Trying to make sense of an impossible situation

[Shi]

I would really like to get some opinions from anyone in this forum who is willing.

 

My first romantic experience ever was with an MM. I was 27, and he was 46.

 

He was the first guy to hold my hand, to ask me on a date, to kiss me. He said things to me that no one else has ever said.

 

I suspect that I was too dumb to see him for what he is/was. He stopped talking to me over two years ago.

 

I thought I'd moved on, but since I started a new job I see him all the time: mostly passing him on the road.

 

I will post a longer post later; I'm trying to get some work done, but I couldn't stop thinking about sharing my story and being able to talk about it with others instead of keeping it all inside. So my bargain with myself is to post this and then finish my work.

[eleanor01]

Oh, bless your heart.

 

I look forward to your next post and I hope that you can find some support and guidance here.

 

Best,

Ellie

[Shi]

I'm not sure how detailed I want to be here. But if you have questions, just ask.

 

He was a professor at the university where I got my master's degree. I was in three of his classes during the fall semester of 2008.

 

He came over and introduced himself to me on the first day of classes (he didn't take roll since some people would drop/add the class during that week) between the second and third classes. I've never had a professor do that before.

 

I felt like he gave me preferential treatment during that semester, which made me wonder why. We had a regular student-teacher relationship at that point. I didn't talk to him unless it was necessary, and when I did, it was only about school. I'm a very shy person, and professors have always intimidated me, so I keep my distance.

 

The next semester, I didn't have any classes with him, but like most grad students do, I worked in the department as part of my tuition waiver. In one of my other classes, we were required to interview three teachers. I chose the three I'd had the previous semester, since they were the only ones I knew at the school.

 

I found myself knocking on his door during office hours in January 2009. I asked him if I could interview him at a later date, and he invited me to sit down. He asked me some of your normal professor questions, like whether I was planning on going on to more education after I finished there.

 

I told him that I couldn't leave the area because I took care of a family member.

 

One of the reasons that I haven't dated much in my life is that I spent my late teens and all my 20s so far taking care of my little brother and my mom. My brother is 8 years younger, and my mom has psychiatric issues that kept her from going out in public a lot of the time. We also used to live in a really old house that required a lot of maintenance, so I had no social life between house repairs, babysitting, and caring for my mom.

 

I never told anyone about my mom's issues (mostly because she asked me not to) until 2008. I had a few friends who had a vague idea that she wasn't well, and I had told the department chair at the university when she was writing me a letter of recommendation for a scholarship in 2008, but other than that, I just kept to myself and didn't let anyone into my life because it was easier. And I didn't have time for socializing with friends, much less dating.

 

The professor talked with me for probably half an hour. I left his office that day wondering why he was talking to me about stuff like music, my major, and technology. It was all stuff that I was interested in, but there were plenty of other students who were much more outgoing than I, and I didn't see why he didn't talk to them.

 

This is what I mean about my being naive and stupid. I didn't even realize I was falling for him (much less than he was obviously interested in me) until much later.

 

I had scheduled a time the next week to interview him for my class, but my mom ended up in the hospital. I had to email him and reschedule.

 

Over the next month, my mom was in and out of the ER and the hospital. During this time, the professor emailed me more and more. And I wrote back. We talked about mutual interests and things like that.

 

When I went to his office to interview him, he had a box of CDs that he loaned me. This was totally unsolicited by me. I took them, and then when I brought them back the next week, I spent more time in his office talking to him.

 

At some point, I told him about my mom in the emails, and how she had a psychological problem (in addition to physical ones) that I hid from most people. He shared some things about his parents.

 

At the end of February, I was working for a different professor: the one I was assigned to as part of my work as a grad student. I didn't know how to do something she wanted me to do on the computer, and she suggested I go ask this other professor, since he had a reputation for being knowledgeable about the particular issue.

 

I went to his office. He ended up talking to me for almost an hour. He shut the door and told me about his wife, who was schizophrenic and bipolar. He didn't know this when he married her 12 years earlier, and he had moved around a lot because she made it difficult for him to work without her episodes intruding into his professional life.

 

I was still oblivious at this point. I couldn't believe the things he was sharing with me. I felt unworthy of his confidance.

 

He started to tell me about talking to a lawyer about divorce, but someone knocked on the door. I left. It was Thursday, and the following week was spring break, so I didn't see him again for almost two weeks.

 

his emails got a bit more friendlier over the next few days. Finally, he had to blatantly compliment my eyes, hair, and smile to get me to see that he was interested in me.

 

And I loved the idea. Part of me felt that it was wrong, but the rest of me, the part that had never known love before, the part that had had very little comfort and companionship in my life, didn't know how to react in the wake of the happiness that followed.

 

I couldn't stop smiling. I'd had crushes before, and had guys who were interested in me, but I always pushed them away before things could progress.

 

We emailed a lot over the spring break week.

 

The next week, my mom got worse. I spent almost every hour that I wasn't at school helping her. I think I slept about 10 hours from Sunday through Thursday, when she was in the ER and they decided to move her to a larger hospital an hour away. They told me that she was going to die.

 

I continued to email him. I told him that she was in the bigger hospital, which was in the same town where he lived. I spent all day Friday over there, and Saturday as well.

 

I had internet access at the hospital. At some point on Saturday, he said that he would take me to dinner if I told him when I was planning on leaving the hospital.

 

I almost said no. But I thought that since I was still a student at the university where he worked, and since he was married as far as I knew, that nothing would happen. I was still very nervous when I saw him at school, and I wanted to chance to really be myself around him.

 

We got a pizza and went up to the national park. At some point he put his hand on mine. I got extremely lightheaded and didn't know what to think. He continued to hold my hand while we ate.

 

After we were done eating, he kissed me. He knew it was my first kiss. We spent two hours parked there.

 

He said things to me that made me think that he truly cared about me. But I know that guys can say whatever they want. No offense intended. At some point, he looked at me and said "you're in love." I couldn't tell if he was surprised or not. But he knew.

 

Things were great over the next six weeks or so.

[MissBee]

Wow Shi....there is a lot going on in your story.

 

Were you finished telling it?

[Shi]

We emailed a lot, and the few times I saw him in his office he would touch my hair or my arm.

 

My mom didn't die, but she came home and needed even more help than before. The professor shared stories with me about how his parents had died.

 

He talked about how the doctors wanted to institutionalize his wife, but he couldn't afford it. She was verbally and physically abusive to him (so he told me) and destroyed things in their house as well as his personal things (like an iPod).

 

He told me that he didn't have tenure, and he couldn't afford to lose his job because of me. I told him that I understood. He had a young son; just three years old back then.

 

I wonder now if I was implicitly agreeing with the way he treated me after our one date. I took his statement to mean that he needed to get his personal life straightened out (i.e., divorce and custody) before he could be seen in public with me.

 

His emails decreased some in frequency starting in May. I wasn't taking classes on campus anymore, but I was in two of his online classes that summer.

 

I sent him a collectible poster for Father's Day. It was one that he told me he had wanted for a long time. A few weeks later, he sent me an email telling me that if another student (a classmate of mine) asked me about it, that I should tell her that I had given it to him as a thank-you for the classes I had with him. He had it framed and hung it in his office, which is why the other student would have seen it.

 

When he didn't email me as much, he said that things were bad at home, or that he was sad. This was his third long-term relationship; the first was a marriage that ended in divorce after his first wife became pregnant by someone else.

 

During that summer when I had online classes with him, we emailed occasionally. He asked me to pick something up for him at a store in my town because the one in his town had run out. I did, and put it in his mailbox the next time I came to campus. He left me money for it, as well as some flower seeds. This was July 2009.

 

After I finished the classes in early August, he never emailed me again, at least not a personal email. We had talked in March about waiting until August, but I never asked him or pressured him about when I could see him. I felt that he would let me know when he had made changes in his life.

 

I sent him a forward email in September about some free applications, and then in October I got an email from him. He had responded to a request from the department head, who had asked professors to recommend students and recent grads for a job. He had recommended me, and had CC'd me on the email.

 

I wrote him back and thanked him. It was direct and only mentioned the job recommendation.

 

In November, I sent him a Thanksgiving e-card. It wasn't sappy or romantic. It was just a card. Three days later, when it was still unopened, I deleted it and started feeling like an idiot.

 

In December, I emailed him some Christmas songs. He always used to send me songs via email, and I knew he loved Christmas music. I didn't get a response.

 

I didn't contact him at all from then (December) until May. There was a job opening at the college in his department, and I was considering applying for it. I wrote him and asked him if it would be a problem if I got the job.

 

He wrote me back and called me a stalker. He offered to write me a letter of recommendation for the job, but said he wasn't interested in a relationship other than colleagues if I got the job.

 

Until that point, I was still under the impression that I was waiting for him. I had waited from August through May. It was an almost unbearably long amount of time with no contact with him.

 

I have since learned that many guys will cut off all contact with you when they are no longer interested. But I didn't know that at the time. And even if I had, because of the way things were (our lives didn't allow for us to see each other) I don't think I could have fully believed that he was done with me with no notice at all.

 

This was last year, in 2010. I was still spending all my time at home with my mom. I worked online from home. So I had all this time with no distractions, to think about him and what might have happened.

 

I bought concert tickets in February of this year. It was a band that he and I both liked. I asked my friend to go with me, and if she couldn't, my brother said he would be my back-up.

 

April 2011 came, and they both backed out on me. I didn't want to go by myself, so I emailed him. I didn't ask him to go with me; I simply said that I had two tickets and that I couldn't go, so if he wanted both of them, he could have them and I would get my brother to leave them in his mailbox at school.

 

A week went by. No answer. I sent him another email and told him that it was rude not to answer a direct question. I was respectful about it, but I was tired of being ignored. I just wanted an answer. I had been talking to another guy whom I met online since August 2010, but I still thought about the professor more than I cared to admit.

 

He wrote me back almost immediately. His email contained only two lines: "It will never be the way that you want it to be. Please stop."

 

I couldn't understand why he would immediately respond to direct questions from me: first about the job the previous summer, and now when I told him it was rude not to answer an email.

 

I also didn't understand why he was acting like I was the only one who wanted a relationship. He had initiated it. I had even turned him down after our date when I was going to the mall in a town an hour away, and he insinuated that he wanted to come. I felt that it was wrong, and I didn't trust myself.

 

I moved in May of this year. I live very close to the university where he works. And this fall semester, he and I have similar schedules. I pass him on the road several times a week. This morning, I pulled out of a side road and he was coming up the hill on the main road.

 

I don't know whether I'm protecting myself from the truth by continuing to hope that he will contact me one day. I have very little in my life right now: no friends live near me, and I still am taking care of my mom. I think in some ways it's a defense mechanism to have someone to daydream about, even if you know that it will likely never happen.

 

He doesn't have tenure yet. I have wondered if he might contact me if he gets it. But if he does, he is going to have to earn my trust. I deserve to be treated better than the way he was to me.

 

I do truly think that he cared about me, but I don't know what happened in between. Maybe he couldn't afford a divorce. Maybe he decided to stay married to be able to keep custody.

 

I wish I had been more experienced with love and with men before this happened. He and I were both at a vulnerable time in our lives, which isn't an excuse but more of an explanation. However, if I'd been more experienced, I don't think it would have ever even happened.

[Shi]

Wow Shi....there is a lot going on in your story.

 

Were you finished telling it?

 

I'm trying to finish it now. If it's too long, please let me know and I can shorten it. Thanks.

[eleanor01]

Oh, Shi—

This sucks in so many ways, I doubt I’ll manage to address all of the issues going on here. But, hopefully, I can offer at least some useful words.

 

First, and most importantly, PLEASE FIND A COUNSELOR. It sounds to me like you have spent your entire life caring and nurturing other people. As such, I think that it’s going to be kind of difficult for you to adjust your perspective so that you see you are also worthy of being cared for and nurtured.

 

Professor-grad student relationships are very, very common. They enjoy an intellectual rapport and they get excited at ideas and it’s all a rush. Sometimes these relationships work out, but the vast majority of them do not. I can’t say that your professor saw you as prey, but I’ll bet that your innocence combined with your enthusiasm about his work made you very, very appealing to him. Please, don’t think that he is going to change his mind about being with you after he gets tenure. He’s not (I don’t think). Tenure at American universities (the way you write makes me think that you are American) matters not one whit when it comes to professor-student relationships. The ethics guidelines may differ slightly from one university to another, but he really could be in a heap of trouble if he had a relationship with you if he was in any supervisory capacity at all at that time. If he wasn’t supervising your work, then he’s probably in the clear.

 

In any case, the paragraph above is probably beside the point. For whatever reason, he made the decision to dump you, but seems to have lacked the decency to tell you directly until he decided that you were a “stalker” (blech. Jacka$$). I really doubt that you’re ever going to get an explanation from him, although I do think that you deserve one.

 

I would suggest that you try to find somebody else, but your situation is such that it’s going to be difficult to find the time. And your shyness is going to compound matters.

 

I’ve been trying to think of strategies to offer you that might help you deal with your pain and I can only think of three right now:

1) As I said before, find a counselor;

2) Take a different route to your job and if you see him in the halls or on the street or some such, turn around and hope that he didn’t see you;

3) As a caregiver and a nurturer you may be feeling completely bewildered as to how one person could treat another the way he has treated you. Try to imagine yourself treating somebody the way he has treated you. I bet you can’t, right? That ought to tell you a lot.

 

So many good wishes to you,

Ellie

 

P.S. You should know that, unlike most other forums, Loveshack will not let you edit or delete your posts if somebody else has posted after you. So, you might want to be careful what you say. Also, you should know that an amazing number of people read this board and so it wouldn’t be impossible that somebody might recognize you or your story. For example, I’m almost certain that somebody on LS lives pretty near to where I do.

Edited October 12, 2011 by eleanor01

[Shi]

Thank you all for your replies.

 

Yes, I'm sad and I still miss him every day.

 

But I'm the kind of person who sees the good that comes from a situation, too. Even if it makes me feel crazy sometimes.

 

He really did help me see myself in a different light. My relationship with my dad is/was not good, and I think a lot of my shyness came from assuming that all men were like him.

 

I never felt desirable or attractive before I met this professor. I never felt like I had anything to offer to anyone.

 

Now, I do. I have more confidence than I've ever had. Sure, I still have that knowledge that I've never had a serious relationship, but my outlook on life is completely different now than it was before I knew him.

 

His home life (assuming that he wasn't lying to me) was a lot like mine, with the exception that he had a normal life before he married. That was the main point that we connected on: the fact that we had both been hiding our home situations from almost everyone else in the world for over 10 years.

 

I spent more than 9 months talking to a guy I met online almost daily. We never met, and I obviously can't say that we had a relationship, but we were very close. I learned a lot from that experience, too. He stopped talking to me earlier this year with no explanation, too.

 

And most recently, I reconnected with someone I knew in college who lives far away now. We talked for a few months both online and on the phone, but he broke off communication when he began dating a local girl.

 

I think more than anything else, I want to know what, if anything, I did wrong to cause these guys to just start ignoring me. I know that sometimes it's not anything that the girl does, but I don't want to continue making the same mistakes again in the future.

[jj33]

Shi I am sorry you have been through such a difficult time. I think you have gotten good advice here and agree with Frozen Sprouts but I would go further.

 

I think the Professor led you on. It sounds like he was very fond of you but he is an adult and he should have known that by paying such special attention to you that you might have taken it the wrong way. My suspicion is that he was hoping you would want to have an affair with him. He realized that this would be very serious for you and backed off.

 

And that is a good thing. You have a lot going on in your life and you dont need to be a bit on the side for anyone. If you wanted something casual thats one thing, but you didnt so in a way, as much as it hurts you were lucky. I think its doubly hard when you are having a rough time to find out that the person you thought wanted a serious romance with you may have been fond of you but isnt on the same page.

 

I think you can have the same problem with online romances. So many people say they want long talks and walks on the beach but they only say it because its what women want to hear (yes Im jaded and cynical so sue me

 

You sound like a lovely woman. You are in grad school, you have a bright future ahead of you. You will meet the right guy, you just havent met him yet.

 

Take good care

[SisterMidnight]

Hi Shi, genuinely sorry you have been put through this. Also the fact that you've had so many other things to deal with, it says a lot for you that you were able to complete postgrad study with so much else on your plate.

 

I think that professor has treated you absolutely shoddily, and it is very unfortunate that you have had this happen to you in the first relationship you've been in.

 

There's not much I can actually say to help, but I will say, what's happened is definitely not through any shortcomings of yours, don't make his poor behaviour your problem, because it certainly shouldn't be! I really hope you do'nt let this knock your confidence so hard you are afraid to try again, there are some decent blokes out there, perhaps you've had a lucky escape...

 

Hope you're going to be ok and life gets a bit easier for you very soon...

[Owl]

He looked at you and saw someone who was emotionally vulnerable, and susceptible for what he had in mind.

 

He spent that time grooming you for an affair.

 

It worked.

 

Once he got his fill, he lost interest in maintaining that 'relationship'. That's why the communication began to taper off.

 

Then when you continued to try to contact him, he bluntly and directly rejected you. He was concerned that you would blow his cover, expose his secret life to his wife or to the college.

 

He's probably already done this to other girls before and since then.

 

I'm not in anyway attacking you. He used you. He used your vulnerability. He knew it would work. Again, I'm betting he's done it before, and will do it again.

 

For yourself...recognize that for him, it wasn't anything special. His actions show you that. Learn from this, and move on.

[Shi]

Thanks for the responses. It's helpful to hear outside opinions on things.

 

He knew that I wasn't interested in a relationship while he was still married. When this had all started, he and I both talked about spending time together after I had graduated and he was single: not before. I did make the mistake of saying yes when he asked me to dinner, but after that, I ignored or turned down his advances to see me outside of our work environment.

 

He continued to send me pictures of his house and his son, to tell me about what he was doing, to talk about things that we had mutual interest in, etc. I never initiated contact with him; I let him do it. Things stayed this way for four months after I had no reason to see him at work anymore.

 

The thing that lingers the most in my mind is that I know what being a full-time caregiver does to you. I have had some not-so-very-nice thoughts about my mom during the rough times. It's a normal human response, but I'm still not very proud of wanting my independence so I can live a little.

 

Everyone whom I tell about my personal life tells me that I need to get out of the situation and live my own life. They say that I have no responsibility towards my mom, or my dad (my parents are still married; my dad is never around unless he needs something or is out of money).

 

Yet I don't leave. I wonder what this says about me. Am I co-dependent? Something else? I feel that it would be cold and uncaring to leave, since my mom has no one to support her, even though I wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and hope that I'm one day closer to freedom. Very little things I do in my life are for me.

 

My parents' situation is complicated. And this professor's life was/is complicated. I am fairly certain that he wanted a divorce. But I don't think he went through with it, for whatever reason: maybe the same reason why I continue to give up my social life and career opportunities for my mom.

 

I know I'm making excuses for him. In some ways, though, I don't think most men are strong enough to handle caregiving like most women can. And I also know what it's like to give 200% of yourself and still have it not be good enough for those you are giving up your life for. It's soul-crushing, especially when you have no close friends or other support system.

 

I had to cut off all contact with my dad two years ago. It was a long time coming, and I still feel like a terrible person because of it. I had to make a choice between him and my mom, because trying to keep up with both of them wasn't working. I know that my siblings think it's a horrible thing to do.

 

I felt like I couldn't do what was best for my mom (i.e., remove her from my dad's house, which was unhealthy for her due to her medical conditions as well as her psychological ones) if I still maintained a forced relationship with my dad.

 

If I were free to make my own choices, I would move far away and never deal with either of my parents again. But I can't do that for a lot of reasons. I have a conscience, and I know that my dad can't support my mom financially.

 

I guess it's wrong for me to put this professor's situation in the same light as my own. I can't know what his home life was really like. But I do know what it's like to spend your life trying to do the "right thing," whatever that is, and to still fail miserably when things never seem to improve.

 

I'm doing to my dad what this professor has done to me: cutting off all contact regardless of how I may feel because it's the only thing that can allow me to improve my situation at the moment. I think this is my main barrier to lumping this professor into the same category as other MM I've read about on here.

Edited October 14, 2011 by Shi

[fooled once]

Shi,

 

Please stop contacting him. He isn't interested. I am not sure he ever wanted anything more than a flirtation and you made him feel like a king.

 

Stop emailing him. He isn't going to divorce and come find you. He got what he wanted and he is done.

 

I am not trying to be mean, but I need to let you know that continuing to contact him could end very badly for you - like a restraining order.

 

Who knows if what he said was true or not. The point is he has moved on and doesn't want you in his life. Please don't "wait" for him; he isn't returning.

[Shi]

I never sent him a personal email after August 2009. I suppose that's just my own definition, but I always held myself back from asking anything about his personal life and any possible future contact.

 

I think the reason that I felt so surprised when he called me a stalker in May 2010 was because I had made such a huge effort to leave him alone.