While we were breaking up, my ex-wife once pointed out what she saw as a crucial difference between us (which I believe was pointed out to her with the help of a therapist). She needed to be needed, and I didn't, and it hurt her that I didn't seem to need her. It made her feel extraneous, especially since I had the writing thing that seemed to keep me marginally happy. 

Well, she was wrong. I proved time and again after our divorce that that I needed to be needed, particularly by women. Nothing unusual about my case––I'm sure that any decent grad student in counseling could point out a handful of case studies in which one party in a divorce appears to take on characteristics of the other, probably because those characteristics were there all along and were blown to the surface by the shock of separation. I indulged freely in this need to be needed during my Wifeshopping phase, to the point where it ruled my behavior. 

I needed to be needed by M_____, who once clutched my knees and refused to let go because she thought I was leaving her, even though I was just going out to the car to get a sweater

I needed to be needed by J___, who admitted that she'd tried to get pregnant by me and said that although she wouldn't force me to marry her, she would expect me to be a father to our child 

I needed to be needed by B____, who had a serious drug problem that I didn't know about at first because our town was in a marijuana dry spell at the time, and who almost got back with me after our breakup but didn't want to get "caught in my web"

I needed to be needed by K____, a classic other woman who, not too long before I got married to Jen, seduced me with her attentions at work and for almost a decade checked in me on electronically to "see how my marriage was going"

I needed every single one of them to need me. Desperately so, and I got off on it. Women needing me was my most powerful drug. Twice in my life I've had women threaten to "hurt themselves" (no meaning specified) if I left them, and I know that part of me––the weakest, most wounded part of me––loved the power trip it gave me. 

Because the woman I'd first loved didn't need me, dammit. So I was going to make women need me, and I didn't care how I made them feel. I obviously wasn't going to be ready for love until I jettisoned this habit from my life, and I'm grateful that I could finally see what I was doing. It sucked toward the end, when I could feel the pain I was inflicting on them with my mind games. Because as much as those women needed me, like hell I would give myself to any one of them. 

I pulled a disappearing act on every single one. I led them on and was gratified to get them on the hook––not because I was a seducer, but because I had a hole inside me that no woman's love could ever fill, because it wasn't a woman's love that caused it. None of the women I led on were ever going to have me. I planned to keep my love to myself so I could hurt other women with it, until I was satisfied. 

It's one of the greatest desecrations of my life, because I shared it with others. I laugh about it and say it was my "crazy girlfriend" phase, but my behavior was really shameful. Luring others into my web of need and poisoning them with my pain. I never want anyone to feel that from me again.