I couldn’t help laughing, NML, at your latest post. Many thanks for this. How incredibly timely – generally and, sad to say, personally.

I am afraid that the previous entry also resonates. Including the bit about the estranged wife’s diagnosis, which rang a few bells*. Now read on …

A couple of days before Christmas, I received a ‘phone call from an ex-lover. One whose comprehensive mendacity had – once I discovered it and its extent – horrified me.

Lonely as new to the district, I had a brief fling with him nearly 3 years ago. Emotionally unavailable, confused and tricky, he was never going to be Mr Right – let alone Mr Right Now! All the same, as he was (and is, I suppose) unusually clever, well-informed and interesting, I kept in touch sporadically thereafter – on a strictly friendly basis.

This detachment was helped by the fact that from then on I was literally removed from him, living a few hundred miles away. I went abroad a couple of months after our affair – if such it was – ended. I returned to the UK after a few months away, but to a location far from his.

Having given him my new telno a few weeks after my return, he used it – calling each week for 3 weeks. Somehow I avoided speaking to him directly. Red lights were flashing vaguely in the background – an instinctive block to action which puzzled me. Why be so self-protective? After all, he was just a friend – no more, no less. OK, he’d behaved badly as a lover; but who doesn’t, at times? Especially if they have ‘issues’ with the ex. In any case, he wasn’t my lover anymore – he was, I thought, a friend. Albeit a chilly, rather selfish one. Still, why was I so disturbed by doubt?

Well, we ignore such promptings at our peril, dont we? My dubious reaction was more than justified when a few months later this man was revealed as a pathological liar – about his family, relationships, qualifications, career: nothing was sacred. Nearly everything I knew about him turned out to be an outright lie, a misrepresentation or an evasion.

Shocked – not least at my own gullibility – I decided to end the friendship. No relations of any kind can exist without trust. My researches showed that a confrontation would be pointless, so I kept silent. In any event, our contact was now reduced to the occasional email; I believed the whole thing would just tail off, coming to a natural end.

But, no. Last Christmas, he sent me an email greeting. He followed this up with an email Valentine (I know it was him: the idiot used the same pseudonymous URL he’d used on the previous occasion!). I ignored both. And heard no more. Phew! That was that, then, finito.

Imagine my surprise a year later to hear his voice, addressing me in an intimately jocular fashion and clearly expecting a warm welcome.

I asked why.

Testily, clearly irritated by my lack of enthusiasm, he announced I was on his Christmas list – typically implying that I was merely one of many who were eagerly awaiting his attention. [During our relationship (?), he was always making out that he was much sought-after; so much so that it was often tiresome to him. He was always very touchy, excessively quick to take offence - often where none was meant - responding promptly with vitriolic putdowns.]

He explained that since I’d ignored his email of the previous Christmas he thought he’d ‘phone me, this year. Hm, such is his ego that it had evidently not occurred to him that my failure to respond might have constituted a hint that I might not wish to hear from him, eh?!

Calmly, quietly and firmly, I said I didn’t want to speak to him. He replied “Well, that’s all right” – and I cut the connection.

I doubt I’ll hear from him again. I assume his call was some form of booty call, or morale-boosting exercise (everything is about him and his needs). All the same, I feel besmirched. Sickened by the thought that I engaged in intimacy with such a shit. Also, horrified at my apparent naivety and lack of judgement. I find it very hard to trust a man now. And I’m scared to trust my own judgement: every time I try dating in the belief there must be a nice, good man for me out there somewhere, it seems to send out an irresistible signal to all the psycho-neurotic males within a 50-mile radius! No surprise, then, that I’ve now given up. If ‘he’ turns up: fine; if not – well, tough: life will go on, anyway.

Men like him really do bugger things up, though, don’t they?

* One of his claims to fame and sympathy was his assertion that his ex-wife has invasive, aggressive form of breast cancer. And he still loves her. One could not help but feel great pity for both of them, and for their children. I prayed for them, and put in countless prayer requests, for a couple of years.

Problem is, it’s not true.

And,yeah, he too was given to making highly inappropriate comments regarding e.g. ex-wife’s pubic bush (I know, I know: TMI – by far!). All of these comments I found distinctly repellent. Why do men so often make them?

Blessed be!