It Happened to Me: Loving Him Drove Me to Bankruptcy

My love life hasn’t been easy. I know better now, but it has been a long ride. I look back and realize what kind of fool I was for love.

I was in school working on my Masters, in — guess what — psychology. I was a Sunday school teacher. He attended church with me, even did the Sunday school review. I would get refund checks to have spending money, and buy clothes and shoes and all kinds of stuff, and use it to buy his clothing and jewelry too.

He once even coerced me to use my refund checks as a down payment on a car. He coerced me, too. I didn’t have enough money to pay the note; so the car got repossessed. Before I knew it, my mortgage payment got behind and he called the bank to work out a payment plan, without my knowledge. My house almost went into foreclosure. My bills got behind. He made arrangements without my knowledge. Therefore, I had to create a pass code so that he would not access my account again. We had bank accounts together.
 
We had two gym memberships, each. When I wanted to workout, he never wanted to go, but would always go without me.
 
I was looking bad and gaining weight. When I got dressed in the morning, he would tell me how pretty I looked. But, when I saw myself in the mirror later during the day, I looked like an old woman.
 
He would cook steaks, and shrimp, and fish, and chicken, and potatoes, beans, and greens, and so on, in the middle of the night (I paid for it) and would feed me in my sleep. He wanted to feed me out of his hand and I let him.
 
I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be staring at me. He said that he was praying for me. He would lay down next to me and talk to God about me, so he watched over me during the night. He said that we were married among he stars like people were during the time of Moses.
 
I stopped going to my church and starting attending his. When the money started to get low, I started going to check-cashing places. I have 11 loans to repay. I took him on vacation for a week to Florida and Tennessee.
 
He touched every area of my life.

He went to my class reunion with me and paraded us around like we were engaged. He visited my mother’s house, with me and my children, on ALL holidays. He befriended my friends. When they called, he would answer my phone and carry on conversations with them as if they were his friends.
 
Sad to say, I’m now in Chapter 13 and I only receive $827 a month because of the Chapter 13 payment, which includes my mortgage payment as a guarantee to pay the note.
 
It wasn’t love. It was self-abuse. In my mind, we were friends and lovers having bad times. I loved him. I missed him. I didn’t want to be without him, no matter what. I am so embarrassed of myself, to myself.

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