Unexpected encounter/confrontation

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with friends-- some new and some old.  It was a small and intimidate dinner party and as we cleared the dishes, the boys headed straight to the TV while the girls hung around in the dining room talking and catching up.  As we talked, the topic of B. emerged.  Now, I have not been avoiding this topic recently. However, I have been avoiding one person in particular.

My friend/acquaintance Nicki is someone who actually warned me about B. when he and I first started dating.  About 6 months into the relationship, I had hosted a huge event and had introduced them to one another.  Afterwards, Nicki had come up to me to ask about the status of our relationship and to tell me that she knew him and his relationship with his ex-girlfriend.  She told me a lot of things that, at the time, seemed preposterous.  She talked about how much of a cheater he was.  She talked about seeing him flirt with other girls while he was with his ex-girlfriend.  She told me that he actually flirted with his ex-girlfriend's sister!  She told me a lot actually, and she was apologetic but very honest about it.  Nevertheless, as much as she said, I just couldn't wrap my head around it all. She said things that seemed impossible in real life (a soap opera maybe). Things that would make my stomach sick if it were to really happen to me. Things I couldn't imagine happening to anyone, much less myself.

Well, that feeling of being sick-to-my-stomach is now something I am experienced with.  I should have listened to her warnings.  Well, I did listen, but I decided to give B. the benefit of the doubt.  At the time, I persistently told Nicki that it couldn't be who B. is now. Maybe that was him before and maybe that was his dynamic with his ex-girlfriend (a girl who Nicki also said was a serial cheater!).  I told her that with B., I felt so loved and adored and wanted.  When we were together, he made me feel like no one else in the world existed.  I said that his passion for me was so clear, so salient, I couldn't possibly imagine him having any additional energy or time with anyone else other than me.  I couldn't even envision him giving anyone else that kind of intensity that he gave me.

About a year ago, probably around this time-- after I had found out the B. cheated on me and then forgiven him, I ran into Nicki again.  I'd been avoiding her, actually, and when she saw me, her first question was whether we were together. I felt so ashamed in so many ways.  I felt ashamed because:
1) I should have listened to her because everything she said came true.
2) I should have broken-up with him knowing now that he was a cheater
3) I should definitely be broken-up with him because he has now cheated on me.
4) I am still with him and I can't explain it to anyone else.  I don't even understand it myself.

So I dodged her questions and tried to avoid her altogether after that.  I didn't reach out to socialize.  I declined invitations. I was a no-show to general public outings that might have included her.  Simply put, I disappeared in all of my social circles during the last year of my relationship with B.

Around the time that B. and I broke up over the summer, I attended his graduation and I saw Nicki again.  It was both awkward and embarassing for me.  The look on her face made me feel so ashamed and so cheap.  I was there attending B.'s graduation ceremony too, and she could not believe we were together.  By then I was already so miserable.  It was during the month of May and I was already mentally checked-out, exhausted, and waiting for the final straw to break me.  I wanted to disappear into a hole because of how uncomfortable I felt.  Because it was during graduation, people surrounded us and herded us to take pictures.  Nicki-- and God bless her for her honesty-- flat out said to me (in a different language), "No. I do not want to take a picture with him.  I refuse and I won't do it. I want a picture with you, but not him. I will not take any photos with him in it." So of course, we quickly posed to get our shots, I expressed my congratulations to her and gave an excuse to skip the after-party... and then I fled the scene.

So now, here we are at this intimate dinner gathering and of course, the topic of dating comes up.  I'm telling some new girls that I'm recently single, and I'm trying to casually explain that we broke up because of cheating.  Nicki, of course, interrupts me to clarify if it's B. I'm talking about, and then to express her relief that we are finally over. She wants to know if it was because of cheating. She wants to know if her perceptions of him are as true as they were before.

It felt brutal, that conversation with Nicki.  I did not want to have that conversation there.  I did not want to share the details of my breakup there. And I did not want to confirm that everything she said was true. It's been hard enough to acknowledge that to myself.  It's even harder to do that with the person who actually warned you! The worst part was that I didn't want to do it there. Please, not there.  Not in front of new people, not in such a public setting, and not when I feel so vulnerable and raw and with no place to hide. This was not the kind of "let's get to know you" kind of conversation to have with acquaintances nearby too.  But there it was, out in the open.  And there I was, exposed.

Safe to say, it was very humiliating for me to talk about it, and even more humiliating when Nicki told all the girls what she knew about him from his previous relationship.  She added more details this time  which made it even more difficult to sit with.  She actually added a lot of information that I hadn't known before.  Details that were probably too graphic for me to hear, and that made me want to wretch. On the plus side, I'm glad she skipped the details when she told me the first time around-- I'm sure it was because she didn't want to freak me out.  On the negative side, however, I felt even dirtier and more ashamed than ever before. I wish she hadn't done it in that setting.  And part of me wishes she wouldn't give me the gory details.

But then she gave me another piece of information that I did not know before. Nicki told me that when we had that conversation years ago, when B. and I had just started dating and were in our honeymoon period, she had already seen him flirting with other girls. She had seen him flirting with other people already WHILE we were together.  This reality was not in the ex-girlfriend era.  It was in the present (when she told me what she knew). But she didn't want to tell me that then, so she had told me about other examples from his past to let me know about the type of person he was/is.  And silly me, here I was thinking, "oh, but that's his ex-girlfriend and she was psycho too! They have a different dynamic, it won't be like that with me!" So it was shocking to hear that in our relationship, as early as 6 months, he was cheating.  6 months-- when we, no, I was knee-deep in infatuation, he was already cheating.

I'm sick to my stomach again and I feel like I can take 20 showers and still feel dirty.