Breaking the Stigma

To begin with, I couldn’t talk about it.I was the woman, after all, who lost out in comparison to a cache of home-made porn and either a fear  or an addiction to drama (or the possibility thereof). How could I tell people that I had been going out with someone who was hanging on to  some ‘mementoes’ in case a previous partner made an allegation against him of rape? Rape.

Not exactly the Boy Next Door, then.

So here’s the thing: when we met, he told me about his history – as a sex addict, and he also told me that he wanted to change the ways in which he got into a relationship. This time, he wanted honesty; intimacy. He told me about this ex-partner and about a job he had lost as a result of some naughty-boy behaviour and he also told me about a bit of a furore that had been kicked up by this ex-girlfriend in the past. That, he said, was why he was keeping a video of her ‘enjoying herself’ on his mobile phone. Oh, and all of the text messages they exchanged. I didn’t know about this until the crisis point, at which he made his choice and walked away. Twice. Yes, I gave him a second chance.

I was very touched by his honesty, you see – and, when I fell for him – because indeed I did; I thought that he would do the right thing and dispose of his garbage, putting the past where it belongs. After all, a year later, and with no contact from the previous partner, I’m pretty sure that she has simply got on with her life: it was she who dumped him. 

I found in this situation a powerful narrative about myself: I had very little self-esteem; my son was newly diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and I was (and remain) a single parent. The road ahead seemed too challenging, and the learning curve too near vertical for me to consider what lay in store for both of us without feeling utterly overwhelmed. I am not the first woman, and I won’t be the last, to make a decision about a man based on fear – of being alone, of being unattractive, of being outrun by my son’s behaviour et cetera. And so it was that I turned as blind an eye as I could to the growing realisation that this man couldn’t leave his past where it belonged.

I fell under the charming spell of a man with some pedigree, whose command of the language enabled him to beguile me into a false sense of security which, together with my desire to meet a mate, a life-partner, a ‘team mate’ had me, frankly, hooked. Before long, this feeling of being loved was displaced by a paranoia, which I attributed to my own insecurity, that every other woman was competition. His words sought to soothe, but his behaviour remained the same and, when I saw this particular ex-partner’s telephone number prominently displayed on a notice board in what passed for a living room on his grubby boat, the writing was, quite literally, on the wall. I saw this manky vessel as a repository of something altogether sordid; and I knew that the decision I must make, though it stood to set me free, would hurt like hell. And it did.

Just before Christmas 2016, days after my stepfather’s funeral, I spoke the words that I knew would make my stepdad proud: “I do have self-esteem, and there is no room in this relationship for that material. If you want me, get rid of it; if not, there is the door.”

As he drove away in my spare car, I closed the door and cracked. I was broken; ripped wide open – for what I saw before me was a life alone, with a son whom I had hurt through my decision, based on fear, to let another person into his trusted circle; our trusted circle.

I am no fan of Christmas and the truth is this: the Yuletide time is when, as Pagans, we cut away the deadwood, painful though it is, so that we can travel forwards into Spring lighter, not weighed down with what we do not need to carry. On Christmas night 2016, I left my son with his cousins and my Mum at her house, and drove home to sit and weep from somewhere deeper than I had hitherto dared to go. Something in me stirred, a little pilot light of hope, and I played Alanis Morisette’s ‘Thank You’ on my mobile ‘phone, as I knew that this was my catharsis. I just did not yet know quite how, or at what layers of me it would happen.

Happily, almost three years later, I see the gifts of that situation. Not long after the New Year, eager to use up my gym membership (which I couldn’t cancel until the August) because I felt like a lump of shit; I started with Zumba as a means to lose weight. I tried a few of the other classes – mini-interval training sessions, and found increasingly that there was more and more that I could do. By the August, I had no desire to cancel my membership. I had found, through tears and being invalided-out of classes, that hormones were my problem, not my physical capabilities; and that mental health stigma has been removed in so many places – especially in the Fitness industry.

Testing my new-found physical abilities, I mistook a man chatting me up and commissioned him as a Boxing coach; as chemistry became more evident (helped by low self-esteem on my part and the action of Progesterone in me as a contraceptive agent) the boxing career got, shall we say, jettisoned. He, too, turned out to be a player and, when the time came to let go, I found that there was more to me than there had been before. Crucially, perhaps as part of the overhang from my Mum being in an abusive relationship when I was a child, I had grown up with the idea that sex was dirty and disgusting, that women lost our power and became ‘vessels’ not simply for recreation, but for all of the abuse that some men meted out. I had held on to this idea until the ‘Canesten Cuckoo’ (as I shall nickname him) had refused to dump his old material for a life with me. I call him this because I have heard it said that cuckoos take over the nests of other birds, and perhaps their chicks, and this man was indeed in search of a ready-made home and family as his host. Canesten soothes aching private parts, and he carried his with him like a familiar or a talisman; fortunately, I remain uninfected, and I am so very grateful.

Generally, after orgasm with him, I would find myself crying, and I had no idea why; he would simply hold me and tell me that he loved me, and in that safe space I see now that I was letting go of old patterns of belief. In that open space of orgasm one’s defences are not there; it’s the petit mort  – the ‘little death’ of the ego, where the masks we have been wearing slip aside, and we are truly naked to the soul.

I found, with ‘Shrek’ (a definite resemblance) that I could truly enjoy myself, and his stamina was marvellous, I’ll still admit. After this, I found ‘the Aspie’ altogether too much like a woman or a soft-boiled egg and, when he too backed off, I let it be because I had found running on a treadmill delightful, and swinging Kettlebells too much fun to ditch over a drip like that.

Something new in me had emerged; I have given her space: she is a special-needs Mum; she knows her way around a sentence and, thanks to Thai Boxing and weight-training, can turn it to good use in many ways. She’s still an artist, despite the brain-injury putting something of a damper on that for quite a while, and she finds that there is no longer a stigma to be found around such areas as mental health, or female sexual need. I have truly liberated myself from those erstwhile trap-doors which I fell down in my psyche all the bloody time.

I shall end with this piece of writing that I found in my sketch book, from March 3rd, 2017: People put on masks; and we also apply to them a mask of our making – of our expectations and our hopes (during the ‘halo effect’ stage early in a romantic relationship, for example). But over time, the mask begins to slip and we are confronted with the question of whether we can live with what lies beneath: the reality of the person or situation over which we (and they – for often we collude) have placed a fascia.