L.A. Affairs: He manipulated me and tried to exploit me. Here’s how I got revenge
I met him on OKCupid and with our first words it was love. We wrote poetry to each other and shared our deepest thoughts. When we finally went on our first date, I felt that magic continue as he held my hand and we ran down Ventura Boulevard at midnight. The first three months were beautiful; he was exciting, tender and always the gentlemen.
He charmed me like a snake.
After three months he informed me that he had actually been on hiatus and would have to get back to directing 10 new movie projects. Suddenly, his attention dwindled. I had to wonder if he really liked me.
And I had to revisit those white lies I caught him in the first month of our relationship:
He wasn’t the age he listed on his profile; he was five years older. I saw his driver’s license and discovered that he didn’t use his real name either. I wanted to prod further, but I was dealing with another dilemma: Did I really want to act the part of the girl whose trust issues sabotaged a potentially great relationship? The yogi in my mind told me to trust the goodness in everyone and even if it didn’t work out, it was better to live with an open mind and heart.
Another three months passed in relationship purgatory where hours with him were heaven and days without him were pure hell. Then I caught him in another “omitted truth.”
I had asked him early on if he had ever been married and his answer went something like this: “Ha! Yes, once a long time ago and it was a mistake.” I could sense there was more to this story — any guy who couldn’t listen to Coldplay because it reminded him of his ex was exposing a red flag. So I brought it up again and he admitted that he had called it quits on his marriage one month before our first date — the divorce was not final when we started seeing each other.
I was shocked. I wondered why our relationship had to start with lies and why his story continued to have omissions. I was forced to ask him the forbidden question: “Do you love me?”
He couldn’t answer, so I asked him if he saw himself loving me in the future. “Well … I more than like you,” he responded.
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They were pitiful, soulless words thrown at me like scraps to a desperate pigeon. I thought he wanted love, but I was forced to realize that, as a woman several years his junior, he was probably keeping me around for one thing. I felt insulted.
“You need to have patience,” he said, sensing my dissatisfaction. Yes, after all of his lies and disappearing acts, he still expected me to stay in a relationship that was bountiful — in emotional neglect. Memories of the times I had tried to stand up for myself kept invading my thoughts. All he would say is: “Don’t be mean to me, please.”
At the beginning of the relationship, he manipulated me and my sense of kindness to work in his favor. Toward the end, he was trying to exploit my patience. I could finally see it.
I broke up with him immediately.
And what did I learn from all this? That I would never be silenced again by him or anyone else. The yogi in my mind still told me to be strong and to detach without anger, until a friend saw his picture on a dating site less than two weeks after our breakup. He had falsified his age again. In fact, it was the same profile he had used to lure me in.
Finally, the sting produced some healthy anger. He was searching for another woman who wouldn’t anticipate his lies. He was continuing to maintain the face of a nice guy, and it infuriated me that I had fallen for the scam. It infuriated me that someone else might fall for it.
I kept thinking about a great quote by Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I know this is a simple story about one person’s heartache, but these words called me into action. I created a new “profile” on the site and used his photo and included his real age and a few pertinent facts about our relationship. My goal was to protect anyone else from repeating my mistakes. To say nothing and allow another woman genuinely looking for love to fall for his lies felt criminal to my gender.
I’m grateful for my own enlightenment, but I’m looking forward to the days when the inclination to become a dating-site vigilante is kaput.
Lauren Eash is an avid reader currently writing her first novel.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the current dating scene in and around Los Angeles. If you have comments or a true story to tell, email us at home@latimes.com.
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