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AJC.com > Living > Blog > Archives > 2008 > September > 29
Monday, September 29, 2008
A lover’s hidden life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
About four years ago, I spent a summer seeing an incredibly talented musician who played in the local symphony. “Marco” was different from other guys I had dated; first of all, he was 15 years my senior, had spent years around the world because of his work and practiced yoga when he wasn’t rehearsing.
We saw each other nearly every day and being around him always felt peaceful. Yet, he once informed me I was “getting involved with a weird person” and that he’d explain it in time. In retrospect, this is when I should’ve run.
Before the time came for him to clue me in about his past, our relationship ended with an anonymous phone call to my mother. Yes, my dear, sweet mother, (a Sunday school teacher at that), was dialed up by a woman who refused to identify herself.
Keep in mind a couple things — I lived several hours away from my parents at the time, Marco hadn’t even met them, and the woman making the call to my mother must have engaged in some serious sleuthing to track down my folks.
The cliffnotes? She told my mother to get her daughter away from Marco. No, he wasn’t married, but according to the stranger-caller, he was a womanizer, destroying women’s hearts and their marriages in his path. Oh, and quite possibly a swinger, too.
Turns out, upon confronting Marco, it was all true. He maintained a long-distance relationship with a woman planning to leave her husband and three children for him. (She didn’t know about me, of course.) He admitted having a profile on adult “casual encounter” websites. He acknowledged seeing multiple women at once, even though the women thought they were in monogamous relationships.
He tried to tell me that had all changed when he met me, but I didn’t believe him. I was naive, but thankfully not that stupid.
Needless to say, I took my young self and fled as fast as I could. This wasn’t the Marco I thought I knew. This Marco seemed a shell of a person, a damaged, twisted man unlike the fellow I had spent nearly every evening with that summer.
The good news? At least I found out fairly early on what a psycho he was, had no health repercussions (though the emotional ones were worse), and have a pretty good story to share. But it was a tough lesson and has made it at times difficult for me to take people at face value. (Though to be fair, he gave me a disclaimer. I simply had no idea how serious he was.)
Have you ever encountered someone and later found out they weren’t at all who you thought you knew? What did you learn from that experience, and did it make you wiser or just bitter? And how long do you think it takes to really get to know the “real” person, or do you still take people at face value?
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