Before I share my latest misadventure, I have another Bottom of the Barrel guy to put on blast.
This guy, who I will simply refer to as “K,” started off incredibly strong. We talked over the course of a few days and he put so much effort into our conversation that I was quite honestly blown away. He asked me thoughtful questions about myself, and gave me equally thoughtful replies. He was very complimentary, but not overtly sexual. He really seemed like a total gentleman.
After some time, we moved our chat off of the dating app. At that point, he was continuing to gain my trust and subtly shifted the conversation to talk about exhibitionism. I was the one who brought it up, to be fair, but I brought it up specifically to tell him that I don’t send sexy pictures or sext until after I’ve met a person. Little did I know that he was taking that information and looking for ways to convince me to do just that.
The irony looking back is that we literally talked about how it was lame how people were disingenuous just to get sexy pictures from people. Yet, all of the evidence now supports the theory that that is exactly what he was doing.
He gained my trust and I ended up breaking my rule and sent him some sexy (but not extremely revealing) pictures. He responded super positively and it felt great. But the next day, he didn’t message me back. Or the day after that… or three days after that. It’s now been over a week of silence and I have to accept that he was just another liar manipulating me for his own pleasure. How are there this many shitty men in the world, and why are they all finding me?
Here is a small sample of some of our conversation:
I mean, just look at that banter. It was so good! I really didn’t see that one coming, guys.
My parting words to you, K, are as follows: I hope you’re proud of yourself, because you were part of the final destruction of my trust in… well, anybody. You were one of the reasons I broke. And I hope you have the lonely, sad, empty life that you deserve.
Now, moving on to the next of the recent death blows to my poly journey.
Do y’all remember Tucker? I wrote about him here and here. The TLDR summary is: he was a guy who I connected with super strongly and I had a very exciting day of getting to know him, but he ended up being full of shit and purposely fucked with my emotions.
Well, guess who came back for round two.
Tucker messaged me out of the blue a couple days ago. It started casually, and I was polite but guarded. He ended up basically asking for a second chance. I told him that what he did before was really shitty, and I suggested that he read the posts I wrote about him. I figured he should know exactly what he would be coming back from, if we were to try to have a relationship.
He accepted what I wrote, and agreed that he deserved it. He apologized many times. And I, being the incessant people-pleaser that I am, told him I forgave him. I believe in second chances, and sometimes even third and fourth and more. But I’m not stupid. When someone has broken my trust, I don’t give it back easily. I told him upfront that I was going to continue to assume he was full of shit until proven otherwise. He basically vowed that he would prove that he is genuine, and that he isn’t a psychopath like I accused him of being in my previous post about him.
We talked a lot that day, including sending video messages back and forth, texting, and even a reasonably long phone call. It was really fun talking to him, and he was giving me a lot of feels. I decided that I would just go ahead and enjoy those feelings for as long as I could, while still fully expecting him to fuck it up again.
I was right, of course.
We made a plan to meet, and I decided it would be best to make him wait a whole week for that. I wanted to see if he could be consistent. I also decided that we would be meeting in public twice before inviting him to our house. I told him that we wouldn’t be doing anything sexual until I trusted him. He seemed to accept these terms with complete understanding.
Unfortunately, his communicativeness never extended past that first day. We barely talked in the following days. I asked him what he was up to and he said he was “just hanging out,” but when I commented that he was really quiet he said he was busy. It didn’t add up, and it didn’t give me any confidence whatsoever that this so-called “relationship” would ever go anywhere good.
I now believe that he was only talking to me to try to once again charm me and lull me into a state of undeserved trust, so that he could get some quick and easy sex. I think that he thought he could convince me to change my timeline, or maybe just keep up the ruse until he got what he was after.
It never ceases to astound me how manipulative, calculating, cruel, and careless people can be with others. There were so many things that Tucker said that would’ve led me to believe that he was being genuine. But if he was being genuine, then why did I already feel like he was over me on day two?
Here are some of the sweet things he said:
“I usually don’t talk on the phone but you are different.”
I told him that I hated how he was making me feel because I knew that it was really stupid to trust him, yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself from catching feelings for him; he said “please don’t stop yourself.”
I told him I’m basically looking for a boyfriend, and he responded that he’s “looking for a girlfriend,” so it works out.
He texted me late at night to say he was missing me.
I think the worst one was this:
I said it loud and clear. If he wasn’t being genuine, then he was being incredibly cruel. And he proved me right, again. He knew exactly what he was doing, and now I know that all of the horrible things I thought about him before are completely accurate. I now know that he is, in fact, a psychopath.
According to Wikipedia, “Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality,[1] is a personality construct[2][3] characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, in combination with traits of boldness, disinhibition, and egocentrism. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress,[4] which create an outward appearance of apparent normalcy.”
This describes him to a T. He was very bold, very confident, and very charming. He knew that he was hurting me, yet he simply DID. NOT. CARE. He somehow felt that it was perfectly fine for him to lie his ass off about his intentions in order to manipulate me into developing feelings for him; and he did it not once, but twice! Presumably, it was all for the purpose of getting me to have sex with him. Or perhaps he gets a kick out of tricking people into liking him. Maybe it makes him feel powerful.
In any case, I decided to let him know that I was having doubts about meeting next week. You can see what happened after that for yourself.
He said nothing to that for hours, until I took those screenshots and he was notified (as Snapchat does), and then he finally had the motivation to respond.
I didn’t get a chance to take screenshots of our last messages, but his said something like, “I guess we shouldn’t talk then. I would appreciate it if you didn’t post any of this online.”
The nerve.
I responded that if he didn’t want to be called out online, he shouldn’t have been talking to a blogger. The absurdity of him asking me not to post anything is that he knows I already posted about him before and he knew exactly what he was getting into. He knew that I would absolutely call him out for his bullshit, and yet he did it anyway. What on God’s green earth would make him think that he deserves the courtesy of me not telling my readers exactly how much of a scumbag he is? Beats me.
Seconds after my last message, he deleted our chat and unfriended me (and possibly blocked me, since I can’t find him anymore). At least he saved me the effort of having to block him myself. To be thorough, I also blocked his phone number for texts and calls. You can be damn sure that even if he ever does manage to find a way to contact me, I will never speak to him again. And he knows exactly why. In fact, in all likelihood he’s going to read this post. (Hey Tucker! Thanks for the excellent content. 😘)
I would also like to point out that even a psychopath gets the courtesy, from me, of being told why I am no longer going to be talking to them. That’s called being a decent person.
As for Tucker, good fucking riddance. I knew, knew, knew that he was full of shit, and yet I had the smallest glimmer of hope that he had changed. What a joke.
Anyway. My next post will be coming soon, in which I elaborate on my ominous mentions of the “death blows to my poly journey,” the “reasons I broke,” and the “final destruction of my trust in… well, anybody.”
Spoiler alert: I’m done trying to find what I wanted from polyamory.