I Lost My Virginity To A Psycho

I LOST MY VIRGINITY TO A PSYCHO

In 1997 eighteen year old me, landed wide-eyed in Edinburgh from my small, conservative hometown. I met Mark, with his clear blue eyes and bad boy vibe. He was different, mysterious and told stories of the city's underworld which blew my mind.

I lost my virginity to him a week after we met. He asked me to keep our relationship secret, which was no surprise because he’d only recently broken up his engagement to Caroline, a close friend.

But I was bursting with the excitement from being in love for the first time in my life, I HAD to tell my other bestie, Gwen. Halfway through a cheap bottle of vodka in my student flat...

“There’s something I have to tell you.” I grinned.

“Me too!” She replied excitedly.

“I lost my virginity to Mark. I’m so in love! We….” I stopped because the reaction on her face was all wrong. “I know he only recently broken up with Caroline, but…”

“I lost my virginity to him yesterday.” Gwen replied. The crushed look on her face echoed onto mine.

I staggered down my hallway in shock, about to do that thing I’d only seen people in movies do: I got in the shower with all my clothes on. The hot water soaks through the fabric of my 60s sweater dress as I sob for the first time in my life.

How is this possible? I’m finally in love. It’s not meant to be like this. We’re meant to spend the rest of our lives together.

I had eighteen years of brainwashing each Sunday from the church, telling me that s€x before marriage is a sin. While I wasn’t a Christian, the beliefs were still firmly lodged in my subconscious. I believed this relationship HAD to work as I’d already lost my virginity to him.



Later that night Mark came into my room, crying “I’m so sorry. Sleeping with Gwen was such a mistake. I felt bad for her and she was all over me. I love you. I choose you. I want to be with you.”

Overwhelming relief washed over me. Our relationship wasn’t over! He was sorry and wanted to make it work!

He held me as I sobbed and comforted me with reassuring words and promises.

I thought everything would get better because it couldn’t possible get worse. Right?

Wrong.

Pathological liars come with no warning label. It was the 90s, even the cigarettes had no warnings. The word ‘Gaslighting’ described a kitchen activity involving a stove and ‘Red Flags’ were only mentioned in connection to football.

The close nit group of cool friends I’d finally discovered in Edinburgh, understandably, abandoned me (Years later I found out Mark hadn’t actually broken up with Caroline and they were still sleeping together when he took both my and Gwen's virginity).

With no other friends, Mark became my world.

Within a week of being together, he told me that drug dealers were going to kill him if he didn’t give them £800 (about two month’s living expenses). He was about to get paid for a construction job so I’d have the money back in a few days. I never saw that money again, just a string of excuses until I stopped asking.

His lies seemed to be a compulsive game for him. He lied about everything from eating a bacon roll to building us an apartment. He peppered lies through everything he said and eventually I stopped being able to grasp what was true and what wasn’t.

I was terrified of losing him as I had no one else. He alienated everyone who tried to warn me against him, making up horrifying stories about them, telling me he loved me. His lies eroded my already fragile self-trust and self confidence.

If I caught him outright lying he’d gaslight me. He turned it around and made me question what I thought was true. If you’ve never had someone fking with your version of reality so much that you doubt your own experiences, it feels like you’re walking on a knife edge of insanity.

I stopped trusting the thoughts in my head.

Yet when I thought I was losing my mind, who did I cling to? The one person who was there for me, who said they loved me. I didn’t realise he was the one person I needed to doubt and get away from.

I stayed with Mark for a year.

Until he elbowed me in the face. It was an accident but his lack of remorse and concern for me was enough of an epiphany to make me leave him.



He turned up a week later and told me his Mum had stage four cancer and the doctors said she had a few weeks to live. I couldn't tell if he was lying but I didn’t go back to him.

By the end of that year, I was nineteen, with zero self esteem, no friends, almost no money in my bank account, countless psychological scars and genital warts so bad the nurse gasped.

The psychological scars were the worst. I didn’t trust anyone, especially myself. I hated men. I had both an ingrained victim mentality and hyper-independence.

It took over a decade to unravel the internal damage caused by Mark.

But I did fully heal from it. Now, 23 years later, I feel no resentment or anger about my relationship with Mark. I feel only compassion for him. His parents were alcoholics and things happened to him in childhood which made him that way.

Recently, I watched Bad Vegan and my boyfriend was struggling to understand why smart Selma would stay with a pathological liar. So I shared this story, because I completely understand what Selma went through and why she stayed.

I want to share this story here so other people who’ve experienced such intense gaslighting and compulsive lying feel my solidarity. But also, I want you to know it’s not worth staying in a painful relationship:
- in the name of “love”
- because of a belief that you MUST make the relationship work (I inherited this from the church)
- with someone who says they love you but their behaviour says otherwise

The sooner you leave, the sooner you can start the healing process and get your life back on track. I know this not only from my own experience, but from the tens (if not hundreds) of clients I’ve guided to heal from such toxic relationships in their pasts.

I also share this vulnerable story for the first time publicly because I want to share with you how painful things like this can make us stronger.

Healing from this abusive relationship gave me strength and taught me so much about myself. Because of Mark’s lies, I have an extraordinarily high BS detector and an unwavering commitment to always speaking the truth.

There are superpowers waiting to be unleashed from inside you, as you heal from your past. You don’t need to carry this weight inside you anymore!