With Johnny, I was content but never really happy. And even though deep down I had to know nothing was ever going to change, I kept going back to him. I was always nervous that I wasn’t good enough and that he didn’t care about me. Looking back, I realize that although it had a lot to do with me and my own insecurities, he also never gave me the security I needed. He never expressed how he felt and that I had nothing to worry about. I realize now that I was starving for something that he couldn’t give me. What I needed, I could only give myself. But at the time, I thought that if I kept him coming around, eventually he wouldn’t be able to hide his true feelings from me. Eventually, he would have no choice but to be in love with me (because after all, I am great). So we did the up and down, back and forth, hot and cold thing for about 18 months and the number of chances we gave it probably couldn’t even be counted (I’m not good with large numbers). But the number of real chances we gave it…I don’t even think I could say we gave it one. So every time I kept thinking, “this will be the time that it works out”, “this time we are going to give it a real chance”, “this time he will give it everything.”
I was even more confused by the mixed reactions I was getting from my girlfriends:
“You never know how great something could be unless you give it a second chance. Or third, or fourth, or whatever.”
“This has gone on too long, you need to give him an ultimatum.”
Well, eventually I realized that the pleasure that comes from pressing on a bruise (or dating Johnny) is temporary and fleeting – and it’s always followed by sharp pain.
“I don’t believe that all situations in life have to be all or nothing, but this one does. It’s selfish for you to expect to have me at your convenience. You can’t have me just a little bit anymore.”
He proceeded to tell me that I would never understand the mixed emotions that he had – um, maybe because he never explained them to me?? He said he knew I deserved all or nothing, but as frustrating as it was, he couldn’t give everything.
It was nearly impossible to avoid him after we broke up. We attended a large university, but it was a small town and there were only a few different bars that people went to. In the first few months after we stopped hanging out, I would get extremely emotional when I ran into him. If I saw him out at night, I would grab my girlfriends, make a bee-line straight for the bar, and proceed to take shots until my vision was too blurry to see him anymore…it was the only way for me to feel like he wasn’t there. This often ended badly…drunk phone calls and text messages that usually resulted in an argument and the inevitable tears that follow.
“I don’t believe that all situations in life have to be all or nothing, but this one does. It’s selfish for you to expect to have me at your convenience. You can’t have me just a little bit anymore.”
He proceeded to tell me that I would never understand the mixed emotions that he had – um, maybe because he never explained them to me?? He said he knew I deserved all or nothing, but as frustrating as it was, he couldn’t give everything.
It was nearly impossible to avoid him after we broke up. We attended a large university, but it was a small town and there were only a few different bars that people went to. In the first few months after we stopped hanging out, I would get extremely emotional when I ran into him. If I saw him out at night, I would grab my girlfriends, make a bee-line straight for the bar, and proceed to take shots until my vision was too blurry to see him anymore…it was the only way for me to feel like he wasn’t there. This often ended badly…drunk phone calls and text messages that usually resulted in an argument and the inevitable tears that follow.
Then, I found out he had a new girlfriend. I kept saying over and over again that I couldn’t believe it. My roommate, however, was not surprised. “Johnny lets us down again. It’s the same story line.” (You were so right, by the way!)
I spent a few months ignoring him whenever we happened to be at the same place. He would get insanely frustrated by this and a few times he even made it a point to come up to me and point out that I hadn’t say hello to him. One time, it got so bad that one of my friends had to speak up and ask him to “please stop bothering” me – or something more vulgar, but along those lines. I mean, he sometimes wouldn’t bother to say hello to me in bars when we were actually dating, so I didn’t understand why he wanted to be so conversational now that we weren’t.
In the end, I decided that the problem was he liked me just enough so I wouldn’t walk away, but not enough to make it worth my while to stay. He tried to get by on the bare minimum and, although it took me too long to realize it, I didn’t have to settle for the bare minimum.
For a long time I struggled with the situation. I just wanted to know if I had any effect on his life. I used to wonder if he ever thinks of me or wonders what it would be like if things were different. When we don’t like the way something turns out, we try to analyze it and analyze it and analyze it to try to make it make sense. There are always two sides to every story. The thing that bothers me is I never knew his. But maybe the other side doesn’t matter…maybe it’s just the end result that does. It’s not going to make sense for a while, if ever. I’ll never fully understand what happened and what went wrong and why his feelings changed. I still question a lot of things, but thankfully I’ve learned how to be happy anyway.
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