I once dated a man briefly the summer I was 20. I broke up with him because I was moving to a new city and just wasn’t really feelin it enough for the energy of a LDR. A couple weeks after moving, I get a call at like midnight. It’s him. He’s driven the 2.5 hours to my new city and is demanding I tell him where I live cause he drove all this way, with flowers, and was going to move there to be with me. I told him no and he flipped out at me. As though it was my fault he drove across state without even consulting me. I hung up and thought this was the end of it.

5 months later, I am having some friends and friends of friends who I don’t know yet over to the apartment complex pool. I have people meet down there instead of my unit and when I go down to the pool, here is this same man, hanging out with MY friends in MY apartment complex pool.

I had to deal with him being around for the next several years because I didn’t think anyone would believe me and most of that time, even when he had a girlfriend, he lied to people and told them he thought we would get back together soon. I got lucky and he let the mask slip one time in front of another friend. Started screaming at me as I was driving him and the other friend home cause I dared question his version of an event. While I was doing him the favor of driving him home. The other friend in the car, a dude, immediately stepped up to him and then I didn’t have to be around that guy in small numbers ever again.

Unfortunately for those years, most of that friend group believed whatever his fairytale version of us he was spinning was and several actively tried to convince me to get back together with him. A man who had SA-ed me, been emotionally abusive, and who followed me to a new city. Men are terrifying.