While nothing came out of the events of my eighteenth birthday, there was a change in the attitude of the group. Slowly but surely, there was a change in Oliver’s attitude to my friends, and how and when I hung out with them. A few months later, there was another birthday in the group. Amy was turning twenty and had invited Oliver and me. We were starting in our favourite Indian restaurant and then would no doubt end up in the Student’s Union as always. It was agreed that we would go. We made plans to show up together, and we talked about the evening several times before it arrived.
On the night of Amy’s birthday, Ollie texted me to tell me that he wasn’t going. He said that he couldn’t be around Steve after what happened at my birthday. He apologised and said he would call me the next day. When I tried to call him about it, his phone was off. Alice told me not to give it a second thought and to go and enjoy myself, so I got ready and went out to the party.
The whole time I was there, I fended off the, ‘Where’s Ollie?’ inquiries, trying to explain his absence. I felt out of place without him there, and I didn’t enjoy the evening as much as I thought I would. Looking back on it, I can see it was the start of the dependency he had bred into me. It was so subtle at the time that I was blind to it.
When I asked him about his absence from Amy’s birthday, he was dismissive. “They’re just your friends, sunshine. You didn’t need me there,” he tried to explain. “Besides, I think after what happened with Steve, I’m not really welcome in the group anymore.”
I thought about what he said. I tried to reason out in my head why it wasn’t true. When it came down to it, through the blinders Oliver had put on my eyes, I could only see it his way. I started to think about how my friends reacted to him. I started to wonder if, in fact, they were just humouring him, like he had suggested they were. Self-doubt crept into my relationships with my friends. Little seeds Ollie planted and watched grow to fruition. Didn’t they want me to be happy? Were they just jealous that I had a nice boyfriend and was in a long-term relationship when they weren’t? Hadn’t Ollie been right to stand up for my honour, and as Steve had himself stated, wouldn’t he have done the same thing?
By the time the next birthday party rolled around, I was so unsure of myself. Again, Ollie and I were invited to Michael’s party, and it was swiftly agreed that Ollie wouldn’t be attending. The debate then became one for me. Should I attend if Oliver didn’t? In the end, I decided I should go, but again, the evening was spent in the regular discussion of why my boyfriend was absent from the event.
Next time, it was just an end of academic year party that had been planned. We all wanted to meet up one last time before the summer holidays started and we went our separate ways. The guys called me, asking if I wanted to join them. I started to feel dread, knowing Ollie probably wouldn’t want to go since he was feeling cast out of the group and wondering if I should really go myself. This one time, I lied. I said Ollie and I were going away that weekend, and we wouldn’t be able to make it. Obviously, we had no such plans, but it just felt easier to tell that one small lie than to deal with the comments when I turned up alone again.
The next time something was arranged, I made another excuse as to why Ollie and I wouldn’t be there, and that worked the next three times we were invited out in the group. I found myself being asked out less. Some of the members of the once close group of friends I had stopped calling. I was always too busy doing something with Ollie to ever go out with them, anyway. Or at least that’s what I was starting to think. I was buying into the lies I was telling to ease my sense of anxiety. Amy was the only friend who kept talking, mostly because we saw each other every day. I guess with hindsight, maybe it was more that Amy saw what I couldn’t. She knew I was going to eventually need someone, and she seemed determined to make sure it was her.
Under Oliver’s careful manipulation, I had gone from a happy and bubbly young man to someone who shied away from friends, tried to avoid upsetting everyone, and was completely dependent on Ollie. Aside from Amy, he had pretty much manipulated me into pushing everyone else away. The worst of it was, he hadn’t even had to threaten or cajole to achieve it. He had made a few off-the-cuff, seemingly innocent remarks to play on my insecurities to get me overthinking things, to have me analysing everything people said to me. He was the master pulling the strings, and I was the poor puppet.