Mad Men - Don Draper

I'm not sure how many of you watch the AMC TV series Mad Men, but the main character, Don Draper, is modeled on an N. This is the 4th season and I've watched since the beginning but I didn't catch all the references until I became educated about the disorder. They've had Don Draper say such things as, "I view you as an extension of myself" when speaking to a woman in his office who he thinks is like him. There was a reference recently to Dorian Gray when someone commented that there must be an aging, ugly picture of Don Draper hanging in a room somewhere. THere are so many references thrown into the show that I am convinced they have someone writing who totally GETS these people. And they don't really glamorize him. You can see the deterioration of his life. It's actually been fascinating to watch.

My ex and I worked together and used to enjoy discussing this series. I've been NC for a while but ended up on the phone with him the other day to let him know not to contact me anymore b/c I have found out about him, etc... But before I got to that part, he and I were just chatting and he joked that in his new job there is an ugly girl who is in the same type of job that I had when he and I worked together. In a recent episode, Don Draper's secretary left because he was heinous to her and he ended up with an old ugly secretary instead. Someone on the show asked Don why he keeps this ugly secretary around and he said, "I got the type of secretary I deserve". So this exN says to me, "isn't it funny that like Don, I ended up with an ugly colleague in your old role?" He thought that was really ironic and funny and I actually laughed about it a little at the parallel. But later I was really angry because it is just LOST on this man how Don Draper DESTROYED his former secretary by treating her with total disregard as a human being. So here's part of a cathartic letter to my exN that I will never send, where I address this:

"It was ironic that you brought up Mad Men and the ugly secretary and how Don “deserved” her and how you find a parallel with your current situation. Do you recall why he ended up needing a new secretary? How he treated the other one? She wasn’t upset that they had a one-night stand. I get the distinct impression she could have dealt with that if he had simply spoken to her later about it in a human way. She was upset because he treated her with absolute disregard. He threw some money at her as a bonus but never even acknowledged what had happened. When she asked for a letter of reference he didn’t want to spend the time writing it himself. He advised her to write one and he would sign it. She was crushed not because she was in love with him, or because they had sex. She was crushed because he treated her like an object, someone totally meaningless to him. "

I so wish I could send a letter to this man to somehow let him know what he did to me, how he emotionally raped me. But, alas, as we all know on this board, there is no point. He won't get it and it will only make him feel important that I even write to him.