(No surprises to follow, but there is one last question... For anyone reading this who is in the middle of dealing with an emotional manipulator, or a habitual liar, I detail this, it seems a prime example of many points of how this is done... Look before you leap... Don't look for an oasis beneath a swamp... )
(And for the hecklers who think my writing this is just attention seeking on my part: No this isn't jerry springer... Think investigative journalism on my own situation, to document it, as yet another warning post for others who might be experiencing parts of this, to help them see just how bad these situations can get... Thanks for those who can appreciate how painful it is to go through this, and how journalling about it helps, trying to turn the sleeplessness and rumination in my head into something of use to others, your feedback has been helpful... )
Yesterday I spoke with an old girlfriend who is now into giving hypnosis therapy for healing. I met with her a month ago to talk to her about what is happening. She is very kind and very into loving people, but could give no benefit of the doubt to the things my girlfriend is doing. She told me my girlfriend sounds a lot like her sister, and she had to give up on trying to help her sister.
Yesterday I asked her some questions about my girlfriends weed habit. My girlfriend will claim that she only smokes $20 of weed a week. For me, just one or two puffs of a joint, plus sitting in the second hand smoke of her finishing the whole thing, will send me into lala land for about 4 hours. However, I watched as my girlfriend claims an entire blunt only gets her high for an hour. I've also watched her go through 2 or 3 blunts in one sitting. She claims she has no appetite without smoking weed, and claims she can go almost a whole day on one very small meal if she doesn't smoke weed. She frequently smokes weed to have enough appetite to eat before our restaurant dates.
According to my friend, each blunt is about $20 of weed, and someone who can smoke three in a day, and only gets high for an hour, that is very heavy usage. My friend said it isn't worth it to only have a high for an hour, weed can be good as medicine, but used as a drug the girlfriend has built up a lot of resistance. Her opinion is that my girlfriends drug habit is quite heavy. My friend said she had to kick out a boyfriend who was going through hundreds of dollars of weed a month but not working.
When I was going out with my friend 15 years ago, it seemed to me like she lived to smoke weed, and we tried to have a business together, but she was too busy dreaming on the weed to actually get much work done, and that frustrated me. I needed a do-er to help me in my business, not a dreamer. But these days she said she smokes very little (she has a pot card), and she actually feels "sloppy" when she smoked some at a concert recently. It's nice to hear that in 15 years, some people can outgrow their weed habit.
I told her about some of the insights I've gained from two or three times I've smoked weed with my girlfriend into how screwed up her head must be. Weed smokers might look like they are functioning OK, they might look like they function better than drunks, but the inside of their head must be like a house full of funhouse mirrors...
And weed is not the only habit. My girlfriend has admitted to liking to drink a lot, margaritas, patron, etc. She's a tall girl, big bones, can probably handle a lot just from that alone... She gets upset that I don't drink when we are out, it makes her feel uncomfortable she has claimed. I isn't judging anyone, no one else seems to worry whether the cranberry juice I have includes alcohol... She's been telling me recently how a former motorcycle club associate called her up to have a drink, but may have tried to drug her drink. She told me of another time she felt a little funny after part of a drink she was given, then gave it to her friend who got knocked for a loop and said, "wow, yeah smoething in that..." So she is constantly on guard for this kind of thing in the crowd she runs in. Maybe part of the reason she won't let me come and party in her crowd. What a life, huh?
Perhaps one aspect of interest in her is that her life is so different... Need to realize that is what reality TV is for, and it's free even.
Soapbox Sidebar: And no, this friend I mention was never a sex worker. She was a college student at the time, I mentored her in web publishing at the beginning of the web era, and she has been very thankful over the years for my giving her something that she supported herself with for a long time... So for those hecklers who insinuate I only know how to have relationships with those women who are less than me, shove it. Picking someone who seems to have an interested in being helped to better their life, and sharing things with them to try to help them isn't a bad thing in and of itself... Jennifer Lopez has a song "Cherry Pie" where she sings "In a strange way you turn me on.... I told myself not to fall for you because I can see that you dont follow rules, I should have just walked away, but your eyes were telling me to stay, Damn.. Why do the wild ones turn me on.. like driving fast, you ought to try it... A real rebel kind of fun, the kind I would never trust... its funny how those kind of guys have a way of getting what they want, and even good girls, eventhough they try, they just can't seem to stay away, damn, why do the wild ones turn me on"... There are plenty of songs and threads from guys who say "Some of the wildest most active sex partners I have had were the most mentally out there women I've met"... Anyhow, go listen to the song, and get another idea other than psychobabble about "low esteem" as the only reason men have a relationship with someone the rest of the world looks down on. It might be one reason, but it isn't the only reason... Off soap box... Sorry... )
So at least I have some better insights from a "professional" into to that aspect of my girlfriends life.
And she also said if I don't break this off, then she also considers me a prime candidate for serious mental health treatment.
I have followed up with the bank, and their fraud department wanted me to go to my girlfriend and find out if she had used the bank card.
I saw her yesterday evening. Coincidentally, she called me claiming that yesterday she lost a pouch containing several of her charge cards and atm cards and money. She wondered if she had dropped it off with me with some food in the morning, but there was no such pouch in the bag with the food. We rode to her job so she could check at her job to see if the pouch fell out of her purse. For 10 minutes she ranted about how she had torn her apartment apart looking for it, torn apart the dumpster, blamed the guy, wondered if I took it, and talked about how angry she was about this.
I told her that the bank had called me over some charges against one of my accounts. As soon as I brought it up, she told me I was lying. I calmly told her the locations and dates of the ATM withdrawals ("Wow, thats near where I work" she said in surprise) and the Lucky's shopping on her birthday.
She made me repeatedly explain the circumstances, amounts, dates, "How could that happen? I never asked for a card for your personal account." I explained this all happened with the card that was issued for the joint account we created. Thanks Wells Fargo for making a mess of things by hooking the card to the wrong account! Lucky it wasn't one of the accounts with real money in it.
All mail for the joint account, including both of our ATM cards, was supposed to go to her address. As I explained repeatedly to the fraud department dumbfounded by why I would have an ATM card mailed to her address, I had specified at the bank when we opened the account, the ATM cards issued were supposed to be only for that particular account, not for any of the other accounts either of us have at the bank. We wanted all mail concerning the account to go to her address (actually her grandfathers address). I wanted this to be entirely separate from my other accounts at the bank.
The bank mailed the card, and separately a PIN. Both had my name on them, and someone would have had to put them together to activate and then use the card.
The fraud department demanded that I go to the post office and file a report, and to the police department to make a report.
The bank had told me there were two attempts to activate the card. One from her grandfathers house phone, and the final attempt that worked was from the girlfriends cell phone. I did not tell her that I knew that.
She asked more than once how could someone do this? I explained how cards are activated either through use at the ATM, or over the phone. She pretended not to know.
She swore up and down she didn't access any of my accounts, she didn't receive the card. I told her I wasn't accusing her of that, I was only saying the facts that someone other than me did this, was not authorized by me to do this, and I was talking to her about it as the bank asked me to. I told her my next step was to go to the police and make a report. She said sure, go and do that.
I asked again, point blank, more than once, was there any mail for me with my name on it. "Oh no...." Any chance you could have gotten it and confused it with your own card? "No Sam, i never got a card for that account." You didn't activate any card recently? "Oh no..." The only card I used for my birthday stuff was my own card from my job, here you can listen to the bank robot say all the recent charges... "
I told her no problem, then I would go ahead and make a report to the police, and they could sort it out. I mentioned at the ATM machines there would be photos of the person, and the Lucky's store would still have the surveillance camera tapes from Monday, the police should be able to figure out who did this.
"When it rains it pours she said", and we arrived at her work where she looked all over for her pouch, and had them issue her a new payroll debit card for her paycheck access.
We then drove back to my motel room. Drammatically, she says, "OK Sam, I did get the card and I did use it. But I didn't steal from you. I didn't go wild and take a lot of money from the account." No there wasn't much to get. "I thought you sent me the card. I wasn't stealing, you are my boyfriend and I though it would be OK to use the card to get money." She said she was embarassed, that is why she didn't tell the truth right away. She used the "I was embarrassed I lost my job" excuse for lying last year about continuing to have a job at Denny's for weeks after she was fired.
I pointed out how it was wrong she didn't tell me the card arrived, she didn't tell me she was using it, and it was sent as a result of the joint account we created, that she knew was already frozen and closed. So where did she think the money was actually coming from? When did she let me know she received it, she was using it, how much she was using? Where's the communication?
She claimed she didn't really think about these things, she doesn't know a lot about how the bank works. I told her that is why if we were a couple, she should be communicating with me and relying on me about financial things.
Later she claimed she thought it was a credit card I had sent her. Eventhough the card clearly said Platinum Debit Card. Uh huh.
She promised to repay the money. Apologized, said she had trust issues. No, this is not a trust issue. This is a she can't tell the truth about what she does issue. She even called herself a habitual liar at one point.
I told her there was obviously no mystery for the police to solve, and that I didn't see a need to go to the police, I would just have to eat the loss with the bank. She kept challenging me that I could go to the police if I want, she's not afraid of the police, so what if she spends some time in jail, she would get out.
What we have here ("is a failure to communicate") is what I called the "game of 20 questions" when my oldest son was a teenager. I have seen her several times play this game: If caught in a lie, dont tell the truth until you find out just how much of the truth is known. Then adjust the story you admit to how much of the truth you think they know....
We came up with a name for it, she calls it "picking each others brain."
