A woman wondered why her boyfriend of 10 years repeatedly asked her the same question during sex. Then his web of lies fell apart, revealing that this smart and charming man was, in fact, a “skilled manipulator”.
Liza Dezfouli once believed her partner Michael* could be “the one” and was struck by his educated, cosmopolitan personality. A charmer, Michael would shower Liza with compliments, and they enjoyed various romantic moments together.
Two in particular stick out in Liza’s mind. The first was a starlit picnic in the park, where Michael had set up a table complete with a white linen tablecloth, crockery and wine glasses. Liza, now 64, kicked back with a gin and tonic while Michael prepared a feast of fresh salmon on a portable barbecue. In a scene straight out of a movie, the couple enjoyed champagne and chilled white wine while jazz played from a portable CD player.
Another time, Michael took Liza on a trip to San Francisco, where they drove over the Golden Gate Bridge in a top-down Ford Mustang convertible, playing Aretha Franklin music and laughing together. On reflection, however, there were red flags that Michael wasn’t the man he made himself out to be.
Liza, from Melbourne, Australia, recalled: “He told me he’d been a private security detail on an estate in South Africa, spoke Spanish, had a pilot’s licence, a heavy-duty truck licence, was a trained firefighter and had been given some bravery award by the mayor of a precinct in Paris for the way he handled a fire in an apartment.
“He said he’d volunteered his services in the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009. It seems so obvious now that he was attached, but at the time, he convinced me that, as an international businessman, he was just so busy that he didn’t have time for a solid relationship.”
Work and her two children from a previous marriage kept Liza busy, so she didn’t commit to Michael. Instead, he hopped back in and out of her life between periods of “working away”, keeping up the pretence for a decade.
Comedian, writer, and performer Liza remembered: “There were so many red flags; his general unavailability and unwillingness to socialise with me. How we always had sex with me on top – so I wouldn’t leave marks on his back. How he never used my name, he’d call me ‘Baby’ or ‘Darling’ so he wouldn’t slip up. Not letting me meet his friends (he said he didn’t have many) or get involved in his life in any way. If we ever did run into anyone he knew, he acted casually and introduced me as a ‘mate’.
“I asked him straight out if there was anyone else when we started sleeping together. He made it clear there wasn’t. I asked him several times about his relationship with his so-called business partner, asking him if there was more to their relationship than business. He convinced me there wasn’t. I always wondered about her. And I was right.”
Eventually, Liza decided enough was enough and decided to do some digging. She shared: “Eventually, I Googled his “business partner” and it all fell into place. I thoroughly stalked her on the web. She was doing the same thing to me at the same time as it happened.
“I contacted her to tell her about my liaison with Michael. At that time, she didn’t want to communicate any further with me and that she was trying to work things out with him.”
After Liza confronted Michael with her findings, he claimed that, although he had indeed started a new relationship, this was only from a previous period of separation. It was at this point that Liza immediately broke off the relationship. One year later, Liza was in for another shock when the ‘business partner’ contacted her to reveal Michael had been unfaithful to both of them, bedding countless other women behind their backs.
Liza said: “She’d found out about me, thought I was the only one, then eventually she started digging deeper and discovered all his other lovers. She met with them where possible, piecing together the whole sorry story. She had no true idea about how many others there actually were – she’d worked out there were at least two or three in this city, two elsewhere in Australia, and a couple overseas throughout those ten years.
“I invited her round, and you can imagine what an epic girls’ night-in that was. We drank bottles of wine, swapped notes and realised that practically everything he’d said was utter bullshit. He’d been living with her when Black Saturday happened. He never went anywhere near the bushfires. I told her how excited I’d been by the trip to San Francisco, how it had been one of the great thrills of my life. She leaned towards me and said gently: ‘We’ve all been to San Francisco’. It was comedy gold.”
Nowadays, Liza is happily single and looks back on the deceitful relationship through a philosophical lens. She reflected: “Michael was a skilled manipulator and a classic narcissist – this is what he does to women. He gets off conning smart, independent feminists. It’s a sport. To him, women are a resource. His betrayal of me wasn’t personal.
“The last time I saw him, he told me that I should find myself a relationship with someone cos I’d be “really good at it”… I reckon that if I’d killed him at that moment, any jury hearing the whole story would have immediately acquitted me. I’m so glad I found out about him when I did. It was a lucky escape.”
*The name has been changed.
Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com
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