Sex Lies and Videotape

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That's quite an attention-grabbing title if I ever see one. It is the title of a 1989 movie about the main sexual organ……the mind. It is also about trying to find happiness in a relationship with another person.

Why this title for tonight’s entry? Well, apart from the attention grabbed, there is something there in which I may find the turning point I need to move forward.

Videotape...I have nothing to say about that. There is none to speak of in the first place. At least not that I know of. Even if there is one, I wouldn’t want to see it and hope nobody else gets to see such a private business either.

Sex...in the absence of hard evidence (no pun intended), it is only right to assume there is none. Well, even if there is a videotape, one can recall the famous quote, "He looks something like me, sounds something like me, but I can’t be sure it’s me".

Anyway, sex may seem like a major contributing factor, but I only gave it fleeting thoughts every now and then, just as it deserves. I have learned earlier on that you can be assured of denial even when the man is caught with his pants down. (That lesson was shared with me by a 60+ year old man I had befriended years ago, who might have been caught with his pants down some time in his lifetime.)

Lies...now, there's something which bother me a great deal. That is what consumes me.

There are so many reasons to be angry about. I could list down all the hurtful stuff that took place. But I don’t want to do that because individually, they are petty issues. Only when I took a step back that the bigger picture started to emerge. In the end, what I find make me most angry are the lies.

It makes me wonder, at worst, if any part of our long relationship was true. Was his passion for me real? Did he really want to marry me? Could he have been laughing behind my back all the time for my gullibility? It is most humiliating if all those were lies. No one but him can distinguish the lies from the truth.

I would sometimes contemplate seeing him again to ask him all those questions, if only to learn enough so I can bury them permanently. I will have to do this on my own. This may seem like suicide to those who have been supportive thus far. But with others' presence, his ego will get in the way.

On the second thought, would I not be exposing myself to potentially more lies? Would I not in the end wonder yet again, which bits are truth, thereby taking me back to square one. I would then fail with my burial scheme.

In order to pacify myself, I pretend that the lies only started with the presence of the third person. At least I could pretend that he lied in order not to hurt me.

What an oxymoron that makes. When a person lies to us, the hurt is instantly applied whether or not the victim has learned the truth. Lies are concocted because the liar doesn’t trust that the victim can handle the truth. That’s where the hurt sits. We have taken the time to get to know each other, and yet, he still didn’t trust me where it matters most.

I had always made it clear that if he decides that it is over with us, or if he found me no longer suitable for him for whatever reason, he should just tell me and be done with it. I trusted that he would love me enough to do that. Difficult as it may be, we could at least move forward separately from there. Where is the fairness when I was made to hang on to the unknowingly doomed relationship? The playing field is level no more!

All the time when I intimated that I smelt something stinky, he simply denied them. Not just that, he would say that I do not trust him by equating him with other men who are despicable enough to indulge in such actions.

In the end, we believe only what we want to believe. This explains how he managed to drag it for so long; all the while continuing to profess his love for me and continued to introduce me as his future wife right through the end.

I found this in a newspaper column today:
“Trust is a gift given freely to many, but its thread is thin – once broken, it can take a very long time to mend. Saying sorry is the easy part; it is gaining back the trust of someone you have hurt that is painstakingly hard.”
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