Letter to Eric.

Dear Eric,

I'm sad now.

In that last angry email you sent me, you reminded me that you and I had enjoyed each other. And that you wanted to focus on that.

And we really had.

So, why did you tell Cara that you and I were "incompatible for dating"?

That wasn't true.

You and I were totally compatible for dating. We totally enjoyed each other's company. We laughed together, cried together. We talked for hours on end.

We took trips together. Wonderful ones. We enjoyed traveling together. We were good at that. We flew to faraway destinations and then took road trips from there. Just the other day, I was remembering how you held the door for me after we had played in the snow. And you leaned in to kiss me. And it was so sweet.

And we could talk about politics and religion and relationships and the dorkiest shit imaginable. All the way through two states and back.

And then we took that ride over the falls, something that terrified each of us. But we took that risk. Together. And then that walk over that bridge. Together.

We weren't compatible?

Fuck you for saying that. Ever. Sure, we argued. Because we were passionate about each other. But for you to dismiss our relationship like that? When even as recently as two days ago, you were still reminding me that I was the one who broke up with you???!!!

You betrayed me long before I told Cara the truth. You lied about me. You lied about our love for each other. Or maybe you didn't lie to her. Maybe you lied to me. Maybe you were lying to me as we drove down that highway, watching the deer hopping alongside the road. Maybe you were lying to me when we held hands in that cab in my favorite City.

I can't believe we've come to a place where you can minimize everything that we shared. And you were doing it long before I spoke to her.

Fuck you, you self-serving jerk.

And I'm sitting here, crying, because you decided to give me the big "fuck you" by blocking me on Facebook? You wanted to hurt me? Congratulations, you've done it. Again.

I guess this is what happens when you get too involved with a rebound.

I should have known this was going to end this way. I guess I did know that night when you first told me you were dating her.

That's why I asked for the journal back.

Not because I wanted it. But because I didn't want YOU to have it. Because even then, I didn't trust you with it. I knew the day would come when you would share our words with someone else.

I destroyed it. I destroyed it before I even saw you again.

And then everything else happened. And I realized that I still love you. That I'm still in love with you.

And I allowed myself to let you use me. And I allowed myself to get caught up in your games. And your shades of gray.

Dammit, Eric. I trusted you. And now I'm second-guessing everything you EVER said to me.

I owe you a huge "thank you".

Thank you for reminding me that anybody who says "I'm the most honest person out there. I never lie. I'm completely forthcoming" is probably hiding something.

Cara was stunned. She trusted you, too.

But her shock made me realize that maybe I really didn't know you as well as I had thought. Or maybe you really were completely honest with me, but since that blew up in your face, you decided not to trust her as much as you had trusted me.

Eric, I'm sorry I hurt you when I broke up with you. I really, truly am. I loved you. I trusted you. I was so happy to anticipate going to Europe with you. I actually let my guard down and thought we could have a future together. I wanted to let you keep your promise to kiss me under the Eiffel Tower.

You were the only man I really considered that way.

And I got scared. And I wanted my family back. And I felt like I couldn't move forward with you until I had actually finished my marriage. For real. It was a very confusing time for me. Surely you can understand that.

And today, I told V about where that marriage is going. And, again, she was not surprised.

I was, apparently, the last to know.

Except for you. I think that since you loved me so much, you couldn't imagine why my husband would not jump at the chance to get back together with me. Because you would have.

But, he didn't. And he wouldn't.

And I would not have known that if I had not broken up with you.

And, deep down inside, you know that. You do know that.

But I am sad to know that you minimized what we shared to the next woman. It makes sense. Hell, it would have been nicer for me if you had minimized stuff for my benefit. ::shrug::

But then we got to this place...

This place where you are probably seeing red.

I'm not sorry I did what I did, Eric. You should have been the one to tell Cara. And you can tell yourself all you want to that you would have told her, but I think that you knew you never would have. Especially since you chose to be with her again after what you and I shared.

And, I don't know where you are with her. I don't know if you have managed to talk your way back into her heart and into her bed. It wouldn't surprise me. Hell, you spin for a living. And one thing she said to me kind of set off alarm bells in my mind. Made me think that she just might be weak enough to take you back.

Well, I hope that if you guys make it through this that you end up being happy together. And at least you can move forward without secrets and lies between you.

I know you want to hurt me. I know you think I told Cara to hurt you.

That's not why I did it, though. At least, that wasn't the primary reason.

I told her because she deserved to know. And you had knowledge that she absolutely deserved to know. I stand by that. One hundred percent. (It was what I told her the next day. She said she would add it to her list of questions for you. Please tell me you are not so naive that you honestly did not think you should have told her that one thing from the first day.)

I am sorry that I hurt you when I broke up with you.

And I'm sorry if it hurts you to know what happened to the journal. (I kept it from you because I didn't want to hurt you then. I'm admitting it now because I'm angry and you did something to deliberately hurt me, so I'm doing the same back to you. Immature, sure. But I'm mad, too.)

But, Eric. I loved you. And to realize that with such clarity and then to find out that you lied about me and to me? So soon after realizing I would have to grieve for our relationship? When I'm realizing that I am choosing to live without Love? Without Affection? Two gifts that you gave me so freely?

I'm aching here. I'm missing who I used to be when I was with you. I'm missing the man that I thought you were.

You did the wrong thing. And I took that choice away from you because you made the wrong choice. But your mistake wasn't in being with me that night. Your mistake was lying about it. Your mistake was deciding that Cara was more important than I was.

Grownups hurt each other. Grownups make mistakes. But grownups don't go running out and getting completely enmeshed in the next relationship just because they're lonely.

Yes, I broke up with you. Yes, you were lonely, so you went out and found someone new. As you've repeated so often in recent weeks, "We each did what we had to do."

But you know, deep down inside, that if you had only waited... You and I could have had a chance. And you know that you miss me. And you know that you love me. And you know that the love you have for me is not "not that way anymore".

You do know that.

And you can hate me all you want to because it's easier than hating yourself.

But you know, deep down, that you're the one that fucked up. And you can pretend all you want to that you're just upset because you lost Cara (if you even did).

But she did NOT matter to you like you're pretending she does.

You miss being a family. And THAT is why you decided to become one so quickly with her.

You KNOW that you did the wrong thing there. You KNOW that my rules are in place for a reason. And you hate me because I actually follow my rules. And you hate me because you know that I am right. And you know you fucked up.

So, go ahead and blame me all you want. Go ahead and destroy everything I ever gave you. Go ahead and tell everybody that I'm a fucking bitch for telling your girlfriend something I had no right to say.

And, you're right. That was your job. And you failed.

And you hate me because I was the best friend you ever had. I was the one who knew you better than anybody else in your world, including your "best friend", who's known you for years.

But when you're tired of hating me, take a good look in the mirror, Eric.

I would have been that friend. Even if we were never lovers again.

Thank you for turning out to be such a coward. Thank you for serving to remind me to go with my instincts. Because my instincts were spot-on about you. That first time we met, you made it so clear that you didn't really respect me.

And then I dated you for the next five months.

Oh, my god.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Eric, I am sorry you got hurt. I am. Because I did love you.

But I needed to burn our bridge. Because I probably would have ended up getting back together with you down the line. I always said that you and I would work out in ten years.

But maybe now that I've done this thing, you'll still hate me in ten years. And that will keep us from making a huge mistake.

I'm going to learn not to discount what you and I did share when we were in love. Because we were. And we were good together. We boosted each other up and we challenged each other to test our own limits. We shared some amazing memories together.

Thank you again, for being there for me that night when LI did what he did to me. Thank you for holding me and making me feel safe. Thank you for making me smile and for helping me to sleep.

You'll be glad to know that I'm really having trouble with the whole LI thing now. I've scheduled an extra therapy session to help me deal with it. Since you hate me so much, you'll be glad to know that I'm pretty devastated by all of this. Throw in the whole victimization thing, and I'm just a bundle of fucked-up nerves. I'm sure that'll make you feel better.

So, congratulations, Eric. Your goal was to hurt me, and you have succeeded.

I'm not going to hate you, though. Sure, I'm really sad right now. And I wish I could talk to someone that I considered one of my best friends.

And, hey, if you're wasting a bunch of energy on hating me, at least you're thinking about me, right?

I'm going to keep loving you, though. And I'm going to remember that you're not quite the perfect man for me that I thought you were. And I'm going to remember that, yes, we really were "incompatible for dating". But I'm going to remember that there was a time when we weren't. When we were really good together.

Reason, Season, Lifetime, Eric.

I've been walking around with a Euro in my pocket.

Light and Love,

RetroMama

Playing "The Other Woman". Or NOT.

I lost my virginity a few months shy of my 17th birthday.

It was a pretty good experience as far as first sexual experiences go. I was in love. I knew the guy loved me. We had already done pretty much everything else, so the actual act of intercourse was a simple progression.

I'm grateful for that.

Of course, once my parents found out that we were having sex (or rather, suspecting!), they put the fear of God (or rather, the fear of JAIL) into the poor guy. He had turned 18, and they threatened statutory rape charges.

The kid was so glad they did not make him stop dating me, but he was terrified of having sex with me again until I was 18.

So, there were other things. I was fine with it most of the time. But there were times when I wasn't fine with it. And times that he forced me.

I didn't even break up with him for that.

I remember the afternoon when we did break up. And I went to work that night. And after work, I went out with a guy I had become friends with through work.

And that young man kissed me that night.

And I remember going to school the next morning, anticipating seeing my friends. I was desperate to tell them that I had broken up with Alex, but that another boy had kissed me.

Of course, a girl at my school had committed suicide the night before, so my boy drama took a backseat to that.

Within a few weeks, however, I was messing around with the new boy fairly regularly. Not having sex, but pretty damn close. We did go out. He actually offered me a ring fairly early on. I refused.

It wasn't long before my friends found out I was dating the new boy. And a particular group of friends knew him. Because he was the long-time boyfriend of a girl in their youth group. The guy was practically engaged. But getting naked with me on a fairly regular basis.

Ew. I ended things pretty quickly at that. I had too much respect for myself to be the other woman.

Then I got involved with the next guy. He would end up being the fiancee. It was while I was dating him that I began to have flashbacks of what had occurred with the first boyfriend. It was the fiancee that used the word "rape" for the first time.

A year later, I would run into that first boyfriend. And I would use the word "rape" to his face. And he would look me in the eye and apologize for what he had done.

Of course, the fiancee felt pretty good about himself. He would never rape me. He would spend the rest of his life with a scar on his right hand when that fist connected with the first boyfriend's teeth.

Of course, that fist would end up connecting with my face a year later.

But I didn't even break up with him right away for that.

I had gone off to college during that time.

And once I broke off the "engagement", I went a little wild. I kissed a lot of boys. None of them respected me. None had a reason to.

Many of them had girlfriends. And I simply did not care. Because if they had a girlfriend, they would not get close enough to me to break my heart or my spirit.

Sex was my shield. Sex was my weapon.

I finally calmed down enough to date a boy who would never rape me. Or hit me. But he would let me know in other ways that I wasn't quite good enough. And I let him.

I went through a few more phases of being the other woman because it was safer.

And then I met the husband.

And he treated me like gold. For many years.

Until he didn't.

And when we were breaking up, I fell into that thing with the soulmate. Ah, the soulmate.
The man who turned me inside out, woke me up, and got me out of that marriage I needed to leave. That soulmate.

He was no longer living with his girlfriend, but they were still speaking. I guess, in a way, I was the other woman for him. And because I was still, technically, married, he kept me a secret. Nobody knew that he loved me.

And when we broke up, he waited about five minutes before inviting a new woman into his bed.

But a few weeks later, he saw me. And I knew that he had been seeing someone new. But when he invited me to stay, I was pretty powerless to resist. He still had that hold on me.

And he did not kick me out the next day, bless his heart.

But I never did see him again.

I did hear from him for awhile. Especially when things were not going well with the woman that he would end up marrying.

Yep. He married her. And she has no idea that I even existed.

And I let that happen.

Because he and I were done. I would never see him again. We would stay in touch periodically for awhile. But I have not contacted him in over a year. And I have not heard from him in about that long. As far as I know, they're happy. He was not committed to her at the time we last made love, but once he did, he did.

Did I feel a little used? Nah. I got what I wanted that night. Was I sad that he would not be in my world for a longer period of time? Sure.

But thanks to Richard from Texas, I let that go.

When I mentioned him to TF the other day, she reminded me, "But you never thought you had a future with him." And she was right. I always knew that the soulmate and I were finite.

But I did feel a little icky about being the other woman. Which is a major reason why I never saw him again.

And through a lot of therapy, I've come to realize that I have some pretty serious issues when it comes to men. I won't go into all of that here.

However, you probably need to know that RetroMama has not always had this self-esteem that she holds dear now. She really let men use her as she used men in turn. She chose men who were "committed" to other women because it kept them from getting close enough to break her heart. Because she was sick of being raped. She didn't want to be hit. She didn't want someone to tell her that she really wasn't pretty enough, or smart enough, or good enough.

So, she chose other women's men.

But those days have been over for a long time. She does not choose other women's men. She's not that fucked up little girl who had been used and abused. She would rather be alone that with someone who will never be hers. (Clarity? Yes. But we'll save THAT for another blog for another day.)

Eric was the man who really made me realize that I deserve to be treated well. Eric respected me. Eric loved me. Eric made me realize that it's okay not to settle. That I am pretty enough. And I am smart enough. And I am good enough.

But then...

That night... When LI came over here and took something from me. I told him to stop. I told him to slow down. I told him to leave.

And he did not.

He did not "rape" me in the technical sense. But as TF validated for me, he did rape me in an emotional sense. He did something after I told him to stop.

I took the same shower I would have taken if he had raped me. I washed and washed and I made the water hotter than I could stand. I washed my clothes twice and still ended up throwing out the tee-shirt I had worn that night.

And Eric came to me that night and made me feel safe. He touched me with love and affection and gentleness.

But he had a girlfriend. Oh, but that didn't really matter because he was going to break up with her anyway.

So, when Eric touched me that night, I did not feel guilty.

For days, I did not feel guilty.

But then he threw me under the bus. And he not only did not break up with his girlfriend, but he told her that I had told him I still loved him.

Um, I would never have said that to another woman's man if he had not told me that, repeatedly, in the previous days.

But then he did not break up with her.

And he did not tell her what he had done with me. And what he had said to me. He only told her what I said.

Great. Now, she hates me.

And I stuck up for her that night when he told me he had booked that trip. I told him that he was leading her on. And that he wasn't being fair to her if he only told her half the story.

But that day... When he told her what I had said, but not what he had said?

Something broke in me.

Because Eric... Darling, wonderful, loving, amazing Eric... Eric made me into the "other woman".

And I can't condone that and I can't respect that.

And I was fucking pissed off that he did that.

Because he was the last person on the planet that I believed would ever disrespect me that way.

So, I told him we couldn't be friends.

But he fought for me.

And I thought I could forgive him. As long as he did not make me a party to his dishonesty. If we were to be friends, I would have to be friends with Cara, too. And I could not be friends with Cara if he did not tell her the truth.

So, he asked for a "break". "Let's take November. You write your novel, let me get through my stuff. Then we'll be friends."

I assumed that he meant he would have told Cara the truth. Because that was my condition. Not an ultimatum. Just a condition.

And as the days passed and we weren't talking, I realized that there was no reason to wait and have a conversation in December if he had not told her the truth.

And, surely, he would know by now.

So, I emailed him and asked him. He'd said it was okay to email if we needed to. I needed to. So, I did.

And he ignored me.

Until today. Finally. After I actually had started worrying about whether or not something awful had befallen him or his family.

And after dragging it out all fucking day long, he finally answered me in a one-word email.

"No."

Well, there's my answer.

I'm done with Eric. And while I did call him, hoping for a decent good-bye this time, he chose not to answer my call except for when he had a kid with him. Knowing I would not pressure him to speak in front of his kid.

So, I may have left him a voicemail. One in which I told him I'm so damned disappointed. That I had expected so much more from him. That he had always treated me with respect. And that I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around this. But that I hoped he would choose to be happy. That it would be worth it. I said that stuff at the end.

Huh. He must not have listened to that part. Because he described it as a "diatribe" in his last email. Which he sent about two hours after that voicemail.

Um, okay.

He opened with how furious he is with me.

Yeah. I think he's going to be even more furious with me by the time this night is over.

Because, you see, I realized something that I never realized before. Back when I was in college, I liked being the other woman. It made me feel powerful. Sexy.

But now? Now I feel dirty. (Which really sucks. Because last night when I was so upset, I found myself thinking about LI and what he did. And I can't focus on how Eric made me feel better. So, now I actually get to deal with that whole act.)

And I realized that I really feel a sense of solidarity with Cara.

And I said in one of those emails over the weekend, that this isn't about him telling her to hurt her. If he broke up with her with our secret intact, that would be okay. I'm just really not okay with allowing this woman to fall further in love with him when he has already betrayed her.

She's a single mom, for crying out loud.

And I would hope that if I'm ever in a relationship again (which is REEEEEEEEAAAAALY doubtful at this point!), that if that man made love to another, I would hope that someone would be brave enough to tell me.

Cara seems like a really nice lady.

She's a little pissed off, though, and confused. And says that Eric's got some 'splainin' to do.

But, yeah. I did tell her. And I apologized for my part in this, and I told her that she does not have to worry about me ever having sex with her boyfriend again. That I had told him two weeks ago to tell her what had happened, and that he had, apparently, decided against it.

So, yeah.

Eric's gonna hate me now.

But you know what?

I'm actually feeling totally okay with that.

Eric said in that email he sent me a couple of hours ago that I can think of him whatever I want. That he knows who he is.

Yeah, well. So do I.

And now, so does Cara. Just as she should.