Reading rosyxxx's journal

Last night was a little painful to go through... in more ways than one. First, I had to cut off a budding relationship. Second, I really hurt my back at work. Third, I was at a loss as to what to do for one of my co-workers when her man pulled some psycho stunts on her.

When I woke up yesterday, I turned on my phone to find another message from the guy I had just had a first date with on Sunday. I realized that we only started talking last Monday, and after that, Friday was the only day we didn't talk. I only called once. I didn't really think anything of that, even after the conversation we had Sunday night about families and children, where he was trying to convince me how much I would love having a child. I know this is not for me. I don't need to be swayed or convinced. I also saw a 'red flag' go up when he told me a bit about his last relationship. Some things just did not jive, like the fact that his child died, and he never said how or why. The fact that he was just in a relationship that lasted only a matter of months, and they were going to get married, until the woman decided that it was too fast, and bailed. He felt that she had commitment problems, and I begged to differ.

Other than that, dinner was lovely, so was dessert, so was the movie, and bowling was mostly fun. But the reassurances required by him became exhausting, and I just wanted to go home, eventually. We'd spent more than eight hours together. By the time I got home, I had had another message from him... nice, but I didn't deem it necessary to be calling back that very morning at 2 am. Monday went by, and a full day of work, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I thought: "I am just too wary of people."

Yesterday came, and a new message. I was short on time getting ready for work, and I didn't think it necessary to call back right away... so I didn't. He called less than three hours later, giving me an ultimatum on when to call him back, and reprimanding me for not calling back Sunday night, after we had just finished our date, not calling Monday to say thank you, and not returning his call that afternoon. Then the message went on for a full 5 minutes. I had my girlfriend listen to it. She pulled the phone away from her ear, and said: "Honey, you don't need this. Get it over with..." Which is what I did. I ended it.

Granted, it would have been nice for me to call and say 'thank you' over the phone, after having already said 'thank you' for a nice date in person plenty of times... but, my lack of doing so, didn't merit a 5 minute reprimand. It possibly merited somebody being mature enough to understand that I was a little scared.

Then I pulled a back muscle in the thoracic region.. a repull from a few weeks ago. Fortunately, my manager understood and let me go. Before I left, two people worked on my back, and then I put ice on it, so that I could drive. I was grateful to the guys who worked on the knot, so that I could sleep relatively pain free tonight. No more headstands for a while... I guess.

While I was resting my back, and getting ready to drive home, a coworker burst into tears. It was the classic stripper story of an abusive boyfriend. He'd taken her car, changed the locks on the apartment, and left town. He was mad because she complained about the fact that he slept with someone else behind her back. Nevermind that the car she payed for, she bought and put in his name. Nevermind that she paid the rent every month, and the apartment was in his name as well. ??? He beats her too. She wanted to know why he would treat her that way... and I said, you can't wait around asking those kinds of questions. Believe me I know. Don't waste anymore of your time.

I told her she could stay with me for the night, not thinking I have to meet some friends later today... I don't have a TV for her to veg in front of, and I don't trust her, either. Stealing isn't the problem. The problem is that she immediately got on someone's phone, called a friend, and told them that she was staying with me, and where I live. I suspected that she might also place calls from my home phone without thinking to block the number; and probably try to call her man, and let him know where she was, without thinking...either. I wanted to care, but she'd already told someone where she was staying, without thinking about my welfare at all.

People asked me if I was crazy for ever agreeing to let her stay with me... I told her, under the circumstances, I couldn't trust her if she was going to give out my private information. I don't need that drama added to what I have gone through. I told her that I would take her wherever she wanted to go, but no longer to my place. Someone else offered to take her home, get drunk with her, and stay up watching movies. Right now, though some would disagree... I think that is what she needs. I gave up drinking myself, and would not be a good drinking buddy for that reason... but I remember leaving a similar emotionally and mentally abusive situation, and drinking myself into oblivion back then was what kept me from calling for the first month, before I got my shit together.

I told her she needs distance, perspective, and that the more of it she has, the easier it will be to see how much she doesn't need him in her life. The man is a control freak, much like the dude I dallied with last week.

I think it bears mentioning here, that trying to control what a control freak does to your life, does not necessarily make you a control freak... but if you have any tendencies towards that kind of behaviour yourself, you definitely don't need to pair up with someone who has a full-blown case of controlfreakedness. I can listen to her stories without it draining me, oddly enough... due to my meditation practice, but I can't risk my physical well-being by having someone like her man come near my home. I also can't have a man in my life who wants to know my whereabouts 24/7, like the dude I dallied with last week. Thank god I am a old-fashioned and didn't let anything of a sexual nature occur with him, before I found out what he was really like. Sex soooo clouds the issues. If I had begun to have feelings for him, I might try to rationalize his desire to know every last little detail about my life.

My whereabouts for the next couple of days, though, are to be hanging out with friends while my back recuperates. Just in case, anybody wants to know.... :-)

<insert canned laughter>

Oddly enough, I am not exhausted. Just relieved that everything worked out okay.

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.

This post was edited by rosyxxx on Jun 01, 2005.

I'm sorry to hear about your back. I hope you feel better soon.
This might help with the pain, inbetween the ice packs, take a cup of dry rice and put it in the microwave for a minuet then put it in a sock and put it against the tight muscles, it will help them relax and the rice stays really warm for quite a while, and you can reheat it as often as nessiary.

Control freaks are such a strange trip, arn't they. Pretty scary the first time you get connected to one and don't realize what your getting into, that is until the stuff starts to happen.

It's a good thing you reconized this guy you went out with was a control freak very early on.

I remember the first time I dated a control freak. At first the attention was so amazing. I had such poor self-esteem that it swept me off my feet.
For the first month this guy was always there and I felt so incredibly special, then the weird stuff started happening, the nagging feeling I was being tracked because he would ask about all my wareabouts and he wanted me to meet his parents and have my parents meet his, and this was only after 2 months of dating.
The phone calls would go on for hours and they were everyday.

I remember feeling trapped but had no idea if it was just me or what to do.
Thankfully it came to a head when he got into an argument with my mom about how to cut the lawn.
I was on the stairs and heard this and it was like someone threw cold water on me.
I broke up with him that afternoon. But for a few months after he keep showing up and I would get phone calls from him.

It took a while but eventually he left me alone. I think I was lucky because it could have ended like your co-worker, or worse.

I know alot of people would say get a restraining order against the guy, but many times that doesn't work because a control freak dosen't reconize restrain when it comes to what they see as their possession
It's like your not even human when your with a control freak, your just a possession, and it's almost like they have this idea in their head that you should act like one and be very understanding when they get a new possession, meaning another woman, or man, depending on the personal taste of the control freak.

I don't blame you for not letting her stay with you if she can't think clear enough to be careful about your safty.

I wonder if some people out there who keep ending up repeating the same pattern over and over of choosing control freaks as partners in someway feel that's really what they deserve.
Not nessiarily on a concious level of thinking, but if a peson feels so shitty about themselves that in order to maintain a certian comfort zone in their lives they need either physical or emotional beating up on a regular basis.

They can't seem to break away, or break the cycle. They sometimes do leave, but unless they realize that they are worth more than that they will most likely end up either going back or ending up attracting that same kind of person again to themselves.

And the funny thing is, you can tell them all this, and they may know it in their head and agree with you, but until they get the info down inside where it actually will begin to really regester it's almost like talking to a blank wall.

At the place where she is, she may be as dangerous to be around as her absuser because she is so messed up in her thoughts and so disabled, not being able to say no, or as with you having any common sense to realize that when she tells people where she is that makes you and anyone else she stays with, a target for his crap, simply due to the fact that you or anyone else in close proximity, would be in his way.

The really sad part is that if she doesn't start to make changes where they count, inside, the older she gets the more the pattern becomes ingrained until it's too late.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Jun 02, 2005.

I wonder if some people out there who keep repeating the same pattern over and over of choosing control freaks as partners in someway feel that's what they really deserve.

I suspect that is very often likely the case... but then...it also bears mentioning that 'control freaks' use that very thing to justify and rationalize their behaviour. I know I've heard it before: the idea that if I feel I am worth no better, and feel that I deserve some sort of punishment, then what they are up to isn't wrong. What a load of crap. And most control freaks are intelligent enough to realize that it's bullshit. They still say it anyway.

...ending up attracting that same kind of person to themselves{,}

is something that seems to happen not only to those who have not broken the cycle, but also those who have broken it. I think the abusive control freak (as if there were any other kind :/) just recognizes the marks left by someone else. The marks that may not be visible.

But that's okay, because I, for one, recognize control freaks. I should know. I had become one myself...but I did not choose to stay there. I prefer where I am at right now, and this guy isn't the first one who has tried this kind of stunt. Two more over the past few months tried it. Prior to that, I just didn't date at all. The first control freak I ran into pissed me off on the third day of knowing him, because he already expected me to call everyday, and said as much. I told him to cease and desist. He did.

And last week, oddly enough, I ran into him, and he apologized to me. I said I accepted his apology. Then he wanted to talk, and to introduce me to his friend. I said I had to go, and that accepting his apology did not necessarily mean that I would want to converse with him further, and in fact, I did not want to converse further. I left. The end.

They pop up, just like somebody did in my dreams on the final day of my 40-day mantra practice. That person was standing on the sidewalk in the Loop, blocking my way, like a schoolyard bully. He teased for a second, and I got a little caught up in defending my position, and then realized what was up, and turned away. I snorted, turned from him, and walked out of the dream, and into 'waking' life. I suppose that he still wishes me: sweet dreams... but maybe he thinks of the Annie Lennox song a little too much. Some of us like happiness.

And happiness doesn't include control freaks.

I want you to know, harold_maude, that much of what you have written in either response to my writing, or simply your own threads - has had a very positive influence on me. If I clung to you as a life preserver too much, I hope you understand. You did right by me, and you still do. You saw beneath the self-assuredness of my facade when I first came here, and saw my vulnerability. You did not misuse that knowledge. You helped to protect me, and I love you for it. Grateful is the wrong-ass word. I love you for it. <3 <3 <3 Yo is my sister. :-)

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.