So I met this woman named Audra online a couple weeks ago on a dating site. She is a hairdresser in the local area where I live. Cute, very pretty. A little younger than 50.
Her ancestry is Lithuanian, and she has the typical blonde hair and blue eyes that often occur there. I guess I must like chicks from countries around the Baltic or something. Her language skills in English were sub par, but she was an immigrant and had lived almost the first 25 years of her life in a former Soviet state. So we can give her a pass on this.
I was practicing my recovered state on her, being kind and patient and not asking inappropriate things. This appeared to bother her. The question I got was “why are you being so patient with me?”, which after consultation with my Al Anon peeps, probably indicates some past trauma for her.
I felt bad after she said that bit about patience. The reason I felt bad was that it made me feel I wasn’t demanding enough from Audra. Objectively, I don’t think I had the right to at the moment – we had just met and it would be unkind to demand things from her until I was reasonably certain I wanted a relationship with her. It still made me feel like I was stuck in the codependency and selling myself short that typified my earlier relationships. A blow at just the right chink in my armor. I had thoughts of never talking to Audra again after that. I mastered myself yesterday morning and met her after work. I presumed it was all in my own head.
I met Audra at a Panera yesterday. Ironically, one of the ones where Shartbox worked when she was in high school. The conversation started nicely enough, but then she went on a rant about she had to do everything alone, raising her children. Also, that she never listens to anyone else and does what she wants without consideration for others. For the ladies’ reference – this is very unattractive. I could say the same thing about my ex-wives and girlfriends. They were more or less incompetent and had to be taken care of by me. I wouldn’t, though, because it gives a bad impression as if you are pompous and more importantly, you have been out of a relationship so long and gotten so conditioned to being on your own that there may be no way back for you into one. If we’re on a date, and the date tells me that she’s not open to sharing her life and insists on always being in control of everything, then the date is pretty much over there and we aren’t going out again. I’m sure i’m not the only guy who would feel this way.
But it got worse. Audra then segued into a discussion of current events and attacking all the Jewish people she worked with, calling them mostly Russian and Ukrainian Jewish people. Characterizing some of them – one in particular – with advocating nuking the Gazans (Palestinians) and killing all their women and children. Then arguing with the woman about this. But Audra didn’t stop there. She described what her grandmother had taught her about Jews using scissors in Lithuania to make cuts all along the arms and shoulders of Christian girls, and then sucking out their blood. Her grandmother told her that the Jews got what was coming to them from the Nazis after all the harm they had done to their Christian neighbors. With that said, she put up a couple Jewish families during WWII and protected them from the Nazis.
Now, I’ve dated Jewish women, and gone to synagogue with them. That said, I’m not a huge defender of Jews and Judaism in particular, i’m not white knighting this stuff. But I had never heard this old-fashioned antisemitism before, except maybe in Schindler’s List, where even the Nazis referred to it as “good old fashioned Jew-hating talk” as if they didn’t believe it either. Drinking blood? I imagine that something of my shock and disgust must have leaked out in the way I asked the response question: “If your grandmother believed this, why did she help them?”. The response I got was “Humanitarian reasons”.
Audra disappeared shortly thereafter, suddenly having to leave. I think she realized what she had said or my reaction to it. She had blocked me by the time I got home. Saved me the effort 😉
I realize now that my impression on Tuesday was correct: Audra was toxic, and my body was telling me this, but my mind didn’t trust the signs. I still blamed myself. I realize now that I need more recovery, but that my picker is not entirely broken – I knew something was wrong with her. I have to learn to trust myself better in the future.
