My Least Favorite Lessons from You
You know I’d never ‘hidden’ a post on facebook before I met you. I’d never selected from among my group of friends who would or wouldn’t see a specific post. I knew the functionality existed, I just had never used it.
I never erased or deleted or felt fearful for the repercussions. In retrospect I felt so very open and safe before you taught me that I wasn’t; that I couldn’t be.
You taught me about that.
You taught me the little quirk where you could post something on my ‘timeline’ (or ‘wall’ or whatever they’ve decided is the best name for it now) and I would get a ‘notification’ about it showing me a preview on my phone…but you could then delete it after I was notified so that when I actually clicked on it the original post was gone.
There were a few of those that were lovely…the secretive sexy/lovey posts in bad-google-translate french when we weren’t all ‘out’ to the public about our polyamory in our burgeoning polycule and you still wanted to reach out. I loved those, they made my heart race with the thrill of our new love and this lovely little quirk. I even had my facebook set to notify me whenever you posted because I was absolutely enamored with whatever it was you might be posting. It wasn’t until later that you taught me that you could also use this quirk to send me notifications about posts to your ‘friends’ declaring how you’re “finally out with someone who actually makes me feel wanted” on those nights when we’d negotiated to be with our other partners. Of course you deleted those postings too; that was the fun(?) of it, you could write anything for a moment, and be sure that at least I might see it if I paid any heed to the notifications (which of course how could I help myself if they were by you my love?).
You taught me that sex could be an emotional cudgel. Eventually the carefree wonderfulness of our embrace began to be touched by an anxiety, and touched, and touched, and as time passed almost completely replaced by my fear and anxiety about your soon-to-be-pending anger. It wasn’t enough for us to have sex anymore: it had to be the correct number of times, the correct times of day, you taught me that if I didn’t ‘come’ it would be a problem, a problem that would then bring my masturbatory habits of that day or week into question, or was I having sex with my other partners that day? or too much the preceding days? I remember you reaching into yourself and then pulling out your fingers and saying that it didn’t feel like I’d ‘come’, as the beginnings of the next repetition of that anger and emotional hostility you taught me of crossed your face…both of us still flushed and breathing heavy.
You taught me that you could just as easily hate me as love me and you’d find reasons afterwards once I left. You taught me how it feels to be stalked and harassed. You taught me what it feels like to fear opening emails from accounts I don’t recognize as you taught me that you would happily create new ones just for the purpose of extending your reach into my space after I left you.
You taught me that you could still get in my face and get in my space and harass me and insult me. You taught me that even if our friends see what you do they might turn a blind eye to what you’re doing and what you’ve done.
You taught me that it’s different when a woman abuses a man.
