One of the things I keep thinking about is how differently all of this might have affected me at another point in my life.
I have been hurt by what happened with Jerry. I have been angry, confused, sad, and completely baffled by some of it. I have questioned what I thought I knew about him and what I thought some of our experiences meant.
What I have not done is decide that any of it means something is wrong with me.
That is not because I am somehow exceptionally strong. It is because I have done a lot of work over a lot of years. I know myself pretty well now. I have therapy. I have recovery experience. I have strong relationships. I have a life that was already full before Jerry and is still full without him.
A younger version of me would have had a much harder time separating his choices from my own sense of worth. I can imagine spending years wondering what I had done wrong. Why I was not enough. Why someone could make me feel so seen and important and then behave in ways that seemed to say the opposite. I might have taken all of that confusion and turned it inward. I know there are women who would do that now. That is the part that scares me.
Jerry is very careful about the women he pursues. He pays attention to people. He notices what they care about, what makes them feel understood, what they respond to, and where connection is likely to happen.
One very concrete example is kink. I had almost no experience with kink when Jerry started introducing rope, pain, restraint, and more intense forms of control into our sex. He knew far more than I did. At the time I did not even know enough to understand how much I did not know. I know now how important that imbalance was in my own experience. And kink experience is only one kind of vulnerability.
Some people desperately want to feel chosen. Some are lonely. Some are trying to rebuild after terrible relationships. Some do not trust their own judgment yet. Some have spent years being told they are too much or not enough. Some are simply at a point in their lives where being intensely seen by another person feels incredibly powerful.
Jerry is very good at making someone feel seen. I know because he did it with me. That is why I worry about someone who might need what he offers more than I did.
I liked Jerry. I cared about him and I wanted him in my life. I trusted him, but I did not need him to tell me who I was. I did not need to be chosen by him. I was not looking for him to organize my life or give me an identity or reassure me that I was worthy of being loved. He could still hurt me, obviously, he just could not take my sense of self with him.
I know there are women who are not in that place yet. I know because I was not always in that place either. That is what makes this particular kind of powerlessness so difficult for me.
And this is not a hypothetical fear about what Jerry might do someday. He was looking for new women almost immediately after things ended between us, and he is still pursuing new relationships. I do not have to imagine whether he will keep going. He already has.
I can tell people what happened. I can make the evidence available. I can explain what I learned later and what I wish I had known sooner. I can talk openly about the patterns I saw. But telling the truth does not give me control over what happens next. It does not make Jerry stop pursuing women. So far, he has not stopped.
I cannot control who Jerry meets. I cannot control what he tells them or what they believe. I cannot make someone read this before she gets involved with him. I cannot make her recognize a pattern while she is inside it. And if she does get hurt, I cannot make sure she understands that his choices are not a verdict on her.
That is the part I wish I could somehow guarantee, not because women need me to rescue them. They do not.
I just know how easy it is to take someone else’s behavior personally when you are already unsure of yourself. I know how much damage can happen when someone makes you feel deeply understood and then leaves you questioning whether any of it was real.
I can imagine a younger version of myself trying to make sense of that and tearing herself apart in the process.
That thought is awful. There is nothing I can do that guarantees another woman will never have that experience. I can only make what I know visible.
Visibility matters. It just is not control. And I think part of my grief is learning to live with the fact that I can care very deeply about what happens to someone I may never meet and still have absolutely no way to make sure she will be okay.