How I learned to not settle for the love I thought I deserved
In February 2019 I met M. As you do in NYC, we met on Tinder. He lived outside the city so meeting in person had to wait a few days but this didn’t stop us from texting all day, Facetiming multiple times a day and generally being excited about each other. I stopped talking to everyone else, I cancelled a few dates and stopped looking at the app.
The big day finally arrived. I knew by this point that he doesn’t drink but what do you do on a first date, other than go for a drink in the West Village? So off we went to a bar. Then on to the next one to grab some food. Conversation was flowing and we were crazy about each other. He walked me home and I was on cloud 9.
I was leaving for a 10 day long vacation and before I left, we were Facetiming every morning while he was driving to work and then every afternoon while he was driving home. But he always hung up before he arrived at home. Little patterns were forming and I tried to understand them. There is always a reason behind habits and always doing things the same way. Something started to stand out. We never Facetimed when he was at home and he texted a lot less after he got home. Weird, right? One would think it’s the other way around.
One Friday night, on my vacation, I was sitting in my hotel’s bar and I wanted to talk to him. I asked if we could Facetime. He said he is about to go out with a friend and he is running late. It was odd. I asked why he can’t just Facetime me while getting ready. No response. And that’s when I had my little lightbulb moment. He does not live alone.
I asked him outright. He didn’t admit it right away, he wanted to avoid having this conversation then and there. All he said was that he has a child. It was enough, I knew right away that with the child also comes the wife. All of a sudden I wasn’t the potential new girlfriend. I was the other woman, without even knowing let alone agreeing to be forced into this situation.
This lightbulb moment was followed by me settling. At this point I was so down, I had no direction, I had no goals and I had no self worth. He found me two years after someone did the same thing to me, but got away with it for much longer. M told me that he only ever got married because the person he was dating at the time got pregnant. Then he only stayed because of their child. Can you even be mad? Yes, yes you can, because this is not unconditional love for a child and a lot of sacrifice. This is deceit. But then I thought I don’t deserve more or better and I took whatever I could, whatever I was given. I settled.
I saw him once after I returned to NYC. I spent less than a day in the city before I was going on a weeks long business trip. I wanted to talk to him, to get a decent explanation at least. Obviously it didn’t happen that way. Again, I was settling. The texting continued throughout my trip but I knew I have to find the strength to end things with him.
Because he wasn’t living in the city, we didn’t meet in person too often. Between February and April I saw him three times. By mid April my mental health got so bad, I was having multiple panic attacks a day and I knew I had to do something. I finally went to therapy and not long after I also went to see a psychiatrist. I was on medication for a few months. In the meantime therapy was doing wonders.
Initially I was desperate to get back on my feet because I could see M withdrawing. You could call this phase breadcrumbing. We didn’t Facetime as often and if we did it wasn’t for as long. All of a sudden talking to me wasn’t the perfect way to start or to end the day. He needed to listen to music or podcasts or whatever the current excuse was. I thought it’s my fault so I used all my energy to be “pleasant”. Be someone he wants to talk to. And then I realised… If he truly did care, he’d be there for me. He’d realise I need someone to care about me for a change. I lived for my job and my work. I burned the candle on both ends so burning out and having this breakdown was inevitable. While he was talking about how he wants to hang out more, to do things together, he never mentioned that he just wants to be there for me.
When I realised this, I no longer settled for him. I moved to the countryside. I needed to be far away from the never ending partying, the constant socialising, the endless hours spent in the office. With this, I also distanced myself from M. I had a clean slate. My space was mine. Unfurnished, no decoration, no familiar scents and most importantly, no memories with anyone.
I wish the story ended here, but it did not. Learning to ask for more, to know my worth was a long journey. It only ended several days ago, when I sent one final email and I blocked him on every platform I could. Every once in a while, M would resurface. For a week or two we’d talk. We have not met in person and our conversations were mainly just small talk, nothing sexual, no flirting. But then out of the blue, he sent me two unsolicited and completely unwarranted nude pictures. When he didn’t get the reaction he expected, he tried to back-paddle. But I realised then and only then that he sees me as someone who is always available for him. You see, he never came to me and said “hey I hope you are doing ok”. He only resurfaced when he was bored. He was never there to listen even when he said he just wants to be a friend. He was never there to give advice or help with anything. He was never the person I could call to help build furniture or someone who would ever become the person I text to buy milk on their way home.
M was never meant to be more than a lesson about how I won’t be offered “more”. I will have offers in front of me and I need to know my own worth and never settle for less. M was also a lesson about how women take on a caretaker role all too easily. I thought I had to solve his problems. I thought I had to love him because no one else did. But during that time I stopped loving and respecting myself. And as a consequence, I stopped respecting the other people in M’s life who were betrayed and who were lied to. M wasn’t the first person who did this to me, but he was the last.
