So it (actually my entire life) is a season of loss and unraveling. And I feel self-conscious about that, because in a world low on emotional intelligence, it’s easy for people to see a woman breaking under multiple pressures and say, “There she goes again—claiming pain, can’t handle life.” I can hear the judgments before they’re even spoken. I wish I could say no one judges me harder than I do, but I’m pretty sure my family—including my sons—absolutely does.
And then there’s him—my love bomber, the one I parted with in March. He wasn’t a “shitty person.” He was toxic, yes, but he also brought me more joy, peace, pleasure, and adventure than anyone. It has been a challenge to reconcile: letting go of the only adult person who ever made me feel even remotely glad to be alive.
Maybe that’s the theme of this season: letting go of people I thought I could not live without.
And here’s where I land: I don’t think he’s a bad man. I think he’s unwell, acting out of a savior complex- compelled to capitalize on the desperation of others. His impulse is not love, but a deep seated need to leverage the vulnerability of others as a means of personal validation. I think he mourns the collateral damage, but not enough to stop creating it. I don’t think he gets pleasure from hurting anyone. The pain he causes is incidental—fallout from whatever is starving inside him.
I was fiercely protective of him. When he was broken by fever for days and the church elders, his ex-wife, and those other two women were all coming for him, I defended him like he was an endangered species of goodness. I sheltered him. I believed in him. I thought he was misunderstood, persecuted, too precious for the world.
Then came the devalue/discard phase. The mixed messages. The devotion in words—you’re my best friend, I can’t imagine life without you, you’re my anchor—while his presence went thin, remote, unavailable. His messages to me could’ve gone to anyone, and I’m sure they did. Our dates and conversations shrank to weekdays only, weekends reserved for “Asheville.” It took me a minute to realize he was farming Asheville the same way he farmed me (and the others): attach to the vulnerable, show up strong, perform stability, offer spiritual oxygen, future-fake, mirror, enthrall, repeat. Good intentions don’t cancel destructive patterns. They just make them harder to see.
And still, I can’t fully condemn him. I wish I could. Some part of me still wants him to get well. But I also want his wings trimmed—just enough that he can’t keep circling the vulnerable, sweeping in with intensity that looks like devotion, persistence that feels like passion, attention that mimics care. I want him unable to keep exploiting people who mistake his performance for love of anything but his idea of himself as the good guy, the ernest savior.
This week I missed him—annoyingly—so I googled him. And what hit me first was this: he’s not someone I would have chosen. Not on sight. Not based on the facts of who he is. He looks like someone I’d avoid on instinct—performing some rugged, salt-of-the-earth healer aesthetic I don’t even like.
Then I googled the other two women he entangled during the same year—both arrested this year—and humiliation rose in my chest. Not because I think I’m “above” anyone, but because I suddenly saw the demographic he reaches for. The vulnerabilities he circles. And the story he fed me—You’re different though; I picked you; they picked me—fell apart instantly.
I deeply and genuinely loved the hologram of him.
He cultivates his image—the simple man in a van who needs almost nothing, who’s always pleasant, ready for a chat, ready with the perfect tool or solution. So when the hurricane hit and he said he’d be in Asheville “helping,” it read as noble. His charm thrives in collapsed places—towns, women, systems. He – the strong and calm one, armed with his Mercedes Sprinter home, pastoral credentials, emotional fluency, and endless bandwidth. A savior with compassionate eyes. His potency is illuminated in already broken spaces. I once told him he was like penicillin. To which he replied: “I don’t wanna be penicillin. I wanna be cocaine.” I thought that hysterical…at the time.
I fell under his spell.
A well-crafted, highly practiced, deeply intoxicating spell.
I miss him like a miracle wonder drug of healing and hope — which has known catastrophic side effects.
Ralph Owen #expedtionofhope Expedition of Hope Asheville NC
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