Masks off!

So, you’ve just got into a new relationship and everything is going great. He is kind and caring, smart, and funny; and let’s not mention how handsome. He treats you right, he loves your little quirks and gets on with your friends and family. He is perfect; he may even be the one. Long, romantic walks on the beach, candlelight dinners, cozy nights in; like a fairy tale come true! What else could you ask for?

As time goes by you get to know him more and more. Learn his likes and hates; good and bad habits. And you feel like you know him. You feel like you can trust him with anything and you believe that he does the same. You can talk to him for hours, finding out little things about him and adding them up to create this person in your mind; this person you believe you really like. So you spend more and more time with him, devoting most of your time to him and forgetting about your friends, and how you promised them that just because you’ve got a boyfriend, that doesn’t mean that you won’t hang out with them anymore.

But then, three months down the line, he changed; everything changed. And as you got sucked in, deeper and deeper in your emotions for him; you were blinded by your own love and affection. You never realized that the guy standing next to you wasn’t the one you fell for. He was someone else; someone completely different. He was becoming controlling and abusive. But you still didn’t see it. His ‘mask’ had come off; the real guy you got involved with was revealed. Your friends would try and tell you but you wouldn’t listen. You still couldn’t see it.

He is an egocentric and mean guy who now spends his days picking at every single little thing about you that he doesn’t like anymore, trying to change it. Trying to change you. And that’s when you see it. That’s when you realize. He wasn’t wearing his mask anymore and you didn’t recognize the person standing in front of you.

You realize you are left all alone thinking: where did the sweet guy I fell for go? What happened to him? Was he ever there or was he just pretending? You realize that you are involved with someone you would never even look at -let alone get involved with. And you don’t know what to do.

Now, I know that everyone hides parts of who they are at the beginning of a relationship, but they are only small things; not entire personalities. And we only hide those parts because we think they will make the other person think less of us, or that they will scare them away if we reveal our little quirks too early.

But the truth is, we are more scared of what we will find when the masks come off. When the real people are revealed. I mean everyone tells you not to judge a book by its cover but what if you like the cover but not what you find inside it when you open it? What if the real person under the ‘cover’ isn’t who you thought they were? More importantly, what if you don’t like them?