"Luella Miller" - Narcissism in a Velvet Gown

I first read this story as a teen, and it has haunted me ever since. The older I get, the more I see in it; it's not just a ghost story, it's not just a horror story, it's a case study, and one of the most psychologically literate things I've read since Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper".

I'm not sure how widely known this short story is, or the author, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; but it and she both deserve to be very widely known indeed. Especially by those who have been subjected to covert emotional abuse, and the kind of manipulation that poses as helplessness even as it takes total control of the helper. There is a cautionary tale here for Rescuers and Enablers; not even the most perceptive person in the story manages to escape, in the end.

Here, then, is a link to the Literary Gothic web site's page on "Luella Miller". Read. Enjoy. See what you find in it. And please respect the site owner's wishes; don't copy the text online.

Is there, was there, a Luella in your life? I know there was in mine... Luella Miller is a psychic vampire. Ms. Freeman had clearly known and observed at least one of these creatures in her own life. Luella Miller epitomizes them - their affectations of helplessness, their entitlement, their total self-centeredness. One after another, she uses people, and uses them up, until they literally die - not quickly, either, and certainly not painlessly. Their suffering doesn't register with her at all; their deaths leave her absolutely unmoved, except for concerns that she won't get her coffee in the morning if her current victim is too busy dying to make it for her.

This is a classic portrait of narcissism - the sugar-coated kind; the kind that dresses in velvet, wears lace gloves, stamps its dainty foot and puts its little nose in the air when facing someone who sees its essential evil. But the tantrums Luella throws when she thinks a victim is about to get out of her clutches show an amazing degree of 'strength' for such a helpless li'l ol' thing.

Reading this now, I see both my mother and myself, our lives and our fates.

In her youth, my mother had the Luella act down pat. Strikingly beautiful, she knew exactly how to bat her eyelashes and croon, and people fell for it - over and over. She fooled them, she used them, and they came running back for more. It wasn't until she was long past middle age that she began to lose the knack of fooling people; partly because she no longer cared so much about fooling them - she wasn't willing to work at it anymore. But there were quite a few people she fooled until the very end.

At least some of those people, I think, took over from her at some point, and generously took on the burden of fooling themselves on her behalf. This was doubtless less painful for them than facing and truly admitting the kind of person she actually was: malicious, vindictive, calculating, deliberately distorting and withholding information to demonize anyone who refused to worship her - including her own child. Better to stay soothingly unaware...

After her death, there were some waves of awareness / revulsion among her few remaining friends and acquaintances; some even contacted me, embarrassed, remorseful, to make amends for wrongs I had never known about. There were so many lies she had told, so much she had confabulated, to keep these people from ever wanting to know me - so that they would never be able to see through the confabulations and lies. It was almost unbelievable. I thought I had seen through her years ago, but at the end of her life, I found myself amazed at the things she had done to me almost from the minute I was born.

Luella Miller's fictitiously fantastic indifference to the condition of those who served her, even as they were dying, is also neither fantastic nor fictitious. I saw it in my mother during my father's final illness. Not merely indifference; absolute, blind, infantile rage, that he would dare to get sick when that was - and always had been - HER privilege.

She was similarly self-centered when her own daughter needed surgery for a life-threatening condition. I carefully scheduled myself into a hospital that was far enough away for her to be unable to visit me. She had pulled Munchausen's by Proxy stunts on my sick and dying father, and she wasn't going to pull any on me. The nurses though it odd that she never even called... knowing what I know about enabling, I never even tried to explain to them.

For my part, I see all too much of myself in Lydia. I remember how hard I fought to get free. How determined my mother was to fasten on to me, financially and emotionally, and drain and destroy me just as she drained and destroyed my father. And I know very well that although I escaped alive, I did not escape unharmed.

I am very grateful, and will always be grateful, to the therapist - and the elder law attorneys - who supported me through the last two years of my mother's life, and after her death; they had seen enough similar cases to know just how destructive these people are, and they were able not only to believe me, but to understand. Yet I still find myself drawn into helping those who give in return only indifference, further demands, or outright harm. Like Lydia, I find myself all too often confronting and denouncing narcissists in velvet gowns, while trapped in the cottage next door.

Lately I've wished that when I first read this story as a teen, I had understood it then as I understand it now - that I had seen through my mother much earlier, and escaped emotionally when I first escaped physically, thirty years ago. But that's not what happened, and we all have to play the cards we're dealt. I can be grateful, at least, that now I see what was.

And that, almost a decade after her death, I have finally written her eulogy.

May she rest in peace... and may peace rest in me.

The Ultimate Hostile Takeover

A good formal definition of plagiarism is "the practice of ... incorporating material from someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement."

A while back, I experienced this directly as a participant in an informal book discussion group. This was [ostensibly] a writers' support group, yet I found myself repeatedly fending off bullies there. In the most egregious variation on this theme, one particularly impervious duo pointedly ignored or disparaged every contribution I made to group discussions, while presenting many of those very same concepts and ideas in their own comments, without attribution, sometimes verbatim, apparently in order to create the impression that they, not I, had originated them.

Both people emphatically praised and credited other discussion group members whose ideas they quoted; the contrast between this behavior and that directed towards me was remarkable, to anyone paying attention. Thus to all appearances, these individuals sought to stifle my voice within the group, while appropriating that same voice - my words, my ideas, even aspects of my 'style' - to pass off as their own.

[I have also experienced this in workplace settings - both as a bystander and as the target. Women may experience this behavior from male colleagues and superiors as a subtle form of discrimination: ignore her, but steal her ideas... ]

This behavior gives a bully a triple payoff.

First, the bully obliterates the target by disenfranchising him [or her] to keep him [or her] excluded and unheard, and at the same time appropriates the target's talents and accomplishments to pass off as the bully's own productions.

Second, while preventing the target from receiving recognition and reinforcement, the bully diverts what is rightfully the target's 'payoff' into the bully's own hands. Much sadistic pleasure can be gleaned from this behavior, for those so inclined.

The final payoff, of course, is that the bully does no actual work to produce the talents and accomplishments he or she dishonestly appropriates. It is an act of pure parasitism: the ultimate hostile takeover.

Both of the people whose actions I am describing here seemed highly focused on establishing themselves as 'gurus' over this particular group, and apparently regarded my presence and contributions as a threat to this. For someone whose goal is dominance of a group - "power over" it, in Patricia Evans' terminology - people who think well [aka 'critical thinkers'] are not easily deceived and cannot be easily controlled; they must therefore be intimidated, marginalized, and, if possible, driven away.

This happens in churches, clubs, neighborhoods, and workplaces. It happens everywhere. It happens all the time.
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The hostility that underlies this type of plagiarism - and its many cousins - seems rarely to be acknowledged by onlookers, no matter how blatant it becomes. But this particular experience was relatively minor, as such things go.

I know of a case that was far more extreme, extending far beyond the theft of someone's idea, catchphrases, or pet metaphors, to the point where the actual life of the target was plagiarized and appropriated, in the most extreme form of 'hostile takeover' possible short of outright murder and impersonation.
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A woman I know [whom I will call Sandy] had an entire career plagiarized out from under her by someone who was, to all appearances, a bully with erotomanic stalker 'traits'. With her permission, I will tell her story. I've altered a few details to protect her privacy.

Sandy, who was single, started working for a new employer about 20 years ago. Although she loved the work, she was soon very uncomfortable with the woman in the office next to hers. This woman, who was also single, made no overt passes at Sandy, but insinuated herself into every conversation Sandy had, work-related or otherwise, that involved a male colleague or superior, and made barbed, hostile, often highly inappropriate remarks to the man [usually semi-jocular threats of violence].

She struck obvious 'vamping' poses in Sandy's office doorway; gushed fulsomely and effusively over things Sandy did, said, wore, or read; referred to her as 'sweetie', 'honey' and 'my dear'. She followed Sandy to on-site meetings and presentations, sat next to her, and disrupted the events with loud, inappropriate comments [usually audible, hostile put-downs of the speaker, if male]. Claiming 'seniority', she tried to force their employer to send her to all of the offsite meetings that Sandy attended.

Because no direct overtures were ever made, Sandy, who is a very devoted PFLAG and utterly opposed to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, could only hint that she had other romantic preferences, talk about her dates, etc. - all of which simply compounded her discomfort.

Since the underlying issue was never directly revealed to Sandy, she never felt able to directly address it. Erotomania was hardly a common topic of conversation at the time; stalking of any kind was only beginning to be addressed legally with any seriousness. Dr. Doreen Orion's personal account of her own horrific experiences, "I Know You Really Love Me", had not yet been published and wouldn't be for years. Sandy could not describe what was happening to her in any way that she felt a third party, particularly her own management, could understand.

Within a year, Sandy's 'office neighbor' had bought a car of the same make as Sandy's, as close to the same color as possible; was purchasing identical clothing and dressing like Sandy; and had even switched physicians so that she was seeing some of the same doctors. At this point, Sandy took the opportunity to move to a different office, feeling quite reasonably that she was being stalked and subjected to barely-covert sexual harassment.

The woman became infuriated when Sandy moved, went to their superiors, and demanded that Sandy "be ordered" to return to her original office or that Sandy's office furniture, computer, and professional reference books be reallocated to her "for compensation". When Sandy was told about this by her puzzled [and frightened] bosses, she was asked only if a direct and unwelcome pass had ever been made; she answered honestly that it had not, that no non-collegial relationship of any kind had ever existed, that her preference was for male romantic companions, and that she hoped that any such issue would die away eventually as a result of her relocating.

She had no such luck. Shortly after the office relocation, Sandy required emergency cancer surgery and chemotherapy. While she was gone, her former neighbor broke into her office, broke into her computer, and subsequently claimed to be the real author of all the work Sandy had done. Amazingly, by the time Sandy returned, this woman had appropriated the promotion that Sandy was promised at hire - and had been told she was qualified for, just one week before her surgery.
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The term 'existential revenge', used by Martha Stout in connection with workplace sociopaths' deliberate sabotage of their colleagues' careers, comes readily to mind here. In Sandy's case what occurred was so drastic and bizarre that it is more accurate to call it 'psychic cannibalism'. This woman clearly had an extreme wish to possess Sandy, and failing that, was determined to devour her, professionally at least. She sought to destroy Sandy's career and appropriate it for herself, and Sandy's feckless superiors were only too willing to oblige - after all, it was easier for them to destroy the career of a convalescing cancer survivor than to stand up to an obviously unstable bully.

Sandy's 'harasser' remains in her position to this day. Sandy, fortunately, found a healthier workplace, where she met and married a decent man who had enough life experience and common sense to believe her when she told him about this ghastly situation. She tells the story of her former life [with a shudder] when the subject of occupational plagiarism comes up in professional discussions, as a strong warning that not all plagiarism involves the written word, that employees cannot expect bosses to control even the most obvious and egregious bullies, and that such bullies, when coddled and enabled, may do - and get away with - almost anything short of murder.
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What do people gain by behaving in such ways?

My two bullies gained very little in real terms. Neither of them worked, and they were both enmeshed in the writer's group to the point of spending most of their waking lives in activities related to it - phone calls and e-mails to other members, lunches and coffee with other members, etc. This investment of one's time and treasure is a steep price to pay to maintain a small captive audience, and when I realized this, their behavior almost immediately ceased to be an issue, emotionally at least.

Sandy's Nemesis, on the other hand, gained a great deal, outwardly at least. She was able to con [or bully] their mutual supervisors into awarding her the promotion that Sandy worked for and earned. Although she was not able to maneuver Sandy into a parasitic personal relationship, she intruded into Sandy's life as much as possible, and co-opted many of Sandy's 'unique characteristics'. The purchase of an identical car and identical clothes, and the appropriation of the same medical professionals that Sandy consulted, parallels the theft of ideas, catchphrases, and 'style' that I experienced - but on a much larger, much more pathologically disturbing scale. And, in fact, Sandy's entire body of work was essentially stolen by her harasser, when the woman infiltrated her computer and claimed credit for all of the work that Sandy had prepared.

But Sandy had the existential 'last laugh'. While her 'usurper' clumsily copied some of the outward aspects of her life and took over her career path, she does not have Sandy, and never will. She also does not have the professional or personal respect that Sandy has, in her new working life.

Sandy, in the meantime, has someone sane and balanced in her life, whom she dearly loves, and who loves her dearly in return. She considers herself a double cancer survivor - "one physical cancer, one occupational cancer, two radical surgeries, two great reconstructions" is the way she puts it. She has far more satisfying work now, which she would never have considered but for this 'catastrophe', and she has no illusions whatsoever about the extent to which people will go to steal from one another in supposedly civilized places.

The Paradox of False GoodWill: Unfriendly Friends

In our culture, people often regard others as friends not on the basis of shared values, but on the basis of some shared hobby or mutual interest - such as a book club, a sports league, or membership in the same church, synagogue, etc.

It is wiser to regard people as friends only when they have shown themselves capable of basic reciprocity. In other words, you are an acquaintance to someone with whom you bowl on Sundays; you are a friend to someone when you are there for them in their time of need. They are an acquaintance to you when they pick you up reliably as a member of the league carpool; they are a friend to you when they are there for you in your time of need ... and don't punish you for it afterwards. Friendship, necessarily, flows in both directions; reciprocity is one of the most fundamental components of human decency.

Abusers frequently use a maneuver Gavin de Becker calls 'forced teaming' - language that implies you're in something together, you're on the same team, you see things the same way, etc. What they generally have in mind, however, is a predator-prey relationship, with you as the main course.

The word 'friend' can be misused in this context quite easily. Keep a close and watchful eye on people who trot it out in the earliest stages of an acquaintanceship. Often, such people will quite soon thereafter experience a crisis - emotional or financial - that, on close examination, appears to be at least partly self-induced. Or, they may announce a suspiciously well-timed major illness. If this happens, you are wise to be cautious about the type and extent of support you provide. More often than not, you will observe that these people will have a strange and fascinating reaction to your own problems, and an even stranger and more fascinating reaction when you are unable to help them - in the way they have ordained that you should help - with theirs.

This reaction is hostility. Blunt, direct, unmistakable.

If, for example, you find yourself short of cash while in their company, these are the people who [having borrowed money from you less than two weeks previously because they 'left their wallet at home' when you met them for lunch] will lecture you about fiscal responsibility [while conveniently forgetting that they have still not repaid that $20].

Or if, to take another example, you find yourself on the receiving end of sudden unexpected verbal abuse from a mutual acquaintance or co-worker, these are the people who will leap into the breach without knowing what the issues are, and devotedly and energetically do everything in their power to assist the person abusing you.

Certain confirmation will be had if you confront these 'friends' regarding their behavior towards you, or if you simply express an inability to help them when they call on you for assistance. You will not be listened to; you will be completely unable to make yourself heard. There will be no reflection, self-awareness, or apology. There will be righteous indignation, usually in the form of a highly critical outburst, and you will be blamed for causing 'a problem'.

Yes, sometimes a genuine friend - someone you've helped in a major crisis - ends up with more to deal with just when you need a helping hand - and vice versa. But then, both parties are usually aware of this, see the irony, regret the circumstances, and try to find something mutually supportive to do for one another. A genuine friend won't actively compound your problems, and they won't blame you for asking for their help.

The Sociopath Next Door: A Review

I've just bought Martha Stout's book "The Sociopath Next Door", and in it she talks about one career choice made by sociopaths who aren't quite aggressive enough for criminality, and are reasonably bright, but not brilliant...

She says: "... As this sort of person, you ensconce yourself in a niche, or maybe a series of niches, in which you can have some amount of control over small numbers of people. These situations satisfy a little of your desire for power, although you are chronically aggravated at not having more. ... Sometimes you fall into sulky, rageful moods caused by a frustration that no one but you understands.

"But you do enjoy jobs that afford you a certain unsupervised control over a few individuals or small groups, preferably people and groups who are relatively helpless or in some way vulnerable. You are a teacher or a psychotherapist, a divorce lawyer or ... a consultant of some kind, or ... a human services director.

"Whatever your job, you manipulate and bully the people who are under your thumb, as often and as outrageously as you can without getting fired or held accountable. You do this for its own sake, even when it serves no purpose except to give you a thrill. Making people jump means you have power - or this is the way you see it - and bullying provides you with an adrenaline rush. It is fun.

"... Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun; it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience, it is amazingly easy to do. You quietly lie to the boss or to the boss's boss, cry some crocodile tears, or sabotage a coworker's project; or gaslight a patient (or a child), bait people with promises, or provide a little misinformation that will never be traced back to you."

So many of us have had this experience... when I read this passage today, I felt literally dizzy with exoneration and relief.

Dr. Stout begins from the premise that sociopaths are devoid of conscience, but builds on this to demonstrate that, being devoid of conscience, they are also utterly devoid of emotion, and especially impoverished in that they are utterly incapable of love. Their lives are boring, lacking any emotional texture or richness, and as a result they often resort to drugs or extreme risktaking behavior to fill the void. Thus, although their lack of scruples may lead to some degree of material success, they do not 'live well' and they tend not to die well... their old age is usually horrible beyond belief.

She describes several common subtypes of noncriminal psychopath, but most importantly, she describes the 'tell' - the set of behaviors that are a highly reliable indicator that someone is psychopathic. This 'tell' is something that many people have difficulty in perceiving clearly, tend to be 'sucked in' by. It is, in fact, something that many of us have been trained to comply with by abusers in our families of origin, or elsewhere: PITY for our abusers.

"Pity ... should be reserved for innocent people who are in genuine pain or who have fallen on misfortune. If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath."

That's it, in a nutshell. Beware the person who wounds and betrays you, and then portrays themselves as the greater victim, and expects you to comfort THEM for having harmed YOU. They are inviting you to join forces with them against yourself, and laughing all the way.

And she does not simply describe and deplore the problem - which is the frustrating reality of so many self-help books - she actually offers thirteen specific points for action. I won't summarize all of them here, but I do want to touch upon three of them.

Her eighth point is... NO CONTACT. She makes the point that "Sociopaths live completely outside of the social contract, and therefore to include them in relationships ... is perilous."

Her ninth point is a strong recommendation to pity with care... not to give away pity easily, and not to be manipulated into pitying our abusers.

Her tenth point is... let go. GIVE UP. Or, as she puts it, "Do not try to redeem the unredeemable." ... "If you ... want to help people, then help only those who truly want to be helped. I think you will find this does not include the person who has no conscience."

I will leave points one to seven and eleven to thirteen for people to discover during their own exploration, and will discuss only one more aspect of this incredible book.

Dr. Stout makes an interesting differentiation between narcissists and sociopaths. She considers a narcissist to be halfway to sociopathy, but does not perceive all narcissists as wholly sociopathic. In her view, narcissists have a full range of emotions, but only as they apply to themselves; they are devoid of empathy, and cannot envision others experiencing the same emotions, on their own behalfs, with equal validity or even an equal right to these feelings. Sociopaths, on the other hand, are devoid not only of empathy, but of conscience, and are essentially dead emotionally, except for primitive rage and 'the excitement of the kill' [which, for noncriminals, equates to abuse, theft, sabotage of someone's career, soiling of someone's relationship by seducing their husband or wife, etc. - essentially, an addiction to cruelty].

I have reached the conclusion, for myself, that this distinction is actually fairly minor; as far as I am concerned, a narcissist is basically a sociopath who happens to have feelings for themselves. But that is my conclusion, not hers.

This is a truly remarkable book. It is well written, well organized, eminently readable, and eminently sane. Dr. Stout clearly cares deeply about the impact of unrecognized sociopathy on our society and on individual people within that society... and has laid out the heart of her own life's work in these pages, as a gift, that others might learn and find ways to protect and heal themselves.

"You ___ too much!"

Do you ___ too much?

This is not a party game; it's a real question.

Have you been told that you --

think too much?

care too much?

are too sensitive?

Does your critic tell you this most often when they, or someone they approve of, has hurt you, and you've spoken up for yourself?

It is certainly possible to ___ too much. Many Americans take in more calories than they expend, and as a result, are overweight: we eat too much. We drive when we could as easily walk, we spend the days glued to our desks and the evenings glued to our blogs [ahem]: we sit too much. We may well drink too much, watch television too much, play video games too much...

But all of these too-muches are things that do us harm, sooner or later. And those who criticize us for them, tactless though they may be, are usually attempting to speak the truth in love, in order to protect us from future harm.

Thinking too much? Caring too much? Feeling too much?

These criticisms, more often than not, are the disarmament tactics of people who are speaking nothing true, without love, in order to make it that much easier for them to harm us, in the future.

Hostile Dependency

I used to feel that it was right and meet to stay with any person to whom I had opened my heart, 'right to the bitter end'.

It took me years to realize that I didn't need to suffer so for people who were unwilling to do even the smallest thing to help, please, or otherwise consider me; let alone for people who actually had a 'hostile dependent' focus on me, clutching me frantically with one hand while they stabbed away like mad with the [metaphorical] knife they were holding in the other.

I've become convinced that most if not all emotional abuse is hostile dependency in action.

When abusers are raising you to be psychological prey, which they do, they are very very careful to teach you that it is selfish and bad to consider your own needs.

Ever, at any time.

And they also make sure to teach you that you must, on the other hand, always, and without exception, consider everyone else's needs.

Thus you have an ingrained double bind from the moment you're old enough to be told anything. Everyone else matters; you do not.

Doesn't matter whether they do this from calculation or instinct. What matters is that they do it.

Hostile dependency is a complete no-win situation... nothing we can do will fix it, nothing will change it. The other person has a compulsion to act out against those close to them, while at the same time they feel a desperate need to stay near and hold on to the people they want to hurt. Their targets are powerless to alter that.

Because this is so bizarre, because every story and every myth that we are taught in our culture tells us that when we act lovingly towards someone, the response from them will be loving, it is very difficult to believe in this dynamic when it is happening to us. Thus, we're set up to doubt our own perceptions.

Normally I think that the only way out is through, but in this situation, I think the only way through is out. This type of interaction is one I will abandon in a heartbeat, because I have learned from sad experience that it is the seed from which stalking and scapegoating and domestic violence and 'mobbing' [group bullying] dynamics and many other bad things spring.

Re 'mobbing': in group dynamics there is a term, 'outgroup', and another term, 'enemy creation'. Underlying these two terms is the fact that some groups require an enemy, or outsiders to exclude, in order to preserve their own cohesion and their members' feelings of specialness. Gangs, for instance, and some middle-school cliques [which usually morph into water-cooler cliques when the middle-schoolers get older, if they've never really grown up] tend to require an external enemy in order to survive.

If that isn't hostile dependency writ large, I honestly don't know what else it could be.

Watch What they Do, Not What They Say

She was kind to strangers because she wanted to convince them that she was a lovely dear person; she was savage to her family because she could get away with it - they were in no position to leave her, and she knew that nobody would ever believe them.

Being sweet as honey to outsiders while being shockingly vicious to your near and dear is standard operating procedure for abusers of all types - emotional abusers, child abusers, spouse batterers.

Most people are easily taken in by a charming performance; this may partly come from mental laziness, but I believe it's largely due to the fact that we are immersed in a culture that values 'positivity' far more than realism, and almost literally worships 'winners' while it scapegoats anyone branded a 'loser'.

As a result, all too often when an abused spouse or child attempts to get help or a hearing from family or friends, the people they talk to have been pre-emptively fooled by the abuser, and won't believe them. There are few crueler, or more blatantly selfish, forms of human folly on earth than the entrenched belief that "A can't possibly be abusing B because A is so polite to me." Thus do abusers literally get away with murder.

In a depressing variation on the deception theme, abusers sometimes fool even mental health professionals and legal authorities; the abusers are calm and suave, while the person seeking help is clearly distraught. All too often, the source of distress is not understood, and it's much simpler and easier to 'write off' the weaker-seeming party. And sadly, those who simply and openly prefer to identify with abusers may be found among mental health professionals and legal authorities, as well. After all, these positions are powerful... and abusers are drawn to power.

Never believe that a person is their 'image' - especially when their 'image' is extremely important to them, and they seem heavily, overly invested in protecting it. Images are just that: a deliberate creation.

Don't believe what people say. Watch what they actually do, especially to people like waiters, waitresses, janitors, etc., and even more especially when they don't think anyone is looking.

It may take a little longer, and it may require a bit more effort, but it pays off.

My Nearest, Dearest... Saboteur?

I was eighteen the first time it happened. Or, perhaps, it just took me that long to recognize it.

I was in college. There were exams. There was a young man... who claimed to love me... yet strangely, was most interested in me, most insistent that I spend time with him, just when I insisted on studying for those exams.

There were explanations that fell on deaf ears. There was the claim that 'if I loved him I'd make time for him'. There was the counterclaim that 'if he loved me he could wait two days to see me until my test was over.' There was, incredibly, the ultimatum... see him when he insisted, or not at all.

The choice was sadly easy.

The next time it happened it was a gaggle of girlfriends playing the part. Come out tonight and party with us. Can't, I have an exam tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep. Oh, come on, you're such an old stick in the mud. Sorry you see it that way, but I have an exam tomorrow, gotta get some sleep.

It wasn't always exams. Sometimes, it was food [oh, forget that silly diet! One little piece of double chocolate buttercream frosted devils food cake won't do you any harm]. Sometimes it was other things [what do you mean I can't smoke dope in your car and make obscene gestures at police cars on the road?]. Sometimes it was very serious other things indeed [I can't believe you'd insist on using contraception when we really love each other] [and I can't believe you'd want to put me at such risk when you claim to really love me!]

And it didn't stop after college.

And it didn't stop after graduate school.

And three decades into the working world, it still hasn't stopped.

What did stop, what stopped by the time I was twenty, was my believing that anyone who claimed to love me, but actively encouraged me to do things that would potentially harm me, actually gave a damn about me, ever.

I was lucky.