He said he was waiting for a postdated cheque to clear and would pay me back that Friday. Could I lend him the amount till then? He even flashed me the cheque. I had been dating G. for three years; what was not to trust? Sure, he’d had a bit of a chequered past, with a ‘white collar’ mistake thrown in and a couple of long stints between jobs, but when I met him, I was nursing a broken heart and didn’t much care. He appeared to be the perfect Band-Aid. Now he had to pay restitution in court for that old mistake – close to $10,000. But when Monday came and went, and G. kept pushing the repayment date ahead for one reason after another, I had to face facts. I was never getting the money back.
There had been no court case, I found out later, and Lord knows what that cheque was he had showed me. G. just had big money problems, a backlog in child support, legal bills for other trouble, and so forth; and rather than try to solve the problem like a solid citizen, he conned me. I contacted a lawyer, who said: ‘You don’t need me. This was theft by deception. Go to the county prosecutor and try to convince them to take your case.’
When I did, I learned that G. had swindled another woman simultaneously and had also opened a credit card in the name of a relative with an intellectual disability on which he’d run up several thousand dollars that he never paid.
A detective on the case showed me an old mug shot in which G. looked grubby and sleazy and so distasteful. Then he told me more about G.’s illicit past. After an initial crime got him in trouble, he’d lived on other people’s money when necessary, ripping each of them off. The prosecutor combined the three cases and G. went to trial and served a year in jail. Luckily, after testifying in front of a grand jury, which indicted him, I didn’t have to show my face in court again.
The guy knew how to wine and dine a girl, I’ll say that for him. He brought me chicken soup when I was sick. Gave me diamond earrings for one Christmas and silky ivory lingerie for another; and took me to a movie premiere in New York where everyone was dressed to the nines. And yes, there was the proverbial trip to Paris, with a side visit to Bruges.
It was fun and took my mind off my heartbreak, but looking back, it was a dumb move on my part to accept his largesse. I did share some of the cost, but a minuscule amount compared to what he shelled out, though he wrote off part of the Paris trip as business expenses. There was only one other time we used any of my money, and that was for a weekend getaway when he supposedly forgot his wallet. I was briefly suspicious about that because it’s such a cliché about what scammers might do, but I overlooked it, just as I overlooked the shifty way he showed me the cheque.
Still, I do think he actually cared for me. He was a master serial swindler, as all the good ones are, but I don’t think he deliberately set me up for the con. Rather, when his back was against the wall and he needed money, G. resorted to his usual – and quick – way of getting it. This time, I was the closest prey (and the current sap, along with the other woman my case was paired with). Maybe he thought he could fix things between us later; he had done a lot for me and given me a lot. Then there was my willingness to hand over what he needed. He probably never thought I’d go to the authorities.
I wish I could say G. was the first poor choice I’d made when it came to men, but he wasn’t – and it’s common for people whose parents abuse alcohol, like mine did, to do the same. Because we never experienced anything close to loving parent-child relationships, children of addicts miss out on the crucial nurturing they need to feel good about themselves. It’s what psychotherapists call ‘secure attachment’. The upshot is that people like me struggle with low self-esteem and routinely settle for less than we deserve because we don’t think we can get it.
Ask most children of alcoholics what life was like as a kid and they’ll describe growing up in chaos, feeling their needs often went unmet. A lot of the time, I didn’t know what to expect around my parents – whether the laundry would be done or not done; whether my father would be sober or drunk when he picked me up at the mall. One time there was an inebriated phone call to my dentist when my mother didn’t like the caps he gave me. Another time she embarrassed me, drunkenly greeting my new boyfriend at the front door before I could get downstairs and leave with him.
Who doesn’t love themselves enough to leave a relationship like this? Me, back then
However, some things were predictable. On nights I’d ask my parents not to drink, one of them would retort: ‘It’s not your house!’ If they got into a fight over their pre-dinner drinks, my mother would stagger up to bed, my father would leave for a bar, and there would be no dinner. I learned early that I couldn’t rely on anyone who was supposed to love me, or said they did.
Thinking about how my upbringing affected my relationships, I shake my head in disbelief. Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places. I used to catch out my first boyfriend lying about every small thing when there was no reason for lying. He was going nowhere. I can’t recall what menial job he had after high school, but when he joined the military, he failed to rise through the ranks and make the service a career, as many enrollees do. Instead, when he was discharged he tried beautician school. We broke up as he was dropping out of the programme, and I lost track of him. I can’t believe I once thought I might spend my life with him.
With another boyfriend, it was a mystery how he got into college. And once he did, he had other students write his term papers for him. An avant-garde Broadway play we saw, and that I loved, made him blow a gasket because he didn’t understand it. Why I stayed with him for so long is beyond me.
One boyfriend was narcissistic and rude, taking off on a skiing trip and leaving me alone on my birthday. Plus, he developed a wandering eye for other women. Who doesn’t love themselves enough to leave a relationship like this? Me, back then. And people like me, now. And then there was G.
The afternoon I came home from the county prosecutor’s office, I spent the rest of the day in bed. Not because G. broke my heart; I never planned to stay with him. I had told him so early on and thought that by doing that, I was safe from, well, anything. He had laughed and said he planned to win me over; then, as I dumped him, he said he had hoped we’d get married. No, I was in bed because I was beating myself up. I felt so humiliated – the money I’d lost, how easily I’d been fooled, appearing before the grand jury, all of it.
I hadn’t been without a boyfriend since I was 15, and now I was in my 30s. I needed to make some changes. The recovery community has a saying about why a person sometimes says they stopped drinking or using drugs: ‘I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.’ That’s how I felt about my history with relationships.
The solace of time alone helped me to think and to learn about myself
I vowed that G. was the final straw. There would be no more making excuses for my behaviour, no more being a pushover, sidestepping my feelings and avoiding confrontation. I wanted better for myself, and no one was going to make it better except myself. I needed to find a sense of self-worth.
The more I thought about what I really wanted, the more I realised it would help to spend time on my own, for the first time in my adult life. I needed to sit with my strengths and my weaknesses. I never had boundaries, for example: going forwards, I needed to go over what I would and wouldn’t accept. I knew I’d be lonely at times, and I had to find a way to get through that. Thinking about the work I faced was daunting, but I found that the only way out was through.
That year was an awakening. I bought a tennis racquet, took a few lessons, and started playing. I did more with girlfriends, taking a trip to Florida with one. If I was alone on a Saturday night, I’d take a long bath and read a book. Initially, I wasn’t comfortable tuning into and acknowledging my needs, but as I practised more self-care I began to experience a kind of bliss because I hadn’t received a lot of care in my life. Eventually I grew to like time alone. The solace of it helped me to think and to learn about myself. I had been wanting bigger digs, so I looked at houses with a realtor and dreamed of buying one. This was the first time I had been so independent, and it felt good.
In my second year post-G., I dated a bit but there was no one I badly wanted to see again and that was fine: I was still taking time for reflection. I also grew better at deciding whether or not I really wanted to do something and I learned to say ‘no’, simple as that sounds. If I ended up in situations I didn’t enjoy or that made me uncomfortable, I left and went home. I looked at men differently. By the third year, I was more confident that I could live my life alone if I had to. I could picture a brighter future.
Still, I keep the victim notification letter I received notifying me that G. was being released from jail as a reminder of what I went through. I never got the money back.
