The relationship began beautifully. Over winter break, I met a boy named Gerald* online through the dating app Tinder. I had never dated online, but he seemed like my dream guy on paper: a bit older than me, involved in sports, and majoring in a difficult field. I was excited when Gerald reached out to me, and we met for the first time over the break.
Our first date was an unexpected twelve hours long. We met over coffee, which led to shopping. We then went to a different part of town to look at succulents, which was followed by a movie, ice skating, and then a late-night cup of coffee. He completely swept me off my feet. Looking back now, though, I realized that even then the compliments he gave me had an ominous edge to them.
“I like that you’re smart… most girls that look like you aren’t that smart.”
“You have my ideal body for a woman.”
“There’s a set of criteria I hold my women against, and so far you’re meeting it.”
I have never appreciated the notion that women are supposed to compete with one another. However, I was happy that he was impressed with me.
Gerald also chose odd times in the conversation to share intimate details about his relationship with his most recent girlfriend, dragging her name and reputation through the mud. As someone who’s been through her fair share of heartbreak, I let his comments about his ex-girlfriend slide and chalked it up to a grudge that he would soon let go.
I ended up ill with mononucleosis at the beginning of winter quarter, and I was bedridden for the entire first week of classes. My spleen was swollen, I was sleeping about sixteen hours a day, and I could not walk without suddenly losing my breath. Gerald took it upon himself to not only take me to the doctor, but to also schedule my appointment and pick up medication and food for me for the entire week. Gerald then helped tutor me in the classes that I had missed and a pattern developed where I ended up sleeping at his apartment most nights of the week after late study sessions.
Once I somewhat regained my health, the dynamic in our relationship started to change. Gerald began to talk down to me, explaining my own jokes to me, or why what I had said turned out to be smart. He even tried to mansplain how to use a tampon. He became the ultimate authority on everything, and I was not to disagree with him ever.
As the ultimate authority, Gerald also attempted to decide who I was to associate myself with and when I would go out. Although we always spent time together on his terms, I was supposed to be readily available for him at all times. Social events with my sorority became a sore topic between us, and I slowly stopped attending events – even mandatory ones.
Although I made an effort to introduce him to my friends, he acted uninterested and moody, and soon after the introduction he decided exactly why I should not affiliate with my closest friends. He dedicated time to attempt to psychoanalyze my friends and turn them against me in my mind – he even tried to convince me that one of my best friends was screwing me out of my apartment for the next year.
When Gerald would come to pick me up, his mere presence in the room would set my roommates and friends on edge. I didn’t understand why he would go silent when we were around my friends – he blanketed himself in a subtle rage that I could feel from rooms away. In fact, his anger was so strongly felt that my roommates would leave when he would arrive because he terrified them.
Gerald was also impossible to reach for communication. His reasoning was that he did not like using his phone – he would then suggest that I was socially inept and dependent on technology (as today’s youth woefully is) because of my readiness to answer calls, texts, and emails. Interestingly, when Gerald and I spent time together in person he was constantly texting in his sport’s group message or scrolling through memes online.
Gerald and I only ever hung out as his apartment. We would never go out to get coffee or study together on campus; it was always his apartment at night. I later realized that this was because I was not the only woman in his life.
Whenever I tried to speak to Gerald about my issues with our relationship or his behavior that bothered me, he would twist the circumstances around to make it seem like I wasn’t justified or as though he was a victim. He reserved the emotion of anger to himself; I was not allowed to be unhappy. When we argued, he would reprimand me as though he were a figure of authority, and that I should be so brave as to challenge him.
Throughout our time together, I would suddenly be hit by an intense fear: walking into his apartment would make the hair on the back of my neck and arms stand up, and I would often wake up in the middle of the night with a sudden urge to get out as fast as I possibly could.
When I ended our official relationship, we agreed to meet in person so that he could give me my things. However, Gerald decided to act on his own terms by waiting outside my secure dorm building to be let in and taking the elevator up to my room. When I got home from, a bag of my things was propped against my door which was ajar, with my roommate inside. Gerald wanted to make it clear to me that he could get to me whenever he wanted.
This behavior sparked nightmares from both me and my roommate. I often dreamed that he was standing in my wardrobe waiting to pounce or gently opening the door to my room so that I wouldn’t hear him. Irrational thoughts like these would soon invade my everyday life, and even to this day I am paranoid in safe places in the middle of the day.
Even though we were not officially “together,” Gerald and I ended up spending time together again like before. He laid the foundation to make me feel as though I needed him, because although he was not kind to me, he made an effort to take care of me in little ways that I would remember and grew to rely on. Ultimately, his seemingly sweet actions were meant to benefit him because they were meant to build my dependence on our relationship.
About two weeks after we stopped talking, I went home for spring break where I could finally recuperate with my closest friends and disclose all of the details of my twisted relationship. I told a dear friend of mine the intricacies and events of mine and Gerald’s relationship, and she recommended Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. Bancroft’s book helped me reckon with what happened throughout winter quarter and re-establish my footing in my own life and on my college campus.
I highly recommend Bancroft’s book to any womxn who have been hurt physically or emotionally in a relationship with a man. I say womxn because Bancroft’s research deals primarily with female-male relationships, though some abusive tendencies and thought processes can carry over gender barriers.
Bancroft explains that an abuser will do anything in his power to throw his partner off balance in order to establish dominance. My relationship with Gerald left me confused and fatigued. I felt as though I was living in two realities: my own and the one Gerald wanted me to believe. As time went on, however, Gerald’s constructed reality began to press against my own and the two blended together so that I genuinely did not know fact from fiction.
After reading Bancroft’s book, I came to realize that Gerald, like so many other emotionally abusive men, wanted me to be fully dependent on him. By isolating me from my friends and sorority sisters, Gerald was able to consume all of my time and energy and distort my perception of reality. He would put me down for challenging myself, like when I was hired for my internship, because he didn’t want me to become aware of my own self-worth.
The most valuable lesson I learned is that men who abuse do so because they feel painfully inadequate. As a result of their insecurities, they will stop at nothing to make their partners feel worse than they do as a way to cope with inferiority. I am eternally grateful that I was (and still am) surrounded by fearless women who stopped at nothing to drag me from the grips of this insecure, toxic boy.
Emotional abuse is no joke. Although I have lost sleep over this depraved boy, I am stronger for having experienced our relationship. No one will ever be able to skew my perception again.
*Author has changed the individual’s name.