I was with a man I really loved. He was sexy, smart, and really funny. Sometimes I was afraid to tell him the truth because I didn’t want to disappoint him.
Anyway, last December he told me that, though he loved me, he sometimes found my effeminate behaviors a turn-off. He said that he was telling me this because he loved me and he knew it was his own homophobia and he wanted to work through it. He said that if he didn’t love me, he would not have told me.
So he would bring it up sometimes – the way I talked. Yes, sometimes I talk more effeminate more than others – I don’t know why. He would ask me why I did it more than others. I would make a sad face, he would ask if he hurt my feelings, and I would say yes. Then he would say sorry.
But I met a friend and she told me that he should never have done this to me. So I started to get angry at him a lot. And he had all these issues with back pain and working a lot and graduate school and OCD, but he would still judge me – I could see it in his eyes when I would sit on the sofa on my legs. He said I looked like the little mermaid.
I finally confronted him about it in October and said I wished he had never told me. It hurt me. He apologized profusely and said he would never do it again. And he didn’t.
But my friend kept pointing out all the mean things he had always said and I kept getting mad, even though I always told him I loved him. So I left him a couple weeks ago. Today, I came home and packed all my things while he was at work and took the cats we had adopted together. He texted me to please bring back his cat and I said no, I had left the key with the building manager.
So I have learned to love myself thanks to my friend.