This is the story of how I was gaslighted by a douchebag.

Very early in my poly journey, I met a guy named Curtis on a dating app, and we started talking non-stop. Intellectually, we had a strong instant connection, and I enjoyed our conversations—at least at first.

Unfortunately, there were a few things that felt off to me.

Curtis was outside of my “age range” that I was looking for in guys to date, but I didn’t immediately discount him because of our good conversation. I was slightly unnerved by the age difference, but it was something I figured I could get over with the right person.

However, Curtis was not the right person for many reasons.

I wasn’t attracted to him, which is something that can develop in time for me, but still not a great start. I also started noticing some irritating behaviors from him in our conversations.

One thing he did was dominate the conversation. For everything I said, he had a story he needed to tell me related to it. For every topic, he had some special wisdom or knowledge he felt was valuable enough to share with me. He had a condescending tone at times, but it wasn’t enough to be a red flag right away.

He also acted suspicious when it came to talking about his wife. He originally claimed to be interested in exploring some kind of swapping situation with me and Hubby, but when I tried to inquire more about that, he shifted the focus to a potential relationship between just me and him. Later, he shifted once again, this time to suggestions about having his wife watch me and him, even though I told him I wasn’t interested in that.

He was very complimentary of me intellectually, and frequently said things about how he was attracted to my intelligence. I certainly didn’t find that concerning, but what I did find odd was his lack of compliments about my physical appearance. I don’t need men to fawn over me and boost my ego by any means, but when I sent him a confirmation photo, his only comment on it was that I had “tired eyes.” Hashtag rude, dude!

Then things started to feel even more off when he continually warned me to “be careful out there” in the dating world. It felt as if he was trying to give me the impression that every other guy had malicious intentions except for him. This is a type of grooming behavior that I immediately found alarming, but I at first gave him the benefit of the doubt.

As our conversations progressed, he asked me out and we began to make plans to meet. But a few days before our date, I was feeling anxious and just “off” about the whole thing. I have an excellent intuition, and I decided I needed to trust that. I told him as kindly as I could that I wasn’t interested in meeting him after all, but that I’d be happy to continue talking as friends.

He was graceful in his acceptance of my decision, but did not take me up on my offer of friendship. I was just fine with this, and happily moved on.

A week or two later, he messaged me again just to say hi, and as a kind person, I was obliged to respond. BIG mistake.

He seemed to take my response as a sign that I had changed my mind about how I felt. I decided it was a good opportunity to practice my assertiveness. When he asked what had gone wrong between us, I told him honestly about all the red flags I’d seen.

His reaction to each one was embarrassment and a seemingly sincere belief that they were all simple misunderstandings. I finally told him frankly that I wasn’t romantically attracted to him, but he didn’t seem to hear it. He was convinced, it seemed, that he could change how I felt with a few small tweaks in his communication. It was at this point that he confessed his love for me—yes, that’s right, he said he straight up loved me. I was shocked, but I’m ashamed now to admit that it also moved me a little, because he seemed so sincere, and I am a hopeless romantic after all. I thanked him for sharing his feelings, but also gently reminded him that I didn’t feel the same. Again, he didn’t seem to hear it.

As our conversation progressed, I began to find it necessary to be more and more direct with him. He would say something of a concerning variety, and I would call him out. This pattern continued to escalate until I was basically reaming him out every few minutes, and I knew at that point that we would absolutely never meet in person and I no longer wanted to talk to him.

He started to push back on some of the things I “corrected” him about, and I had to get more aggressive. One of the biggest tipping points was when he told me that I needed to slow down my poly dating pace, because it wasn’t good for my Hubby and he was worried about my marriage. FULL STOP. I absolutely tore him a new one at that point.

I told him that he didn’t know me, my Hubby, or anything about my marriage. I also told him that I did not appreciate him, a random man, telling me as a woman what I needed to do or not do. He was coming off as a patriarchal asshole and I was not okay with it. I told him that I found his unsolicited advice disrespectful, and asked him not to do it again.

This is when he called me stubborn, said that I had logical fallacies in my thought processes, and that he had to give unsolicited advice to me because he cared about me and had experience I could learn from. I was becoming furious at this point.

I told him we’d have to agree to disagree, but not before informing him that I found his opinions on that topic to be sexist. His response was that in the community he grew up in (?), he learned “not to see gender or color.” I was so flabbergasted by his idiocy at that point that I couldn’t even begin to respond and dissect that. I excused myself from the conversation and took some time to formulate my message informing him of my intentions to end our communications.

In my final message to him, I was apologetic and kind, but firm. I let him know that it was not going to work out between us, and that I was sorry about that. It was succinct and clear.

A short time later, I received his response in the form of a short essay. I glanced at it, immediately knew it was trouble, and didn’t read it. I let my Hubby read it, since he was curious, but he immediately regretted it. His exclamations of disbelief and fury as he read it were admittedly entertaining, though.

The only words I caught in my brief glance were “postpartum hormones” and “manic episode.” What I gathered from Hubby was that he was diagnosing me with mental illness and beseeching me to seek help.

I did what any sane, healthy person would do and deleted his messages and blocked his number.

Experiencing such blatant gaslighting firsthand—literally being told that I’m mentally ill by a manipulative and emotionally abusive man, when in fact I am not, was extremely uncomfortable. Even though I am confident in myself and self-aware, it still affected me. I still found myself questioning my mental health and giving a small but real amount of consideration to his accusations. Was I, in fact, having a manic episode?

I wish I could say that this was the first and last time I was gaslighted, but unfortunately it happened twice more, to a lesser degree. As it turns out, dating as a woman is no walk in the park.

The benefit of these experiences has been a higher level of self-confidence and self-awareness, which I’ve had to develop in order to stay emotionally healthy as I continue my poly journey. Polyamory brings an even greater importance to the need for discussing, reflecting, and understanding one’s feelings, needs, and boundaries. This is one reason that I’ve grown so much and so quickly as a poly person, and I am grateful for it.