Cut by the Chase

If red flags are like fire alarms going off on the whole block, instead of getting out of the house, I just found ways to disconnect the power and talk over it like nothing was happening.

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Alphabetically, I came up first in his contacts and, in hindsight, I wished my name had been Zander.

When that first text came through from an old acquaintance that I had a not-so-secret crush on—who I would later find out was just drunk and horny scrolling on a Friday night—I felt how a Swifty does at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Intoxicated with excitement.

He was a sexy musician with a successful job in TV, and most importantly, he had reached out to me. I wasn’t used to being someone’s target. By definition, I liked being chased, but it was all still so foreign to me that it was exhilarating when it happened.

In 1993, driven by an obsession with Billy Baldwin, I came out at 19. But it wasn’t until I was 21 that I experienced my first everything—from kissing to intimacy—with a man. That ended painfully when I discovered he was cheating on me after I moved him in, and he couldn’t figure out how to tell his wife he was gay. Turns out, I have a type.

After that, I packed up my feelings and my Jagged Little Pill CD into my ’88 VW Fox and moved to Los Angeles. Despite being one of the world’s biggest cities, it felt like it had the fewest dating options for me. Surrounded by 8s and 9s looking over my shoulder for 10s, I felt invisible—a self-imagined 3. Before the internet and Grindr, I had no idea I had a tribe. I just knew I wasn’t attracted to myself—6-foot-3 and Santa-bellied—and those I was attracted to weren’t interested in me either. That changed when MySpace came along, revealing a whole new pond in which to fish. It turns out my love handles and hairy chest had a name: bear. And, surprisingly, I learned there’s a small group of athletic men who find us attractive, known as chasers.

Eleven years later, I met my first official boyfriend, who had Zac Efron’s looks paired with incredible sweetness. His greatest gift to me was making me believe I could be sexy without a 32-inch waist. That relationship lasted eight years but ended in a Judas kiss when he, too, cheated. I had held onto that relationship too tightly, long after it had run its course, because I believed he was a needle in a haystack and experience taught me that there’d be no one else like him. The breakup left me feeling unworthy of love, and those old feelings of not belonging in the gay community—because I didn’t look like the boys in my Abercrombie catalog—came rushing back.

Which is why when that horny text arrived, I felt the haystack had procured me a rare second needle and, this time, there was no way I was going to lose it. We had our first date the next night, and I went all out to show him I wasn’t just boyfriend material, I was husband quality. I cooked dinner for us, helped him with tech issues on his computer, and flirted as if my life depended on it. Didn’t it?

It worked.

When he kissed me in the living room, it felt like actual fireworks, just as Bobby Brady had always promised. Then came the sex. I had never experienced anything like it, and I only wanted more. From that first kiss, this man was my drug, and I was addicted.

Our relationship was immediate but, within two weeks, we had our first explosive fight. This should’ve been a red flag, but I attributed his fiery nature to passion; he was a musician, after all. I also learned I wasn’t the only thing he chased in life. When he had an idea, he pursued it with full intensity. His bad boy confidence was intoxicating and sexy. Our first date was on January 10th, and by March 15th, we signed a lease on a new penthouse that he insisted we needed. He assured me that I was always going to be his, and there was no point in wasting any more time. His words were music to my broken heart. Someone wanted me. Someone I desired with every cell in my body was actually chasing me. 

A month after we had signed the lease, my job became uncertain, and I worried about losing it. He reached for my hand with tears in his eyes and said: "I've got you. I have plenty of money, and I know you'll find the perfect job in time." No one, not a single person in my life, had ever filled me with so much comfort and support, and I soaked it up. What red flags?

From the start, he made no apologies about his visits to Korean spas, where he would go a few days a week, rotating between the steam room and the hot tub until he found someone to get off with. Sometimes I went with him to show I was OK with it (I wasn't), and often I stayed home, practically begging him to have sex with me so I could prove to us both I was an incredible lover and that he shouldn’t need anyone else. 

With our ever-changing circumstances, I would learn the hard way the true meaning of codependency. I found myself performing for him, hoping he would chase me over that high, choose me over that drink, that expensive purchase, or sex with strangers. I collected every red flag and displayed them proudly in a vase on the kitchen table. Someone once said the red flags were like a fire alarm going off on the whole block and, instead of getting out of the house, I was just finding ways to disconnect the power and talk over it like nothing was happening. That resonated.

I cooked; I cleaned; I shopped; I walked the dog. I also kept the wine rack full, charmed his friends, and experimented sexually—all in hopes of being enough for him. I was tap dancing for my life. But what you learn about codependency is that no matter how much you hope they will change, they never do. Whenever he sensed I was getting exhausted, he’d come up with a shiny new diversion, making me believe change was possible. I was the dying mouse, and he was the cat—keeping me just alive enough to play with but too weak to flee.

As we were approaching our first year together, it seemed like I was checking out (literally, as I developed a life-threatening heart condition), which prompted him to double down with a marriage proposal. By July, we were legally married. Before I could question what I had done, a week later, we were putting an offer in on a house. At this point, I had taken a production job on a big movie, hoping to make enough to keep up with a lifestyle that constantly felt out of reach. 

One of the loneliest times in my life was being married, sitting next to my husband on the couch while he watched TV, as I scrolled through Growlr, Scruff, and Grindr, hoping to find a third because then I knew he’d want to have sex at home. Based on the betrayals of being cheated on previously, I convinced myself that since he was transparent about his actions, I could find a way to be OK—even though it felt like drinking poison and wondering why my stomach always hurt. I also believed that if I were the perfect lover and partner, he would eventually decide I was all he needed, and we could finally have the life we claimed to be living.

A mere five months after our wedding, the winds began to blow around the house of cards we were building. During an unusual streak of rain in Los Angeles, I decided to create a romantic day for us. I bought a joint from a dispensary, picked up some Legos at Target and, while the Los Angeles River swelled, I cooked an incredible dinner. We drank wine, laughed, watched The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and built with Legos. It was the kind of script Hallmark wishes they could write. In retrospect, it was the greatest day of our relationship—and the day everything began to unravel.

It seemed he too felt it was the greatest day of our relationship because, in his addiction, he spent every day after trying to replicate it. Every night I would come home from work to find him high and building a new Lego set. By the second week, I became suspicious of where all the Legos were coming from. Everyone knows how expensive they are, and all of a sudden, we were close to owning the entire Batman series. In addition, his behavior was becoming manic. Marijuana didn’t affect him the way it affected others. Instead of the typical giggly, munchy, and sleepy effects we associate with Seth Rogen or Cheech and Chong, he became unbalanced. 

His thoughts were scattered, his energy was hyperactive, and he couldn’t stop talking because he believed every thought he had was so profound because God was channeling through him. As the weeks went on, his behavior grew more alarming. One day, he called me and spent an hour explaining that Jesus was actually his subordinate and that a group of us were his prophets because he believed he was, in fact, God. I was terrified. 

Suspicious of the Legos filling up our house and concerned by his alarming behavior, I uncovered an even bigger secret that prevented me from talking to anyone about what I was going through: He was shoplifting this new parade of merchandise into our home. Legos were just the canary in the mine. Suddenly, we had throw pillows anywhere you could throw, along with a variety of watches, vases, and complete collections of full-sized cologne from Tom Ford and Jo Malone. Our bathroom wasn’t just stocked with every Kiehl's product: We had back stock! I would go on his computer when he slept and search his internet history. It was full of “how to remove sensors” and “what to say if you get caught.” 

The house of cards finally collapsed after he posted some erratic videos on Facebook while high, which caused his mom and boss to separately reach out to me. Then I imploded from my emotional fatigue and finally told them what I knew. When they confronted him, he was furious with me and immediately asked for a divorce. He. Asked. Me. It’s been seven years since this episode and that detail still embarrasses me the most. Even though our marriage looked like a game of 52 Pickup, I didn’t have the strength to leave him.

In the weeks that followed, someone forwarded me an article from Rolling Stone discussing marijuana-induced psychosis. It was a fairly new topic, and researchers were still trying to determine its cause and effect. Essentially, the idea was that certain people who smoke marijuana exhibit signs of bipolar disorder. The question was always whether the symptoms of bipolar show up only while you’re smoking or if the symptoms were always there and smoking marijuana reveals them. Either way, he checked every single box in the article, and all of those red flags I had strategically avoided in the beginning and mistaken for confidence and sexiness now seemed like symptoms of a disease. 

Eight months into our marriage, we began our first round of divorce proceedings, which reignited all of my insecurities and also substantiated them because “of course” I couldn’t even make my marriage last a full year. A short while later, in a moment of lucidity, he realized he had burned down his world. I had filed the paperwork for our divorce, he didn’t have money to pay the mortgage as he hadn’t worked in months, and his relationships with his entire family were flatlining. That’s when he began imploring me to give him a second chance. He promised to be sober, admitting that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he vowed to do whatever it took to prove it to me. 

I took my wedding vows, “in sickness and in health,” very seriously. He was very much sick, and I was very much exhausted. I also believed in the “devil you know.” None of these were good enough reasons to get back together, but we did. I gave it another try because my codependent heart wanted to believe he could change, that all my tap dancing had paid off, and that I’d finally be enough for him—and for myself—because his validation was what I had been seeking all along.

But we’ve all seen enough Lifetime movies to know that’s not how this ends. The wheels came off after just a few months when he bought a new vape pen, and we finally divorced. And for the second time, HE had to ask ME for a divorce. This time, his behavior became more erratic and dangerous, so I kept tabs on his comings and goings, but never got involved. I’ve heard through the grapevine that he eventually received a proper diagnosis and has sought treatment. While I have empathy for how hard his life has become, his journey is best left in my rearview mirror—though not without some valuable lessons in self-worth to carry into my future.

I couldn’t shake the shame of him having to ask me for a divorce. Twice. After everything we had been through, how was I not strong enough to know I deserved better? Since that first text, I deserved better. When it was over, my friends reminded me how, in the beginning, I would say: “Can you believe someone like that could like someone like me?” I don’t even know what that means, but I know I said it. Repeatedly.

The ride I had been on with him was so chaotic from the start that I never realized I hadn’t healed from my previous heartbreaks, infidelities, feelings of being unwanted and undesirable, and every other dating trauma I’d endured. This made me a very willing participant in the entire melodrama.

Determined not to lose myself again, I committed to treating myself the way all my friends do. “Love yourself,” as they say, wasn’t enough. I spent the entire year after our divorce discovering the power of relying on myself. The belief that I wasn’t enough on my own had kept me trapped in those previous relationships, clinging to the idea that I needed a man by my side to feel complete. But I was wrong—so very wrong.

I once heard Elizabeth Gilbert describe boundaries as drawing an imaginary circle around yourself, with everything inside being your sacred space. Only those who honor and respect that circle are allowed in; anyone who doesn’t can get the hell out. Yet, you can’t expect others to honor that space if you haven’t defined and respected it yourself. And I hadn’t.

Hearing this made me realize how responsible I was for letting men into my life who wreaked havoc. Without setting clear boundaries, how could I expect to handle it when they were crossed? I had been inviting them into my circle, seeking the approval I hadn’t given myself since coming out. Once I established strong boundaries, I realized I was all I truly needed. This shift enriched my life, freeing me from the need for others’ validation. My friendships deepened as I focused on those who brought me joy and distanced myself from those who didn't. I began making decisions based on my own desires, enjoying solo events and travel. This newfound independence was liberating, allowing me to thrive by being true to myself. The greatest gift I gave myself was the knowledge that had eluded me all along: I was enough.

And wouldn’t you know it? Just as I was settling into a life of solo contentment at 45, I met an extraordinary man—who yes, pursued me. He loves and supports me for who I am and thinks I’m sexy no matter my belt size. He’s kind beyond compare: curious, successful, and whole. The very first time we met, he said, “You’re so much more handsome than your photos.” And you know what? I believed him! After four-and-a-half years of dating, we recently married.

The best part is that, when I tell people how amazing my now-husband is, I truly believe someone as wonderful as him could love someone as wonderful as me. I have the partner I’ve always imagined and deserve because, finally, I know my worth. To him, I’m not just enough—I’m more than he ever could’ve dreamed. Together, we’ve built our relationship on a solid foundation, where we only use cards for playing games on a quiet Friday night.

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If you or someone you know needs more information on mental health support, contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness. You can reach their helpline by calling 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or visit NAMI.org.

Each week, The Queer Love Project publishes an original essay. Want to submit your essay and add to our growing archive? Find our submission guidelines and more here.