Jian Ghomeshi, one of the most famous broadcasters in Canada, the beloved host of CBC’s radio show Q, allegedly slapped, choked, bruised and bit several women. It’s claimed that he punched one woman so many times she couldn’t see straight, and demanded another kneel in front of him while he beat her on the head. Jian Ghomeshi is accused of horrible things, of terrifying unsuspecting women, of vicious sexual assault. Jian Ghomeshi is my idea of a monster – and I dated him.
Jian and I went out in 2010. I had been listening to his show, and heard him talk about how he’d given up a journalism scholarship to Stanford to pursue his passion for politics, and as I was struggling with a similar decision, I emailed him. Jian’s celebrity came with an openness and accessibility which made writing him feel no different than contacting a friend, or reaching out to a mentor for advice. When he responded within minutes, I blushed, freaked out, started sweating. When he asked me out for a drink, I accepted immediately. We carried on seeing each other in Toronto for five months before I moved to New York, and our relationship ended.
When I started reading the Toronto Star’s shocking allegations that Jian had physically attacked several women, struck them with a closed fist, choked them until they nearly lost consciousness and called them names after sex, it was hard to square this with the man with whom, despite our 19-year age gap, I had fun. He took me to the Rufus Wainwright opera and the Rock of Ages premiere. I watched most of the World Cup on his couch. We suntanned together on his rooftop and I met his high school friends.
But amid the nights out at premieres and fancy dinners, something wasn’t right. Jian refused to have sex with me. “You’re not ready,” he told me, over and over. I shrugged it off: some people wait, right? Maybe he just really liked me. Maybe something was wrong with him and he wanted to wait until he knew I liked him to reveal it. Now I know what that was.
Meanwhile, he told me about his struggles with anxiety, how much his father meant to him, how he wanted to get married eventually. He pulled me close one day and pushed me away the next; told me I was sexy but refused to take his clothes off; told me how close he felt to me and didn’t respond to texts; took me to parties but refused to be seen with me in a photograph. He created a relationship that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but us – and it confused me as much as it drew me in.
“We have conversation sex,” I once told a friend, while trying to explain why he wouldn’t sleep with me. He was the best damn talker I’d ever met – persuasive, well-read, passionate without being angry, smooth and just a little bit corny. He managed to make me feel very smart and very mature one minute, and parochial and prudish the next; too good for him and then not good enough.
He’d act like a child begging for my approval – did I think he was attractive, did I think he was too old, too Persian, too fat, did I think he was sexy at all – and then act sexually aggressive in ways that made no sense for someone who seemed to be begging me to like him.
He’d rub his hands inside my upper thighs at public events even though I always slapped them away; he kissed me too forcefully in his car when we said goodbye until I turned my head. He’d lick his lips at me during dinner, even when I looked away. He’d make me uncomfortable, and then ask why I didn’t like him, baiting me to comfort him.
But why didn’t he hit me? Part of me, when the first allegations came out, wanted to think I’d been somehow different: that he’d cared a little bit more about me, that I’d been smart enough to leave when I did, that there was something about me that kept him from hurting me.
But when I read the allegations from eight different women of Jian’s violent assaults, I saw myself and elements of my relationship with Jian in almost every one. From his cadence in his correspondences (‘Dear Ms’, ‘Twas’, ‘Tis’, his writing is *always* in small caps), to his early-morning text messages that mirror the intro to his radio show (“Happy Monday!”) to his invitations to travel to Toronto to see him, and even his talk about me being “the one” and wanting a family. All of those things happened to those women. And they happened to me too. Like me, those women weren’t expecting that being involved with Jian would mean submitting to violence, to being choked, to being abused.
Jian has denied the allegations made against him, and is suing the CBC, which fired him on Sunday.
As for me, I now believe that Jian was grooming me for the same violence he inflicted on other women. I think he was pursuing and encouraging me because of the existing power imbalance, creating a level of emotional intensity as a preface to his “big reveal” so that I would either acquiesce or never tell. He trained me to feel sorry for him, to feel guilty about not giving enough of myself to him, to believe I was special to him. And for what? So that one day, when he thought the time was right for us to be more physically intimate, he could hit me? Smash my head against a concrete wall, like he allegedly did to one woman? Choke me with a leather belt, like he allegedly did to another?
Even today, as I’m writing this, I find I’m thinking about him, worrying: will he be disappointed in me for writing this? Should I hold back? Will he text me to tell me he wouldn’t have done this to me? But that is how his kind of manipulation works, and I refuse to protect him.
I now believe that I only escaped him subjecting me to sexual violence because of the circumstances, because of the timing, because I moved away from Toronto. Those terrible stories we’ve been reading could have been about me. They almost were about me.
I am no different from any of the young women Jian is alleged to have abused – I’m just lucky that he never got around to doing it. I’m no longer confused by what happened between us: it makes a sick sort of sense, but I’m too sickened by what he is said to have done to so many other women to care about him anymore. I’m severing myself from him, once and for all.
For legal reasons, comments will remain closed on this article.
Jian Ghomeshi, one of the most famous broadcasters in Canada, the beloved host of CBC’s radio show Q, allegedly slapped, choked, bruised and bit several women. It’s claimed that he punched one woman so many times she couldn’t see straight, and demanded another kneel in front of him while he beat her on the head. Jian Ghomeshi is accused of horrible things, of terrifying unsuspecting women, of vicious sexual assault. Jian Ghomeshi is my idea of a monster – and I dated him.
Jian and I went out in 2010. I had been listening to his show, and heard him talk about how he’d given up a journalism scholarship to Stanford to pursue his passion for politics, and as I was struggling with a similar decision, I emailed him. Jian’s celebrity came with an openness and accessibility which made writing him feel no different than contacting a friend, or reaching out to a mentor for advice. When he responded within minutes, I blushed, freaked out, started sweating. When he asked me out for a drink, I accepted immediately. We carried on seeing each other in Toronto for five months before I moved to New York, and our relationship ended.
When I started reading the Toronto Star’s shocking allegations that Jian had physically attacked several women, struck them with a closed fist, choked them until they nearly lost consciousness and called them names after sex, it was hard to square this with the man with whom, despite our 19-year age gap, I had fun. He took me to the Rufus Wainwright opera and the Rock of Ages premiere. I watched most of the World Cup on his couch. We suntanned together on his rooftop and I met his high school friends.
But amid the nights out at premieres and fancy dinners, something wasn’t right. Jian refused to have sex with me. “You’re not ready,” he told me, over and over. I shrugged it off: some people wait, right? Maybe he just really liked me. Maybe something was wrong with him and he wanted to wait until he knew I liked him to reveal it. Now I know what that was.
Meanwhile, he told me about his struggles with anxiety, how much his father meant to him, how he wanted to get married eventually. He pulled me close one day and pushed me away the next; told me I was sexy but refused to take his clothes off; told me how close he felt to me and didn’t respond to texts; took me to parties but refused to be seen with me in a photograph. He created a relationship that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but us – and it confused me as much as it drew me in.
“We have conversation sex,” I once told a friend, while trying to explain why he wouldn’t sleep with me. He was the best damn talker I’d ever met – persuasive, well-read, passionate without being angry, smooth and just a little bit corny. He managed to make me feel very smart and very mature one minute, and parochial and prudish the next; too good for him and then not good enough.
He’d act like a child begging for my approval – did I think he was attractive, did I think he was too old, too Persian, too fat, did I think he was sexy at all – and then act sexually aggressive in ways that made no sense for someone who seemed to be begging me to like him.
He’d rub his hands inside my upper thighs at public events even though I always slapped them away; he kissed me too forcefully in his car when we said goodbye until I turned my head. He’d lick his lips at me during dinner, even when I looked away. He’d make me uncomfortable, and then ask why I didn’t like him, baiting me to comfort him.
But why didn’t he hit me? Part of me, when the first allegations came out, wanted to think I’d been somehow different: that he’d cared a little bit more about me, that I’d been smart enough to leave when I did, that there was something about me that kept him from hurting me.
But when I read the allegations from eight different women of Jian’s violent assaults, I saw myself and elements of my relationship with Jian in almost every one. From his cadence in his correspondences (‘Dear Ms’, ‘Twas’, ‘Tis’, his writing is *always* in small caps), to his early-morning text messages that mirror the intro to his radio show (“Happy Monday!”) to his invitations to travel to Toronto to see him, and even his talk about me being “the one” and wanting a family. All of those things happened to those women. And they happened to me too. Like me, those women weren’t expecting that being involved with Jian would mean submitting to violence, to being choked, to being abused.
Jian has denied the allegations made against him, and is suing the CBC, which fired him on Sunday.
As for me, I now believe that Jian was grooming me for the same violence he inflicted on other women. I think he was pursuing and encouraging me because of the existing power imbalance, creating a level of emotional intensity as a preface to his “big reveal” so that I would either acquiesce or never tell. He trained me to feel sorry for him, to feel guilty about not giving enough of myself to him, to believe I was special to him. And for what? So that one day, when he thought the time was right for us to be more physically intimate, he could hit me? Smash my head against a concrete wall, like he allegedly did to one woman? Choke me with a leather belt, like he allegedly did to another?
Even today, as I’m writing this, I find I’m thinking about him, worrying: will he be disappointed in me for writing this? Should I hold back? Will he text me to tell me he wouldn’t have done this to me? But that is how his kind of manipulation works, and I refuse to protect him.
I now believe that I only escaped him subjecting me to sexual violence because of the circumstances, because of the timing, because I moved away from Toronto. Those terrible stories we’ve been reading could have been about me. They almost were about me.
I am no different from any of the young women Jian is alleged to have abused – I’m just lucky that he never got around to doing it. I’m no longer confused by what happened between us: it makes a sick sort of sense, but I’m too sickened by what he is said to have done to so many other women to care about him anymore. I’m severing myself from him, once and for all.
For legal reasons, comments will remain closed on this article.
Topics