He Flattered My Intellect and I Paid the Price
He was nice enough, but I felt exposed during our therapy sessions, so I used an inflated sense of intellect as a fig leaf. I challenged his every assertion instead of listening and engaging with what was being said. Our time together became a battleground in my mind, where I was determined to pass whatever test this was.
It was an interesting choice — paying a professional therapist to help unravel life’s knots, only to tighten them further once inside the process.
But avoiding vulnerability seemed more important than understanding the cycle that left me “in the same place time and again through no fault of my own.” It was a reliable pattern where relationships or situations deteriorated, leaving me bewildered and blameless. This same ol’ dance had been going on for as long as I could cry.
Naturally, then, I rejected his claim “things don’t just happen to us, Mel.” That red flags and clues tended to precede pivotal events, whether we chose to see them or not. I scoffed and tried to reduce his words to pop psychology. I did everything except sit with the uncomfortable truth I might be playing a role in my own unhappiness.
It was time that brought understanding — and humility. Youthful certainty gave way to the weight of experience as I reflected on the loves, losses, loyalties, and betrayals since those therapy sessions.
My ‘clever’ behaviour turned out to be a textbook defence called ‘intellectualisation.’ It had one job: to create a barrier, shielding me from the discomfort of vulnerability and emotional exposure.
My therapist was also right about life’s clues. Red flags had waved from tall buildings and lurked on street corners, dropping neon-white breadcrumbs to the warning signs — which were everywhere.
Years later, after my husband Bronnie died, I re-entered the corporate world in a less senior position. With two children and grief to raise, I shunned business travel and lengthy meetings, choosing instead to focus on creative writing and a small side hustle. It was during this period I met… let’s call him David.
David, my new business advisor, was significantly older, quick-witted, and for the first time since Bronnie’s death, I felt seen. He connected with the feisty woman my late husband had admired, not the frightened widow he’d left behind.
From our first meeting, David flattered my intellect with an intensity that was gratifying but should have been unsettling. He remarked on how well-read I was, and in subsequent meetings, referenced books, films, and cultural events. He always had something interesting to share, and each conversation stroked my intellectual vanity. This deepening flattery became a comforting distraction, although, in hindsight, it was the first red flag I should have noticed.
As our relationship developed, business discussions began to blur with these personal anecdotes and cultural debates. I should have questioned why our meetings felt more like cerebral sparring sessions than professional consultations. But instead, I allowed myself to be swept up in the familiarity and validation he offered, ignoring the fact that there was little business substance beneath the discourse.
The work David produced was consistently delayed and, when it finally arrived, was generic and lifted from stock catalogues — far from the bespoke solutions he had promised. I raised my concerns, but David’s charm deflected them, downplaying the issues and steering conversations back to familiar, comfortable topics. This was a major red flag, yet I was too invested in the illusion of a kindred spirit to see it clearly.
Additionally, my business training should have demanded formal documentation, a clear contract, and an action plan. It was also unusual a project of this scope was managed solely through our one-on-one meetings, rather than involving multiple departments.
The red flags and clues wept as I continued to ignore them.
I didn’t wake up until David swindled me out of my meagre start-up funds.
After listing my concerns in a formal email, David, the charming bon viveur, all but vanished, becoming distant and refusing my calls. Instead, his accounts department sent me a hefty bill. As well as the work assignments, the invoice itemised every moment we had spent in discussion — including our off-topic talks on culture and life. His company threatened court action if I didn’t settle within seven days.
Still, I kept thinking there had to be more to David’s story. His warmth and friendship had felt too real to be fake. Surely, such an elaborate deceit would indicate a personality disorder, something I would have noticed. Wouldn’t I?
And why go to such lengths for an amount of money that wasn’t significant for his company, but would be devastating for my family’s finances? This made it even harder to reconcile my image of the caring David I had come to know.
The uncomfortable alternative was I had misjudged this man and situation so completely as to bring my own mental acuity into question.
I struggled to breathe at this wider implication. If I couldn’t trust my own judgement after years of professional experience, what did that now say about me? Losing Bronnie had left me shaky and unmoored, yes, but I was getting back on my feet — wasn’t I?
Or was I also a fraud? A lonely middle-aged widow massaging her ego, too broken and naive to see through a simple con? A silly, vain woman who had colluded in risking her family’s financial stability.
With everything I had lost, this was a scenario too hard to bear.
No, I just needed to be with David again face-to-face. We would sit together, he would see my pain and we would resolve this ‘misunderstanding.’
My plan crumbled when his receptionist refused me entry to the building.
Back home, I sat numb in my office — a storage shed I had converted and refurbished into a modern working space. I looked around at the elaborate setup, the high-tech equipment and the unpaid telephony and broadband bills sitting in the in-tray. The excitement of the past year died as I wept for all that had been and would never be again.
The emotional fallout was intense.
My state in the aftermath has since been likened to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I spent sleepless nights and dazed days replaying every interaction with David. On each loop-around, my self-confidence dissolved a little more into mental fragility and increased self-isolation.
Even then, I did try to fight back and sought legal redress against David and his fraudulence. But my limited resources and mental bandwidth were no match for his army of staff and in-house legal team. What funds remained had to be preserved as I navigated life as a single mother and widow.
In a moment of clarity, I realised David would also be aware of my financial constraints. He would use this knowledge to his advantage and his legal pursuit of me would be relentless.
That is how the best scams work.
No matter how aware or fraud-alert we believe ourselves to be, scammers know we each have a story we tell ourselves or need to hear. I had made it easy for David to read mine.
And whilst making life-changing decisions in bereavement was its own red flag, it cannot shoulder all the blame. It was again my intellectual hubris making the decisions. The same pattern my therapist had tried to show me all those years before.
Today, taking responsibility for my part in any situation means life no longer “just happens to me.” Granted, I still miss clues sometimes, but I am now proactive in looking for them.
That being said, this doesn’t mean I approach life with constant suspicion or mistrust. Instead, I query any situation I hesitate to examine closely — a sure sign there is something there worth prodding. But even then, wherever the signs point, I don’t follow blindly, but make an active decision where the path should lead.
Years later, I bumped into David at a speaking event. Inexplicably, he greeted me with the warmth of an old friend, and showered me with compliments about my public speaking prowess. I thanked him and moved on to the next guest.
He wasn’t to know it, but by then I had learned another important lesson: not every situation requires intellectual understanding. Indeed, there is healing and grace to be found in extracting the lesson and then letting the rest go.
