LAST EDITED ON 01-18-11 AT 02:20 PM (EST)

I guess I've been fortunate. I don't have a long history of relationships, as I never really wanted to get involved in them. I can count my past g/f's on one hand, the last one being the one I married.

However, I was involved in one psycho relationship in a way. My best friend had a g/f who was deeply depressed and sucked the life and energy out of anyone who she got to know and get involved with. At first she seemed to be just the opposite, but over time, almost imperceptibly, the black hole of dark emotions gravitated on the event horizon - where there is no turning back. By the time I was aware of it, my best friend was an emotional wreck, and it didn't take long for me to approach the same state he was in. He was aware of it, but didn't know how to get out of the trap. I told him, we walk. Now. And don't look back.

I almost got the Finn Hudson treatment. When I was in college, my girlfriend (who was in high school) told me that she was pregnant and that I was the father. After a few seconds of confusion, I realized that I actually knew how babies are made and therefore, couldn't have been the father of the child. Obviously, I broke up with her.

I can’t really think of any psycho relationships but I do remember a sort of Bizarro World experience. We moved the summer before my senior year in high school half way across the country. So I was the new guy. There was this girl from Australia who was also new, so with that in common we would talk between classes and after school in the smoking area (remember those, old folks? Definitely shows your age). She was nice looking and a lot of fun. Had that sarcastic Aussie attitude which I love.

So I ask her out on a date. I go to pick her up and meet her mother, an extremely unattractive woman, to be polite. And I look over at my date and see her mother’s face. We went on our date but I could not ever look at her again without seeing her mother’s face. It was a pretty short-lived relationship.

It's like something out of that twilighty show about that zone.

smoking area (remember those, old folks? Definitely shows your age

I can beat that; there were "smoking places" when I was in school but they were supposed to be secret - open smoking was not allowed in schools back in the 60's & earliest 70's.

Staff could smoke in the teacher's lounge tho

I went to a high school in Texas in the mid 70s. The buckets for the tobacco chewing crowd were right outside the lunchroom window. Needless to say no one wanted to sit at the table next to the window. I can't remember is it was also the smoking area since I didn't smoke.

This was also in Texas at the same time. We had a designated smoking area in the breezeway between the two buildings. The high school I went to in MD also had a smoking area, the parking lot. My Junior High School (also in MD) didn’t have an “official” smoking area but we smoked with the teachers under the stairs outside. In retrospect it does seem pretty weird.

We had a designated smoking area at one of the schools I attended (grades 7-12) - the oak tree by "the old gym". I think there was an area at the other high school I went to, as well, but those who didn't have parental permission smoked in the bathrooms. The "dippers" got to use their product wherever they wanted, as long as it was outside.

LAST EDITED ON 01-18-11 AT 09:58 PM (EST)

I was never in a relationship with the person in the following story, but, well...

I was sitting at a table at a parents' meeting at the school where DD was attending when she was 3. I was 41 years old at the time, happily married, with just the one child. I turned around and saw a man glaring at me full bore, as though I had killed someone. He kept this up for close to 10 minutes. I did not know who he was, so I sat there puzzled. I figured if he was really someone who I had known, I would eventually figure it out. He was thin, pale, with fuzzy hair, and a scraggly ZZTop beard, and was wearing a nice business suit. I couldn't help thinking the beard did not jive with the suit, and someone should have told him so.

In a few days time, we received a letter from the school with the name of the director at the bottom. I recognized the name as someone I had known when I was 20 years old. He was a friend of 3 of my roommates and come over to see us from time to time. He always bought a bottle of wine and some Gouda or Edam cheese, which we all shared. I barely knew this guy, because he had never actually had a conversation with me. Not.one.word.

So, there was this night when the roommates told me they would be staying at school one night, and I would have the apartment all to myself. I was happy to hear it, and I was looking forward to reading a book and listening to music by myself. So, on the night in question, I think it was a Thursday, I came home from work on a transit bus, walked a short way from the bus stop to the apartment, and closed the door.

About 10 seconds later, there was a knock at the door. It was this guy, and I had not been expecting him. I stood in the doorway waving my hands in front of me with palms out - the kind of body language that screams "Go away!" I said, "The girls aren't here! The girls aren't here!"

He said, "I don't care about that." 5 words, and the longest sentence he ever spoke to me. Then he walked into the apartment without being asked in, and sat down, without being asked to sit. He started pouring wine in disposable glasses. I was not too happy, as I had plans to eat and change the clothes that I had been wearing for about 10 hours or more by now.

Not knowing what else to do, I sat next to him and asked, "Did you bring cheese?"

I was hungry, and back then our lunch hour started at 11:30 AM, and it was now after 5:30 PM. I was accustomed to eating when I hit the door.

Him: "No."
Me: "No cheese?"
Him, snappish: "NO CHEESE!"

That was the last thing he said to me, and now I was feeling very uncomfortable. I sat there wondering how soon he would leave. I did not want to drink the wine on an empty stomach, so I did not drink much. I did not know how to get him out of there, so I sat and waited. He didn't have anything to say. I felt something between my two bottom teeth with my tongue, so I started digging at it with my pinky finger nail. It was rude, but I did not care. I kept going after it - it was a hardened piece of tartar, for 5 to 10 minutes. He finally got steamed and left. I think I said, "I'll tell the girls you dropped by." as he went out the door.

So, here I was 21 years later, and this man was really angry at me. It took me a while to remember a conversation that had taken place the week before he came over. We were all there in the apartment, including this guy. I had probably been drinking a little wine, because I could barely remember this part of the story. I do know that he never spoke to me, though. The roommates kept saying "You're going to have the apartment all to yourself." The way they were saying it sounded like I was going to have a guy over, so I said, "I don't even have a boyfriend."

One of the girls pointed to this guy, who was sitting in front of me. She said, "He wants to come over."

I said, "You want to come over?" I was not inviting him, just asking, because I did not think he was interested in me that way. I was not interested in him, anyway. He did not speak, but he sat there nodding his head.

The next thing I knew, my roommate Linda was asking me when I got off of work. I said it depended on which bus I took home, and gave a general time when I would likely be home.

I did not realize that he would think this was the okay for him to come over to see me when I was going to be alone in the apartment by myself. He had never shown any interest in me before. He was a 33 year old man, and I was a 20 year old woman, and as I said, we had never had a conversation at all. He had been over to our apartment about 5 times or so, and had never once come up to me and asked me how I was doing, or anything.

Anyway, he never confirmed with me that he could come over to see me that night, and never called me during the week in between to talk about it.

So, 21 years later, I had finally remembered who he was, and found out from the letter that he was the director of the school that my daughter attended. When he was glaring at me, he was a 54 year old husband and father of 4. You would have thought he could have totally forgotten the incident from 21 years before. I know that I had forgotten it.

So, he still did not know that I knew he was the director of the school, so he planned a meeting with me and some of the staff, so he could come in during the meeting, be introduced, say a few words and leave. I think he wanted to make sure I knew he was a big deal - you know, the freaking director of the school. So I came in for this meeting about nothing - we did not address my daughter's needs as we usually did, and no one even mentioned her by name, except me. He made sure there was someone sitting between us, so he was not looking directly at me or speaking to me.

So, later that same year, he and some of his staff were fired for incompetence. Maybe they had too many meetings about nothing. Maybe he had women all over Baltimore City who had been rude to him, and he had to prove to them that he had made something of himself.

Total word count from him to me during this 21 year saga = 8.

Mermaid in the Drink, Silvergirl original 2011
"I have no illusions about my goodliness or lack there of." - qwertypie, 01-04-11

Man - you really know how to leave a mark on someone!

When I was 25 I started working for the company I still work for. A co-worker asked me out and we started dating. There was this psycho girl that had dated him before me. She would make excused to come talk to people who sat near me. One Saturday we had plans to go to a water park. I picked him up and for some reason he gave me directions that took us by the psycho girl's house. She came out ranting and raving and demanded that he tell me that she was the one he loved. I told him to get out of the car. I went home. He continued to ask me out but I turned him down. He finally asked me "Is it because of the past?" D
UH.

At 26 I started dating another guy I met at work. He wined and dined me and sent me a dozen red roses every other week at work. We eventually got engaged and that's when I started seeing the controlling side of him. He isolated me from my friends and pouted everytime we visited my family. He told me once that he couldn't imagine that I would want to do anything that didn't involve him. I told him that we should have our own activities. He was furious. I had to walk on egg shells around him never knowing what would make him mad. He never hit me but I suffered psychological and emotional abuse. We were about to send out the invitations to the wedding when we got in a huge fight. I postponed the wedding and insisted we go to counseling. He begged me not to postpone the wedding and went to counseling. All he wanted to talk about was what was wrong with me. I finally gave up and called it off.

At 27 another guy from work asked me out and told me about the first time he saw me and described in detail what I was wearing. I let him know that we could be friends but nothing more. He sent me cards professing his love for me. The last one came the day before I married my husband.

Obviously I was leery of dating anyone from work. I worked with a really nice guy but we both were hesitant to date someone we worked with. We became really good friends and sat right next to each other. I was his lead. I knew a shortcut to print something from one of the software packages we used at work. He didn't believe me and we made a bet. I won the bet and he had to take me out for dinner. That was Valentines day 1991. We've been married for 18.5 years.

I think all the jerks that I dated have helped me appreciate what wonderful man he truly is.

Great story. Well, at least the last part, not the psycho parts.

A Slice of Manga