Official Kiwi Farms Man-Hate Thread - Gorl Tawk's very own DMZ (De-Moidified Zone)

I dated a guy who ended up doing that to me.

For a bit of context, the main antagonist of the story is a well-established French dude, 9 years older than me. I had met him through mutual friends at a party organised by my running group. He periodically pursued me for over a year, but my first instinct told me not to go there since he was known for sleeping around. Eventually though, we ended up together during one of our running club trips' for a European race. We had spent a week together, and he seemed very charming and sincere in his desire for a relationship with me, so I tentatively agreed.

He was big into grand, romantic gestures : flowers and handwritten letters sent to my home, high-end dinners, opera, all that crap. Nonetheless, it didn't stop him from cheating on me with his ex, and still being active on dating apps. Unfortunately, my self-esteem was just low enough that I thought I could weather it. He had assured me it was just a lapse in judgement, a "transitional period" of sorts, and I thought he'd change. Spoiler : he didn't.

Obviously, I was very dumb in staying, but at the time, I had just enough feelings and not enough self-respect to believe that staying was better than being alone. Anyways, months went by, and we went on a weekend trip to the Alps, since he was preparing for an ultra-trail, and I thought it would be great bonding to try that too.

At the time, I had been running for less than two years, and strictly on the road or "Paris forest trails". I had only ever experienced real mountains while skiing in the winter. I had never hiked, let alone ran on technical terrain, and my whole "being in nature" experience was very limited, which he knew (and had called me out repeatedly for "repeating myself saying that").

The first day, he said we were going for a 35k long run up a mountain, and that there was a shelter at the summit where we could grab drinks and eat. It was spring, and it was quite warm in the valley (18-20 degrees C). I sweat a lot when I run, so I don't really bring warm clothes with me unless I know I'm going to be still for a long period of time. And in that case, I didn't even think that with a 1.8k elevation gain, the climate up in the mountain was going to be way colder. The thought never crossed my mind; I had 0 experience with these situations, and trusted my companion to tell me if I wasn't prepared enough, since he literally did military service with the Alpine Hunters of the French army, and had been trailing and trekking for years.

I ended up going on that run in a t-shirt, with 1L of water, hiking poles, 2 energy bars, and an emergency blanket in my camel bag. It was literally my first real trail, and it was so hard. Hours of continuous climbing.. The Montmartre stairs had not prepared me for that. Also, a snowstorm started 3/4 of the way up the mountain, so I couldn't even stop since I was in a t-shirt and freezing.

We finally reached the summit, but the shelter there was closed for the "off-season period". At that point, I had no more water, I was hungry, and my fingers hurt from the cold. So we decided to go down as fast as possible. I was miserable and crying to myself, but I did run as best I could. Unfortunately, my best was not good enough, and we didn't make the 17k path down the mountain before dark. (We had left around 2PM since my ex couldn't be bothered to get out earlier).

The rest of the run down became so much slower since my phone had died from the cold, and obviously, I didn't think of packing a lamp. But hey, we made it. Together. Oh, he was bitching about how slow and unprepared I was, and that "cold is a sensation for civilians", and that we could've made it in time for sunset if I had been faster. But he didn't abandon me that time. And thus ended day 1.

On day 2, we got ready for a roundtrip trail of 22k up another mountain. Same as the previous day, we had a late start. This time around, I had packed my rain jacket, a buff, gloves, and enough food & water.

My ex looked up the weather forecast, and said there was a chance of thunderstorms, but as we started climbing, it wasn't raining, and the clouds looked okay. Unfortunately, that didn't last. As most of you probably know, the weather in the mountains can change very quickly. I didn't at the time.

First came the rain, which eh, I did have my Gore-tex jacket with me, so it wasn't a big deal. The wind grew worse though, and I started worrying when I saw lightning followed by thunder immediately after. I asked my ex if we should maybe go down, since it didn't feel like a great idea to be on a trail called "the Ridges path", surrounded by trees, when you could literally see the lightning above.

He told me that if I decided to go down, then it would ruin his training once again, and he might DNF his race because of it. "If we're here this weekend, it's to train". But that it was my choice to make for both of us. (He really excelled at that emotional blackmail crap).

Thus, I was stuck in that uncomfortable position between my personal feelings of "omg there's so much lightning, I really don't want to be there", and being responsible for ruining his training trip. So while I was pondering on what decision to make, we kept climbing.

That's when we met a couple of hikers who were going down rapidly. I asked them if it was safe up there, and they told me that it wasn't. That the wind was blowing way too strongly, and that it was better not to take that risk since it would get worse. So I told my ex that I had made up my mind, that I was scared, and wanted to go down.

And yet he just kept climbing. I had to run after him to catch up and ask what the fuck was going on. To which he said that it took me too long to decide, so I had lost that privilege, and could figure the rest of the trail myself. And he ran on forward at his own speed. (He's a way better runner than me, and quite frankly, I suck at uphill running. I'm faster just power walking up, and catching up on the flat and downhill).

And so I was left alone. At first, I rallied and was like "eh, just follow the same path you climbed down". Except, it's a technical path, to the point where all the trail races held in that area don't use it on the way down, only for climbing up. It's very steep, the rocks get very slippery, there's rope to hold onto for some parts of it, and every single season, the military have to rescue hikers stuck there. Oh, and deaths. In the years since I took it on the way down, there's been at least two separate deaths on that exact route that I've seen in the news : trail runners who ran it in early spring, slipped, and fell off the mountain.

So there I was, on my second attempt at trail running in my life, crying like a little bitch, and trying to get down that treacherous path without falling in a heavy downpour. And the hikers I had met were right: it did get worse. The thunderstorm intensified, and the lightning was everywhere. Like there was literally no difference between the light and the sound, and I could really see it way too close.

I knew since childhood that you shouldn't shelter under trees during a thunderstorm and not to use electronic devices, but not much else, so I took a chance and googled what to do. Apparently, you were supposed to keep your metallic poles far away from you, stay away from ridges (obviously), and try to minimise the area of contact with the ground. So I placed my poles on the side up the trail, went down a bit more, and squatted on the balls of my feet on a rock I saw. I thought it was better than trying to rush down while not being able to see jack shit with the rain.

The worst passed. I got my poles, and kept going down. Unfortunately, I'm clumsy by nature, and the rain did make the rocks really slippery, so I fell to the side. The fall in itself was more scary than painful since the ridge of the trail was just there. Thankfully, I didn't slide too much down over the edge, and just dragged myself back up. I had opened the side of my thigh and arm on some small rocks (still have the scars on my leg to this day), but it was all cosmetic and no big deal. It could've ended really badly though.

Anyways, I made it down, and eventually met my ex at the Airbnb. He said that yes, the ridges were very bad, but that his military training had prepared him for it, and that he was happy with his run. I asked him why if he thought it was okay to leave me on the ridges path even though I had little experience in the mountains, and told him I was scared. He said that since I was Russian, "scared" shouldn't be in my vocabulary, and that either way, it was an area with cell service unlike the previous day, and that I did make it down, so he didn't see the problem.

I told him I fell on that stupid path, and he was like "oh, but you always fall, even in Paris". And that since I didn't in fact get hit by lightning, I could stop bothering him.

I tried to let it go, thinking I was maybe blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but I just couldn't. It just didn't seem right or okay to leave me like that, especially after his emphasised emotional blackmail about me ruining his training.

If the situation was reversed, or if I had been with a simple unexperienced friend who told me in no uncertain terms that they were scared, and wanted to go down, I wouldn't have left them. Hell, the following year, I've actually helped a random, panicking guy off the mountain during an official race in similar circumstances.

Anyways, the next day, I just couldn't let it go. We had a train back to Paris, and I tried talking to him about it, to explain my point of view, and why I was hurt despite not dying. And that it felt like he didn't give a shit about me. That conversation went really great, because he instantly broke up with me, in the first 30min of a 5h train ride.
Apparently, I had not much going on aside from my "boobs and beauty", and that "women are like cheeses, you can't ask a man to eat the same one every day for the rest of his life. Someday he may want a Comté, another a Beaufort, yet another day a fresh goat cheese." (This is a direct quote, which I noted instantly and sent to my friends, because even at the time, it felt really comical).

So yeah, great weekend, great train ride. He tried to come back after that for months and months, with flowers, and postcards, and lengthy declarations of love and acknowledgments of the error of his ways. He's literally the only person I've ever blocked on social, aside from Indian spam bot accounts, that is.

That was 3 years ago. I've done some long trails myself since then, including the Marathon des Sables, an ultra race in the Sahara desert (where we ended up having a thunderstorm too), I am generally a bit more experienced with nature, and men, on whom I just gave up in favour of more running.
As for that guy, he still runs with my running group, we still have friends in common, and last I heard, he's been in unhealthy relationships with other girls from our circle since me.

To quote the French philosopher Voltaire, "all is for the best in the best of possible worlds".