From the month we started phone calls (February, 2022), I was assured that she never felt a drop of love for this person. He had manipulated her out of her first abusive marriage—guiding her through the divorce process. Her sole source of support through a very trying time, he also would completely disappear on her when she didn't do what he asked of her. When her first divorce was finalized, he convinced her to hop onto a plane to Turkey, and marry him immediately. The faulty reasoning he gave for such a wild and ill-advised idea (that her therapist strongly urged against, saying she needed time to heal and process the dissolution of the first marriage) was that if she were to live with him, she needed to undergo a marriage ceremony to make it permissible within their faith (Islam).

When I first heard this, I already thought that this was one of the worst decisions a person could ever make for themselves. A woman of few friends, she was going to isolate herself further in a country she did not know the language to, with a man whom she'd only met once. Making another marriage commitment, fresh out of the first failed one.

Another saddening aspect to her history is that this isn't the first time. The first husband had also, years and years prior, convinced her to move to Turkey. They came back, and she processed a green card application for this man. The same thing she's now doing for this guy.

But the second marriage also didn't work out. She was there for almost two years, and was having panic attacks all of the time. Fainting in the bathroom. Stuck there due to COVID lockdowns. She and the guy were wholly incompatible. She'd mentioned how she couldn't even be intimate with him because of how tensed up he made her feel. She'd told me she wasn't attracted to him, and that she cried at the ceremony, knowing she was making a huge mistake, but was so numb and expected to go through with it, at this point, that she did. She told me things in this vein, over and over again.

How utterly numb she was over there, unfeeling, disassociating and just doing what people expected of her. Living as a scraped-out shell of herself.

She returned home to New York in July of 2021. She'd still kept up the pretense with him, of being in a stable marriage, and continued to process his green card application, but knew even by December (according to what she told me) that she did not want to return and that she could not fathom living her life with this person.

We met in January of 2022. Not in-person, yet, but right here on Reddit. Innocuous enough, at first. I had been recovering from long-COVID, with no one in my life believing me. I was searching for both love and friends to see me through the most difficult time in my entire life. She replied to one of the friendship posts, and we bonded through a shared love for music, older music in particular.

She zeroed in on me from the start, telling me later on about how she'd sifted through all my social media and talked with her cousin, her best friend, about the kind of person I was.

The conversation moved to Discord. I was streaming a lot, then. One of the foreign friends I was talking to, said I had a voice that would go perfectly with book-reading, and that I should stream myself doing it. During a lonely end to the December of 2021, I decided to give it a try. I even did one on New Year's Eve, hoping to unite all of the lost souls, who, like me, didn't have any gatherings to attend.

In February, the streams were still going strong, and she seemed to enter every single one of them—constantly there for me, constantly wanting to not only spend her time with me, but to get my attention. And there's one incident that finally made me realize just how much she felt for me.

One late night, I told her politely that I'd be playing Minecraft with somebody else (we had been messaging daily by this point in early February). She had been engaging extensively, sending me a lot of caring advice on dealing with my symptoms, but I needed to rest myself from all the texting.

It was only two hours, but it clearly hurt her. I didn't hear from her until late the next day, when she spilled out her feelings in a message she deleted only moments later. I only caught the notification preview, but the gist of it seemed to be that she felt "disposed of", discarded, and she had cried over it.

This was a shock for me. I seriously didn't think it was that grave an error to commit (it wasn't), but nevertheless, I empathized. I, too, know fully well what it's like to be completely discarded (also see: the end of this story). I certainly didn't want someone coming out of interactions with me, feeling that way. And I resolved within myself not to hurt this person again. I was beginning to develop an affinity towards her—spurred by the obvious interest, and her qualities of both acute sensitivity, and a willingness to be open and vulnerable, something I deeply value. I wanted to become her source of comfort, too. To help her feel safe in a world that can often be cruel and insensitive. That is the decision I made for myself on that day.

Later in the month, nightly phone calls began. The first time we'd spoken through voice. Well into the nights, we talked for hours, a clear close bond beginning to form. She eventually confided that she was developing feelings for me; I said the same. One night, she brought up an obligation in Turkey, unfinished personal business that she would have to take care of, soon. I froze. It sounded like another person was involved with her. Feeling deeply uncomfortable, I told her I was going to go. She was talking around it and I assumed the worst. She told me everything. And she insisted that she had no love for this person, never desired to be with him again, and that the "business" she had there was in divorcing him.

Her family's faith complicated things. Even if she was only technically legally married (i.e., not living with him for almost a year, by that point), they would not allow her to be in a relationship while the marriage contract was still in effect. She was attempting to hide even her communications with me. This is a 32-year-old woman, by the way. Her parents had always been overbearing and controlling. She was not to talk to strangers on the internet. I witnessed her being treated like a minor half her age, numerous times over the course of our relationship.

She clearly wanted to be with me, but this got in the way of it, and a few times, we parted ways. But our link just couldn't be snuffed out—we always found a way back towards one another. In mid-March, we decided, finally, to be together. We were not boyfriend and girlfriend, but we would remain in contact, and we would acknowledge our feelings, which we previously tried to put aside (which obviously cannot work; you cannot deny feelings like these).

I did have to push for it, by then. She was clear her parents wouldn't approve. But at 32 years of age, and with a divorce that wasn't even able to be set in motion—if it was a definite eventuality, wouldn't it make sense to still live your life in the meantime? Divorces can take years to go through. Grown adults don't put possible new relationships off because of a technicality. The marriage was already over in their hearts—if it ever even existed within, and not solely on paper.

I just didn't want this to slip away. She made her interest in me very obvious, and had persisted enough for me to return her feelings. She continued to feed that previously empty part of me—the part of me that never, not once in my life, had been shown real love, by any woman. I didn't want to lose her. I have been used, and discarded multiple times, by people I'd barely ever met, but who'd kept me in a misleading cycle of hope and despair. This felt real, for once. This felt like it could be something.

The phone calls evolved into something deeper, at her instigation. She'd cutely suggested falling asleep together over Discord in late March: whispering goodnights, giggling when we were both unable to fall asleep, and greeting each other first thing in the morning. It felt like a dream, to me. I had never felt so loved, cherished, valued. She went far out of her way for me, and I was willing to do the same for her. We continued this nightly ritual throughout the entirety of our relationship—breaking it, occasionally—but for the first few months afterwards, there wasn't a night we didn't spend together.

The "I love yous" came next. I was adamant that, as much as I wanted to say it, I wanted to hold off, to tell it to her in person. She couldn't control herself, and gently said it to me one night as we were falling asleep. Our bond felt cemented. Talk of meeting increased.

If you'll notice, a pattern emerges here, where every subsequent higher step in this relationship was initiated by her. The clinginess, the admission of feelings, the phone call, the nightly ritual of sleeping on the phone, and now the "I love yous". I was overjoyed to be on the receiving end of each of these, and yes, I did fight for the relationship to stick in the first place, but in hindsight, it seems ever more crueler that she could've done all this, only to completely ditch me at the end.

We were across state lines. I was in New Jersey; she in New York. I knew of a bus that could take me to Manhattan. From there, it was just a hop, skip away to where she resided. She, once again, took the real initiative. We had originally planned to meet in the summer, perhaps at a café or library or amusement park. But she was telling me she only had to take one subway to end up at the bus I was speaking of. Early April, completely out of the blue, she sent a photo of that subway, asking if she should do it? That all I had to do was answer in the affirmative, and she would. I was in the shower, but I actually had this hunch that that was going to happen. For no reason whatsoever. There was no indication. I hadn't seen the message. I just somehow knew, and I was shivering in the shower at the thought of meeting her that day. Of course, it was too late by the time I was able to reply. However, we still met, the very next week.

We met at a large and lovely park, the only escape to nature you can truly get to in my town. She looked so lonely, staring at the stream, her backpack on. I came right up to her, and the sweetest meeting of my life ensued. We both somehow seemed cut from the same cloth. Both tall, but lanky—slimmer than most examples of our respective genders. Darker hair and eyes. And kind of a sensitive, hesitant disposition. The result of too much overexposure to the deafening hostility that can strike in this world, from all directions. We walked awhile, sat on a bench and somehow managed to hold hands to quell the shyness and nervousness that we both seemed to share (though her to a much greater extent). It was surreal. The day was a dream, but a dream that extended into most of the year.

We met again only two days later. She wasted no time in instantly coming back. We baked brownies together, and, probably too much information, but we became intimate from this day on. Once again, the bond went to another level. We were both hooked on each other: emotionally, and physically.

I don't need to go into the many months we spent together. There's simply too much to say. I met her in the city, and witnessed her father scream at her on the phone, bringing her to tears for daring to spend time in Manhattan with me. According to her, the divorce was now out in the open, and all parties involved knew of its inevitability. The husband wouldn't talk to her, so nothing could even happen. He told her to just worry about herself. But the parents weren't having it.

We met every single week up to November at least twice, barring one or two where she had a surgery take place in late April. We roamed down so many paths in my own town, and all over Manhattan. Experienced more restaurants than I'm sure I have in the past five years. Went to Coldplay at MetLife Stadium; it was also the first night she stayed over, again to her parents' ire. She would continue to stay each weekend. They were the loveliest times of my life. But her parents gave her hell every time she returned. They treated her like a complete outcast, giving her the silent treatment for days on end. A grown adult capable of making her own decisions for herself, being pressured by childish, immature parents who constantly filled her head with horrible advice about trusting nobody, keeping no friends, and adhering to a religion that I believe is an extremely harmful force in this world.

I had never felt so close to somebody before. She was as seemingly gentle as they come, and we were both extremely generous and caring to one another. Which is why the next part of this absolutely shocked me and sent my heart into a downward spiral I still struggle to soothe.

This past November, she finally left back to Turkey, the place she was formerly so miserable in, supposedly to take care of the divorce. She assured me all the processes were in motion—the search for a lawyer, setting of a court date, and the eventual date itself, somewhere in February. These were all lies. I don't know exactly what happened, but sometime in January she made the decision to remain faithful to both her religion and the marriage, yet she continued to lie to me daily about what was going on. One point of contention that came up again and again between us was the lack of phone calls from her, all of a sudden. The first few weeks, I understood it was because her dad was there, but in the months succeeding that, the situation hardly changed. I'd get hung up on out of nowhere, I'd get excuses such as depression—she even wrote a post on an alternate Reddit account asking for advice: how to assure a loving boyfriend that she's too miserable to call due to the circumstances surrounding divorce, and that it's no cause for insecurity. All while knowing that she was not divorcing... I was misled so cruelly. The web of lies is just immense, and I can't believe she was even capable of all this.

She argued with me over asking for more calls, pleading for me to understand her, and assuring me that she wasn't hiding anything. She would even randomly blurt out harsh things like...that she didn't trust me, or anyone...or that love can't always be there for you. She was slicing up my feelings and toying with my heart. Sensations that were all too familiar, from the wounds of my past. This wasn't the care a loved one is supposed to show, but out of trying my best to understand her side of it, I decided to stop asking for calls.

We went all of February and half of March without a single phone call. Not even on Valentine's Day. But I was only bottling up just how much it hurt to be so neglected. Surely two people in love both crave to hear each other's voices, more than this? She once told me my voice was like listening to the sound of the ocean through a conch shell. Comforting, yet fleeting. What was going on?

Another argument ensued, and this one led to a break-up. I realized through talking with a friend who asked about how we were doing, that I was immensely down about our only communication happening through a few daily texts. I wasn't given many updates on what was going on. She claimed in December that she was staying with the husband's family at night because he refused to fix the broken heating in her apartment. She was now staying there full-time. I tried to just trust her about it, but it looks like that was a mistake. She was isolated from any voice of sense, and only had pressure and religious guilt-tripping paving the path for her. I still don't believe she has any love for him whatsoever. He is a clumsy manipulator, who practically bragged to me on Reddit about luring her away from her first husband, while attempting to condescend to me about intelligence. Her few current Facebook posts all seem curated to highlight just how miserable she was over there the first time around, and that the same now continues. Her life is not her own, and I'm reminded of all the times she told me she was in chains. The one positive-appearing post was put up during our many days of vivid and lively exploration.

She always seemed easy to influence...often by people who never truly cared for her. I can't believe she would be duped by someone so obviously conniving that he convinced her to marry straight out of a divorce in the first place. She probably needs real help and people to look out for her...but her parents will not take up that mantle. She is, however, very conditioned to seek their advice, and treat their words almost as a decree from god, itself.

We broke up a little over a week ago. She still did not reveal the truth to me; she only acted as if I was asking for too much, all because I wanted some phone calls. She even argued, all this time, knowing she was deceiving me. And she put her all into her arguments, trying to portray herself as a decent person who held no blame. This is one of the most hurtful things anyone has ever done to me. And just like always, I'm expected to just accept it, with little explanation or apology given. She claims she wanted to live a sinless existence within her faith, but what she did so blatantly to me will never make her sinless. I poured my heart for the first time into somebody who I thought wanted to be with me for life. She'd say she'd never felt as alive, happy, and free as she was with me; that I was her favorite person. I definitely felt the same about her.

I don't even know what to think, anymore. She did claim her feelings for me were all true. In a final phone call that the husband initiated to tell me off, she said outright she'd be able to get over him, if he passed away. But that the same wouldn't happen with me. She also claimed she would never be able to truly be her own self with me, but that's not true. Happiness reveals your true identity; following your heart. But going against your inner nature, to please the whims of controlling people... that can never lead to happiness or truth, and is only ever going to slowly kill a person. I just wish I could've helped her. She never deserved such toxic people around her, but as long as she keeps choosing them, she'll have to live with the consequences of it.