A big red flag

I've just remembered something else that should have been a huge red flag for me.

About 3 years ago, on my birthday, we went out for a meal. XN was telling me about this girl in work who'd had a crush on him (I'd known about it already but things had come to a head with this girl). He'd not told her he was seeing someone and accepted lifts off her every day to get to work.

One day she drove off somewhere with him and demanded an explanation from him because she felt he was leading her on.

He was incredibly p*ssed off that he'd been put in that position by her. Yet he'd done things like gone around to her house (pretending to be single) and helped her cook when she had a party for some people from work.

He made me sympathise with him because he said she was a trouble maker and had caused problems with male colleagues before.

He told me that his mum got really excited that he was hanging around with this girl thinking he had a g/friend at last (she didn't know about us at the time-my choice as I worked with her) and she invited this girl for dinner.

XN was livid, spitting with rage that his mum thought he would interested in this girl...he said things like, "I mean....look at me!! Does she think that someone who looks like ME would go for HER??!"

....this from someone who apparently suffered from very low self-esteem! I remember thinking that something didn't quite square there!

Anyway, back to my birthday meal. I was asking him about this girl and he said he didn't care at all if she liked him. He admitted that he'd liked the attention and that if she did like him, it was her problem. I said, "but you don't want her to get hurt, do you?" and he said he didn't care.

I was upset with his attitude at the time and we fell out (on my birthday). However, I had a nutcase stalking me at the time and I didn't care about HIM so I tried not to be too harsh with XN.

However...that should have been a huge red flag.

XN took advantage of someone who liked him, used her for lifts, devalued her and eventually stopped speaking to her altogether. I wasn't threatened by her so let him do what he felt he needed to do. However, this is exactly what he did this year in work, pretending to be single, acting flirtatiously, but this time with a more attractive girl, who was "kind, and sweet and nice". A younger version of me looks wise and her character was like mine before I was devalued.

So....an indication of things to come that I ignored. More fool me.