My ex stole thousands of dollars from me
A lesson in boundaries… I still don’t know what’s right and maybe never will
I have a lot of anger today.
A moment ago, I found a charge on my credit card that I didn’t recognize. I immediately took action to find out where it was coming from. I had a feeling it might be the same as before, but I wanted to be sure.
4 years ago, I started my first full-time gig as a product designer in New York. I met a ton of cool people, some of whom are still my friends today. It was a fun job at tech start-up–––the kind with a hip office and endless supply of coffee or snacks. I felt like a boss bitch.
Still somewhat new to the city, I romanticized everything. I said goodbye to my roommates because I was able to afford my own place uptown: a mouse-infested 1 bedroom with so much space I didn’t know what to do. My downtown commute to work every day became a sacred space for reading my book, listening to a new album, or thinking about what I wanted my life to look like. I lived the New York lifestyle, enjoying many happy hours with co-workers that eventually became friends.
In the middle of all this, I met someone while out dancing with friends one night. He was a great dancer, kind, handsome, charismatic. Eventually, we found that we worked at the same company, and we lived across the street from each other. It felt like fate.
As a semi-professional salsero, he introduced me to the latin dancing scene in the city. It was like nothing I’d ever seen as a woman from Louisiana, and it was fun as hell. He showed me all the best spots in our hood, including the bodega where the cooks and cashiers became brothers who looked out for me. He witnessed my empty apartment because I had just moved in and previously was unable to afford furniture. I was sleeping on an air mattress. He immediately brought me to Macy’s to help me pick out furniture. At work, we would sneak away to get coffee or take a walk to St. Marks to get piercings. He helped me make the city home in a hood that other New Yorkers later told me was one of the hardest to live in. Falling for him was easy.
Living alone in a city like New York, it’s important to feel like someone is there to have your back in case shit pops off. Keeping good people around you assures you that you might have a safety net. I didn’t realize how important this was until later. He became someone I felt I could rely on. I started trusting him more and more. He claimed he loved and adored me. He wanted me to meet his son, and he joked that I had to become fluent in Spanish so I could meet his parents. I studied even if it was a joke.
He began to tell me more about himself and his life. He previously worked as a security engineer for banks, airlines, and even the government. He shared with me that he was on the spectrum for autism, and he had narcolepsy. He explained that he was really good at a few things and really bad at others. I wasn’t educated on the symptoms of autism or how this might be compounded with narcolepsy. He answered all my questions and explained patiently.
At this point, red flags began popping off. How would this effect whatever was happening in this new relationship? How would this affect me? I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I could see that he was bright, high-functioning, and focused at work, and I knew he was capable of things that maybe only a handful of people were. This was proven to me after we canceled a trip to Miami.
Everything was planned and ready to go. I booked our hotel and car rental on my credit card, and he was going to pay me back. The night before we left, he called to tell me his son broke his arm and was in the hospital. So, he couldn’t make it. I told him I completely understood, and I began cancelling our reservations. Shortly I found out that I would not be able to get a refund because I missed the window for refundable cancellation.
Because he worked for banks before, he told me he knew how to get my money back. All he needed was my card information so he could help, and they would reimburse me. What followed wasn’t exactly that.
I know what you’re thinking at this point in the story.
“Why would you give him your info?” “How stupid are you?” “No one is ever that trustworthy.”
These thoughts and more have passed through my mind countless times since that moment. Stuck in my 1 bedroom apartment living alone during lock-down in a deserted New York, I spent the majority of the COVID pandemic crying… yelling at myself in the mirror in anger and disbelief… struggling to face each day. The experience that followed made me question my core values, and it made me wonder… What’s the point of kindness if it’s never reciprocated? What’s the point of living at all if your core being is centered around kindness and the world doesn’t value that? I was forced to ponder these thoughts alone in silence while the world stopped in 2020.
Still, I’m affected, and I have struggled to forgive myself for this moment more than anything.
In that moment, I felt I could trust him. He was talking about a future with me, which I previously gave up on since all my previous exes cheated on me. He had proven that he was my person to count on in the jungle of New York, and I wanted to believe he was the person I thought he was… the person he originally presented himself to be.
I wanted to believe this so much, I put up with hell.
Weeks later, he quit his job. He told me he was having trouble finding a new one because of his neurodiversity, and he asked me to help him make rent payment.
Soon after, I started finding charges on my credit card that weren’t mine. He racked up thousands of dollars.
Immediately, I canceled my card for a new one, but this didn’t help… he had recurring payments setup. I had to comb through my account and call a slew of customer service numbers to decipher which charges were mine and which were his.
He had an excuse for every instance that came up.
Sometimes he didn’t have excuses at all and flat out told me I was being crazy for thinking he did anything wrong.
He told me he would pay me back one day. He told me this for 2 years.
When COVID hit, the hell was amplified. With death tolls lingering in the news and in our minds, I knew I had to find a way to forgive. We spent time together during the pandemic since the city was in lock-down, and my choices for socializing were extremely slim.
Every time I saw him, he would act as if he did nothing wrong. I believe he accepted my anger because this was the baseline for most of his relationships/friendships.
He once asked me, “Why are people so quick to forgive dogs when they do something wrong, but they won’t do the same for humans?
I can’t explain what I went through.
I can’t understand it.
Even after walking through it with professional help, questions remain.
I haven’t shared any of this because I was afraid of what he might do.
I was also afraid of what people might think of me.
I didn’t file a police report because it was my word against his… especially since I willingly helped him out before he stole from me.
Was I conned by someone evil enough to use autism like that? To garner sympathy from kind people and trick them? Was he actually autistic? If he was autistic, could I have done something differently to keep healthy boundaries? Why do I still feel like I did something wrong? Why can’t I hate this person? Why do I still feel sympathy for this person after everything?
He once told me, “I can’t love like you do. Even if I think I love you, I can’t feel it. I can tell you that you’re important to me, but I will never feel it burning in my heart like you might. I can’t love you like you want.”
I’m still processing.
I’m still understanding how this experience has shaped me.
I may never understand what happened because my brain just doesn’t work the same way as his, autistic or not.
Most of all, I’m still forgiving myself.
For not keeping my boundaries tight.
For not loving myself first.
For thinking kindness was ever a weakness.
Before this experience, I felt that neurodiversity isn’t something to be afraid of. It’s a beautiful part of humanity that could be looked at as an advantage in some scenarios. Some of the brightest people in history were neurodivergent, and they’ve contributed so much to where we are as a society today.
I still feel that way.
Only, now I know how important boundaries are in relationships like this.
In any relationship.
Keep healthy boundaries, y’all. Don’t blame yourself for the faults of others… even if you love them, especially if you love them.
I’m doing okay now.
I ended up leaving this living situation in New York, and I moved to Hawaii and started living like a nomad. Something about those islands helped heal me though, but that’s a story for another time.
Until then, I’ll continue forgiving myself.
