It is said that if a frog is put into a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out but if the frog starts in cool water that is gradually heated the frog will ultimately boil to death.  Although this is just a parable and not backed in scientific fact, it does accurately represent the dynamics of my relationship and many others, where the temperature is so gradually increased that the situation isn’t obvious or maybe even evident at all from within, until the burns are so painful they become impossible to ignore.

Or in other cases, the frog ends up escaping from the pot without realizing the dangers avoided, and tries to look back and identify any red flags that the water would start heating up, however having escaped early on, the frog has learned nothing.

My situation falls in a final category, where the frog has the knowledge of the boiling water, the scientific understanding of boiling water, and has a broad insight into early warning signs and red flag identifications but is somehow unable to apply this knowledge to the frogs’ own situations. The awareness only applies to the situations of others. And this was my situation.

By this time, I’ve read up on narcissism, watched documentaries about relationships and mental health, having a significant other experiencing serious psychological disorders, listened to professionals talking about toxic relationships and abuse within relationships. I felt like I had enough understanding about the backgrounds, triggers, and circumstances surrounding abuse in relationships, that I believed identifying early red flags would be easy. In fact, I had no doubts that my awareness would prevent me from ever being in another abusive relationship, I assumed that being able to identify red flags in other people’s potential partners would apply to my own potential partners. And despite my research, I spent last year in a pot of cool water, knowing the temperature was rising, and genuinely convincing myself that my awareness will protect me when the water starts to boil.

I met the man who turned up the heat last year, a few years prior. He was a coworker who I wasn’t particularly attracted to, and really had no intention of pursuing any of his advances. Mr Coworker was persistent but not pushy, a huge improvement from my ex- who was so pushy and insistent that I would eventually explode, defensive and unwaveringly stubborn. Mr Coworker would be understanding when I declined, yet soon had the courage to risk rejection again, and it was this space and freedom to say no that initially made me consider saying yes, and his putting himself in the vulnerable position of repeatedly being turned down, that somehow made me believe that the typical red flags that develop in the early stages of toxic relationships simply did not apply.

At first, Mr Coworker was very full of himself, the kind of guy who dominates the conversation and brags about being a good listener, the kind of guy who brags about how popular he is with women and then makes awkward advances that he expects will be rejected. For months I endured the one sided conversations about how rough his childhood was, how dysfunctional his family is, and how unbelievably cool he is despite it all, but when I finally discovered that a bit of alcohol made it tolerable, and that more alcohol made it quite interesting, inevitably I gave into his advances and thus began a long term friends-with-benefits situation.