I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 13

I didn’t expect real change in 30 days. I know better. I think at some level, I was hoping against hope that my letter would be the kick in the ass he needed to start being a better husband. Unfortunately, it was as my friends foretold. We continued with the marital counseling, but now we split the sessions between us. It didn’t make any difference.

There was an incident during this period, which illustrates just how bad our marriage was. During our separation we would get together on weekends to spend time together and hopefully keep our marriage intact. One week we made tentative plans to go to the mountains and play in the snow. Something I love to do. The coat I had was getting worn out and I’d also gained too much weight for it to really fit properly. I had planned to wait till I had cash to buy a new coat, but with the upcoming possibility of a trip to the mountains, I decided to use a store credit card. When I got to the apartment that Friday, Pat told me he liked my coat. Then he told me he’d thought I was going to wait till I had cash before buying a new coat. He said it in such a way as to make me feel like I had done something wrong in buying a coat I really needed. It wasn’t like I’d bought a piece of jewelry or a pair of dress shoes, for goodness sake.

During the evening he told me we wouldn’t be able to go to the mountains the next day so I assumed we’d be spending Saturday together just hanging out or whatever. When I awoke the next morning, I had a really bad headache from grinding my teeth in my sleep. That’s when he chose to tell me he’d made other plans, which didn’t include me. I was welcome to stay and sleep until I felt well enough to leave. That hurt. I felt like he’d kicked me when I was already down.

During our separation, we came to a point where we knew a decision had to be made. I told him that whether or not our marriage was over was up to him. He told me he didn’t want to decide till after the holidays. I said, “Fine.”

I originally planned to wait till after the New Year to ask, but instead, I asked him a couple of days after Christmas. I wanted to know how I would be ringing in the New Year. Would it be as a married woman or a woman on the verge of divorce? That’s when I learned it was officially over between us. I told him he’d have to file and pay for it, as I wanted nothing to do with that. Even though I’d seen it coming and had time to prepare for it emotionally, it still hurt like hell once I got past being numb.

Our divorce was very simple. When we separated, I took what belonged to me, including my bills and left. There were only two bills that we had both signed for, a car loan and a bank loan. I took the car, so I took the payment book with me. I left him the bank loan because when we had borrowed the money, it was intended for a purpose for which it never got used. When I suggested giving it back untouched, he refused.

If I’d wanted to, I probably could have been really nasty during our divorce. Given that I’d supported Pat while he went to college, I probably could have sued him for that. However, all I really wanted was to get out and be done with it. I didn’t care about fighting him over money anymore. Besides, I’m not sure he would have ever paid.

I realize now that when he married me, he got a woman to have monogamous sex with and someone to do his laundry, cook his meals, and wash the dishes. Me? I got shafted. I did the best I knew how to be a good wife and got nothing in return.

A few years after our divorce a friend of his brought me some film from our marriage, which he was supposed to have had developed and hadn’t. I looked at it and said, “One more promise he didn’t keep.” He never paid me for having the developing done either.

The only things I took, which I felt belonged to him, even though they were purchased during our marriage were some Disney videos. When my mother helped me pack up the last of my belongings, she insisted we take them. I tried to tell her, “no” but she would not listen and I was so drained emotionally, I didn’t have the strength to fight her.

She also opened up the front closet and looked in the boxes in there despite my telling her to stay out of there. The reason I didn’t want her getting into the closet was that we had put some pornographic magazines in there. I wasn’t real happy with her for that but did not have the strength to chew her out or to tell her the truth. You see, I told her that they were Pat’s magazines and basically implied that I hadn’t read them, even though I had. I realize now, that at least for me, reading those was a vicarious way of seeking the love and sexual satisfaction I craved, but was not getting in my marriage.

When he married me, he got a woman to have monogamous sex with and someone to do his laundry, cook his meals, and wash the dishes. Me? I got shafted. I did the best I knew how to be a good wife and got nothing in return.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 12

However, there was another way in which my now ex in-laws hurt me. I don’t think any of them ever realized it. One year for Christmas I decided to make cookies as that was cheaper than buying gifts and I thought they’d all appreciate some homemade goodies. Then I decided to buy some little things to go with the cookies. I stayed up really late Christmas Eve packaging the cookies into individual baskets for everyone. The next day we got raves for the store bought gifts, but not one fucking word about the cookies I’d worked so hard to make for everyone. I decided then and there to never, ever bake for them again. The only person who said anything was his Aunt Donna and she loved them so much she wanted a recipe for one of them. I always meant to get it to her, but never got around to it, which I do regret.

I see now there were other signs he didn’t care about me. There was the matter of pocket change. I once told him that I needed his quarters for laundry money. He told me he needed them for parking while doing things for his company. I remember thinking that his work should provide him money for parking while on the job and besides he had nickels and dimes too.

I know now he was buying coffee and lunch with the change, while I took lunch to work. How do I know this? I made him a lunch on a couple of different occasions, which he didn’t eat. Later the food got so moldy he threw it away, Tupperware container and all. He told me the food got so moldy, I wouldn’t have wanted the container back. The first time it happened, I told him to bring me the container and let me try anyway. Of course, he didn’t care enough about me to respect my property or me for that matter. The next time it happened, he just threw away my container again.

Another thing he did was to leave the driver’s seat pulled forward in our car, even when he knew I would be driving it after him. Pat was shorter than I am and he needed the seat pulled forward. I repeatedly asked him to put it all the way back when he knew I’d be driving it after him, but he never did. I don’t know how many times I banged my hip on the steering wheel getting into the car after him. That hurt!

Within three years, our marriage was so bad, I suggested we try marriage counseling. The first time I brought it up, his response was, “For who? You or me?”

I told him for both of us. The next time I brought it up, he agreed to it. We found a marriage counselor and went to see her about once a week, but to no avail. The counselor made me feel as if she was on his side because she kept asking why I wanted children and talking about how expensive it was to raise a child. She never in my presence anyway, questioned Pat about his lack of desire for children or the fact that he never made any real effort to make it possible for us to “afford to have children.”

Looking back on this, I realize she was talking about the total lifetime cost of raising a child from birth to adulthood. That’s kind of silly, really. Yes, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to raise a child, but those costs don’t hit all at once. They come as the child grows. I mean think about it, babies need diapers, cribs, etc. A toddler/child will need a bed, clothes, toys, etc. Preteens/teenagers need clothes, etc. My point is that although these costs add up, they aren’t paid the moment your child is born. They’re paid overtime as the child grows and the new needs arise. Not all at once, as the counselor implied.

I also realize now that I knew at some level that as I got older my chances of conceiving and carrying a child to term would get smaller and smaller. It’s a natural fact of aging for women that as we get older, our fertility declines. That’s also at least part of the reason I wanted children so badly then, I knew if we waited too long I might not ever get pregnant.

I learned later through another counselor, that for some women, the desire to have children is an inborn need, like breathing. That helped me understand that I simply wanted a child.

By the time we separated, I hated my husband so much; there were days when I wished he would die. If I was a widow I wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. Then I’d feel guilty for feeling that way. Not only that, but we quit talking. He’d ask me what was wrong. I’d say, “I’m just tired,” but I would be thinking, “I’ve told you over and over what I need and want, but you refuse to try and meet my needs. I’m done talking. I’m done doing anything I don’t have to do.”

One day while at work, I decided I’d had enough. Something had to change. I couldn’t live with him the way things were. So, I wrote him a letter. Friends warned me that I was taking a huge chance, but at that point I didn’t care. I wrote that he had 30 days to change or I was leaving.  I couldn’t stand living the way we were. He read the letter, told me he was going out to get his hair cut, but he hoped I’d be there when he got back. The minute he was out the door, I called my mother and told her I was coming to her house. Then I packed a bag with enough to get me through for a few days and left.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 11

My husband Pat, was a little boy emotionally whom I married thinking that he would grow up once he got away from his father’s control. His father had been a Sergeant-major in the army and ran his family the same way. If he said, “jump,” his family asked how high on the way up. His father even decided which branch of the service he would go into. Pat wanted to go into the Coast Guard, but his father didn’t consider that to be “real service” and pushed him into joining the Air Force by having an Air Force recruiter come to their house to meet with him.

I learned a couple of very important lessons there. If you’re going to marry someone, you had better be very sure that you can live with him or her the way he/she is for the rest of your life with no expectation of change. You had also better be very sure that you see eye to eye on all the major issues in marriage, such as money and how it’s handled and having children. Those were the biggest issues in our marriage and the ones that ultimately ended it.

It seemed I could spend money and charge things as long as we could afford the payments. But when it came to paying off the bills and working towards being able to have children, I got no real help from my husband. Every time the subject of having children would come up, he’d say we couldn’t afford to have children. He also told me that he would see about getting a second job to help pay off our bills. He never even looked for a second job, but I tried working two jobs twice. Even when I paid off some of our bills, He’d still tell me we couldn’t afford to have children. Only now, he would get up and walk away after saying it. End of discussion as far as he was concerned. I honestly thought when we married that he wanted children too.

As time went on in our marriage, I began to see this wasn’t true. That as far as he was concerned I was too pushy about the issue and why did I want children so badly anyway? I realize now that he didn’t really want children the way he said he did or he would have made more effort to make it possible. He knew I would not have married him if I’d known he didn’t want children.

During our marriage, I went through a period of months when my monthly cycle simply stopped. I went to my doctor about it and she told me she was going to run a test for early menopause. I happened to tell Pat about the test on the phone. I informed him in no uncertain terms that I was in early menopause, then I was going to jump him and there would be no birth control. I could tell from the way he got quiet for a moment before responding that I’d shocked him and made him uneasy. Looking back on this, I realize now that I dealt the final blow to our marriage then. It continued to stagger along, but it never got back to what it had been, which wasn’t all that good in the first place.

His family wasn’t helpful in matters of having children either. One sister stayed out of it, the other commiserated with me in a weird way. She would say, “I know just how you feel Mayone, I want my little boy back.”

I used to look at her and think, “How dare you claim to know how I feel when you have three beautiful daughters? Wanting something you had is not the same as wanting something you have never had!”

However, there was another way in which my now ex in-laws hurt me. I don’t think any of them ever realized it. One year for Christmas I decided to make cookies as that was cheaper than buying gifts and I thought they’d all appreciate some homemade goodies. Then I decided to buy some little things to go with the cookies. I stayed up really late Christmas Eve packaging the cookies into individual baskets for everyone. The next day we got raves for the store bought gifts, but not one fucking word about the cookies I’d worked so hard to make for everyone. I decided then and there to never, ever bake for them again. The only person who said anything was his Aunt Donna and she loved them so much she wanted a recipe for one of them. I always meant to get it to her, but never got around to it, which I do regret.

I see now there were other signs he didn’t care about me. There was the matter of pocket change. I once told him that I needed his quarters for laundry money. He told me he needed them for parking while doing things for his company. I remember thinking that his work should provide him money for parking while on the job and besides he had nickels and dimes too.

I know now he was buying coffee and lunch with the change, while I took lunch to work. How do I know this? I made him a lunch on a couple of different occasions, which he didn’t eat. Later the food got so moldy he threw it away, Tupperware container and all. He told me the food got so moldy, I wouldn’t have wanted the container back. The first time it happened, I told him to bring me the container and let me try anyway. Of course, he didn’t care enough about me to respect my property or me for that matter.

Another thing he did was to leave the driver’s seat pulled forward in our car, even when he knew I would be driving it after him. Pat was shorter than I am and he needed the seat pulled forward. I repeatedly asked him to put it all the way back when he knew I’d be driving it after him, but he never did. I don’t know how many times I banged my hip on the steering wheel getting into the car after him. That seriously hurt!

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 10

I also had a onetime sexual encounter with another man, before I married my now ex-husband, Pat. I met Teddy Bear in a message room on the old computer Bulletin Board Systems. We met in person at a Bulletin Board User meeting. He was very nice. He invited me to lunch one fine day and by the time I left; we’d had more than lunch. We’d had each other. I didn’t cry all the way home this time, I simply felt guilty for what I’d done. I realize now the reason I cheated on Pat was the same reason I cheated on Andrew. My emotional needs were not being met. Unfortunately, I was too needy and hungry for love to see anything else, even how bad a relationship was for me.

Just before I broke up with Andrew, I took a job as a security guard. I worked several different sites in the course of my job and it was at one of these that I met Pat, the man I married. When we first met he was so nice and understanding and pretty soon I was crying on his shoulder about my relationship with Andrew. Pat often said he would treat me differently. Shortly after my breakup with Andrew, Pat and I started dating.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was on the rebound from my relationship with Andrew. Because of that I wasn’t seeing things as clearly as I should have.

He was very considerate of me and as time went on I got the impression he wanted the same things in life I did. I remember he even talked in his sleep one night saying something to the effect of, “Mayone, take the kids to the car.” I was thrilled. He’d proposed to me by this time and I honestly thought he was the perfect man for me.

We moved in together a few months before our wedding, as it was more economical to do so. Pat was going to college and I supported us both for a time. Pat tried working through a temporary agency, but after working one job through them, they didn’t have any more jobs for him. College didn’t go as well as we thought it would for him because the college found out it wasn’t teaching the students in his program enough of what they needed to know. Consequently they revised the program and Pat had to re-take some classes separately he’d already done together. As a result he ran out of grant money. Then he wouldn’t go to the college to ask for more money, so he didn’t get his degree.

During this time, I began to have thoughts about calling off our wedding. I couldn’t put my finger on any reason why and I felt committed to marrying Pat so I didn’t call it off. I realize now there were little things that made me realize marrying him would be a mistake. He didn’t always listen to my requests to not hug me when I was working the kitchen. Our kitchen was so tiny I could barely work in it; if he came in I was trapped. There were other things as well. We only had room in the bedroom for one dresser and because I didn’t own one, we used his. He was only willing to clear out one drawer for me out of the 4 or 5 it contained.

If I were superstitious at all, I would have run for the hills on my wedding day. A lot of things went wrong. When my attendants and I were getting dressed, I noticed that the flower girl’s dress was not the style I had originally specified and the lace trim was not what I wanted either. I was not happy about that. I learned later that the original pattern couldn’t be used for reasons beyond anyone’s control and no one had bothered to tell me. I never did learn why the wrong lace trim had been used.

The special nylons I had bought didn’t fit and neither did the spare pair, my sister-in-law, Danice brought along, just in case. Then to make matters worse, the friend who was supposed to be watching over the guest book didn’t show. Fortunately I had made other arrangements just in case because I had a feeling that would happen. My mother was late for the ceremony because she hadn’t finished making her dress, even though she’d had six months notice about my wedding. Then after the ceremony, I noticed that the person serving punch was my friend Kathy, when it should have been someone else. I was extremely grateful that she noticed the problem and just stepped in and took care of it.

My husband Pat, was a little boy emotionally whom I married thinking that he would grow up once he got away from his father’s control. His father had been a Sergeant-major in the army and ran his family the same way. If he said, “jump,” his family asked how high on the way up. Pat’s father even decided which branch of the service Pat would go into. Pat wanted to go into the Coast Guard, but his father didn’t consider that to be “real service” and pushed Pat into joining the Air Force by having an Air Force recruiter come to their house to meet with him.

I learned a couple of very important lessons there. If you’re going to marry someone, you had better be very sure that you can live with him or her the way he/she is for the rest of your life with no expectation of change. You had also better be very sure that you see eye to eye on all the major issues in marriage, such as money and how it’s handled and having children. Those two issues had a lot to do with the breakup of my marriage.

It seemed I could spend money and charge things as long as we could afford the payments. But when it came to paying off the bills and working towards being able to have children, I got no real help from my husband. Every time the subject of having children would come up, Pat would tell me we couldn’t afford to have children. Pat also told me that he would see about getting a second job to help pay off our bills. Pat never even looked for a second job, but I tried working two jobs twice. Even when I paid off some of our bills, Pat would still tell me we couldn’t afford to have children. Only now, he would get up and walk away after saying it. End of discussion as far as he was concerned. I honestly thought when we married that he wanted children too. As time went on in our marriage, I began to see this wasn’t true. That as far as Pat was concerned I was too pushy about the issue and why did I want children so badly anyway? I realize now that he didn’t really want children the way he said he did or he would have made more effort to make it possible. He knew I would not have married him if I’d known he didn’t want children.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 9

Prior to our breakup, we’d made plans to go on a trip to Canada with David, a man we knew at church, and another friend from church, Patty. When Andrew and I broke up, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go if he was going too. Then to make matters worse, David came to see me after work one day to tell me that I needed to get back together with Andrew before we went. I told David that under no circumstances was I going to get back together with Andrew, even if it meant missing the trip. He’d hurt me too badly for me to consider it, even though I really wanted to go.

I did go on the trip with the three of them, but only because Patty came and talked to me. She assured me I didn’t have to go back to Andrew despite what David had said. It was an interesting trip. Andrew kept trying to get me back and I kept trying to run away from him. I ended up verbally sniping at him a lot in the car on the way to the ferry. We must have just about driven poor David and Patty crazy.

When we got on the ferry to Canada, Andrew followed me around like some kind of lovesick puppy. I couldn’t get away from him. Even when I used the ship-to-shore phone to call Pat whom I was dating, he would wait a few feet away. The only way I could have escaped him during the crossing would have been to spend the whole trip in the ladies room.

Thankfully, Andrew took me to dinner the next night at a very nice restaurant in Victoria. During a sumptuous main course consisting of rack of lamb, I set him straight once and for all. I told him point blank that his current efforts to get me back were too little; too late. He had hurt me too much for me to want to even think about trying again. The rest of the trip went very well after that. The next day, we even went shopping together and had a pleasant time.

Just before we broke up, I quietly and gradually withdrew from the church I’d attended for years. I could see things were not as they should be. I couldn’t prove it although, even if I could have, no one would have listened to me. God was connecting people together for mutual healing, but unfortunately some people got carried away. They divorced their spouses in favor of marrying the person God had connected them with. The church leadership even put connections ahead of the marital relationships.

I learned this after I sought the advice of a church counselor in regards to Andrew’s seemingly higher interest in his connection, my friend, Kathy. The counselor told me point blank, that their relationship was more important as it was an eternal one, but our relationship was only for as long as we were here on earth. I learned later that his attitude was wrong. That I could have and probably should have sought other counsel within the church. Not everyone saw it the way that counselor did. There were counselors who saw that the God given connection was to serve a healing purpose in people’s lives, but was not meant to take the place of any marital or engagement relationship or to permanently become more important than those relationships. It was to be more important for a time, but not forever. However, I was too hurt to even think about it and to take the risk of a similar attitude. I later wished I had talked to our pre-engagement counselors regarding Andrew’s attitude, but I’m not sure how much it would have helped. I know now that we would never have succeeded as a married couple anyway.

I need to be completely honest here, regarding my relationship with Andrew. I wasn’t perfect; I did cheat on him, just once. I was at a family reunion in Eastern Washington, when it happened. I’m ashamed and embarrassed to say that it was Don I used that weekend: the same man who abused me as a child.

I was in a very high state of arousal that weekend. I knew that if I worked things just right, I could seduce Don. We’d played strip poker a few years prior when I was staying with him at his home in Everett as a teenager, so I figured if I could get him alone for any length of time, I could get what I wanted. Well, I got him to go for a walk with me and as we walked, I worked the conversation around to where I wanted it to be. We found a secluded spot and flipped a coin with the loser removing clothing, etc. I felt so ashamed and guilty as soon as it was over, that I cried all the way back to camp.

            For a long time I asked myself over and over why I had been so aroused that I would have sex with any man, including him. I finally realized that my emotional needs were so strong, they were driving me to do things I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I think that in my relationship with Andrew I expected him to meet those needs and when he continuously failed to do so, they got so strong that I couldn’t control them. It was like trying to hold the lid down on a volcano. You can only do that for so long until it has to explode then, watch out!

I Was an Emotional Prostitute Part 8

Trigger Warning: Nasty Car Accident

The second thing, which opened my eyes to the truth of our relationship, was a car accident I was involved in. One evening while working for Domino’s pizza, I was hit head on by a man making a left turn in a pickup truck. The accident was so bad, that paramedics thought I’d be a body, although I didn’t know it then. It must have been a shock to find me not only alive, but conscious.

All I remember about it is that one minute I’m heading back to the store, the next I think I see a reflection of light in front of me. I wasn’t sure, but no one was behind me, so I hit the brakes. The next thing I knew there was rain coming in where the driver’s side window had been, an ambulance was about 100 yards away coming my direction, and the steering column was in my lap. My first reaction was, “Oh, my god! I’ve destroyed a rental!”

            Then, for some reason, I decided I needed to take the keys with me. Don’t ask me why, because I honestly don’t know. When the ambulance arrived, one of the paramedics opened the passenger door then got into the car with me. He told me they were going to get me out of there, but I needed to trust him. Other personnel tried to open the driver’s side door, but it wouldn’t open. The car started rocking, so the guy inside hollered that they needed to stop what they were doing.

            I told him I could just crawl over and started to do so. He looked at me, held up his hand, and said, “Stop.”

            I said, “Why?”

“We don’t know if your neck is broken.”

Then he told me they were going to have to cut the door off. That I needed to trust him as it was going to be noisy. I said, “Okay.”
            I heard them start the saw up, then the next thing I knew the saw was being shut off and they were removing the door. I remember thinking in surprise, “That wasn’t noisy at all.”

            Several years later I realized that I must have fainted.

            As they were putting me on the backboard, I heard someone say, “She came out of nowhere, man!”
            I thought, “What? I had my headlights on!”

            When I was loaded into the ambulance, someone asked me whose fault the accident was. I said, “I can’t say.”
            I’m surprised I had the presence of mind to say that. I wanted to say it was the other guy’s fault, but wisdom prevailed.

            Thankfully, the injuries were fairly minor. I had whiplash, bruises across my chest and belly from the seatbelt, and had to have six stitches put in my right knee at the bend, which required a splint so I didn’t accidently bend it and rip out the stitches. The stitches bothered me the most. I’d never had to have stitches for any reason before the accident.

The resulting shock had me sleeping most of the time for a week. On one of the few occasions when I was awake, I asked Andrew to come out to the living room to sit and talk with me for a few minutes, just the two of us. Andrew refused on the grounds that I needed rest. I couldn’t believe it. He would rather sit in the dining room with everyone else, than spend time with me. That hurt. The only time I saw Andrew during that week was when I dragged myself to the dining room to have dinner with everyone else. This made me feel like some kind of lovesick puppy following her master around wanting some of his attention.

Shortly after this, Kathy and her husband split up for good. Kathy moved to Oregon and stayed with her family while she looked for a job and a place to live. Andrew drove down to see her one weekend, but didn’t come home till several hours after he’d said he would be. I was working when mother called to tell me that Andrew had called to say he wouldn’t be home on time. I immediately got suspicious, especially as mother couldn’t give me a reason.

As it turns out he had stayed late in Oregon because he was looking for a gift for me. I was so angry with him I didn’t care about the gift. In my eyes it was an excuse for him to spend more time with Kathy. No one seemed to understand that Andrew keeping his word to me was more important than any gift he could have bought me.

To make matters worse, the gift he brought home to me showed me how little he understood me. It was a ceramic cat, curled up as if sleeping. It had some sort of blue pattern on it. Had it been a solid color or looked like a calico or tabby cat, I probably would have loved it. The blue design was just weird to me.

A few months later I moved out of mother’s house again. That’s when I finally felt free to break up with Andrew. The nice thing was that Andrew said the very thing I needed to give the deathblow to our relationship.

One night Andrew came to the apartment I shared with my friend, Clara. He’d bought a truck recently that didn’t have seat belts in it that we knew of. He wanted me to go with him to a nearby store to find new sheets for his bed, as he’d recently moved into another apartment close to ours. I refused due to the lack of seatbelts in his truck.

He tried to convince me to go by reminding me the store was less than a mile or so away. Given what I’d just been through a few months prior, there was no way I was going anywhere in his truck till the seatbelt situation was remedied. He finally left.

I went to a movie instead with a co-worker, Pat and my roommate, Clara, instead. We got back kind of late and I knew that Pat had a long drive ahead of him. So, I suggested he stay the night in our apartment on a cot I could set up for him. As we were getting it set up, Andrew called. While we talked, he asked what was going on so, I told him. Andrew said he wasn’t comfortable with that idea. I told him that it wasn’t his decision and that I would never leave him for another man. He laughed, then said, “I hope you wouldn’t leave me for another woman either.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I felt like he’d just put a knife in my heart with the fact that he could even think such a thing. I told him I needed to go. He sensed something was wrong and questioned me. I told him to let me go. He did, but reluctantly. He hated for me to be angry with him and not talk about it. He would push at me to talk until I got so angry I not only told him what was wrong, but said some things I wished I hadn’t; despite warning him to back off. But this time I had my way. He let me off the phone without forcing me to tell him what was upsetting me.

Pat left because he didn’t want to be the cause of any trouble between us. What I didn’t tell him was that the trouble was already there; his presence only brought it to the surface. Andrew called the next day and told me he’d meant that last part as a joke. Joke or not, it still felt like I’d been stabbed. I told him I needed a few days to think. He called me a couple of days later to say he wouldn’t wait forever. I said that I hadn’t asked him to wait forever; I just needed some time to sort things out. Well, that last phone call from him sped up my decision. The next day I went to his apartment, picked up anything that belonged to me and left him the key.

Andrew pulled into the parking lot just as I was leaving and wanted to talk things over. I was so angry I didn’t care. All I wanted was to leave him behind. I’d had it with him and everyone else who had thought he was so perfect for me. They could not or would not see how the things he did hurt me.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 7

We didn’t become sexually involved until several weeks after I moved out of mother and Bill’s house for the first time. Andrew came to my apartment one night to tell me he wanted to make love to me. He was torn though. Andrew wasn’t completely convinced it was right for us to do so, even we were planning to be married. He asked me how I felt. I was sitting on my bed. I held out my hand to him and drew him to me. We had sex for the first time that night in my twin bed. The next night we went to his apartment as he had a full size bed. After that, sex was a regular part of our relationship and I regretted ever allowing it to happen.

Unfortunately for me, Andrew wasn’t exactly the most considerate of lovers. There were two occasions when our sexual activity nearly got us in trouble, despite my saying something to him about it.

The first time was at his apartment. Andrew’s mattress had a tendency to slide one way or the other during our sexual activity. On one occasion, the mattress had shifted to such an extent that I was hanging over the edge of it myself at such an angle that I was scared we’d roll off the bed and into the dresser a foot or so away. When I told Andrew about my precarious position, he asked if I could hold on just a little longer as he was almost there. After that, we made very sure we were always in the middle of his mattress. But that one incident always bothered me as it made me feel his pleasure was more important than our safety.

The second time we nearly got in trouble, occurred at my mother’s house. By this time I had moved back to mother’s house, as a live in job I had taken, had not worked out. We were in my bedroom going at it, when I heard my mother’s dogs start barking at something. When they persisted, I told Andrew that maybe we should check on the dogs to find out why they were barking so much. He said they were just barking as they always did and not to worry about it. Moments later, we heard mother’s husband, Bill, get up to check on the dogs then come back. Andrew got up just in time to keep him from opening the door and seeing us in our birthday suits. Bill yelled at us through the door about why we hadn’t checked on the dogs when they barked. Andrew made some excuse while I found my clothes and dressed. I was mortified to come so close to being caught doing something that almost surely would have gotten me kicked out of the house. I was also upset with Andrew for not listening to me - again.

In the later months of our relationship, a few things brought the reality of our relationship home to me and caused me to end it. One was our mutual friend, Kathy. Andrew became so enamored of her, that he often put her ahead of me on his priority list and no one thought anything of it, except me.

One Valentine’s Day, Andrew gave me a fancy doll and Kathy a handmade card. The doll was very pretty, but I didn’t understand why he’d bought such a thing for me. Again, I had never indicated a desire for dolls, fancy or otherwise. I would much rather have had the handmade card. No one understood that to me the handmade card was a more personal thing to give someone than an elegant doll bought in some shop. Although at that point, I would have resented anything Andrew gave Kathy; especially on Valentine’s Day.

Another time, I had a small accident with my car due to poor lighting, which caused a mechanical problem. The car was still drivable, but it swayed like something was out of place. I called Andrew to ask for help. He brought Kathy with him, and she drove my car while I drove his. I was really upset and asked that he ride with me. He told me he was going to ride with Kathy, as she was nervous about driving my car. Looking back on this, he should have driven my car, while I was a passenger and had Kathy drive his car.

The other thing, which really bothered me, was that Andrew and Kathy would go off somewhere to spend time together, but I wasn’t allowed to know anything about their whereabouts or how to get hold of him. Yet if we went anywhere, one or the other of them called to see how they each were. I finally told him that it had to stop. If I wasn’t allowed to intrude on their time, she shouldn’t be allowed to intrude on ours.

Then one day, on our way home, Andrew moved into a left turn only lane that led to the street Kathy lived on. I asked him where he was going. He told me he was going to check on Kathy. He also said that he’d asked me if it was “ok” and I’d told him it was. I made it very clear that I did not remember saying such a thing and I certainly did not want to go to her apartment for any reason. He insisted on going anyway.

The moment he parked, I started to get out of the car. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to walk home. He told me to get back into the car, so I did. I wish now that I’d told him where to go then walked home anyway. Or even gotten out of the car while he was at her door.

I didn’t break up with him then because I didn’t want to face censure from family and friends who thought we were so right for each other. I knew that mother’s husband, Bill in particular would think I was an idiot for breaking up with him and I didn’t want to hear it. I’d had enough of his lectures about what I’d done wrong at different times in my life. The last thing I wanted was him telling me that breaking up with Andrew was the wrong thing for me to do.