CATEGORY: Relationships

A True Story

Names and certain details of this story have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

Everything Seemed So Perfect at First

Danae and Odysseus already knew each other. How or where they had met doesn’t really matter. Perhaps because some stories do not begin the moment two people meet, but the moment they begin to see each other differently.

And that is how their story began.

At first, everything seemed so beautiful. There was that unmistakable intensity of a new romance—the anticipation, the messages, the conversations neither of them wanted to end, the desire to spend as much time together as possible.

Danae felt she had met someone who truly saw her. Odysseus was attentive, expressive, persistent in pursuing her. He made her feel that what was developing between them was anything but ordinary. At the time, she had no reason to question what she was experiencing. No reason to look behind his words, analyse his behaviour, or wonder what might be hiding beneath such an intense beginning.

She was in love.

And when you are in love, you do not stand outside your own story and observe it.

You live it.

What Danae could not have known then was something she would understand much later: what she experienced as a great, almost cinematic love story actually bore all the hallmarks of carefully orchestrated love bombing.

Odysseus entered her life with intensity. With constant attention, interest, words of affection and reassurance. He made her feel special—as though she were the woman he had been waiting for all his life. As though he had finally found what he had always been searching for.

And perhaps that is precisely what makes love bombing so difficult to recognise while you are experiencing it.

It does not look like manipulation.

It looks like love.

It does not arrive carrying a warning sign. It comes wrapped in attention, tenderness, promises, plans for the future and an extraordinary sense of intimacy. Very quickly, it creates the impression of a bond far deeper than the time two people have actually shared would suggest.

And back then, Danae had no reason to call what was happening love bombing.

For her, it had a much simpler name.

Love.

When Odysseus approached Danae, he was not approaching a stranger. He already knew her. He knew a great deal about her character, the way she thought, and the things that mattered to her. He knew her sensitivities, as well as those parts of herself she rarely allowed others to see.

That gave him a significant advantage.

He knew how to approach her. He knew which words would carry meaning for her, which gestures would make her feel safe, and what would create the impression that she was standing before someone who understood her deeply. He knew that Danae tended to give way, that she avoided conflict and rarely raised her voice. He knew she preferred to talk things through, to understand, to give the other person space and time.

For Odysseus, that knowledge was an advantage.

For Danae, as she would later discover, it was quite the opposite.

It did not take long, however, for the first cracks to appear.

The man who had initially showered her with attention, tenderness and reassurance gradually began to change. Not suddenly—and perhaps that was what made it so difficult for Danae to recognise what was happening. Warmth could unexpectedly turn into coldness, closeness into distance, and reassurance into devaluation.

At times he would draw her close; at others, he would pull away, leaving her trying to understand what had happened and, more importantly, what she herself had done wrong. Cutting remarks, belittling comments, withdrawal, blame and the questioning of her own perception slowly began to find their way into the relationship.

And then, whenever Danae began to withdraw emotionally or push back, the Odysseus from the beginning would return: tender, loving, attentive—the man who knew exactly how to make her believe in them again.

And so Danae was no longer simply trying to hold on to her relationship. Without yet realising it, she had begun to wait for the return of the man she had fallen in love with.

Little by little, their everyday life began to take on a different face.

Odysseus insulted her, belittled her, compared her to other women and often left her feeling that, no matter what she did, it was never enough. He would cite health problems, and Danae, out of care and concern, took it upon herself to cook for him almost every day. Yet even this gesture of care was rarely received without criticism. Something was always missing, something had not been done properly, something could always have been better.

The same pattern gradually spread into other areas of their life together. He never explicitly forbade her from seeing her friends—he did not need to. Whenever she went out, he might disappear from their messages for hours, sometimes even days, later attributing his absence to his workload.

Their outings and trips were no different. There was always something that would spoil the moment: the food was not good enough, the hotel was mediocre, the service was inadequate. He was often rude to the people around him, leaving Danae to manage not only his dissatisfaction but also the discomfort his behaviour created for everyone else.

Alongside the devaluation came silence, emotional withdrawal, blame, cutting remarks and the constant shifting of expectations that kept Danae trying harder and harder for something that never seemed to be enough.

No one ever had to tell her directly, “Don’t go out,” “Don’t speak,” or “Don’t do that.”

Instead, she gradually learned that certain choices of her own came with an emotional price.

And that was how, almost imperceptibly, the relationship began to teach Danae to adapt herself around him.

There was, however, another side to their relationship—one that Danae would gradually come to discover. Throughout almost the entire relationship, Odysseus kept doors open to other women. Former partners remained in his life, while new acquaintances, flirtations and, in some cases, sexual relationships appeared alongside them. A woman from his workplace, another he happened to meet at a shop where he was a customer—there seemed to be no particular place or circumstance. Odysseus cast his net everywhere.

Age did not appear to matter either. At 61, he could just as easily turn his attention to a 25-year-old woman as to someone approaching 80. The common denominator was not age, appearance, or any particular “type” of woman. It was the search for a response. Every new glance, every flirtation, every woman who showed an interest seemed to become yet another source of validation.

And amid this constant presence of other women, Danae found herself in a relationship where the exclusivity she had taken for granted had never truly existed.

When Odysseus spoke about his former partners, he almost always had something negative to say. They were the difficult ones, the unfair ones, the problematic ones; he was the victim—the man who had been hurt and wronged. At the same time, he made sure to surround himself with people who reinforced his image, admired him, justified his behaviour or supported his version of events—people often referred to, in the language surrounding manipulative relationship dynamics, as “flying monkeys.” And so Odysseus almost always had a small audience around him, ready to applaud the image he had carefully constructed of himself.

The women who entered Odysseus’s life while he was still in a relationship with Danae did not know about one another. Nor, of course, did all of them know about Danae.

But eventually, Danae learned about them.

And that was the end.

Final and irrevocable—at least as far as she was concerned.

When she confronted him with what she had discovered, Odysseus did not take responsibility. Instead, he questioned the reality that was now right in front of her. He told her she was imagining things, that she was making it all up, that she was possessive.

The irony was almost absurd: discovering that your partner has been unfaithful, only to be accused of being possessive when you react to it.

And yet, at the very same time that he was trying to convince her that it was all in her imagination, he was begging her to come back.

When pleading failed to produce the result he wanted, things took a darker turn.

The threats began.

Yes. Odysseus went as far as threatening Danae because she had chosen to leave.

Danae is one of those women who, when they love, make it known. She does not love in half-measures. She is spontaneous, warm, humorous and giving, and she expresses her care in countless ways, both small and significant. That was how she loved Odysseus, too. She gave him her time, her presence, her care, her patience, and second chances—perhaps more of them than she ever should have had to give.

And yet, towards the end, Odysseus had the audacity to tell her that, in this relationship, he was the one who had given so much and had not deserved what he got in return.

Perhaps that one statement captures what had happened between them better than anything else. After so much devaluation, so many lies and parallel relationships, Odysseus still placed himself in the position of the person who had been wronged.

Only this time, Danae did not try to convince him otherwise.

The end of the relationship did not mean the end of his attempts to make contact. Even after Odysseus had moved on with his life, those strange “accidental” phone calls to Danae would still appear from time to time. Once may genuinely be a mistake. But when the same mistake keeps happening, questions naturally arise.

A call like this can serve as a small test: Will she answer? Will she call me back? Does she still have my number? Can I still provoke a reaction? Is there even the slightest opening left?

And it offers one considerable advantage to the person making the call: if there is no response, there is always the most convenient explanation to fall back on.

“I called you by accident.”

By then, however, Danae had stopped searching for meaning behind his every move. She had understood something far more important: she was under no obligation to respond every time someone tested whether her door was still open.

When Danae first came to my office, she seemed lost. As though a hurricane had just swept through her life and she was still standing among the wreckage, trying to understand what exactly had happened.

She could not believe she had stayed in that relationship for so long. And again and again, she returned to the same questions:

“If I wasn’t happy, why didn’t I leave sooner? Why did he treat me so terribly? Why did I keep making excuses for him? Why did I make so many compromises? Why, when he was conspiring behind my back and speaking badly about me to other people, didn’t I just leave? Why did I stay, constantly trying to defend myself?”

Perhaps this is one of the cruellest consequences of a relationship like this. Once it is over, the person who has been hurt does not only ask, “Why did he do this to me?”

The interrogation slowly turns inward.

And this was the question that tormented Danae most of all:

Why did I stay?

From “Why Him?” to “Who Am I?”

In our sessions, we did not try to find more answers about Odysseus. Danae had already understood enough about him. What she needed now was to understand Danae.

Alongside psychotherapy, we worked with self-awareness exercises. Not to discover what was “wrong” with her, but to help her reconnect with who she truly was outside the relationship. To recognise her needs, her values, her boundaries, the way she loves—and also the reasons she had kept giving in, making excuses, enduring, and trying so hard to prove that she was not the problem.

Little by little, the questions began to change.

“Why did he do this to me?” began to lose its power.

“Why didn’t I leave sooner?” stopped being an accusation directed at herself and became an opportunity for understanding.

“Why did I make so many compromises?” helped her meet those parts of herself that had learned to love by giving, forgiving and waiting.

And by the time our work together came to an end, Danae had found her answers.

Not all the answers about Odysseus.

The answers about herself.

And ultimately, those were the only ones she truly needed.

Today, when Danae looks back, she no longer sees only Odysseus and what he did to her. She also sees herself within that relationship. The woman who loved, who gave, who forgave, who tried, who compromised—and who, for a long time, believed that perhaps if she explained herself a little better, loved a little more, showed just a little more understanding, things might change.

She is no longer ashamed of that woman.

She understands her.

She learned that kindness without boundaries can create a space in which someone else may take far more than they should. That loving someone does not mean tolerating everything. That understanding another person does not require abandoning yourself. And that there are times when the greatest act of love is not staying and trying just a little harder.

It is leaving.

Danae cannot change what happened. But she can decide what place those experiences will have in the rest of her life.

And perhaps that is why she wanted her story to be told.

For the woman who, at this very moment, is asking herself, “If I’m not happy, why don’t I leave?”

For the woman who is still making excuses for him.

For the woman who is still trying to prove that she is not crazy, overreacting, jealous or possessive.

For the woman who is beginning to forget who she was before the relationship.

Danae’s story does not say, “You should have left sooner.”

It says something very different.

Odysseus was a difficult chapter in her life.

Not her whole story.

Today, Danae is beginning a new chapter.

And this time, she is holding the pen.