The Problem with a Monkey Grip

A.K.A., a man with too much power

Trigger Warning: emotional, physical, and sexual abuse - and a bad man

And so it begins. Another problem with a man.

Ooh boy. Most of us have heard this one before. That one friend who complains about another man, or worse yet, that same man who she keeps making excuses for, keeps going back to, keeps defending, keeps bringing up again and again. Fuck. Enough already.

Full disclosure: I was and still am that friend.

One more disclosure: this post will be about a relationship with a bad man. If you’re tired of hearing about bad men, I will absolutely not blame you for skipping over or skimming this post. Not that I will know if you did any of the following, but well, you get the picture.

This is the man in question: I have called him many names. Some of them are: him, the underdog, the male component, the attraction, the male gaze, the idealizing pedestal, the asshole, the cumstain, the shitfuck, the sociopath, the lover, the situationship, the narcissist.

For the rest of this post, in order to put things more simply (and also as a way to diminish his power), I from now on will call him the problem.

I have the annoying problem, like many, of easily being attracted to charismatic men. I used to be insanely jealous of confident men in my childhood (hellooooo, patriarchy). Nowadays, I have overcome this, but it’s been replaced by admiration, idealization, and oh god, feelings for them, bleh. I can appreciate that confidence they exhibit enough for it not to threaten my self of security anymore, but now it’s been replaced by being easily enamoured by them. A true blessing and a curse.

This idealization began taking root as a child. It began with seeing heteronormative love on TV screens. It began with seeing most main characters as attractive men in movie theatres. It began with reading about beautiful men far too perfect in books. It began with the song, those damn love songs I would either play to myself in a moment of romantization (and of course society taught me that yearning for a man was better than any other kind of human relationship), or listen to and daydream about on long car rides. To be fair, they were beautiful songs. But my brain had already been programmed and conditioned to associate any kind of love, with love for a man, and over time, that love became more important than my needs.

And then I became a magnet, like many people do, for emotionally unavaliable men. Fun times, right?!

For many reasons, I did not feel safe for most of the time as a child. That safety escalated into deep rooted insecurities, and as far back as I can remember, it has always been incredibly hard for me to to feel or recieve love.

So I have been looking around. Looking up, looking down. Looking around for any kind of attention, validation, anything to feel close to the love I have always felt like I have not gotten enough of.

Enter stage left: the problem. I met the problem approximately two years ago, when I had heard some devastating family news that left me feeling the deep need to escape, to get away, to feel anything other than the loss and pain. I was high on an edible at the music venue that I work at (not currently working at that time, which might be important to note), enjoying the effects of not taking anything that happened that night too seriously.

There was actually very little attraction at first. I would have moved on from that intial conversation entirely, but the problem kept talking to me. (because I am damn interesting, humble brag alert).

The problem went home with me that night. And it would have been just that, a one night affair. But something happened from then on that has happened with very few people in my life: I kept jokingly asking the problem to come back to my place the next several days after that, and he did. Every single time that I asked. It felt unreal. I felt utterly desired.

Let’s add drugs to the equation: he introduced me to several more. Before then, I had only one or two experiences with hard drugs - well, that certaintly was not the case anymore. That addictive aspect, plus his presence, his attention, our chemistry, the sex.. I think you can understand the obvious hooks by now.

And for a few weeks, it felt magical.

I know, textbook right? The honeymoon, the euphoria, the bliss… of course it feels like that at the beginning. It always does. I truly thought I knew that by now. The thing is, you get caught up in something, especially something that meets your needs that for so long were unmet. You don’t want to break away. You don’t want reason in the same equation.

But then, of course, the problem eventually started showing himself as the problem. First it was the criticisms, which of course were annoying. I brushed them off. Classic. Then casual bullying. Gaslighting. Subtle manipulation that took me off my guard every time. Control issues. Silent treatments. The problem would routinely withhold affection and intimacy from me, which slowly started to really bother me. The problem started ringing my doorbell, basically anytime he felt he wanted to use me (numerous times he woke me up in the middle of the night) and left also essentially whenever he wanted to. The problem would lie constantly about coming back again at a certain time, or even showing up at all. He would take hours after the agreed upon time to show his ugly face. He would promise to meet me somewhere, and then not even show up at all. The problem would randomly lash out, scream at me, and then find a way to subtly blame himself while justifying that of course some of it was my fault as well. He would withhold secrets from me that I have never to this day ever found out about. The problem would steal things from me, read some of my private writings, and bring it up so casually, as though he always had a right to every part of me.

We’re not even touching upon the other accounts of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse.

And of course the many, many, many numerous useless times I thought I could talk to him about all of this, again and again and again. I’m a pretty damn good verbal communicator, so I assumed I could get through to the problem. The problem (lol), was, unfortunately that he didn’t give enough of a fuck to truly listen. He pretended he did (unfortunately, he was certaintly clever enough to), and I believed it all, until I realized reasoning to the problem was literally exactly like talking to a brick wall.

Jesus Christ, okay, but then why would you have kept seeing him for so long? What was in it for you? Why would you put up with everything you’ve described above so for long?? Perhaps, as the reader, you are asking yourself these questions.

Let me talk some more about the benefits of the problem:

the problem was very charismatic. the problem was almost a master at manipulation, so would constantly pull back and then come back and shower me with gifts and attention. the problem keeps giving me all the attention i had been longing for, especially in the form of a man. and he knew it. the problem knew exactly what to do to make me feel better, when i was too high or sick and incapable of even functioning normally. the problem cooked for me, fed me, and was actually quite creative with food. the problem gave me free drugs, all of the time. the problem knew what kinds of series I liked to watch and introduced me to many. the problem and I had fantastic in-person chemistry: there were many times where we would laugh, joke, and I would feel content and euphoric in their company. I trusted the problem with many of my own personal problems and the problem would know exactly what to say to help or what to do in order to help. the problem knew how to make me come, really hard. He knew where my addiction to him lay. He knew how to get me to ask him to come over. Again and again.

and that, has been *the problem.

Yes, clearly, on paper, you can see the “benefits” absolutely do not justify his atrocious actions. That’s the thing about hindsight, unfortunately you have to go through it in order to later see it.

And yes, of course I made a million excuses for him. I realized very early on what was happening, and tried my best to shut him out, many many times. I blamed him a million times, I wrote about him either in my notes apps or on physical paper, I researched online the shit out of emotional abuse and narccassists while reflecting on the kind of monkey grip I had caught myself in.

My point being: I tried everything to fight this grip.

Eventually, the horrors became far too much and I travelled far enough away from him for awhile to gain an even deeper sense of clarity, to cut him off permanently. The blessing that saved me, was distance.

The trouble that keeps coming up nowadays, unfortunately, is that he is still the problem. The problem is the problem that I cannot stop thinking of. The pain he caused me still lives through me, with deep emotional scars that I suspect time might take awhile to heal me from.

It’s aggravating, because on the outside this problem seems so simple: he’s an asshole, he doesn’t even deserve this much brain space, he’s a shithead, why would you think so much about yet just another bad man?

The problem is, he displayed power over me. I got to know the problem far, far too well. Too well, to the point that what should be simple is now overly complex. The complexity lies in a situation that should never have had the intense emotional intimacy that for me, it did.

Let’s make one thing clear: I will never call myself a fool for being caught up in this. I have far too many ideas, fantasizes, thoughts, and emotions about the problem to reduce my role in this to just that of a fool.

I will be the last person to ever find fault with anyone battling with narcissistic abuse, with the whims of a trauma bond, with the pychological warfare that comes with the addictive pull and push of such a dynamic. It takes ahold of you, it destroys you, it meddles with you.

That is the problem with a ¹Monkey Grip.

1. I give major thanks to the novel Monkey Grip by Helen Garner as the major inspiration for the title and this piece. I picked it up off a bookshelf a few days ago, and the plot has many similar aspects of my situation described above.