an open letter to the newest member of the club

To my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend:

I was made aware that you ex­ist, and it makes me sad and scared for you. 

You see, you are on your way to be­com­ing a mem­ber of a club of at least three oth­er women who have been abused by your cur­rent tryst. R, D, and my­self have been in your shoes, and we know what hap­pens next. It is a pat­tern of cheat­ing and abuse that spanned at least three re­la­tion­ships, maybe more.

We know who you are, but we can’t reach out to you be­cause he’s prob­a­bly made it his life’s mis­sion to poi­son your mind against his “psy­chot­ic” ex-girl­friends. Right now, we can’t tell you what we’ve been through, but you’ll find out soon enough.

He’s prob­a­bly al­ready told you that he val­ues trust and hon­esty in a re­la­tion­ship, and that you are wel­come to go through his phone. But try it out. You’ll see that it is im­pos­si­ble, be­cause he’ll nev­er let you get past his se­cu­ri­ty code. 

If you do, head straight into his Face­book mes­sages, or his In­sta­gram likes, or even his Twit­ter DMs. Look for some­one named C. This is/was the woman he met back in 2008/2009 through Twit­ter, and main­tained an in­ap­pro­pri­ate sex­ting re­la­tion­ship (plus nudes!) with de­spite him dat­ing R, then D, then my­self. You can check the dates. That is … if he hasn’t delet­ed them. 

But that’s no mat­ter – I’ve man­aged to save the thread and some screen­shots the sec­ond I ran into them. I also have mes­sages from C, ad­mit­ting to their af­fair. She was in tears when she called me over the phone. If he is still friends with her on his so­cial me­dia, I urge you to speak to him about it and set bound­aries. He might tell you that this is not a prob­lem, and it’s not cheat­ing be­cause she lives in an­oth­er state, but cheat­ing is cheat­ing. Don’t ever let him make you doubt your feelings.

Your re­la­tion­ship is prob­a­bly still young and new, and you are in the hon­ey­moon phase. This means you haven’t re­al­ly found some­thing to dis­agree on yet. But when you do, be care­ful to NEV­ER DIS­AGREE WITH HIM. If you do, he will threat­en to break up with you. He will raise his voice and slam his open palm against the ta­ble, so that even his dog will cow­er in fright and his glass of whiskey will shake, and he will blame this on you. He will say, “You’re scar­ing my dog!”

All this when you haven’t said a word yet. His word is law, or “you’ll find your­self sin­gle very soon.” I can­not tell you how many times I’ve heard him say that when I so much as cor­rect him when he re­counts an event wrong.

I said glass of whiskey, didn’t I? That’s be­cause he can nev­er go more than two nights with­out a drink. He can fin­ish more than one bot­tle by him­self every week, and he will in­sist that you take shots with him. 

Pace your­self, and hy­drate accordingly. 

And if you have plans for the week­end, can­cel them. He likes to drink hard on Fri­days, so that your Sat­ur­day plans are ef­fec­tive­ly ru­ined. Be­lieve me, I sched­uled a cou­ples mas­sage for us weeks in ad­vance, and he de­cid­ed pol­ish­ing off a bot­tle the night be­fore was a good idea. Let me just say that dri­ving down the free­way with an al­most-40-year-old puk­ing out the pas­sen­ger side win­dow doesn’t strength­en any relationships.

R, D, and I wish we could tell you our­selves the men­tal, phys­i­cal, ver­bal, and emo­tion­al abuse he put us through. When I con­front­ed him about his cheat­ing, he lit­er­al­ly spat on my face and phys­i­cal­ly man­han­dled me in an ef­fort to throw me out of the sec­ond-floor apart­ment. I record­ed the au­dio of this event, if you want to hear your boyfriend use the most vile words against a cry­ing, heart­bro­ken woman who just suf­fered a miscarriage.

Did you know that when D’s car broke down near his apart­ment and she asked if she could stop by for help, he got an­gry at her? You might won­der why … and it’s be­cause when D got to his place, she found an­oth­er woman’s clothes on his bed­room floor. 

And did you know that he used to pick fights with R on Fri­days, so he could throw her out of their shared apart­ment? While R stayed at her mom’s, he had women from Twit­ter over. Per­haps some­one known as @Ms.Foxy_420. Check for her on his phone … if he’ll let you. R found an open box of con­doms with some miss­ing – and they didn’t use con­doms. Hmmm … I won­der where the miss­ing con­doms went.

And since Christ­mas just passed, did you no­tice that he has blue and white Christ­mas decor? Did he tell you that it took him two years to col­lect them? Let me tell you right now, he did no such col­lect­ing. Those were R’s, and he de­cid­ed to keep them af­ter throw­ing her and the rest of her things out of their apart­ment and throw­ing wa­ter over them.

R could also tell you that he got vi­o­lent with her. He threw her against a wall so hard that she passed out and he thought he had killed her. If my pre­vi­ous state­ments haven’t scared you, this should. 

PHYS­I­CAL ABUSE should be a deal­break­er. You should not let a man throw you against a wall, spit on your face, or throw emp­ty box­es at your head while you’re in the bathroom.

If you do need help, come to us. Not to his par­ents. I made that mis­take when I called his mom. She wasn’t much help, and ac­tu­al­ly main­tained an on­line friend­ship with C, de­spite know­ing that her son’s preg­nant girl­friend was be­ing cheat­ed on by this woman. 

They won’t have your back, and they cer­tain­ly think he can do no wrong.

All these years, he’s told R, D, and me, that his OTH­ER ex K, threw him out of their du­plex with­out 30 days’ no­tice “out of the blue.” We thought K was evil … but think­ing back on every­thing he’s done now, per­haps K had all the right rea­sons in the world to kick his ass out. 

Maybe she found out he was also cheat­ing on her with some­one else. And this is why, if you do start to live to­geth­er, he’ll NEV­ER add you on to the lease. His ex­cuse with me was that adding me on would have in­creased the rent. 

This of course, not only gave him the pow­er to threat­en to kick me out con­stant­ly, but it also put me in a bit of a bind once I did move out and get my own house. I had no of­fi­cial rental his­to­ry to show for dur­ing the year and a half that I lived with him. AL­WAYS IN­SIST TO BE ON THE LEASE IF YOU’RE PAY­ING HIM RENT.

R, D, and I are now hap­pi­er with­out him, nat­u­ral­ly. He was a huge can­non­ball that we dodged. They reached out to me the sec­ond they found out that he and I broke up, and we shared sto­ries so sim­i­lar, it is no doubt that he will do the same thing to all oth­er women he’ll encounter. 

When he found out that D and I had hung out, he very swift­ly blocked me on­line. And then told D that it is her fault that her daugh­ter won’t be able to talk to his mom any­more. Yeah, what a sad loss, boo-hoo. I know he got scared that his mon­stros­i­ty was be­ing talked about by women who ac­tu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced them, and his un­do­ing is slow­ly com­ing up.

I can’t re­al­ly tell you what to do, be­cause I bet that he’s putting on all the charms right now. Cook­ing for you, let­ting you hang out with his dog. But it’ll run its course, and you’ll see for your­self. Un­til then, R, D, and I will wait. We were hop­ing I would be the last club mem­ber, but kar­ma works in mys­te­ri­ous ways. He’s get­ting way, way old to act like a play­er. Truth be told, his game was al­ways sloppy.

Reach out to us at the first red flag. #SMILE
 
 

—saman­tha costanilla

Flom­mist Saman­tha Costanil­la is a jack-of-all-trades/­mas­ter-of-none who dab­bles in var­i­ous hob­bies such as fiber crafts, po­et­ry, tarot read­ing, learn­ing new lan­guages, and judg­ing sketchy ty­pog­ra­phy in restau­rant menus. She also sur­vived The Snap. Copy­right © 2018 Saman­tha Costanil­la. Names have been con­vert­ed to ini­tials. For protection.

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