Hi everyone, I am a new member -

I don't know if my story is the same as everyone elses, all I know is that I met somebody who completely destroyed any semblance of self I had. For two years after it ended I cried EVERY SINGLE DAY from morning to night and wished myself dead for relief...

Lucky for me, that I met my now husband - a wonderful, humble man who picked me up out of the debris...and helped me like myself again. No idea where I would be otherwise.

It starts before the actual story starts. I was involved with my 1st husband for 12 years - although he was not a psychopath, we had a volatile, abusive relationship...to the point that there would be weeks when we were in the house and not even utter one single word to one another...It came to a head after the birth of our third child, who has down syndrome...(on some level he needed to blame me for it because he was unable to deal with it) - So, I packed up my three children and moved back to the area where I grew up to be close to my family.

I was 33, flat broke, had never worked and could see myself with not many options.

So, I took a job selling novelty bags on Saturday's and Sunday's, for very meager money, and enrolled in college as a mature aged student during the week.

This is where the real story begins:

I decided I was going to do a course in Network Management/Engineering as the big IT boom was still in the early stages...and I was thinking about the best ways to be able to support myself.

J* was a lecturer in one of my classes. Straight away he had more presense than anyone I had ever seen. The students flocked to him on their lunch breaks. I wouldn't say he was handsome, in any classic sense of the word, but he was the most attractive, confident man I had ever known - (To this day I am still attracted to him).

At this point it gets fuzzy - He screwed with my mind so much that for a long time I did not know what was real and what wasn't - I have been to counselling over this...but there is still a confusion that I cannot shake.

I can say at first, when first meeting him, I thought he was full of himself - and I never spoke to him outside of class...

Something changed and I started to feel protective towards him, as if I was entirely responsible for his mood.

I never sought him out. NEVER. I knew he was married, due to his wedding ring...But he started to seek me out. Before and after college and during breaks. He was so charming, so caring, so witty, and so funny....that going to college became about *J. And nothing else.

Then he stopped wearing his wedding ring.

When we were in his class, he would sit next to me with his leg touching mine...and master flirt with me.

Him: *D wants everything.
Me: What do you mean I want everything.
Him: (A wink) Sorry Freudian slip.

Midway through my course (18 months through) I got offered a job - a well paying job - from a firm that I had been doing some temp work for. So I deffered the rest of my study and left college.

Thats when he started calling me at home.

He told me he was going to call over on his way home from work one day, for a cup of coffee, to talk to me about how the job was going, catch up and ect. At this time, please understand, I was already smitten, so I agreed.

He came.

He sat me down.

"I have left my wife. YOU drive me crazy. What are we going to do about this."

That is when our relationship started.

All the way through I had the feeling that he had never left his wife. Little things. He would stay over but have to leave at 5am in the morning...Among other things that made me confront him about it. The reply I got was this:

"Why would I lie to you? I am in love with you. I don't use those words lightly because I have been hurt by them."

He told me he wanted to marry me. Had big plans for the future....But still it was always peppered with uncertainty on my part...

To the point where I made him PROMISE that what he was saying was true. He did so without blinking an eyelid.

When it all came out in the open...he had been away on a holiday with his football buddies.

We had been speaking three times daily on the phone, and when he came back he was coming to spend the week at my house. He had asked me that while he was away, I told my ex-husband about him (who was still trying to get back with me) - and also told my kids that he was more than JUST a friend...

I did all of this. (Now trusting him implicitely)

On the day he was due to arrive at my house, he never turned up. This was a man who rang me 4, 5, 6 times a day and I never heard from him for a week.

Then he called, said we needed to talk, and arranged to pick me up for dinner.

Over dinner:

"I can't leave my family."

Me: "You told me you'd already left."

He ignored that comment. Looked at me in a way that made me feel stupid for believing what he'd told me. (Like I should have SOMEHOW known that it was a lie).

Then I started crying - I was devestated.

Then, of all things, he offered me his alternative - AN AFFAIR. I promptly refused.

Over the next few months, in the middle of dealing with my own grief, I started to feel sorry for him. Started to feel bad about myself for not being smart enough, and understanding the "ways" of "PEOPLE" for not figuring it out sooner. Absolved him by concluding that he probably thought I knew, and if I had of been smarter, I would have.

I wrote him an email - basically saying, "Don't feel bad, you are still a good teacher, it was a two way street...ect, ect"

He promptly rang me.

"Please can we still be friends. Please can we talk on the phone occasionally. I am having second thoughts. I am so sorry. I really really miss you. I think about you every day."

So I said yes.

Understand, I never EVER called him once.

But a few weeks later, on New Years Eve I sent a group message wishing everyone a happy new year.

The next day I got a message with the txt. "I no longer want to be your friend. Do not contact me again."

I wrote back. "Okay fine. Whatever."

Then the phone rang and it was his wife. She was the one who had messaged me.

He had twisted the whole story around, like he had never done anything...had been an innocent party and I was a home wrecker trying to take him away from his family. He had not told her I was his student. That we had been involved at all as anything other than friends. And he'd never left her.

When I told her my point of view - She immediately gave him an excuse - "Oh he was probably just having a mid life crisis. He is feeling old." (He was 50 at the time.)

Everyone else gave him an excuse too. Friends I had made at college, listened and ohhed and ummed, but suddenly I was the bad guy. The home wrecker.

Because he is so charismatic everybody adores him. He is like a people magnet.

I had a complete nervous breakdown after his wife called - even started to believe that maybe it was all in my head, that I had made it all up, that I was insane. This is how much he had me doubting myself. (lucky, lucky, lucky for me that I had saved his emails and his txts- because that has been a Godsend. I know that I am not insane. I have proof.)

Worse though, I still loved him. I tried to twist things around to make him innocent...It was easier to believe that I was the bad guy.

For two years after that I COULD NOT FUNCTION. I left my job. I nearly got my children taken off me by my ex husband, because all I could do was lay in bed all day crying...and I thought, for the first time in my life, about suicide on a number of occasions.

There is so much more to this story that I do not have the capacity to even write down...and the length would make it unreadable. All I can say is that I now know that there are people who can completely, completely destroy others through manipulation.

Before then, I never, ever knew such evil existed.