Mindreading

This story takes inspiration from some very well-known stories here on Lit, which I am sure many of you will recognize, and one of my own relationships.

There is no sex in this one, no apologies.

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"If you loved me, you'd know." Holly says as she walks out the door.

I am really confused because I am trying to be 'open and communicative' and she just shuts me down like she has throughout our entire relationship. I wish I had the presences of mind to ask her if she thought mindreading was part of those skills she expects me to have as a communication skill in our relationship. That would have brought her up short, but I didn't.

We had just finished moving her out of my apartment because she 'needs her space'. As far as I was concerned, our relationship was OVER. She made the decision to move out so, as far as I was concerned, we were done.

There had been no discussion about her moving out, she just told me she was moving out. I had not been allowed to voice an opinion. See, guys don't think like women. Guys are pretty much black and white. There are no grey areas in relationships, unless we are stringing you along to get a piece of tail. Apparently, women have grey areas in romantic relationships that allow them to drift between varying levels of commitment. With guys, we are either together, or we are not. Any backslide, like moving out, for any reason, is the end of the relationship. END OF DISCUSION, for me anyway.

I have told her that moving out is not how we work on our relationship. She ignored my comment. I told her how much her moving out hurt me, she replied that she understood, but still needed to do it. I told her that I felt that this was the end of our relationship because she was unwilling to talk about anything, but insisted on moving out. She smiled and assured me everything would be fine. I told her it wouldn't and walked away from her to let her know I was not happy at the end of that conversation a few days before she started moving.

Holly doesn't seem to understand that we are over as a couple at this moment. She thinks we have a date planned for Saturday. She moves out of the apartment and thinks we are still dating, amusing. If she can't see the hurt on my face, it is because she doesn't want to see how badly she has hurt me.

She has been planning this for a while as she had to apply for the apartment and wait to be approved. Shit, she had to make a deposit and I know her finances are tight, so she has to have been saving for this for a while. She only told me when it was time to start moving, so obviously she was leaving me regardless of how I feel.

Yes, our relationship has been faltering for months. Back to the mindreading. I have tried to talk to her. Have been asking her, what's wrong? Same answer every time. "If you loved me, you'd know." What a crock of shit! So, by this logic, I guess, she believes I don't love her because I can't read her mind. Well, fuck you bitch. You should have been able to see through my actions, trying to communicate, etc., this would show any normal woman, that I did in fact love her! I care, I give a shit! I was trying!

We hadn't had sex in about six weeks and for a couple in their late 20's, this is nuts, but she wants it to be romanced she said. Wined and dined, but doesn't want me to spend any money on her. How the hell do you do that? Find a restaurant that works on the barter system?

The lack of sex has led to her going to bed early and me staying up and jerking off in the spare bedroom that we have set up as an office. I'm sure this has led to more resentments on her part, but what could I do? She has me boxed in. No sex without romance, don't take me out to diner, don't spend any money on me. Makes perfect sense, right? [sic]

As I am standing in the door and watching her leave, I beginning to think she has mental disorders.

"Remember, we have a date on Saturday." Holly yelled back at me from the parking lot.

She smiles at me and waves as she gets into her car. I just close the door without returning the smile or wave. I seriously think about flipping her off, but that will only have her pounding on my door, asking me what's wrong? I'm pretty much done with her bullshit and don't need her back at my door.

I am recovering emotionally from this, trying to figure out what this stupid bitch was talking about or better yet, not talking about. Questions I cannot understand; if I love her, I am supposed to know? This sounds like mindreading and believe me, I don't think anyone wants to read this bitch's mind.

I thought I loved her, but I am beginning to think that maybe I love/loved the idea of her. This image I had created in my mind that was not based in reality. Holly moving out on me, seems to have opened my eyes a bit. Her moving out is a huge violation in my mind. She has abandoned me and I don't think she understands this, stupid of her. I did tell her.

One of my buddies mentions 'gaslighting' and I have never heard of this before now. Yeah, I know, who hasn't. Well, me. I look it up, see the movie reference and use this as a distraction to avoid defining how Holly has been possibly 'gaslighting' me, whatever that is.

The movie is a great distraction, I really enjoy it.

I am hoping when it ends, I will be too tired to care, but I'm not. So, I jump into defining how I was possibly being gas lit with both feet. The definition seems to be on the mark. I look at our entire relationship from the beginning. The 'double speak' that Holly had been running on me would have made Eric Blair proud, George Orwell is a pen name. Saying she loves me, when her actions shows she doesn't. Bottom line, Holly is a manipulative bitch. She is such a terrible person, that I'm sure she is teaching classes on line somewhere on gaslighting and other relationship manipulation techniques. She is definitely Master Class and I have been a victim during our entire relationship.

Having figured all this out, I want to know what her motivation was? Why had she been doing this? It wasn't money, as I have little. I am working as an Engineer, but paying off Student Loans at triple rate to get them paid off in a quarter the normal time. This leaves me with little disposable income. The math works if you pay them off faster, it kills the compound interest. I was actually almost done paying them off. Then I will have lots of money.

The only thing I could think is that she was trying to do was control me as in her previous relationship she felt that she had not been in control. Her former boyfriend had screwed around on her and she could not stop him. She would chase him around town, trying to stop him from cheating and he would not stop. She should have just walked away, but she hung on trying to make it work. I thought it was pathetic, but I never told her this. I just held her when she was melancholy thinking about it. I should have seen this as a Red Flag, but I never thought about it until I started looking for reasons she was trying to control me. I discounted it because I am not a cheater. I would never screw around on her as I have morals, however that didn't seem to matter to her, she needed control. She wasn't looking at our relationship, she was still stuck with the demons of her past. She had to control me regardless of my actions or moral standards.

So, the requirement for my mindreading was part of gaslighting in order to question myself in order for her to maintain control. She wanted me questioning my commitment to the relationship and how I felt about her, so she could guide and control what happened in the relationship. She had now made a fatal error in that she had moved out and not understood what this meant to me despite me telling her exactly what it meant to me.

Moving out to her was probably another means of control as well. Or maybe it was some pathetic attempt to get me to beg her to stay. To "show her" how much I love her. This would have given her more power in the relationship, which would upset it beyond any health level. As if there was anything healthy in this relationship to begin with, it just would have made it worse. Much worse.

If the relationship fails, the gaslighting and everything else she manufactured in her mind, absolve her from all responsibility for the failure of the relationship. She wants to be able to point at me and be able to tell people that she had done everything she could, but I wasn't there for her, BECAUSE I COULDN'T READ HER MIND!

She wouldn't say this last part, but this is literally how this relationship was going to end and end it would. She just didn't know it yet.

The next day, I started getting text.

-Are you mad at me?-

I don't answer, why would I bother. So I could be manipulated more? More gaslighting? More mindreading requests? More lack of sex? So she can find more reasons to blame me for the relationship failing?

Why bother?

Was she screwing around on me? I doubt it, but who cares. Until she moved out, all her time was accounted for and the trauma of her previous relationship made cheating unlikely. But who knows?

About an hour later.

-Why aren't you answering me?-

Here we go, cycling up to bitch mode. That didn't take long. Is she really that stupid? Breaking up with her was going to be too easy now. She has already moved out, all I have to do is not talk to her and avoid her.

I smile, I suddenly feel pretty good. Holly moving out seems like a pretty great thing, now. I actually start chuckling. "Good bye, bitch." I say quietly.

The texts keep coming and I keep ignoring them. I have a pretty good day at work as I am in a great mood. I got lot done as I was no longer stressing about my relationship.

I hit the gym after work. I'd been doing this a lot out of sexual frustration, another good thing to come out of this, I am getting into pretty good shape. I am smiling as I work out and several women at the gym comment on the fact that I am smiling.

Holly calls that evening and I ignore that too. It feels good as I use to rush to answer her calls and this seems to give me back some of the control I had lost in the relationship. We don't have a relationship anymore, but it was gives me back control in my life. Man, it feels good.

Holly calls at 1 in the morning, wakes me up, bitch. I don't answer and put the phone on vibrate and go back to sleep. Boy, that little act of control feels good. I laugh as I hear the phone vibrate a few moments later. I get a great night's sleep after that incident.

The next day, Friday is more of the same. Texts and phone calls that I don't answer. It continues to feel good. I am empowered.

That night I put my phone on vibrate before I go to bed.

Saturday, she has plans for us to go on a date tonight, but that isn't happening. I need to make myself scarce because I know she will come to the apartment looking for me, after I stand her up. I know I am running away, but that is the point. I want her to know that she is no longer in control of me and the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I want her to know that I am no longer a part of her life and I mean not at all. I am not her friend, because you don't treat friends the way she has been treating me the last 6 month and I am not her emotional tampon either. Yeah, I think I failed to mention that, these last few months, I have still had to listen to all her problems, and put up with her shit, but there were no benefits in the relationship for me, at all. She doesn't listen to me or talk about my issues. Didn't want to hear about how work was going for me, anything to do with my hobbies, nothing to do with my life. We are no longer friends.

I make plans to go out with friends from work, which surprised them as it is something I have not done in the past. I realize that Holly has done her best to socially isolate me. Makes it easier to control someone when they are socially isolated. It also helps with the gaslighting as you have no means of comparing information about your relationship with other people if no other people are around you.

We are leaving the first bar early Saturday evening, when my phone vibrates in my pocket.

Caller ID lets me know it is Holly. One of the women with us offers to answer it for me. We all crack up laughing at the idea of another woman answering my phone. I'm pretty sure Holly is leaving a scathing message about me standing her up, after the phone stops vibrating. I really don't care. Everyone I am with is doing a great job showing me how to get on with my life.

At the next bar, I get a text that I ignore, but I let everyone know about. They have a good laugh at her expense and my handling of the situation. A few of the women in our group seem to admire the idea that I am not taking any of Holly's shit. Oh, if they only knew the amount of shit I had swallowed from her in the last three years.

I buy a round for everyone as I realize that I was free!

I wake the next morning and feel good. I decide to be even more proactive.

I use my smartphone to compose a text to our mutual friends as I am not going to let her spin this her way. I am sure she had already spun her moving out to her friends to an extent, but I want anyone that would listen to hear my side.

-As you know, Holly has moved out, despite my objections.

She says she needs her space to work on our relationship as anyone in a relationship know this is crap

When I try to talk to her about what is wrong, she says that if I loved her I would know

Apparently, I am supposed to read her mind in order to resolve the issues in our relationship

Holly moving out, to me signifies the end of our relationship as she refuses to discuss our issues and does nothing but gaslight me when I try to discuss them

So, for all of those concerned, Holly and I are no longer a couple and there is no point of reconciliation as people don't treat enemies as she has been treating me throughout our entire relationship

Anyone attempting to intercede on her behalf with me, will lose me as a friend and acquaintance

This is your only warning

Sincerely,

Bob-

I ended the text and then spammed everyone I could think of Sunday Morning.

Almost immediately I begin to receive positive text from friends. I see from the text previews that Holly sent me, increasingly bitchy texts about not contacting her, but apparently no one has let her know about my mass text. It was only a matter of time.

Why no confrontation? Was I a coward? No, I just don't want to give her any more knowledge to use against the next poor bastard she got her hooks into. I know what I know, now. She was just going to have to figure it out on her own, if she can. I doubt she would use any of this knowledge to have a healthy relationship or try to fix what we had. I didn't want to fix anything, because looking back on it, I now feel violated by what she did to me. I wasn't in a relationship, it was more like Stockholm Syndrome, where the victim bonds with their captor because the captor becomes the only source of emotional support. Not good, not health, not a real relationship.

I'm sure she is going to blame me for this relationship failing and by now she has 500 reasons she has fabricated in her mind for its failure. I couldn't read her mind. I didn't beg her not to move out, although she already had made the deposit on the apartment when she told me she was moving, so that would have been pointless. I didn't chase her down and bring her home. Why would I, she made her decision. Considering how I was treated throughout the relationship, would any of you done any of these things?

I now have 500 very real reasons not to be in a relationship with her upon reflection. I am not the cause of this failure and I will not take responsibility for any of it. Holly was a manipulative bitch and deserves what she gets out of life. My contribution will be the absence of me in her life. Sound arrogant? I was the only positive thing going in her life. I had supported her when she was between jobs and was positive when she struggled to find work. I was there for her when her father died. She was never there for me during any of the challenges that life brings. Standard for selfish people. So, simply, she will never get to use me again. Her loss.

She doesn't deserve my efforts and I don't deserve whatever psychosis her mind is locked into that makes her think that what we had was what a healthy relationship looks like.

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This story was written in response to numerous stories here on Lit where the female protagonist is not held accountable for their actions and the male protagonist is blamed for their inability to read the mind of the female character. In these stories, the male protagonist is blamed for all the resulting actions of the cheating female character as they did not "save" female protagonist as they crush the very soul of the male protagonist. The male protagonist is to somehow see through his own pain and actions of the female antagonist at this time and rescue her? The male character is somehow supposed to save her from the antagonistic situation she has created. It some stories she has run off with a lover, leaving the country and told her then husband not to follow her, leaving divorce papers, yet later tells him that she expected him to 'fight for her'. How is he the bad guy? She decided to cheat. To leave and somehow it is his fault that she made all these hurtful decisions and her ego expects him to chase her when all her actions tell him otherwise? This is by definition insane. This is the same level of psychosis I was dealing with in the relationship I described in the story. I am embarrassed to say that this relationship lasted longer than I say in the story. In hind sight, there were more Red flags there than a May Day Parade in Red Square.

Writing this has been cathartic.

All this was the inspiration for Mindreading.