Once Upon a Time My Gay Boyfriend Abused Me and Never Knew It until Now

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Recently I let go of two friends, they gaslighted me, and since drama is not my middle name, I chose to disappear in their lives.

Since my MOM passed away this year, I thought it is best to fix relationships with people from the past. So, of course, on top of my list was my ex-boyfriend. I always thought he was a kind and gentle person and that having him back in my life would be great, or so I thought.

I talked to him on the messenger, and it started a conversation of forgiveness and letting go of the past.

It all worked well.

After all, we haven’t talked for years, and yet I felt, or we both felt, there is still a connection. But, it was clear in my head and my heart that we have moved forward, all we can offer each other is friendship.

We would still finish each other sentences.

He would tell me sweet little nothings in between our conversations, like, you will always be my first love, or we still have a vacation together.

How I Met My Gay Boyfriend

I always considered him to be my first real boyfriend, the one I will spend the rest of my life with. I came out late as a gay man; I was already 32 when I finally realized that I am gay.

I am free. I am gay.

But my coming out was also the time of my biggest heartbreak. I wrote about him, the guy who I loved and never knew if he ever loved me, because one day he left, and he was gone.

It took me twenty years, a BL movie, and a gay friend who told me what it is to lose, go and find him.

I did find him, the man I loved twenty years ago, and finally, there was closure or was there ever a need to have one.

I always bounce back.

The next four years after my coming out were my lost years. Until one day, I decided life goes on, enough of the drama, and start moving forward.

Photography saved me.

DAD being a photographer himself, taught me basic photography. Soon after, with pure grit, I was able to land a job as a cruise photographer.

Being a cruise photographer isn’t easy. I have many stories to share someday with you, but it allowed me to see the world and, yes, met my ex-boyfriend.

The Love Boat

Love happens. It happens on the love boat, not only for passengers but for crew members. It is never easy. In comparison, it is easy to find someone to like or even have a relationship with. It is hard even to think if it will last. Crew members often have a joke about love, that it is only for this contract.

When I met my ex-boyfriend, it felt this is it. Or, like me, I always fall blindly in love.

He pursued me. He was about my age, a year older. He was 37.

Boy meets Boy — A Love Story.

My Boy Love story begins, if I remember it, right in San Francisco, where we met. The Alaska season has ended. The Princess ship is moving to Mexico.

If there is a sign that I should have taken early on, soon after we started dating, there was a fire on the ship. Talk about Towering Inferno, the ship edition, or the gay version of The Titanic.

The Love story is ill-fated, but I chose to learn the lessons the hard way, and boy, the lessons were hard, as they happened to me.

He came home with me after we finished our contracts.

But looking back, he coerced my photo manager then who happens to be like him, a South African, not to allow my transfer to Brazil when the photography team needed one as a substitute.

I would have done the same, asked the head office not to transfer me. But he decided it for me. It felt then it was a sweet thing for him to do that. Being the man in charge, he seized what he wanted, and I felt then he wanted me.

After we separated, it was one of the things I hated him for, taking away from me the right to decide for myself and an opportunity to be in Brazil, which remains to this day, on my travel bucket list.

The Hell Hole

In the later contracts, we are no longer working on the same ship. We tried our best. I know we both did. We would still do vacations together.

Looking back, I was always the one adjusting to his contracts. I would ask the head office in LA to cut or extend my contract depending on how his contract ends. Never did he took the initiative to do the same for me.

Again looking back, another sign that I missed.

After three years of being together and yet apart, he managed to come to my ship as a replacement one day.

It turned out he fell in love with someone else, a Thai gay man, younger and willing to be his Asian boy, something I will never be, or never allow, or so I thought.

The time with him being on the same ship was the worst time of my life.

After finding out the truth, the pain he caused me, the lies I discovered and his secrets, the boys he had unprotected sex with within all the ports he had visited. And as our ship goes to Asia, It was heaven for him.

The many promises he can’t keep, and the tears that followed.

The Breakup

After that contract, he took a vacation in Thailand alone to pursue the Thai boy he left for me. It must haven’t worked out, as the Thai boy had a foreign boyfriend back home. I have no judgment for that gay boy. I hardly knew him.

Soon after, I get a call from my ex-boyfriend asking for another chance. Again, I should have walked away. But a single visit to hell wasn’t enough that I needed to go back to hell because it was round two of being in hell and having to cry more buckets of tears.

The same lies, he was more promiscuous, and he stopped hiding it from me.

One day, he talked me into doing something I regret doing, something I should have said no. Still, he gets his way. He sweet-talked me, but now I know what it was, he never physically abused me, but he abused me mentally.

He knew I was weak. He knew he could easily manipulate me.

He shared me with other men.

It was in the Caribbean. He talked me into going to a nude beach. To prove to him that I can be fun. Because then, I would tell myself, the reason he was looking for other men because I wasn’t fun in bed. I took all the blame.

One day, when we were in St. Maarten, he must have been there in his previous contracts. At first, he asked me to take his nude photos, only to find out much later that he was sending them to my friends.

And soon after, he asked me to do something I thought will never happen to me to have sex with many men at the same time. I am unsure if he knew the man beforehand. The mere thought of it now brings me to a dark place.

All I can remember now is I was having sex with him and a total stranger.

We never talked about it, but I felt I did well by him. But, unfortunately, it didn’t happen once, it happened again, and I didn’t want to be that person, and one day, I walked away.

If I didn’t leave him, it was slow descent to the rabbit hole, to a dark place that I will never find a way out of.

It was the last secret. He manipulates people to get what he wants.

Choosing myself.

I have to find ways to heal myself from the trauma. I have always been disturbed when I hear stories of trauma, that it takes years if people recover from what psychiatrists call PTSD.

I remember this now because of an incident that happened recently. My ex-boyfriend was feeling sad or lonely as his new boyfriend was on vacation.

It felt, he needed a surrogate to comfort him, and I can’t be that person to him, or I chose not to, and in one of my Facebook posts, he publicly calls me stupid.

And all the memories came back; it was like watching a movie in a matter of seconds—flashbacks upon flashbacks, that day when he coerced me to have sex with another man.

I knew then that I was suffering from PTSD, a trauma that I never understood until now.

Like the friends I let go of recently, I choose to let go of my ex-boyfriend. But, like the other two friends who gaslighted me, he will never admit to the bad things he did to me.

All I do is to choose myself, to move forward, and let go.

Forgiveness is the only way to free me, but forgiving people doesn’t mean they remain in my life.

For me to be OK, I need to be OK being alone.