Are You Dating a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde?

I reflect on my eye-opening experience with a love interest during a trip to San Diego. What began as a promising connection quickly shifted, revealing a side of himself I neither recognized nor liked. Despite efforts to find closure, this uncomfortable experience left lingering questions. 

Sometimes, the hardest truth is accepting that the answers we want may never come.

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Transcript

Intro

Speaker 0:14

This is Shamron, and you're listening to Open Hearts, Hidden Truths. Have you ever been involved with someone who displayed a Jekyll Hyde personality? The person that you were dating, you were so impressed with, you were so excited, you thought you had a future together. You felt hopeful for the future. And then seemingly out of the blue, this other persona emerges and they show a side of themselves that completely throws you for a loop. This happened to me recently, semi-recently, with someone I was dating. I guess you could call it dating. It was a pretty brief entanglement. It started off very intensely, very fast, a hundred miles per hour. I was cautious. But he quickly won me over. My guard dropped, and I was very intrigued by this person, his intelligence, his depth, the chemistry. It was very it was very intoxicating. And the depth that I thought this person had was something that I hadn't found in quite a long time. And he didn't live here. He didn't live in LA. He lived in another large city. But that didn't deter me. I wasn't bothered by that. But I'm definitely open to moving. I'm not married or shackled to living in Los Angeles for the rest of my life. And I didn't really see that as a hindrance. I saw it as possibly a benefit. Whether that would be sustainable dating someone 2,000, 3,000 miles away, I don't know. But I was definitely open to it. He was out here for a business trip and we met Yeah, it's just a which is one of those strange occurrences that just happened. It seemed like it was almost preordained. And that's even how he framed it to me initially. By eight years. For another, he's a metrosexual. I never date metrosexuals. I've never dated a guy much younger than me. But I also hadn't ever been involved with someone who seemingly had this kind of emotional depth. I mean, the way he expressed himself, he seemed extremely genuine. He seemed very open with his emotions and very comfortable with his emotions. That's one of the main things that struck me about him. He seemed so in tune with his emotions, and it was refreshing. He had to fly back a few days later, where he lives. And over the next month or so, we got to know each other even more through FaceTime dates, nearly every day for hours, phone calls, texts, all of that. And um whatever reservations I had, they quickly dropped. And that dopamine was flowing. I felt high from all this dopamine, from all of the excitement this person stirred up in me. He stirred up something in me that I hadn't felt for a while. Everything seemed possible. Life seemed more hopeful and exciting. And I really started to quickly fall for him. I still found myself saying, okay, I know this is a little fast, this is a lot, but let's just see where this goes. What do you have to lose? This could be the best thing you've ever done. And I was so looking forward to hearing from him every day. Those calls, those long, in-depth conversations that we would have about life, about everything. So we decided that we were going to meet up in San Diego when he had to go out there for a conference. Either it's going to be better than ever and it's going to be full steam ahead, or you're this isn't going to work out. You're going to spend a few days together after having several, several weeks apart. You're going to know something one way or the other. You're going to feel stronger. Either you're going to feel more safe and more secure going forward and know that there's a future, or, you know, we'll see. I didn't quite know what to expect, but I was not expecting what I was confronted with. So he greeted me at the train station, surprised me, which is very nice, grabbed my bag for me. We walked back to the hotel. And then that's when everything sort of went sideways pretty much immediately. He had given me a book on psychiatry, and I packed it in my bag. I always throw books in my bag when I'm traveling. And so the corners were a little worn. It was well loved, I guess you could say. It wasn't pristine. I was enjoying it. I was reading it. And in the room, he looked over at the book, and just in a monotone voice, he said, one of my pet peeves is when people don't take care of books. I was a little thrown off. And I assured him that I really appreciate the book that you gave me. I'm loving it. It's just, it's not that I don't appreciate it. It's just I was explaining myself. I was um defending myself over this book in its worn corners. And it just, it struck me as such a passive-aggressive, strange thing to say. Really was so silly. And um I went to go sit on the bed, and he looked at me and he said, Remember what we talked about. You're sitting on the bed. And I said, Oh, that's that's right. We had had a conversation about how he doesn't like germy clothing on the bed, on the couch, on the bed, even hotel beds. That was one of his. Um, I guess that was another one of his pet peeves. But the way he admonished me, and he didn't raise his voice, but the way he admonished me, I felt like a stupid, scolded little child, and I didn't know what to say. I think I'm I think I apologized. I don't even remember exactly what I said, but I definitely tried to smooth things over. It was just very awkward. He was distant, he was cold, he was disconnected. I didn't know if it was me. I felt like I was walking on eggshells. And I felt some embarrassment too. There's something so embarrassing about it. Like, am I doing something wrong? I found myself questioning if I was at fault. This guy is a psychiatrist, by the way. I think that's worth noting. A lot of doctors think they know everything and they love to well, I would say that a lot of them have a God complex. A lot of them are hugely narcissistic. And I was aware of some of this guy's traits when I met him. Kind of cocky, very self-assured, but I always felt that underneath that cocky exterior was someone who was insecure. He would never admit it. But that kind of that kind of attitude just struck me as something that he was trying to cover for an insecurity. So a few hours go by. I gave him a compliment about something that he had done that I really liked. It was something intimate. And he turned to me and with a smirk on his face, he said, Well, yeah, that's because it's about what I want, not about what you want. And then he turned away. I don't think I said anything. I was so thrown off. I didn't have a retort. I think my face probably fell. And I just remember thinking, what the fuck is going on with this person? Who is this? Who is this man? I don't recognize this man. I don't like him. I gave him a compliment that was very tender. It certainly didn't warrant his reaction. He was devaluing me again. He was pushing me away. I should have just left. I should have just left that weekend. It was a disaster. And it only got worse. The next day we were eating dinner and one of his teeth fell out. He had broken his front tooth somehow. He had had a root canal years ago or something like that. And it was just the most random thing. And the poor guy lost his front tooth. At the end of the trip, I knew that I had a UTI. It was just a disaster. It was as though the universe was telling us, this is not meant to be. I'm going to make it clear in no uncertain terms, just how wrong you two are for each other. This trip um was definitely not what I thought it was going to be, to say the least. I mean, I knew that things would that the needle would get moved one way or the other. I just didn't realize I would be confronted with someone who was so cold. I didn't know if he hated me. I felt like he hated me, that he disliked me. I couldn't do anything right. And I was just wondering, what are you doing with me? I have so many things now that I wish I would have said. I was just so shell-shocked and dumbfounded in that moment that I don't think I knew how to process all of it. Just the person I was confronted with was not who I thought he was. This was not the emotionally aware, thoughtful, beautifully spoken person that I had first met. He was definitely trying to push me away. I think he had already checked out. Doing it now, I never would have gotten involved with him with some of the things that were still going on in his personal life, some unfinished business. But we're only human. We're only human. And I went for it. Horrible trip. And riding on the train back to LA, I just thought, no, this is this is no good. This is it's a disaster. I didn't quite expect that to happen in that way, but um but it did. And I think he freaked out. I think this this whole routine of um showing his best side and wooing me in the beginning and really, really pursuing me, I think he crashed and burned. And I think he probably has some um avoidant attachment issues as well. But the whole point is about the Jekyll Hyde persona. I've never had that happen before, and I hope I never have that happen again. It was jarring, disorienting, embarrassing, pride swallowing, and just so confusing. So confusing. Needless to say, that bit the dust. I was reading that uh narcissists often have the whole Jekyll Hyde persona going on. I don't know how much of this was related to narcissism, but I feel that he was so uncomfortable with the intimacy and the emotional vulnerability. He had just decided I'm done. He had freaked out and perhaps he wasn't even conscious of pushing me away. I don't know. I'm just I can only make sense of it the best that I can because none of it really makes sense to me. I don't know if the way he treated me was just a common trick that narcissists do when they start to devalue you and debase you. I'm still scratching my head. And we don't like to not have answers. We like to figure these things out as humans. But the fact is, I don't have an answer. I don't know exactly what happened on his end. This person who struck me as so communicative with his emotions and his feelings initially, he turned out to be the opposite of that. It was just a like a night and day difference. He was not who I thought he was in any shape or form. So was I starting to fall for someone that was a complete act? Was it a partial act? I know I'm not alone here. I know a lot of you have experienced a Jekyll Hyde persona as well. Whether it's someone that you have just started dating, maybe it's someone you're married to. They turned out to be someone completely different, and you were appalled. It's not uncommon. I know a lot of you have experienced something similar to this. And it's kind of a fascinating topic to me. How someone's mask can drop and they are unrecognizable. It's a little scary to me, it's a little psychotic. I don't know what to make of these people. I don't know what to make of that trip in San Diego. Still, it was so bizarre. But I also know that I'm not alone in feeling this way. So I'd love to hear from you. Who in your life has done something similar to you? How did this make you feel? How did you react to it? How did they behave when you confronted them with this? Or did you not confront them with this? What are you feeling? Talk to me.

Speaker 14:45

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