It was surreal sitting in Martin Wallace’s psychology office discussing my experience of being emotionally abused by Jeanne Dubois.
I never envisioned myself being beaten down by a woman and to be honest, I was that much of a male chauvinist to despise men who fell victim to this kind of mistreatment— I saw men like that as being weak and I even had a term for that kind of male—I called them uxorious fools.
Little did I know at the time I would succumb to this type of torment and it had nothing to do withe being less of a man and everything to do with falling prey to a malicious manipulator.
In a way, I had been a manipulator myself.
I never mentioned to Jeanne or anybody else that I had trouble with commitment. I found it hard to stay with any one woman for too long and most relationships I ended after several months.
Don’t get me wrong—I was not a player—I just got to a point in a relationship where it became boring and repetitive, and I refused to go through the motions.
I honestly felt women would appreciate my honesty, but obviously, I was wrong.
Martin Wallace was listening to my sad tale and at this point his ears perked up. “Why would you say you were, ‘obviously wrong’—what happened to make you believe that?”
I sighed and resigned myself to reliving the nightmare.
I began counting the ways I had been deceived.
“Madeleine, the Department secretary received a box of flowers delivered to me at the college,” I told him. . “She said the delivery person was a Goth-type girl—you know the type—black hair, black lipstick, black painted nails. Anyway, I opened the box of flowers and found a card from a flower shop called The Devil’s Dozen and a typed note simply stating, You’re a marked man.”
Wallace whistled softly. “That’s intimidating.”
I nodded. “It was—but it was only the beginning.”
I resumed my story.
A few days later, Madeleine and a few of my colleagues received explicit photos of me in a compromising position with a woman I dated six months ago. I was tempted to contact the woman and ask if she was angry or bitter towards me. But I recalled we parted amicably and she didn’t seem upset. I also recall her saying she had seen the writing on the wall and anticipated my ending the relationship. She wished me well, and that was that.
I concluded she was unlikely to have sent the photos and damage her own reputation as well.
Then, a week later, Henry Withers, the Department Chair received an envelope containing half a dozen explicit photos of me with a different woman—a colleague I dated a year ago.
This time, I approached the woman and discovered that her friends had also received the photos and she was incensed and had launched a complaint to the University and a member of the Vice Provost’s Group had already been in touch with her.
I was devastated. She told me she was convinced it was me because the photos were so intimate, but when she saw my reaction, she regretted not coming to me first.
And so it continued until even the Dean himself received photos, and he was warned that the next step would involve sending them to my students unless I resigned.
He suggested a temporary leave might be prudent, and within days I was on leave for an unspecified period of time until the matter could be resolved.
“So, what made you suspect Jeanne?”
I shrugged. “It was just a hunch—I had no real proof, but there was something niggling at me from the moment I met her.”
I allowed my mind to return to our first meeting—such a surprise to see a young and vivacious woman who was also so accomplished—and more shocking to think that staid, old Henry Withers hired her.
But even as I flirted with her and fell under her spell, there was something vaguely familiar about her—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but knew was there.
Occasionally, there’d be a nuance in the way she said something—the way she’d tilt her head and smile seductively, or even the scent of perfume she wore.
Whatever it was, I pushed it into the background and focused entirely on romancing this intriguing woman and winning her heart.
I remember thinking that maybe this was the one—the woman with whom I’d gladly spend the rest of my life.
I didn’t realize it was Jeanne, a woman from my past nursing an unhealthy grudge.
