And then he went fishing.....

In the beginning, it felt like the most amazing relationship I had ever been in. He was sweet, kind, attentive, giving... he was... perfect. Or at least so I thought he was. Like I said, the man made me feel  pretty special from over 3,000 miles away. But what more does a man have to do from such a distance in order for a woman to feel good than to just say sweet things in email and phone conversations? Yeah, like I said, hindsight indeed is 20/20.

In a previous relationship, I learned that my boyfriend not only had a wife, but also another girlfriend.  I was the other, other woman. After that happened, I became suspicious of everyone. I was trying to not be this way with Sam, but he happened to set off a few "red flags" that made me curious.

Soon after Sam left to go overseas, I suddenly started to get harassing phone calls. I like to think of this as the diner incident in the movie, "Enough" with Jennifer Lopez. This is the long distance version of that. Sam had urged me to move into his house while he was gone and I adamantly refused. I continued to receive harassing phone calls that became more and more aggressive. They went from some weirdo telling me what he wanted to do to me, to him telling me angrily that he was going to do those things to me. After finally experiencing someone at my back sliding door in the late evening, I agreed to move my stuff over to Sam's house, where I would be "safe," because he had other Ranger buddies that were nearby and could be there in an instance if I needed them to be. He told me it would even be doing him a favor anyway because I could look after the house and grab the mail.

I moved my stuff in and happened across a few things that got me curious. One was the condom wrapper on the floor under the bed.... along with the drawer of condoms and lube in the night stand. There was also mail that belonged to Maria that was left in the Jeep. RED FLAG.

I was upset over my findings and he cooled me down with it not being fair to hold against him, anything that happened before me. I get that. What I was upset about, was the lie about it. I brushed it off in thinking that we didn't have a normal amount of time to get to know one another, so I really needed to just back off. A lesson I have learned and try to remember... "In the absence of certainty, instinct is all you can follow." I should've trusted my gut feeling with this guy from day one.

Conveniently, soon after I moved into the house, the phone calls were fewer and farther between. I am fairly positive that he was behind them.  My gut turns at the thought of watching this kind of stuff on tv... living it is surreal.