Culling The Magnolia Fields

Marlene gaslighted me and told an out-of-context lie to one of our mutual friends about me. Initially, I was a fool for sweeping that notion aside when Amber and Rene suggested Marlene definitely gaslighted me when she did, but as time went on, and I reflected on the events of it all, I realize everyone was definitely right about her. For some reason, I just kept giving her the benefit of the doubt and for what exactly? Just to keep the group dynamics safe and sound? As one of our other mutual friends stated, “It’s time you prioritize your well being instead of looking out for other people all the damn time.” Note that this was originally published in May 4th 2022 under the title “Plowing The Magnolia Fields”. I decided to completely retype that with ALL of the relevant information to protect myself.

So, a little background.

Marlene was introduced to us through a mutual friend over ten years ago. She was a teenager at the time, and thus, I didn’t pay much attention to her. She was just a kid. The only thing we had in common was Minecraft and being human. ^_^ As time went on, Marlene become more and more comfortable with our gaming group. Thus, she opened herself gradually to us and to each of us. She has a genuine desire to make and keep those friendships. She makes an effort to help make everyone feel like they are appreciated within the limitations of what she thinks can be done. Though at times, she would make remarks that made me raise an eyebrow. It made me wonder if she was on the spectrum.

Eventually, we all met up in person at Storm Crow Tavern on Commercial Street in Vancouver. Despite her awkwardness, she was still a very lovely person to be around with. She reminded me of a pixie with good intentions.

The years went by and gradually, I started to take notice of her. We communicated more and more through Whatsapp. Below are a few screenshots of what was shared between us in text and in voice recordings just to show you context of our friendship at the time. Note that I will not be revealing any personal information that will reveal who they are. Only the people who know will know, and those that don’t will simply see her as an unknown person.

These conversations happened within a few months in 2021 and the beginning of 2022. From here, Marlene revealed her hobbies. She expressed how much of a sexual person she is and that she is a very open minded person. She mentioned how happy she was to have found us whom she felt super comfortable with. At around the same time, she accepted my follow request on Instagram to her rope bondage media. She even messaged me in private saying, “Surprise!”What a lovely gesture to put her trust in me, as well as reveal the parts of her that was personal and artistic. Note that in the first screenshot, I mentioned I was horny. I say perverted things to the friends I am comfortable with and trust, that can also be a little naughty. For example, I will say it my friends like Darren, Benny, Thalia, Jon, Jason, Agata, and Patrick, but I will definitely not say it to Jelaina because she has indirectly expressed discomfort about sexual topics.

Marlene also mentioned she loved how everyone treated her like an adult, and not as a kid whom a lot of other people felt they had to tip-toe around. I responded by telling her how amazing it was that we all found each other. Basically, I was promoting a positive safe space for her coinciding the group. Note that she was 24 in 2022.

During one of the conversations, she mentioned in a voice message that a lot of people think of her as a quiet innocent girl, but in fact, she is a “very nasty” girl. I double quoted those words because that is exactly what she said to me. I responded, “I wish you’re attracted to me, as I would love to have a taste of you as well.” She apologized to me thinking she was making me feel uncomfortable. On the contrary, I told her that being sex positive means we can share topics of sex and share our sexual experiences without risk that other people a part of the conversation would use it as a means to get into her pants. In other words, we were friends sharing our hobbies with each other, and not necessarily telling each other we wanted the other person sexually. Make sense? Sometimes, I’m bad at explanations.

It was around this time, I considered asking Marlene to be my friend with benefits. since she was single and stressed out. So I had a chat with Amber, Rene, and Tom. I only wanted insight from Rene, since she didn’t know Marlene. For Tom, while he and I are very similar when it came to perception of other people, he had a less cynical approach to things that I did. I received two different advice from three different people.

Amber told me that if Marlene is as mature as she said she is, and she is as opened minded as she said she is, then my proposition should either be accepted or respectfully rejected. I told Amber that while I am attracted to Marlene’s personality, at the same time, I feel something was off about her. I wasn’t able to pinpoint the exact reasons for my discomfort, but my non-verbal intuition were slapping me weakly, but still very generously.

Rene asked if Marlene had read my previous blog entry about her which has since been deleted. I told her that most of my gaming group of friends don’t know my blog exist, and the one person that does, thinks my blog is so insignificant, that no one from our gaming group will ever realize its existence in their lifetime anyway. Rene didn’t tell me much in terms of advice, but she did say that if my intuition told me something is off with Marlene, then I should trust my instincts, as she has trust hers in all of her years.

Tom basically reiterated what my previous blog entry said paraphrased, “If you feel something is off with Marlene, then trust your inner voice and don’t ask her to be your FWB.”

So for awhile, I declared the matter dead disregarding Amber’s advice. It’s not that Amber has bad insight. It’s just that Amber is German and in common German culture, people are as they are, rather than as they speak and do something else.

Some time passed and one evening, while Amber was sucking me off, she stopped abruptly and asked, “Why don’t you ask Marlene to be your sexting buddy?” This was problematic because I was super aroused for obvious reasons and I was certainly attracted to Marlene. I still denied the motion and Amber continued sucking. After a few more minutes, Amber noticed a sigh from me, stopped sucking again and remarked, “You should just ask her. Marlene says she is happy everyone treats her like an equal and not someone whom everyone have to walk around on eggshells.” So I finally gave in…

She responded as I had expected her to do: playfully and respectfully. She rejected me with grace. More time passed and I thought nothing about it, until two weeks later.

Reuben and I spoke about restarting the Valheim server world with a new map. Everyone was enthusiastic about it, except Marlene. When Marlene saw the messages exchanged she immediately went into an aggressive mode.

There is a large time gap between what Marlene said and what I responded with. That was because various people messaged me in private bewildered with how Marlene could accuse all of us as thus, when all of us have always included her in everything we did. All of us have always offered support and in the few times she vented out her frustrations in dating, we were all there to support her. More words were exchanged between her and a few of us, but I don’t want to delve into that as it completely devastated me in my perspective of Marlene’s character and personality. With all the things she said that day, she made me super disappointed in her behaviour. She came off like an entitled spoiled kid who was stomping her feet excessively trying to make a point, taking absolutely no consideration what we’ve all done over the years with her.

After that, I left her alone until the end of that same month when I reached out to her…

She said she never felt bad, and we all just thought she was. She also said she was only bumbed out a bit.

It was here that I was seeing something I didn’t want to see. She was trying to gaslight me into believing that something else had happened. That her behaviour that day wasn’t her blowing up and being distressed. That she was in fact very calm and felt bad a little bit. When I confronted her with the disproportionate response she gave us, she excused that as something normal.

Here is the definition of unintentional gaslighting…

Can Someone Gaslight You Without Realizing It?

Yes, it is possible for a person to gaslight you without realizing it. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where a person seeks to make someone doubt their own perceptions, memories, or sense of reality.

Individuals tend to engage in gaslighting behavior to gain control and avoid taking responsibility for their own actions. This drive can happen unconsciously or unintentionally, and the gaslighter might not be fully aware of the impact their words and actions have on the other person’s mental state.

Regardless, that conversation continued. I was trying to get to the bottom of why she felt the way she did, despite my feelings of disappointment. Eventually, the following is what ensued in our conversation…

Firstly, she conveniently cut out the part where she responded in the first screenshot to suit her rhetoric of me. Also, if you read the conversation, it seemed she didn’t read anything I posted or only glanced at it. She was basically talking over me.

Secondly, I did not apologize because I thought I was wrong. I apologized because I made her feel uncomfortable.

Marlene told me back in February she is super sexual, very open minded, was happy everyone treated her as an equal, and not some kid we had to tip-toe around. So that’s what I did exactly. I expressed a sexual desire towards her, in a non-dramatic way, which was received with laughter, rejection, and her thanking me for my honesty. I treated her like I treat all of my friends: as an adult that I didn’t tip-toe around. Also, I never brought up any further sex-related topics up since then, because there was no reason to, and after being rejected, I accepted it as thus.

So what changed? How did she lose trust in me? At this point, I was flabbergasted, disappointed, and disheartened. Is she not an adult? Does she not enjoy equal treatment? Is she not open minded? What was it about my age that made her so disgusted at me? I thought age didn’t matter. I thought she was an adult as she claimed to be. That she isn’t so innocent and is in fact, very experienced.

Now, I want to emphasize on a few things that she had said to me, that really upset me.

She said, “Like sorry if I fed into that or what, I just thought I finally get to be myself and share stuff. I saw it was sharing with your friends that are just your friends.”

Firstly, yes it was just sharing with friends, as *I* was also sharing with my friend. I was sharing my thoughts and feelings with Marlene, my friend. What? Only she can share things, but I can’t? I tell Darren all of the time how handsome and sexy he is. I told Reuben all sorts of naughty things. I’ve propositioned at least half of my female friends for sex and intimacy. Most of which I’ve only known for a few weeks to a few months, and all but one of them responded positively with acceptance or maturely with rejection. Marlene was the only one who accused me of ‘making things awkward’.

Secondly, it’s like whatever we spoke about in February 2022 about sex positivity, acceptance, safe spaces, her being open minded, enjoying equal treatment, not being seen as an innocent child we have to tip-toe around didn’t compute with her at all. I never felt like she fed me into anything. I only share these sort of thoughts and feelings with people I trust. It seems to me, that Marlene believes that only she is allowed to share things, but her friends are not permitted to do so with her. It’s like only she can do and say the things she likes, but everyone else has to shut up and just listen.

She said, “I think it’s the fact that you are also like 20 years older than me.”

This is how I realized she was still ‘just a kid’, ‘the outsider’, ‘someone we had to tip-toe around’.

So what if I am 20 years older? I thought she said she was super happy that she was now ‘one of us’, that we didn’t see her like a kid anymore. Which meant age shouldn’t have anything to do with anything. So what is it? Does she want us to see her and treat her like a kid we tip-toe around, or does she want to be seen and treated like an adult – like the rest of us, where we can express ourselves freely with? It seems that Marlene’s perception on what acceptance is, is limited to how others should accept her and does not include in how she accepts others. In other words, I’m too old to engage in a sexual relationship with her, because I am 20 years older, yet I should still accept her as ‘one of us’ and not ‘be gentle’ or ‘tip-toe’ around her because she is an adult who can ‘take it’? So what does she actually want? To be treated like an adult or like a kid?!

But what REALLY pissed me off, was that she essentially called me a dirty old pervert on the same wavelength as a rapist.

I showed this conversation that I had with Marlene in full with Amber. Amber lost it and called her a gaslighting bitch. The entire time Amber read it and reacted angrily, I just sighed in disappointment.

In short, friends shouldn’t do shit like that to each other, ever. In the entirety of my adult life, Marlene is the only ‘adult’ that has responded this way. She mentioned we hardly spoke to each other and our experiences connecting was limited. Which also told me my initial perception of her was correct. Like I said, prior to asking if we could be sexting buddies, I was adamant that she wasn’t ‘quite right’. [sigh] It’s not Amber’s fault that I took her advice. I gave Marlene the benefit of the massive yellow flag of doubts, and of course, it came back to bite me. What further enraged me was that I recently found out from a mutual friend that Marlene had only copied and pasted very select bits of our conversation to the mutual friend. So everything I said to Marlene looked out of context, like I was just saying them out-of-the-blue without any backstory. Basically, Marlene made it look like it was all on me for making her feel uncomfortable.

Like I said, I would NEVER say things like that to anyone, even if I am attracted to them, because it’s all dependent on whether they are sexually open minded and receptive of things like this. Since Marlene told me she’s super open minded and doesn’t mind conversations like this, on top of everything else she had said to me, I figured that at the end of the day, the worst that could happen was she would respectfully reject me. Of course, whatever her initial reaction towards my proposition was, ultimately, Marlene fucked herself over by gaslighting me and telling others an out-of-context lie.

While our mutual friends still consider Marlene as their friend despite her immaturity and gaslighting me, like Amber, I do not consider Marlene my friend anymore. I will continue to be friendly for the sake of the group dynamics, but other than that, there is no reason for me to go out of my way to support her. Our mutual friends can continue to excuse her behaviour, but I cannot and will not. People must be held accountable for their own ways, than to be coddled and excused for being an underdeveloped mid twenty-year old.

Note: comments from the original blog post has been moved over to reflect the overall ambience of the previous post. Hence, the dates are earlier than this blog post.