To understand the outstanding and colorful choices I've made in men, it's important to examine my crutch. The one integral relationship of my life that has always been the reference point, the excuse, the pity party, the learning lesson. I call him my crutch because with every failed relationship it always goes back to him. I blame all of my trust issues, intimate insecurities, and inability to hold a long term relationship on him. However, at some point in my life I have to grow up right? He's been an excuse for 7 years now. So in September, after choosing one wrong man after another, I, for the first time in I can't even remember how long (maybe since I was 17 eek!), have taken a break. Taken a break from dating, meeting, flirting with, and dealing with men. It's been 4 blissful, stress free months. It's been my incubation period of reflection, growth, and strength- basically rehab for dating challenged individuals like myself. Which leads me to examine the most interesting, amusing, heartbreaking, and hilarious situations I've muddled myself in for the last 7 years. I think I'm finally ready to date now, but who knows, I've never been known to do things the easy way.
My journey started at the naive age of 20, during the height of my college days. I was a blond haired wide eyed carefree fake ID toting never had a bad day in my life kid. Never into the confines of the sorority sub culture, I had my core group of friends, my 8 hour a week part time job, and my soon to be first serious relationship. He was new to me being 7 years my senior, tall, handsome, a little mysterious (which I look back now and realize it was probably just sketchiness from the ABC of drugs he consumed, which I also found out about later- stay tuned). He pursued me for 3 months, I finally gave in, and with in 2 weeks he confessed his love for me. I met the family, he called us the Brad and Jennifer of couples as in Pitt and Aniston. I can't decide if I want to cringe or laugh at the comparison and the fact that a comparison was even made- I may have just thrown up a little in my mouth. What followed was 2 years of emotional abuse, lying, cheating, his drug habit- GHB, Coke, Ecstasy, K, oh my, and an endless cycle of intense love to absolute despite. I was a silent and often clueless observer. I believed everything he said, saw only the good and beautiful things about him, and continued down the self destructive path that I now consider a blessing. Because through him I became stronger, less naive, more realistic, and learned about people, controlling behavior, and how to heal. At the end of the relationship I told him that I had no idea who he was, this man who took my spirit away from me. I didn't know who this man really was that I dated for 2 years, and couldn't walk away from until I left college one year after that. He was the last person I saw as I drove away, saying and believing that I would never come back. Here's a list of some other very important things I learned from that relationship:
- If a man never allows you into his home but once when you first started dating, and you have a twin bed which he sleeps in daily, something's not right. Especially when he proclaims that when a man starts fixing up his house he has a new woman in his life which mysteriously happened after we had been dating for quite a while... huh.
- If you go to an after party at a house full of gym rats notorious for drug paraphernalia and threesomes where there might be a dog licking peanut butter off a girl strategically placed because that's your significant others friends, it's not right.
- If at said after party he exits a locked bathroom with a nurse known for her incessant advances toward your significant other, they WERE NOT just talking, and do not believe otherwise (even if he runs after your car as you speed away).
- If you go through a whole pack of cigarettes in one night due to stress and his whereabouts- well that's just stupid.
- If his new girlfriend, donned in a pink t-shirt, pink tube socks, and pink high tops (no joke), with a highly perched bleach blond pony tail, pushes you at restaurant for waving hello then locks herself in a room with a load of cocaine and a bottle of whiskey, consider the company he keeps- see bullet point 2.
- Never trust a man who tells you he wants to marry you after two weeks.
- And it's yet to be established, but if a man loves the chase more then the catch, he'll keep on chasing after he already has the catch- only you might be gutted, stuffed, and hung on display.
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