I’ve been on a few dates now, and I’ve had to tell a few people that I just wasn’t interested in moving forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last Monday, I noticed\u00a02 blocked calls coming to my cell and chose not to answer them on principal.\u00a0 On Tuesday, I went to bed early, but woke up to a series of missed blocked calls – 11:00 PM, 11:20 PM, 12:44 AM.\u00a0 And a voicemail.<\/p>\n
“Joey, hi, this is [Adam Morgan’s] wife calling you? And I just wanted to let you know that he is HIV positive so that you don’t get HIV.\u00a0 Just FYI.\u00a0 If he’s calling you to mess around with you, he messes around with a lot of women.\u00a0 He’s had a lot of affairs.\u00a0 He has a lot of escorts that he deals with. He messes around all of the time.\u00a0 Just FYI. This is his wife [Rhonda Morgan] calling you.\u00a0 He’s HIV positive.\u00a0 Goodbye.”<\/em><\/p>\n Getting a message like this in the middle of the night can be very unsettling.\u00a0 Although I realize that this woman had no way of knowing where I lived, I still felt as if my life had been invaded.\u00a0\u00a0I lay in bed,\u00a0listening to the message a second time.\u00a0<\/p>\n I hadn’t dated [Adam Morgan].\u00a0 I certainly hadn’t messed around with him.\u00a0 He was actually a candidate I had presented to a client for a job.\u00a0 I had given him my cell number so he could follow up after his interview and tell me how it went.\u00a0<\/p>\n I wondered about the woman who would leave a message like that.\u00a0 To be someone’s wife (if she actually was who she claimed to be) and to feel compelled to leave that kind of message.\u00a0 Her voice was not shaky or wavery.\u00a0 There were no tears or anger in her voice – just hardness.\u00a0 As if it was a message she had left several times before.<\/p>\n It reminded me of a call I had received back almost 20 years ago.\u00a0\u00a0The woman identified herself as [Neil’s] girlfriend.\u00a0 Neil was a co-worker.\u00a0 He and I worked in different states\u00a0and had never met in person. We had developed a heavy flirtation, and had exchanged a few funny cards in the mail. I had no idea he was living with someone.<\/p>\n His girlfriend had found the cards in his gym bag, and my phone number in his wallet.\u00a0 When she called me and identified herself, I immediately apologized and told her that I had no idea that she existed.\u00a0 I would have never flirted with him had I known.<\/p>\n She, like Rhonda Morgan, told me that this was something he had done several times before.\u00a0 I asked her why she was still with him.\u00a0 I suggested she dump his cheating behind.\u00a0 She thought I was just saying that so I could have him for myself.\u00a0 It became obvious that she wasn’t going to listen to me, I was the other woman. I apologized again and hung up the phone.<\/p>\n More than once, I’ve found out that the one I was with wanted to be with someone else.\u00a0 Even though it would hurt me to know it, I would rather have someone tell me this and break up with me, than to cheat on me.\u00a0 My last boyfriend told me this, and I accepted it.\u00a0 I didn’t like it.\u00a0 But I accepted it.<\/p>\n Only once did I ever contact the “other woman.”\u00a0I\u00a0sent an email\u00a0to let her know that I existed.\u00a0 I told her\u00a0that if she chose to continue to email my husband, she would be knowingly breaking up a marriage.\u00a0 I told my husband what I did, thinking the shame would stop him.\u00a0 It didn’t.\u00a0 It’s demeaning to stay in that kind of relationship.\u00a0 It’s mentally debilitating and degrading to your worth as a human being.\u00a0 But that inferior attitude is something\u00a0many of us\u00a0allow to occur.<\/p>\n I\u00a0no longer\u00a0believe in staying together and staying miserable.\u00a0 No religious invocation can convince me that this is the way. I will no longer leave midnight messages.\u00a0 I will simply walk away.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been on a few dates now, and I’ve had to tell a few people that I just wasn’t interested in moving forward.\u00a0 Last Monday, I noticed\u00a02 blocked calls coming to my cell and chose not to answer them on principal.\u00a0 On Tuesday, I went to bed early, but woke up to a series of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UnPK-17","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}