I remember when a few sorority sisters and I were in a deep discussion with one’s mother about dating in college. Her words of advice to us were to explore all the possibilities while we’re still here, because we don’t get that accessibility in the real-world, and as a sophomore at Ohio State, the possibilities seemed endless.
That is, until, the following year.
Junior year was coming to an all-too-fast end, which only meant that senior year and graduation were around the bend. And although I was doing everything that I should have been doing: getting good grades in school, being active in my sorority and Greek Life, working at a department store, and even scoring my first (not to mention perk-filled) internship at a local radio station; I still felt as if I was missing a meaningful relationship.
I was never in a rush to be in a relationship, since my last one ended in nuclear meltdown fashion, but when it seemed that most of my best friends were getting into serious relationships, and countless sorority sisters were getting engaged, it made me question when hook-ups and kind-of-sort-of boyfriends would turn into something more. I wanted to love somebody so badly, but until that happened, I had more than enough to keep me occupied.
“Until” happened one night in June of 2011, the night I met Christopher*.
I was back at my mother’s Long Island home at the tail-end of my summer vacation, walking around by the water with my childhood best friend Taylor*, complaining why was it so humid or how I had managed to make it through an entire two-weeks-vacation without meeting one cute guy. Taylor wanted to check out a new yogurt shop, but I was craving some iced tea from the coffee shop next door. We decided to split up, and I ventured into the shop alone.
That was where I met Chris. He was in front of me in line and turned around to ask for my opinion on the store’s coffee. It was so fast, so when he turned around again and complimented me on my straw fedora, I was taken aback. All that ran through my mind was that I’m not the girl who gets hit on while standing in line at a coffee shop; I’m usually the girl who catches a cute guy looking and not-so-discreetly spills her drink on herself. After an uncharacteristically smooth conversation, Chris boldly asked to see me again, and I told him that I live and go to school in Ohio, and was only here to visit my Mom and brothers until that upcoming Wednesday. Even with that information, Chris was still determined to take me out, and we exchanged numbers.
Later that night, we talked and got to know a bit more about each other. I found out that he was 26-years-old, worked in construction/masonry, and was raised in Long Island. It was a huge change from the guys on campus: he actually talked, told me his thoughts, opinions, and it was refreshing to me. It didn’t feel as if I had to force things out of him, and I was smitten after our conversation, so I agreed to see him the night before I left.
He picked me up by taxi, explaining to me that the reason why he wasn’t able to pick me up was due to his suspended license, from unpaid tickets, which sounded temporary, so I didn’t mind. We went to a small, quiet seafood restaurant nearby and talked about everything. It was a relief to finally be able to talk to someone who shared the same thoughts on relationships, people, and life in general. It felt as if he just understood me in a way that no other guy I had ever been involved with had. At the end of the night—and 30 frantic calls from my mother later—we decided to continue talking and maybe the next time I was in town, we could see each other again. Although he was older, and I knew he came from a different background than I did, I was determined to make it work. I saw no negatives in pursuing this—he was more mature, so I thought it meant less drama and the 500 or so miles between Columbus and New York would allow me to still have my freedom for senior year while getting to know him.
It seemed like a perfect relationship. We spoke every day, for hours on end. I was falling so fast and so hard for a man I had only met twice, but it felt as if we had known each other forever. But one day, a friend had asked me about him, and asked to see his Facebook profile. When I said that he didn’t have one, she looked horrified that I hadn’t already Googled his name. In defense of my budding relationship, I said that he would tell me when he’s ready to tell me anything. As confident as I seemed in my statement, I eventually caved from suspicion. And what I found shocked me to the core.
My Chris, the sweet guy who spoke to me on the phone for hours daily, who told me everything, had failed to mention that he had a criminal past. All there, for public record, was drug charge after drug charge—with codes and phrasing that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what to think. Should I bring it up? Do I wait for him to say something? Do I end things? I wanted to tell somebody, but all I could think of was how I would feel if I had been the one being judged for my past. I had gotten to know so much about this man— would it be fair of me to drop all ties because of this? I wanted to get all of the information that I could before making any decisions, so I decided to not tell anybody about what I had found out.
I decided that I would coyly bring it up during one of our late-night sessions. He told me everything he had done—from selling the drugs to, eventually, using them. He told me about how he was in and out of court, paying several thousands in fines, and served time in jail for months at a time. He told me about how he turned his life around for the better. He was enrolled in college and getting straight A’s, and most importantly, he was clean. After that bombshell, I admired Chris for being so strong, and he was thankful that I was willing to see him for who he is now, rather than who he was back then. It was then that we decided to commit to a long-distance relationship. I figured that we had made it through the roughest part, and this was a sign that we were able to do this, especially since I had toyed with the idea of moving back home after graduation. I thought I truly had it all—a job, school, friends, and a good-hearted man, and I could truly see myself having a future with Chris.
But as time went on, there would be times when I felt suffocated in my relationship with Chris. Yes, we were in a long-distance relationship, which meant that I had to put more effort into communicating than if he were in Columbus with me, but it felt different. As a senior in college, I had more than enough on my plate, and it seemed that whenever I had something to do, or if I was just wanting alone time at the end of the day, Chris would get mad at me and keep me on the phone or on Skype longer and tell me that if I didn’t interrupt him, we would’ve already been done with the conversation. However, when I needed Chris to be there for me, when I was stressed out or needed help, he would rush me off the phone, telling me how he needed to get his work done, or that he was out with friends and would call back later. It also was getting harder to lie about Chris’ background to my friends and family. I was constantly worried about the possibility of him using drugs again, and since he lived so close to my mother and brothers, there was always the possibility that they would find out before I could come up with a lie about it. I was equally terrified of them asking enough questions to realize the holes in my story of Chris.
One night, as my college graduation was around the corner, I remember having a conversation with him about what I wanted to do after college. I told him that I wanted to look all over the country, and that I would be applying to different media companies and their early career programs or maybe staying in Ohio for a bit longer. This led to an all-night kind of fight. Chris would say “do whatever you want,” and then switch to, “if you go anywhere else but New York, we aren’t going to be together.” Either way, all I heard was “I don’t support you going anywhere but New York.” When I talked to my friend, Raquel*, who had her fiancé overseas in the military, she brought up something that I never even considered: “Why won’t he move out here for you?” So I asked, because what wasn’t to love about Ohio: its affordable living, people are diverse but kind, faith was a major part of the city, and I had called it home for several years. Chris laughed at the idea and said that he would never live in Ohio, or anyplace but New York.
So I found myself compromising what I wanted for the sake of the relationship, thinking that this is what happens in a “real” relationship, and that you sacrifice what you want for it. But all of that changed in April of 2012. I had graduated and was having a mini-vacation to Long Island. Chris picked me up from the airport, and it was a great first couple of nights until my Mom called. She was upset with my not staying with her or at least seeing her and my brothers, who live less than 10 minutes away from Chris. I talked to Chris because I understood my Mom’s concerns, and he said, “Yea, we can see your Mom tomorrow night,” I told him that I thought she just wanted to be around me, without Chris, and he went off talking about how she’s never home anyway (because she works in the city), and he never gets to see me. He then threw it in my face that I’m driving his mother’s car, that he paid for my plane ticket, and that I came to see him, not my family.
That was the tipping point. That was when I knew that our relationship wasn’t healthy from the start. When I came back to Columbus, I realized that I would avoid talking to Chris more and more, and I would lie about where I was going because I knew he would tell me that I could’ve been talking to him first. It all came to a head in May, when I went to see a friend from work perform at an open mic night. I told Chris that I would be going earlier and that I wasn’t sure when I would be home. He said that since he was in the middle of finals that he needed me to talk to him. I told him I would try for 10:30, and when I was on Skype with him, he started yelling at the top of his lungs that I’m selfish, that I don’t care about him or how stressed out he is, and how much he’s done for me in our relationship. I knew that this was the perfect time to break-up with him, so I did. He only replied, “I’m getting straight A’s in my classes, I cannot handle a break-up this week.”
After his finals were over, and he was being nice to me, I couldn’t believe how manipulative he really was. He sent me flowers, apologized for his reaction, and pretended everything was fine. But I knew that it was over for me. We never communicated the same way. He was possessive, manipulative, and if we talked about past arguments or issues, they were always my fault—the way I had said something or the reaction I had or didn’t have wasn’t what he wanted.
Two months later, he called me while he was getting some shopping done for my upcoming visit to New York, and our one year anniversary. He asked me if I wanted him to buy a new air conditioner, and I said, “I don’t really care either way,” and he started yelling and cursing at me—saying that I was ungrateful and being a “bitch” for talking like that to him. So I told him we were done, hung up the phone and blocked his number. I felt like I was finally free, until I realized that he had already gotten my tickets to New York. As much as I knew I didn’t want to go, I felt I owned it to him to break-up with him in person. So I went, even though I had the mentality that we were definitely breaking up.
On the first day, it was just awkward being with him. I didn’t want him to touch me or talk to me. I resented him. I immediately regretted getting on the plane, saying “I love you,” when by that point, I didn’t feel it. I knew I was only there so I could be the good guy in the end. Later that day, I left him in the car with my phone. Knowing my code and my very distant behavior, he went through my phone and saw the texts between me and a guy I was starting to talk to. And as we stopped for gas, we got into a fight in the middle of the gas station,. The next evening, I told him that I wanted to spend the night at my mother’s house, since I had spent my last visit with him and didn’t want to have a repeat of yesterday’s fight. He refused to let me leave. He locked us in his room, saying that we needed to talk about our relationship and the other guy. I could see my phone flashing, from my Mom calling, and as I went for the phone, he grabbed it and threw it across the room. As I tried to push him out of the way so I could leave, he grabbed my arm— I thought he was going to hit me. So when I told him to let me go or I would start screaming and make noise, he finally let me go. And as I was just short of running to the car, he kept trying to hold me and apologize for what he did—I said nothing, I had nothing to say, I just wanted to stay as far away as possible from him. I left his place, crying the entire way back to my mother’s home.
On July 2nd, 2012, hours before my flight left, I wrote him a letter, telling him that it was over. Chris offered to drop-me off at the airport, so I went back to his place, made sure I got the last of my things—and made sure I was the last person out—and I left the letter on his laptop.
Since all of this happened, we have talked to each other, and he tells people that he broke up with me, or that he decided that I still have some maturing to do. I choose to not correct people about that information, because I’m more concerned with getting my life back on track. Because of the way I allowed Chris to influence me, I left Ohio when I knew I wasn’t ready to, enrolled in a graduate school that I knew I didn’t have my heart in, and ostracized myself from my family for Chris.
But instead of looking at my relationship as a negative, I’ve learned to treat it as a guideline for my future relationships. I’ve learned that loving someone isn’t about compromising the things that matter: your family, your future, or your self-esteem. But the most important thing I’ve learned is that someone who truly loves you would never ask you to.
*Names changed for privacy.
Photo Credits:
Couple fighting on couch