways, all over the world. Shame belongs to the millions of people who are (1) aware of this or that abuse of power, (2) are capable of doing something against it, (3) passively accept it (ex. your friend who said: “these things happen”), and/ or encourage it and participate in it.

“I did not expect him to break my trust and me ending up like this… He did come over home once with my friends. He is very good at keeping appearances in front of others to seem like the perfect guy” – your parents should have taught you that trust can be broken by people who appear perfect.

“Had I not gone through this experience I would never have thought he was like this” – if your parents taught you that people are too often not what they appear to be, you wouldn’t have to go through this experience.

“I did think to myself during the aftermath of this, why did I not have anyone to tell me he was not good for me” – it would have been very, very helpful if your parents, or someone else, told you that it is possible that he (or any man/ person) is not what he appears to be, and then tell you the common ways in which men seek to sexually subjugate women (ex. promising to marry her), so that you would have been aware and alert to such ways.

“I also had an intuition about him not being good for me but at that time I could not figure out why my mind thought so because he was so well behaved” – if you were taught about the ways men seek to subjugate women, you’d have more than an intuition about him not being good for you, you’d have an understanding of the motivations behind his “good” behavior.

The combination of Intuition + Understanding would have been powerful enough against his efforts.

“My feelings of shame and disgust are still strong even though it has been 10 years now. I’m now 37, I can’t think of getting into a relationship for the fear of being used again” – with more understanding comes power. If you use your power of understanding, you can protect yourself from current and future abuses.

“Most of the anger during the time with him was because of his behaviour in relation to other women when we were talking. He would tell..  a friend lost weight, he would tell her did you transfer your weight to her(me). He even said another girl was the most beautiful among our circle of friends” – like I said in the beginning of this post, for people who don’t care about hurting others with their words, it is easy to say whatever they feel like saying.

“Hearing these things made me jealous, but I did not know how to handle that jealousy, I tried to hide it and suppress it to maintain peace… I know I was not to blame fully for that anger” – you were not to blame for feeling anger at his verbal cruelty. Your anger was an instinctive/ natural response to his cruelty.

“How can I move forward knowing that someone is out there enjoying their life after destroying my dreams?” – a person like him, who does not care about honesty, decency and justice, a person who cares only for personal power and appearances, hurts the most when he becomes aware of his disappearing youth and health as he ages and becomes more aware of his mortality.

“I also dreamt during my teens that only the person I get married to would touch me and I had made this clear to him too, but he destroyed those dreams” – if he, or a man like him (and there are plenty) would have married you first and then touched you… you’d still be touched by a bad man.

Your dream, I am sure, was to marry to and be touched by a good man, an honest, decent man. Maybe you can still have a First, a first with a good man, one you are yet to meet and get to know.

It has taken me more than 5 hours to put this post together. I hope it is helpful. Please take your time reading it.

anita

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by .

Dear Shve:

You are welcome and thank you for your appreciation and kind words. I spent all that time yesterday on your post not just “for a stranger online”. Writing to you led me to a better understanding of the very unfortunate, very common practice of Abuse of Power, starting in most homes (parents abusing their power over their children in one way or another), on to bullies in school… on to men abusing their power over women, and on and on, all the way to currently, one powerful man abusing his power against all of Ukraine and Russia… and the world.

Also, there really is no such thing as “a stranger online” or in real life. We people have so much in common wherever we live, whatever gender, age, race, education, experience, etc., we are all one big human family. Of course, like in many families, we don’t all get along, and some abuse their power over others.

“It has affected the quality of my life in a very big way especially because he faced no consequences of this in fact just the opposite, he’s doing very well in life… he has all the luck in this world to not face consequences, flaunt his new life and family, do well in his career, not have to apologize and just walk around like nothing happened“,

“I guess somewhere in my mind I keep thinking he will face consequences, but since it never happens, it puts me into a downward spiral mentally.  Do you or anyone here have any thoughts on how I can make peace with this situation especially because I see firsthand that he has no consequences?”

To come to peace with this situation, you need some justice. You need him to suffer consequences for the wrongs he’s done to you. And for as long as there is no justice, you are stuck in a mental downward spiral quality of life. Here are all the possible (and impossible) ways for you to receive justice, as far as I can think. Please let me know what you think of each way, and if in your mind, there are additional ways:

1) In the U.S., for as long as not too much time has passed (statute of limitation), a woman in your position could sue him in civil court, asking for monetary compensation for damages, (2) You could contact his wife and tell her about what happened, hoping that she will give him trouble for what he’s done, and/ or you could gossip about him to people who know him, hoping to damage his reputation this way, (3) You could arrange to meet him in-person and proceed to physically hurt him in such a way that he will live with chronic pain and/ or disability, (4) You can get involved in a justice-seeking movement, or start your own, educating teenage girls and young women about the practice of sexual subjugation of women/ abuse of power by men against women , so to prevent other women from suffering the injustice you suffered for so long.

anita