The Wrong Man

It's as simple as a choice, but any given choice can be monumental, no matter how simple or difficult. We make choices every day sometimes without even thinking about them because they have been so ingrained into our subconscious. They almost seem instinctive, but they're not. They're learned, like deciding which route to take home. What items to order from a take-out menu. Who we're attracted to.

We've all made choices that we question, in hindsight. The "if only I had" is probably one of the most common statements. There are many choices that I've made without knowing that they would turn out to be staggering turning points in my life. I've let opportunities go. I've taken wrong turns. I've chosen questionable paths. But, I can't be too hard on myself because I did the best I could do with the information, the perspective and the maturity I had at the time.

And I chose the wrong men. Almost like clockwork.

It would be easy to become bitter, saying all men are pigs; but that's just ignorant. There are many wonderful, courageous, intelligent, caring, loving, admirable men out there. I just didn't choose them. I fell into a pattern of destructive relationships.

Given that I was emotionally stunted, physically tortured and psychologically impaired early in my childhood, it makes absolute sense. I grew up without the invaluable education of getting to know the opposite sex. So, it's not surprising that mistrust and fear became ingrained in me. Experience became instinct; an instinct that has brought me to where I am today.

At 17, I started with a series of anguished crushes on men who neither had the knowledge nor the capacity to understand someone such as myself. They probably didn't know I existed while I went through into the nightmarish world of unrequited love- the kind of love that not only is the loneliest, but one that leaves the most emotional scars in a person already rife with them.

My first full fledged boyfriend, at the age of 20 seemed to start with promise. I met him at a bar, and fell in love with him because he asked to brush my hair. How was I to know that this unbelievably romantic beginning would end in disaster a year later? It turned out that this sweet gentle man, chosen because he was so unlike the abusive role models I grew up with, would eventually cheat on me, get another woman pregnant and marry her, all while still carrying on a relationship with me.

That was not an auspicious beginning. It was followed by a string of misses until I met the man I was to eventually marry 3 years later. After his divorce at the age of 27, he came to stay with his mom who lived in my apartment building. I noticed him because he would start coming out to the terrace where I hung out with my coffee and crossword puzzles. He was a gentle, funny and loving guy. How was I to know that he also  was a dead beat dad with a drug problem? I found that out after we got married.

In the four years we were together, our relationship became a project for me. In the beginning, I got him to pay his ex-wife child support, to go back to school and get a better paying job. I cleaned up his look. I reinvented the man. I was so proud of him, until I noticed he spent hours in the bathroom, could not sustain an erection and was acting very erratically. Three years into our marriage, I stopped sharing his bed, stopped being his partner, and became his therapist. By the fourth year, I gave up trying and got out to save myself.

I was 27, bruised by two shatteringly disappointing relationships, and clueless as to what went wrong. I needed to rally myself and find a way to navigate life and romance. That's when I discovered the treacherous world of online and embarked into an even more destructive set of relationships.

But that's a story for another day.

Today, I'm wiser. I understand what went wrong, but I'm still struggling with the aftereffects. If I'm ever to have a healthy, fulfilling relationship with a man, I need to navigate into safer emotional waters. I need to identify the trigger within myself, all the barriers I have put up, and finally be free.