16 years ago I fell hard for a guy I met at a party.  He was different from everyone else and had an insane amount of energy.  I was immediately very attracted to him.  We hung out all night and then finally after the last person left we were alone and I had the most intimate night of my life.  That was the start of it all.

At the time I had a boyfriend that lived states away.  Our relationship had started off as a friendship.  He was someone I had grown close to after my best friend had died.  I didn’t have much of a physical attraction to him AT ALL, but I didn’t want to lose him as a friend so I accepted being in a relationship with him.  It was very up and down because he knew I was holding back and eventually he had to go back to his family in Michigan because he couldn’t hold a job.  That’s when it became long distance.  We were drifting apart and I honestly didn’t think I’d ever see him again, but my brother whom I lived with, decided to give him a leg up and let him move in with us to get back on his feet.  It was the day before he was to arrive that I met the guy at the party.

My boyfriend came, I got him a job and I couldn’t stop thinking about the guy at the party.  I called him and found out he lived about a mile from me.  I started sneaking over to see him every chance I could.  I tried breaking up with my boyfriend, but every time I did he would threaten that he could never be my friend, it was either all or nothing.  I stupidly stayed and got caught cheating.  I basically got kicked out of my brother’s and stayed with party guy for 3 days.  I felt uncomfortable and wanted to go home, so I did.  I snuck out early one morning.  My boyfriend took me back and I stayed away from the party guy.  My boyfriend had huge resentments though and one night threw me across the room into a coffee table.  That was when my brother kicked him out.

I was sad for about a month and then got in touch with party guy.  We started seeing each other again, but within 2 weeks I found out I was pregnant.  It was my X-boyfriends. I was 6 weeks along. I cut things off with party guy and tried to make things work with the ex long distance again.  But understandably, he didn’t trust me and was constantly threatening me and my family and friends via email.  Two days after my son was born, he called at 1 in the morning accusingly asking me where I’d been when he knew very well I had been giving birth.  He said he couldn’t do this anymore, it was too hard.  I said fine then, don’t, and hung up.  That was the last I ever heard from him, and my son is now 15.

I called party guy…we’ll call him Jason, when my son was 7 days old.  After that he never left my side.  Even though I didn’t want to be intimate at all for about a month and a half, he stayed with me while my brother was gone.  He worked and grocery shopped for me while I was trying to figure out how to be a mom.  I was 21 at the time.  We stayed together for some time until he went into a jealous rage one night over a guy hugging me at a party.  We went back home and things escalated to where he was pushing and throwing me around.  I broke up with him with the help of my roommates since he was quite reluctant to accept it.  I moved on met someone else and married him after 2 years.  It didn’t work because HE was a party guy and not into the whole “family” thing.  So I left and we got divorced.

I had become a heavy drinker throughout all this and ended up going to AA.  It was there that I FINALLY got sober and met the first actual “nice guy” I’d met in what felt like forever.  He was 17 years older than me.  My son was 6 at the time.  It was a slow progression to us eventually living together after 2 years and then 2 years after that, getting married.  2 months before the wedding, Jason, found me on Youtube and left me his number to call.  So I did.  He sounded exactly the same.  I missed him.  It had been 10 years.  I knew he was going to screw things up for me if I didn’t stop talking to him, so when I found out he lied to me about having a girlfriend at the time, I told him we couldn’t talk anymore.  Also, I found this out because his girlfriend contacted me to see if he had a history of being violent.  I told her yes.  They broke up over it.

6 months after I was married, I contacted Jason via text.  I couldn’t stop dreaming about him almost every night and was completely consumed, obsessed even with wanting to talk to him.  We continued to talk for months.  We dreamed about me and him and my son living together on the beach since that’s where he lived, to the point where I was willing to make it happen.  I told him I was ready, and even told my husband I had feelings for someone else, my ex.  He was livid.  We had just bought a house 3 months before.  I told Jason I told my husband and within 5 days, Jason started calling & texting me less and became almost impossible to get a hold of, until he finally had the courage to tell me that he just couldn’t go through that with me.  I was crushed.  I thought about him every day and kept a journal almost every day trying to get over losing him.  Finally, I successfully went a whole 7 months without trying to contact him.  I felt like I was finally starting to move on and it was for the better.  Until, one day, he texted me.  I was mad though.  Angry that he had essentially disappeared out of my life and gotten back with his ex.  I didn’t respond back for 5 days, knowing that I would be opening another can of worms if I did.  But I did it anyway, I had to know why he left the way he did.

He sounded different this time.  Like he was baring his soul to me, just letting all of his feelings out.  I’d never realized how much he’d been holding back before.  Within 4 months, I was attempting to leave my husband for Jason.  And I did.  My son and my husband had always had a rocky relationship so my son was all for starting over.  Any physical attraction I’d had for my husband had left years ago and the age difference had started bothering me more and more even before Jason came along.  I got my own 1 BR apartment and Jason moved to my area from 4 hrs away and got a room for a rent and a job. At first him and my son got a long great, but it wasn’t long before Jason’s childish and temperamental ways reared their ugly head.  From the moment he got here, it’s been up and down.  He would throw tantrums over the smallest thing and my son took to not liking him.  They even got into it to the point where my son tried to punch him in the face.  I started seeing him secretly  and not allowing him over, until my son slowly started being curious about him again.  He started being able to come around again and after a year of him being here I got a 2 BR and we moved in together.  My husband and I have remained friends throughout this whole ordeal.  In fact, he’s had a live-in girlfriend at one point.

This man, Jason, is the only man that has ever physically excited me.  He’s fun and funny and very active, as am I.  He loves the outdoors and animals and is extremely quit witted, but in a short amount of time I pegged him as either being bi-polar or having borderline personality disorder.  Never knew which guy I was going to get.  I’ve broken up with him and its never stuck who knows how many times.  He brings out the worst in me really.  He stresses me out, he’s irresponsible and I feel like I’m taking care of pretty much everything financially.  He loses jobs easily because of his “attitude” problem.  He’s overly jealous and make crazy assumptions. NONE of my friends or family like him because of how he’s treated me and even though my son plays x-box with him and they hang out as friends, even HE wants him out of the house.  Every time I think I really truly can’t take any more of him and I break up with him, this overwhelming feeling of loss and regret consumes me and I just want to snuggle up to him and breathe him in and never let him go.  I can’t figure out why I keep doing this and why I can’t let him go.  He’s been here now for 2 years.  I turned my whole life upside down to be with him, disappointed so many people along the way including myself, and he’s delivered on pretty much nothing that he’s promised.  Why do I keep going back!?  Why can’t I just let him go!?