I USUALLY HAVE A TITLE IN MIND WHEN I START WRITING. My blog posts kind flow out of me. It's like telling a story to a good friend but this one feels different. It is time to tell the story of my abuse. Of years of lies and heartbreak. I need to share my story because I know I am not the only one.
It has been almost a year since I finally forced Picasso out of my life. The relationship lasted for three years but should have been over in the first two months. I was broken. I met Picasso online September 30, 2015. You might remember my husband left me over 4th of July for his office assistant he had been having an affair with for the majority of our marriage. I was going through a nasty divorce. Broken doesn't begin to describe what I was dealing with on the heels of him wrecking our lives. That is a story for another day...
Picasso was so adamant to meet me, he wanted me to come see him that day. I don't even know why I opened his message because he didn't have a picture. He said it was because he was from a small town and owned a business. I agreed to lunch in Stillwater the next day and we began talking non stop.
He sounded so perfect, he told me he had gone through a long divorce, from his wife of 13 years. That he gave up his horse farm, house and most other things to keep his business in tact. His ex wife was "crazy" and still wanted him back. He had an ex girlfriend that he was friends with, that use to work for him but they rarely spoke now. He was country and his daughter was a senior so his plan was to move back to grand lake where he was from when she graduated, so the long distance thing could be for a year.
Two months into this on a Sunday night after a weekend together, I had his phone in my hand and a text message from Lewis, comes up. I open it, and see that Lewis is clearly a woman, that he is lying to, that he is dating and telling her he is working when he is in town with me. I proceed to kick him out of my house.
But he is smooth and I was broken, he explains that it has been over, he doesn't know how to get away. He does care for her but doesn't see a future and he wants me. He picks me. She contacts me, she is devastated. She wanted to know how we met, she assumed it was online, she was right. I didn't tell her that but she was right. She warns me of what I am getting into and for the next couple of years would be a staple in my life. While he went back and forth between us. Mostly without me ever knowing.
That was the first incident. I started getting messages from his ex wife and her friends, they were pretty nice at first - you seem like you have your life together, keep your daughter away from this man. You have no idea what you are getting into, never put all your eggs in his basket.
Then the ones from women he was currently seeing started to come in, "Are you dating Picasso?" When I would respond with yes I would be sent their text messages. Fake Facebook profiles were created to send me info about where he was and who he was with. All of this he explained away by his crazy ex wife just wanting to ruin his life.
The women were a problem but somehow he convinced me it wasn't true, over and over, it wasn't true. But then the alcohol became the bigger problem. He said he never drank but he seemed to drink until he passed out every single night. Bourbon. Lots and lots of bourbon.
He got drunk one night and we started arguing. I went to get my things out of his room, he blocked the door, still yelling. I started crying, where would I go. I was in Arkansas City, KS I literally knew no one. His daughter was at college. We had been drinking, where do I go. The fight escalates. He climbs on top of me wraps his hands around my neck and his eyes were dark and full of rage. I am smacking at his face, he snaps out of it and lets me up. Still trapped in this town, not able to drive home. I pack up my things, and cry on the couch until morning. I drove myself home and the apologies begin.
It isn't me, you know I wouldn't hurt you, I am sorry, I will stop drinking like that, I am so sorry, I love you. You are my world. Please let me see you.
This had happened another time, in the summer of 2016 at my house he accidentally elbowed me in the face in an argument by his truck. Then threw me up against my car, screaming he would kill me and holding the back of my neck. He left, we ended things and dated other people. He called and begged me to see him for months, I finally caved.
Things seemed to be getting better, he was working in Tulsa more, so we decided to get a house that was more comfortable for all of us. We moved in what we be "ours" in May of 2017.
August of 2017 we have our final physical altercation. Tuesday night, he gets drunk at the cigar box comes home, is on his phone, gets mad we start arguing. He started throwing things at me. First pillows, then whatever he can find, rips a painting that is hanging above the bed, puts two holes in the walls, and then takes the dresser drawer full of his clothes and chunks it at me, it shatters on me and the dresser legs.
I know how this goes. I warned him, if he didn't calm down I would call the police. I know not to let him near me. It was escalating, I just called. I walked outside he is screaming he will kill me, the dispatcher has it all recorded. I wait for the cops. They take him away.
One of the major fights was about where his cell phone was, I had no idea. I literally didn't, he was on it and then he put it somewhere. I went through the house with the officer and I swore up and down he was drunk and he had it somewhere but I hadn't touched his phone.
When he left I took my phone and called his until I finally found it. Hidden behind the nightstand. I opened it up, we always had each others passcode and as a show of trust, I was always allowed in his phone. After the other women stuff, it was the least he could do.This time there was an icon on his screen I did not recognize. Yahoo
In an email from an unidentified stranger, I had been told about an email address he stores all his hookups and prostitutes on, I never believed it but in this moment, I knew it was true. I open the app - and there it was 10 years of photos and videos of women. Notifications from an app Seeking Arrangements about messages. I download the app, log into it with the email, 100s of messages, using the name Aaron Waters, different career lies, pharmaceutical sales rep, horse ranch owner, all kinds of things. Picasso is in jail for the night and I am uncovering a world I could never imagine.
In one hour the morning this all happened he responded to or sent 120 messages to women on the Seeking Arrangement website. I saw cash app receipts, venmo messages, he was paying for pictures and sex with strangers. He had photos of the women, in his bed, while he was having sex with them. I can still vividly remember the tattoos under one of their breasts and his dick inside her, while he snapped a photo of her and she covered her face. That cost $50 apparently. There was a fake number they would use, it was an app he paid for as well. All of these things he would delete off his phone systematically when he was home with me. So if I picked it up he was never at risk. They didn't have his real name, his real number or know anything about him.
I was up all night, and all day researching trying to understand. 120 messages in an hour begging for introductions, pictures, conversations, meet ups - this was a sickness. This is an addiction. The pictures and emails went back a decade. A full blown 10 years of this behavior. It obviously is what ruined his marriage, even if she never knew it. Threesomes, with the girlfriend that worked for him that he apparently left his wife for. It was all there.
I kicked him out, he stayed in a hotel. I wanted him gone.
He begged, he pleaded. We had a life together, a house, building a business for him here. I was his family now, he loved our daughters together. He was so sorry. He will get help. It is a disease.
I know just enough psychology to be dangerous. He was right, this was an addiction. He had literally rewired his brain to need this sexual deviancy to feel pleasure. Regular sex didn't do it for him the way random sex did. The need to have many women wanting him, some of them thought they could date him, and they didn't even know his real name.
He begs me to see a counselor with him, he finds one that specializes in sex addiction and recovery. I agree.
We go and I am head first diving into his trauma, his inability to create true intimacy, his lies, he childhood, his addiction. We set a plan: one year, therapy, Sex Addict Anonymous Group for him, both seeing therapists, couples counseling and he agrees to lie detector tests.
My therapist and I sit down and in our first meeting she asks me obvious questions. I am young, attractive, successful, with my whole life together, why save this. All I can muster is I love him, I see the illness side of this and I am hoping he can get help. She says a few other important things to me this day. Lets not worry about getting him help, lets help you, so that in a year, if this isn't working you are all whole and healed and ready to move on. We will focus on you, your patterns, what you need to work on, and the PTSD because I was dealing with some massive PTSD after all of this.
FIFTEEN MONTHS go by, some good some rocky. About every 60 days, I kick him out for a day or two because he isn't going to counseling, or group, and he still hasn't taken the lie detector. In this time, I had created some really healthy boundaries for myself. Because I was not suppose to trust someone who kept hurting me and not doing what they said. I had outlined what would make me walk away and never look back. Written it down. Told him.
OSU homecoming weekend - end of October 2018. Such a good weekend, I had family Christmas photos scheduled at the Christmas Tree Farm. His daughter was coming home to have dinner and take pictures with us. Everyone was excited. On the drive from Stillwater to Tulsa, I get a message. Rayna- Are you Picassos girlfriend?
By girlfriend, if you mean live in life partner, that works with him in business, and raises our kids together, joint bank accounts, and a whole life recognized as a marriage by most who know us, yes - I am his GIRLFRIEND.
I turn to him, having been here before and I ask who she is... He makes up some story. I tell him to listen to me very carefully: If you lie to me now, we are over. If you do not have the decency to tell me to my face what I am about to see, we are over. You have one shot here. One chance and it is the truth. Tell me the truth. You know what she is about to send me. You know what she is going to say and what you have done/said to her. Tell me to my face, don't let this woman be the one to tell me. Man up.
Lies.
I get the screenshots of their most recent messages. He offered to fly her for the weekend to Louisville where he had been on a project. Where I had just been with him for a weekend. He told her he wanted to be with her, that he loved her.
Remember those boundaries I had created that I would walk away, they were pretty lean. I would have worked through anything but two things: him lying to my face when confronted in a situation just like this, and if he ever told another woman he loved her.
I love you is sacred. If he can rattle off I love you to every literal hooker that was getting money out of him to send him pictures or keep his secrets then what does I love you mean, when he says it to me. If you love her, you do NOT love me.
After a tense drive, we pull into the driveway, I tell him to grab a bag and what he needs for the night and leave, do not make a scene. My parents were swinging by with Maddie and props for our Christmas Photos scheduled for 2 hours from now. I call his 20 year old daughter and give her a very abridged version of why we would not be taking photos together and that he was moving out. She understood.
That was the end. I never looked back. I didn't cry or shed a single pound in the break up diet. It was done. It was a relief. It was 15 months of hell and fear of messages, and strange calls. It was 3 years of manipulation, it was physical abuse, it was mental abuse. It was being told "I didn't actually deserve a good guy" that I got him because he was the best I could do. It was him stripping me of my security, my sexuality, our intimacy and me hating myself for it. Hating what I had become. The person that put up with all of it, the idiot that wasted 3 years of my life. I still get mad. I still want to reach out and tell him what kind of a monster he is... But I have to believe he knows what he lost. I have to realize his demons didn't disappear because I was gone. He is not a changed person. I was not the problem. The years of sexual addiction stared a decade before I ever met him. It was probably a lifetime of this behavior in one facet or another. I can't own it. I have to forgive myself for the time wasted, the lessons I learned the hard way. I had to let go and move on....
But if you are dealing with this, with any of this. You aren't alone. You don't have to live it behind closed doors and put on the happy face. You don't have to find happiness in escaping your life by traveling or shopping or whatever else gives you instant gratification. You don't have to ignore what he is doing to keep your life together. I thank God that he finally made me see what I didn't want to face. That he forced me to understand my reality and on a day where I had to take pictures with just my daughter to document the moment forever. The day I finally forced the toxic man out of my life for good, is embodied in the most perfect mother daughter photos I have ever taken.
Be strong. You are loved. You are worthy. It is not your fault.
