It was a late August evening in 20?? when I logged into Facebook just to find out I had a new friend request. I guess I was an easy target. I was very fragile at the time. I was burned out, overwhelmed and broken.
My marriage of 20 years was over. I was the one who ended it. I had to. It had been over between us for a long time, but we had both been too scared to take the leap. Now when it was over I longed for affirmation and acknowledgement. I was in desperate need to be seen and heard.
I will call him Johan. They guy behind the friend request that I accepted. One thing led to another. At first we just liked each other´s photos, but it didn´t take long before he reached out. We began texting each other and to start with I found him very nice and funny, a cosy kind of guy.
Our conversations intensified quickly. Yet, I was very clear that I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I needed healing from the wounds of my broken marriage. To begin with, he was compassionate about it, said he understood and that he was okay with it.
After some time of texting each other back and forth, we decided to get together. The first time we met up everything felt really great. We met at his place. I remember how clean everything was in his apartment. I do like to keep my own place tidy and neat, but his place was clean in a completely different way, almost as if it was part of a compulsive behaviour.
After the first date we kept texting each other for a while, but I had a strange feeling in my gut. He was going on and on about how much he wanted to see me. I felt him pushing the relationship in a direction that I wasn’t ready for. I incessantly had to explain to him that I wasn’t ready for a relationship, I wanted to go slowly ahead . We kept seeing each other, but my gut feeling told me something was off. He was very controlling and kept pestering me with criticism and complaints.
He pointed out more than once that it was much better in the beginning. He made remarks that made me want to end the relationship. I wanted to move on with my life. But somehow he made me stay by doing and saying things that made me feel sorrow for him or give him a second chance.
One day I got another friend request, one that I also approved. I sensed it was okay since I wasn’t looking for any company, and I had made it very clear to Johan that we weren’t a couple.
I had no intention or interest in getting in touch with this person, but he started texting me.
His way of writing resembled Johan. My gut feeling told me it was him. I got in contact with a friend of mine who knew how to look into accounts on Facebook. I suspected it was Johan writing to me under a false name,in order to stalk me. One day I received a text from Johan claiming he had got a message from a friend handing him the conversation I had with the other man. The conversation showed no interest from my side, on the contrary, it clearly stated the opposite.
Johan totally changed after this. He had a short temper and yelled at me for no reason and about the smallest things. He kept saying a good fight was good for the relationship, especially in the beginning.
- You get to know each other so much better, he said
Even though I wasn't interested in him anymore, I was persuaded to stay in the relationship. I tried to leave, to cut him off, but he lured his way back into my life over and over again.
A new friend request popped up. This time from a third account. I accepted the request, but I knew it was Johan. It was the same story all over again. The new person got in contact, started texting me and a while later, Johan said this person had been in contact showing him our conversation, which involved him trying to give him my number. He also wrote a lot of stuff of no interest to me. I knew it was Johan who was the third person, but I played along. I also wrote to him to stop contacting me. I confronted him when one of his messages confirmed it was Johan. He got very angry.
I hardly ever raise my voice when I argue with someone. I see myself as a very understanding and forgiving person, but Johan brought out a part of me that I didn't know was there. He made me so angry so many times. Once he told his friends that we were a couple even though I had made it perfectly clear that we weren’t.
He brainwashed me in so many ways. It’s hard to understand why I just didn’t ignore him. His persuasiveness was remarkable. Eventually I stood up for myself and explained to him that I didn’t want to see him anymore. That I never wanted to see him again. I blocked his number, his Instagram and Facebook. It made him really angry. He had several phones that he called from. All the calls came from hidden numbers. He would call 30 times in a row. I clicked him off every single time, but he kept calling. I googled him to find new numbers. I blocked everything I found.
I was so scared. When it was bedtime I feared him standing outside my bedroom window. When I went places I thought he was going to break into my home and wreck things. For months I couldn’t sleep.
I never saved his messages. Looking at them made me feel so bad. I did decide to press charges if he would continue. But it all went silent and I’ve never heard from him again.