63 replies to this topic

[JJames]

last night i was out with my girlfriend and my ex was at the party and then my other ex was there

we all got along really well. one of my exes had an elaborate captain hook costume with mustache and all and i thought i fell in love with her again for a second

[larah]

When I was 16, I had this boyfriend who I thought I was totally serious about for a quick sec. He was a little bit insane and I was actually kind of embarrassed of him. He listened to Marilyn Manson and wore spiky dog collars. Hahaha! Um. Anyway. He moved back to New York for the summer and would call me everyday. Being 16, I was kind of totally over it and broke up with him via a handwritten snail mail letter. I think I even put glitter in the envelope or something. A few days later, I had gone to some artwalk in Charlotte and had been out pretty late. I smoked a bunch of doobs with my friends and came home to totally quiet, sullen faced parents. Apparently, one of his friends had called to tell me that M. had been in a car accident and that it was fatal. I was devastated. Cried and cried, called of his friends, cried some more. A couple of days after I had listened to the message on the machine (classy), I had called his mom to find out if there would be a memorial or a service of some sort and when would it be so I could go. She was silent for a few seconds before she told me that M. was upstairs in his room and to hold on just one moment. I could hear her screaming at him on the other end, but by that point, I felt so stupid and was so angry, I hung up.

Years later, after I had been living in NY for a year or so, I saw that fucker at some random bodega. I was hoping he wouldn't recognize me standing there with my Orangina, but he did. He asked if he could by me a drink, give him a chance to explain and like a dumb asshole, I let him. He denied everything (of course) and told me that his friend was jealous of him, that he got grounded for 6 months for something he didn't do, blah blah blah. This was all over a course of 2 hours. I was pretty drunk by the time he shut up. As I tried to leave, he grabbed my boob and came at my face with his tongue. I screamed and ran and never saw him again. The end.

[fatguyaz]

You may use any of this you like, Jacki:

The man I lost my virginity to was a college friend and my part-time boss (although I was kind of on hiatus from working for him when we first banged). I didn't feel serious about the relationship for a couple of months, but we saw each other constantly and he had written "I love you" in a note or card to me, seemed very fond of me, paid on dates, invited me to move in if I was having place-to-live issues, etc., and neither of us was seeing anyone else. And so after a few months I felt as though I had fallen in love, and you could ask anyone, his friends, my friends, girls, guys, they would have said we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We had epic amounts of sex and quite a bit in common.

Not having had a relationship before, it didn't seem weird to me that he never talked about his feelings much, or about anything else of personal significance, or that I never met his family. He told me he didn't particularly like his family and that they were creepy.

So after about a year, not too long after I'd actually proposed to him and he'd said no and I said "no big deal, I don't have other plans so let's just keep doing what we're doing" (I learned later that's a stupid thing to do because the person who says no is just too freaked out to go back to how it was, typically), he begins withholding sex, claims he's just having personal stuff going on and it's not me, and the next time we go out he asks me for money for my half of the pizza, and never pays for another goddamn thing.

Literally months go by (while I keep thinking he might work out these issues he's having, 'cause I was so inexperienced) before he acknowledges, because I ask him flat-out, that the relationship is over, while simultaneously denying that it was ever enough of a relationship to have to be called one or to be officially ended, yet saying it's still possible he will someday fix whatever is the matter with himself. (By the way, he told me this while I was having food poisoning.) So we try to remain friends.

For about a year, then, though it felt like forever, we lived in separate cities and wrote each other a lot of letters, which was basically cool except that from time to time I proceed to be quite annoying by suggesting we get back together or else that he tell me the truth about why he doesn't want to be with me because that "I'm just too screwed up" thing is obviously not it. Eventually, after a sex-and-weeping-filled-visit, I get a clue and move on, though we keep writing letters, in which I continue to occasionally be annoying about getting back together, suggest what might make him a less crappy boyfriend to the next person, and keep the little hope in my heart literally until I fall in love with someone else. (Which obsession was not his fault, though he could have manned up and hurt me cleanly instead of trying to let me down easy, but he perhaps didn't know better at the time, and he certainly didn't know me and my attachment style.)

He then moves to NYC for career reasons and hangs out with me and Mr. Mary and our friends. After several months he writes me a letter about the real circumstances of our relationship (that's now been over for four years. )

And, dear readers, I realize that there's a difference of opinion whether the dumpee, in general, actually deserves an explanation or the truth, and I know this happens all the time, but I had still been quite traumatized and kept asking for reasons. Which people tend to want to do, I think, when rejection comes out of the blue like that. I think that before it ended I was actually a pretty decent girlfriend; I heard his best friend told him he was an idiot to dump me.

The deal, he wrote, is that he was never actually attracted to me at all. Not even initially. I didn't do it for him, whatever that took. And I never knew that, he didn't tell me, of course; he was just a very lonely horny guy. He felt I was too fat vis-à-vis the size of my breasts (which, in 1984, I was not; I was just an average-looking lady). And he wanted to do me up the butt and I didn't like it. But ultimately he just felt no chemistry, as well as deciding for me what would constitute a good relationship for me and that it wasn't him. I guess he couldn't believe I had such strong feelings for him, so he decided that meant I was a needy psycho (I later heard from a mutual friend).

It was a big thing to find out, for me; I'd think of something from when we were together and then I'd think, Oh, that's right, he didn't actually feel anything there, it wasn't what I thought. Someone stays with you for over a year and you think, Okay, we had this, at least. Then you find out those were just 365 days when he couldn't meet anyone else.

He died in 2000, after 11 years of no further contact. On Day of the Dead I honor him by enjoying some of his favorite foods. Last night we had chicken parm.

There ya go, ladies...If the dude comes knockin on the backdoor, let him in!!

[Jacki O.]

yeah right.

Mary that's a crazy story!

i feel your line about being with someone for a year and them not really wanting to be with you. the "365 days he couldn't find someone else" thing. The dude i wrote about who camped out in my backyard after i kicked him out. I feel like that with him. I feel like i wasted a year of my life with that fuckface, thinking that he was into me, when really he just needed a place to live and a girlfriend so he didn't look crazy obsessive while he stalked his ex-girlfriend.

and larah - that blows.
i also kinda had the same thing, when i went to study abroad, a dude i had broken up with right before i went to Italy called me while i was there to tell me he had stomach cancer and asked me to come home and be with him while he got treatment. For about a week i was really considering coming home to help him but i talked to my mom about it and she knew his mother and asked his mother how he was doing and his mother was like huh?