Reframing the First Date

For a very long time, I told the tale of our first date as a romantic tale. It was fate. Meant to be. The type of passionate connection that anyone would dream of finding.

They asked me out for a drink. A group of people overheard so we all went out together. We had a great night. As I was walking out, they ran out behind me and invited me to come over. I hesitated. As a mom of a small child, I hadn’t been out for a drink or stayed at someone’s house late in years. I ran home, checked on the dog, and headed over to their house.

The setting was romantic. There was a hot tub under a string of lights. I was handed a beautifully crafted Old Fashioned. We wasted no time hopping into the hot tub, sipping away at our drinks, and talking the night away. After hours, we shared our first kiss. We were hooked. Or so I thought.

Looking back, it was all calculated. The invite out. The invite over. The romantic setting. The drinks. The million questions, seemingly so interested in me that they had to know everything about me, and sharing our deepest darkest traumas. They weren’t so enthralled by me that they wanted to know every inch of my history. They were logging it all away. Some information would be used to lure me into a false relationship with them, and more information would be used for them to know exactly how to further traumatize me. I had just given them a handbook to not only hook me, but eventually, abuse me.

I read somewhere that abusive relationships are an assault from the beginning. Love bombing is abuse. The intentional targeting of a victim, creating a false connection to lure them into an unsafe relationship is abuse.

Do you have a similar story? Did you start off with a beautiful, romantic moment that now, looking back, was quite obviously the first shot fired in what would become an intense battlefield of abuser versus survivor? How does the truth look different from what you thought was happening at the time?