I Give Up

I am a horrible person, and I deserve what happened to me because I should have seen the signs. Or rather, I did see the signs, but I chose to ignore them.

When I saw pictures of the Model with another woman on her Instagram page several weeks ago, I was crushed because that made me realize that there really was no hope that I'd ever get to be with him again. But then just a couple weeks after I saw those pictures, he contacted me, saying that he wanted to see me again. He didn't mention that woman, and I didn't ask. He left College Town to go back to his new place in Chicago, but he said he wanted to see me when he got back.

I wanted to believe that that other woman was just someone he was casually dating. After all, she'd only posted a few pictures of him, and they were all recent. Maybe they had just met, and he couldn't be that into her, after all, if he wanted to be with me again, right?

Wrong.

I couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that there was more to this other woman than meets the eye. So I checked out her Instagram page again and looked further. To my dismay and horror, I realized that she was living with him. There were several pictures of her from months ago in her apartment, the same apartment that the Model started photographing himself in as recently as March. That means that he moved in with her less than four months after he dated me, and based on my online sleuthing, they weren't even dating as of January. She mentioned something about "rebuilding" what they had in one of her posts, which made me think that she was an ex (I think she may even be his former fiancee because he'd once mentioned that he'd been engaged before) and they'd gotten back together.

Could it be that they broke up again, and that he reached out to me after the breakup? Wrong again. Two weeks after he and I slept together, he posted pictures of himself on vacation in Mexico. On his Instagram page, he only posts pictures of himself, no one else, because he really is that narcissistic. I knew that if she posted pictures of Mexico, that meant that she was there with him.

Sure enough, a few days later, she posted a series of pictures of the two of them in Mexico: getting massages on the beach, drinking wine while watching the sunset, her sitting on his lap, etc. She bragged about her "beautiful" relationship with him and how he was the perfect guy (if only she knew!). When I saw those pictures, I realized that he was still dating her when he reached out to me that last time. That sociopath used me to cheat on his girlfriend.

When I saw those pictures, my heart broke, and it was like something froze up inside of me. I recognized that feeling. When I was in high school, I had a huge crush on this guy I worked with at my first part-time job. I asked him out, and he said no. At that moment, I felt something freeze up inside of me. That "something" was the belief that I could find happiness with someone and be his girlfriend.

After my high school crush rejected me that day, I withdrew into my work for years. It was better and safer to be a workaholic. I kept my heart closed off all that time because I didn't want to let anyone break it ever again.

I finally realized, however, that it was time to put myself out there and try dating again. I did everything I could think of to meet someone special. I went to a speed-dating party. I joined a youth group at my church and fell for a really great guy, who fell for someone else. I tried seven different online dating sites. I became friends with Small Town Guy, and watched him fall in love with someone else.

And then I met the Model, and all of a sudden it was like I finally understood what all the fuss was about. I know that whatever he and I had wasn't serious. I know that we weren't exclusive. But that didn't stop me from falling hard for him from day one. I should have blocked him the first time he messaged me on Tinder. I could have saved myself months of emotional turmoil.

When I slept with him that last time, I really didn't know that he was in a serious relationship with her. I really did think that they had just met and weren't exclusive yet. There were all these red flags, but I ignored them because I just really wanted to be with him again. That's why I deserve all the pain and heartache that I'm feeling right now. I never should have agreed to see him that night, and if I'd known that he was in a serious relationship I wouldn't have. I'm a horrible, stupid person. But he's worse.

I texted him to tell him that I'd found his girlfriend's Instagram page and seen the pictures of them together. He didn't answer. I texted him again to tell him to delete all the texts we sent each other. I was afraid that she might get suspicious too one day, go through his texts, and find out about me. She might track me down somehow and confront me at the school where I teach. That may seem unlikely, but you hear stories of women angrily confronting "the other woman" all the time. As they say, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". If she did that to me, my professional reputation would be destroyed and I might even lose my job. And then I'd fight back against BOTH of them as hard as I could because my work is all that I have left and I'll be damned if I let either of them take that away from me.

He didn't answer my other text either. I thought at first that he was too much of a coward to apologize or explain himself, but then I realized that he just doesn't care. He doesn't care that he hurt me because he never cared about me. What I don't understand is why, if his relationship is so perfect with her, he would reach out to me to hook up. It's one thing for him to treat me like crap because he doesn't give a damn about me (although that doesn't justify what he did to me). But it's another thing for him to betray her when he supposedly cares about her.

He still comes back to College Town a lot because his friends and family live here, and he goes to my gym when he comes here. If I see him again, I might do one of several things: 1) "accidentally" drop a weight on his foot; 2) "accidentally" drop my fist on his face; 3) tell the biggest bodybuilder (preferably one with a bad temper) at the gym that the Model hit on his girlfriend; or 4) ask him why he did that and tell him that it is not okay to treat me like that.

The Model's girlfriend has no idea that he's a cheating liar with no conscience. She gets to live "happily ever after" with him, and he gets away scot-free with cheating on her and breaking my heart. And I get nothing.

Unlike the Model's girlfriend, I am no longer a romantic. I am a cynic, and can you really blame me? I'm thirty-seven years old, and I've been on many bad dates with the wrong guys and failed to make a real, lasting connection with any of them. I'm sick and tired of trying. Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me that I don't get to have a "happy ending" with anyone and that I'm meant to be alone for the rest of my life.

That feeling I had that day that my high school crush rejected me, that feeling where I felt my heart closing up against everyone else, is back, stronger than ever. My Bumble membership expires next week, and I'm not going to renew it. I'm going to renew my focus on my workaholic life because at least there, I can focus on becoming a respected scholar, continue climbing the academic ladder as a college professor, and also devote myself to my writing too. At least those things can make me happy, unlike a narcissistic sociopath with no conscience. If I'm meant to find love, I'm going to let it find me, because I'm done trying. I'm just done, period.

If you were me, would you confront him? Or would you just ignore him? (And don't worry, I'm not going to tell his girlfriend what happened. She probably wouldn't believe me, especially because the Model is a master manipulator and would convince her that I was lying.)

P.S. I'm sorry about the negative tone of my post. It was either write about it or down a bottle of liquor. I figured it was better to do the former.