Chaos Attraction

The Big Fat Lies of Dating

2003-02-12, 6:46 p.m.

Day Three, February 12: When you've loved. -Write a brief history of your love life, or a single story about your first love. Extra credit for the juicy bits.

This is a rather depressing topic, since when I look back on the past, all I can think about is how utterly beyond stupid I was and all the horrid mistakes I made with regards to relationships. Admittedly, I didn�t know any better, but did I have to go through the School of Repeated Hard Knocks in order to find out the truth? Ugh.

Previously, there have only been two significant fellows in my life.

Number One was the high school er, romance (I guess). It involved the prom, and falling for my platonic date once I realized how much we had in common. He did the same, but the timing was majorly bad for us, since I was a junior and he was a senior, it was June, and he didn�t believe in long-distance relationships. He moved down south for college and we wrote/called back and forth, and I visited him once. And in the winter, he moved back to town because down south was too expensive. I was delighted, and thought I�d get what I wanted.

Alas, this was not the case. Not only was he in school, he started working two jobs. On Valentine�s Day, he got called in to work. I found out a few months later that he was too busy to date. Which of course I now know is Big Fat Lie #1 of Dating (if he wanted to see you, he�d make time), but at the time I was so na�ve I believed it, and chalked it up to his workaholicness. Sadly, I�d already turned down a trip to Disneyland to go to the prom with him, so we kept that date. At which I er, somehow managed to seduce him back into being interested in me again� a few months before I went off to college.

Remember how he said he wasn�t into long-distance relationships? Well, guess what happened. He rarely called or called me back, was "too busy" during any time I went home and I practically had to force him into a date over Christmas break, during which I got the cold shoulder. Even I got the clue then. I swear to god, you have to hit me with the Clue Redwood for me to get the message of GO AWAY sometimes. And even then I didn�t learn the lesson. (See below.)

Five months later, he called when I wasn�t home and said he�d call back. He didn�t. I blew a fuse because I�d gotten my hopes up, and wrote him a foul nasty letter telling him to go to hell. Oh, I was so mature. You�d think this would have given me a hint as to how to handle future events, but nooooo, it did not.


Number Two is the infamous ex you hear me gripe about from time to time. We met online and after a month or two, got hot and heavy. It was my first decent relationship and I was delighted. I was embarrassing to watch during that time. I was all over him.

Which leads us to Big Fat Lie of Dating #2: He said he wanted space. Admittedly, given how he was literally booked every night of the week, this seemed reasonable at the time. Since then I have learned that once the guy says he needs space, it�s the beginning of the end. Space = "I want to break up." Not that we did then- we lasted another five months- but I think that�s when things started to gently roll downhill. I had to make all these arrangements for him to have space and time off, then felt resentful when I�d get the shaft and took it personally. I felt forced into the whole thing, and even though I agreed with it in principle, in practice I got cranky. I had to hide the crankiness, though. God, I was such a needy loser.

Fairly out of the blue one night, while we were lying in bed after he�d bought me a shitload of groceries that night, he dumped me. I cried for days and days. And proceeded to not really get over it for frigging years afterward. Though I have to admit not getting over it for so long did have a lot to do with my not being interested in anyone else that I was dating, either. I only knew of one person I was compatible with in this town, hadn�t found any others, and spent a lot of time whining and fixating over what I�d lost instead of trying any possible way to find someone better. If I�d met Dave any sooner, I think the whining mourning period would have ended a lot faster.

Big Fat Lie #3 of Dating is "Let�s be friends." Number Two Ex was friends with almost all of his exes (and he had many, seeing as most of his relationships lasted somewhere between six months to a year at best), and he wanted to stay friends with me too. I had my reservations about this, as I didn�t really see how I�d get over him if he was around being nice to me. Sadly, I didn�t go with my instincts about this, but decided that he�d be the kind of person I�d want to be friends with if we weren�t dating. At any rate, we were in the same social crowd and avoiding him would be very difficult.

It took me a looooooooooooooooooooooong time to realize what "Let�s be friends" really means. You need to find out what the guy means by this before you agree to it. In some people�s cases, "Let�s be friends" really means "Please don�t be mad at me for dumping you because I don�t want to feel guilty, and I�ll wave if I see you on the street." Okay, that wasn�t how it started out, but that�s certainly where it ended up after a year and a half or so of friendship. He told me he�d rather just wave to me on the street or invite me to a party, and that was all he was interested in. I still didn�t fucking get it yet.

I think he dumped me due to depression issues. I hadn�t clued in that he�d had them before, even though he�d mentioned dropping out of college three times, one time because four of his friends tried to commit suicide in a month and he wanted to hide in bed for a year and a half (huh?), because he�d been pretty damn perky during our relationship. Well, around the breakup is when he started being not so perky. From there, he threw himself into a screwy relationship/non-relationship (DON�T ask, it would take years to explain and I�d rip my hair out in the meantime) with a friend of mine, and then later dropped everybody to go hide in his room and play Everquest incessantly for months at a time. He went around doing stuff like that for the rest of the time that I knew him. He went to therapy, he took meds, he dropped the meds because they didn�t work, he semi-dropped the therapy, he only got worse and worse in the meantime. He turned from a great nice guy into well, an asshole. Any friend of his who dared to say anything about how bad he was getting was eventually dumped. He dumped his best friend over this. And eventually, he refused to answer the phone when I called. I have now become the only ex of his that he outright hates.

I have to admit it: I deserved to get dumped like that. I really did. I am ashamed of myself for not getting the clues earlier on so I could have done the right thing. And I�ve finally learned that there is no way in hell I can be friends with an ex. For one thing, it isn�t exactly a real friendship. And for another, getting mad at them for dumping me and hating them right off the bat is the best clean break there is.


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