Toxic Loyalty.

Anonymous Story:

Toxicity was getting cheated on, knowing I was getting cheated on, and staying in a relationship with the person cheating on me. What does loyalty mean? Why is it so important?

For me, loyalty was being faithful to my boyfriend even when I knew he no longer loved me, when I knew that he had never loved me, and that he was with me for the wrong reasons. Loyalty was suffering through his lies and sex addiction. Loyalty was losing myself.

When I first started dating [anonymous] I was young. I had never been in a real relationship, the one where you go to fancy dinners or on cute movie dates. I was a virgin. I was naive and I was begging for attention from anyone who would give it to me. We met at a high school party, and I felt like I was on the top of the world that he was even talking to me. He was older and had that “bad ass” reputation, the one that Taylor Swift warned me about in the songs I had listened to but had never been able to relate to. 

I fell so hard and so fast. I was a junior and he was a senior. I lived for the looks we got walking hand in hand down the hallways at school. I felt like I was the coolest girl at my high school. With this reputation and this relationship, came sacrifices. One was isolating myself from all of my friends, and the second was losing respect from everyone around me. No one thought this relationship was healthy, normal, or right for me. 

I didn’t believe the rumors. I believed the long text messages he would send me. I didn’t believe that he was addicted to sex. I believed that I was the only one he was sleeping with. I believed it was romantic when we had sex for the first time on the third floor of his house, because he didn’t want his parents to find out. I believed that he was tired and needed me to leave after. Right after.

We dated for six months and then there was proof that I wasn’t the only girl on his brain. One of my friends, in a drastic attempt to get me to wake up from the delusion I was living in, took a video of him at a party. I was at the party. Just as I had heard for an entire year. There he was with another girl pinned up against a wall. Flirting. He wasn’t kissing her, he was just flirting with her. Pinned up against the wall. That was okay. 

Why didn’t I see this happen at that party? I had pregamed with him. He had driven us there. The last thing I remember was sipping on a drink he had poured for me. I woke up alone in the basement of the house.

I stayed with him. I told him that I saw the video and he told me that it was a set up, and that he wasn’t flirting with her. What did I do? I believed him. I told him that I didn’t remember anything and that I woke up alone and I asked him why he wasn’t there. I asked him why he had left me. 

He told me that he had needed to leave right away because he had a family emergency.

That same day I got an instagram DM from the random girl who he had pinned against the wall. The girl had left with him. She was apologizing to me for sleeping with a guy she had no idea was dating me. I believed her. I believed she had no idea.

Let’s go back to the first time we had sex. I didn’t want to have sex yet. The idea of losing my virginity terrified me. Although here we were, drunk after a party, at his house, making out. I didn’t feel “turned on” and it didn’t feel special. 

“Do you want to have sex?” 

I guess I freaked out. I knew he wanted to, and I had to be loyal to him.

But…before I could answer he began trying. 

And then it was over. I didn’t even remember it. My mind was blurred and had blocked it out. I felt pain after. I wanted to be held and told “I love you.” Instead he told me “hey do you mind leaving? I don’t want my parents to find you here.” I told him “No Problem! Can you give me a ride back home?” He replied “Sorry, I think I’m too drunk. Can you just get an Uber?”

He didn’t even walk me outside. What was more interesting is that as I was leaving I heard him make a phone call. I waited outside for my mom to pick me up, who was furious that I was making her come pick me up. Unfortunately she got there too late, and I saw the same girl he had pinned against the wall walk into the back door of his house. She saw me too. It didn’t matter to her.

The serial cheating and sex addiction were revealed to everyone besides me. I knew he was doing this stuff to me, but I blocked it out of my mind- just as I had the first time we had sex. 

Every time I heard that he cheated on me, it made me want him more. I didn’t want him to leave me so I always accepted his apologies. He finally started admitting that he was cheating on me. I also started hearing from random girls that I had never met before that he was cheating on me. That was okay. 

It was okay that he would rape me when he was drunk. The next day he would lie and tell me that I had fallen asleep, when really he was slipping drugs into my drinks. 

“I just was so horny and I couldn’t get a hold of you. My depression gets really bad if I don’t have sex.”

I felt awful for him. Why hadn’t I been there? 

“I love you. You’re the love of my life.”

I loved him so much. He told me he loved me, and therefore that meant that he loved me. 

“You fell asleep but I really was getting depressed so I needed to have sex with you.”

My mom found these text messages when she went through my phone, terrified. 

My seventeenth birthday was coming up, and he was touring a college. I had no more friends. I had no life outside of this toxic relationship. My mom and I hardly spoke.

He face timed me at two in the morning. I picked up and I could hardly understand him and he looked belligerent. Then I saw the naked girl in the background and his phone died. 

That was finally the end for me. I spent days crying to my mother, and some of the only friends I still had left. This was such a push-pull in my life. I hung on for dear life. I wasted precious years, over what? I look back now and still find myself becoming emotional. It isn’t because of him or because I miss him. It’s because of the friends I lost, the respect I lost, and the tears I wasted. The abuse I unknowingly endured. 

I look at so many strong young women out there. The way out isn’t clearly lit, but if you keep walking through the tunnel you will reach a light.