Follow up: Marine Man
After reading this post, an anonymous commenter felt compelled to share the following with the original poster and everyone reading. Definitely an angle we didn’t consider, and something to ponder.
Take it away, Anon…
I love yas DCB and Kathryn, but there’s an angle you missed that could be dangerous. You are assuming this guy is being honest in his dealings, but he’s got a lot of red flags in his story that suggest otherwise.
To the writer: be careful girl, and FOLLOW YOUR GUT. Too good to be true? maybe it is You were at a wedding, but don’t say he was a friend of a friend or anything. Still, you must have friends in common–work that network and get information. What do you know about his family, where’s he from? You say he’s single–how do you know? You don’t know where he lives. You don’t have a home phone. You haven’t met his friends. He planned those dates completely, right? Outdoor activities…not at typical “date” times or places, like friday night in town, right? When does he call you, and where is he when he does? The car, on his way home, maybe? Late at night, standing outside? Does he say your name on the phone when you call him at work?
It feels too fast, too much, out of proportion; you say you’re in unfamiliar emotional territory after just three dates. Have you ever been in love? How does this compare to then? Is it more intense, more heady? wrt trusting your gut, here’s a useful trick to find out what it’s saying to you: what metaphors are you using? Do you find you’re “swept off your feet”? “on a ride”? “falling hard”? “out of control”?
When you met you told him he was too serious and dry for you and it turned you off. Then he dropped the serious and dry and turned out to be your dream guy, and suddenly you saw him in a different light, you say. What a coincidence that after you (implicitly) told him what you like in a man, that very night you find out that he actually IS that person, his previous self, which was trying to impress you with other methods, was just a facade. He’s good looking and has alpha-male balls (”tenacity and audacity” as you put it), that plus his background means he’s got all the skills and discipline he needs to pull this kind of manipulation off.
As you might have guessed, I have a bias. I once got played by a married man, and he started preCISEly this way. I had lots of serious-relationship experience–more even than him–but almost no dating/casual/sussing-out-new-people experience. Despite the massive infatuation it felt a bit off, like it does for you now, and I was looking for gut checks with family and friends all the time.
Eventually I followed the smelly parts of his story and found the truth; unfortunately by then we were far into it emotionally. (Oops.)I can hear DCB writing my advice off as bitter from over here, so let me say I well know could be completely off base and reading my situation into yours. I really hope I am and your Marine is what he appears to be: just an eager guy with his light on. I’d be happy to be wrong about this. If I turn out to be please do let me know.
If this seems like me being too suspicious, well it’s not any one thing that made me wonder about your guy, it was the whole package. That said, the simplest red flag here is his use of the L word. A 35 year old guy should know better. Whether he said it as part of a play for you (in which case he’s too manipulative a person) or whether he said it because he thinks it’s true (in which case he’s emotionally immature and you shouldn’t go much farther) it’s a danger sign. Ask him why he said it/says it. I won’t go so far as to speak to his motivations in all this, I know my experience with the type doesn’t go that far. But I’ll tell you what my guy’s was, to give you an idea: escape from his life/wife/problems into a fun and simple fantasy life with me, projecting everything he didn’t have in his marriage onto me whether it was there or not. His actions were always odd in the “starting a new relationship” light, but they made perfect sense in this light. Have you seen “Match Point”? Yeah. It’s like that. For part of the movie, anyway, let’s hope.
(And none of this is even addressing the problems of being with career military officers especially when you are unfamiliar with the demands of the lifestyle, as it sounds like you are. As other commenters have said it is a very different set of considerations. WRT to the potential dishonesty, I’d recommend googling him or ganking his address off his ID and seeing if any other people are listed there, but the military stuff precludes that, unfortunately.)
I know this is long winded, sorry for that. But you can’t believe how horrible my situation was (I’m leaving out lots of gory details). I’ll take the cassandra role, and any of the ribbing and insults it may bring me, if I can make it help someone else, be it this writer or another reader.
