In the beginning

We met at at bar 5 days after my 21st birthday. He was funny and smart and he liked ME! I couldn't believe it. I had always been the friend. The girl who guys love to drink with but, they'd want to date my best friends. Forever Eponine to many a Marius. So, when B. asked me for my number and said he was going to call me the next day, I was like, "Sure, you do that." I was convinced that he wouldn't. He did and he asked me out. It was the beginning of a whirlwind relationship. He was so intense. So insistant that we were meant to be together. I look back and wonder if I was ever really in love with him. He told me that we were going to be together forever after 2 weeeks of dating. I told him he was nuts. That we just met and he had no idea what the future held for us. He stood up, told me that he fully intended for us to stay together, have a family and that if I wasn't on the same page, that there was no use in continuing. He then walked out of my dorm room. This was after 2 WEEKS! He didn't call me for 3 days and finally I called him, apologizing and telling him that I wanted to be with him. This was the beginning of the pattern of our relationship. What he said went. He was never outright mean. In fact, he could be amazingly sweet, but he was so punishing and controling in his silence that I always caved and apologized, even when there was nothing for me to apologize for.

We moved in together at 6 months of dating and were engaged at 9. Everyone seemed OK with this. My parents were thrilled. I was 21 years old and knew him a few months. Why they didn't question this decision, I'll never know. We did have an engagement that lasted 1 1/2 years but that's because I wanted a big wedding and he decided to change jobs while we were planning. I would have gone to City Hall that day if he told me that's what we were going to do. I had always been such an outgoing, confident person. What was it about him that made me so easily manipulated? I was in LOVE and he LOVED me. He was teaching me about sex and how to enjoy it. I could not see past him. I could not see anyone else wanting me the way he did. It was so wonderful to be wanted. I held on to that feeling so much that it clouded anything he did to me later on. So, 2 years almost to the day after we met, we were married. I really believed it would be forever.