I dated a girl once whom I loved so deeply I thought one day we’d be married. And sure, that’s what every naive romantic thinks about her high school relationship. And no, most naive high schoolers do not marry their high school love. Not only did I not marry her, I ended up hating her with a passion that still leaves a warmth of anger within me.
I met her on social media—the way to doom any relationship from the start, though the LGBTQ+ community would be reluctant to agree with this. Our connection was intangible—the particles of SMS’s that floated through the air around us.
So I guess what I’m really trying to tell you is that I knew nothing about her except what I wanted to know—more accurately, what I wanted to be true. Therefore, what I knew was that she was someone I could count on, someone I could trust, and eventually, someone who loved me. That is the important part: she was someone who loved me. At least that’s what she claimed. But heaven forbid we ever believe someone we have no real reason to trust.
Our relationship was a thing of shadows—something that appeared from the outside to exist, to thrive even, but was really intangible. All the trust and the love I would have sworn was there existed only in my mind. It was the cruelest illusion I have experienced in my young lifetime, and I can’t bring myself to believe there are things much crueler than pretending to love a person when you really don’t. I can’t bring myself to believe there is anything that shatters a heart quicker, or buries someone’s will to love quite like that.
A piece of a piece of a piece of an anecdote about her: she cheated on me, she cheated on the girl before me, and she ended up cheating on the girl she cheated on me with. Inevitably (though I didn’t know it was inevitable until I looked back on it) she viewed me as interchangeable. I might as well have been out of her mind before I was ever in it, because to her I was simply a vessel—a stepping stone to the next, just like the one before me was a stepping stone to me.
What on the surface appears to be a case of horrific disloyalty (while it very well may be), quite possibly has a root below what is obvious. What is it about a person—about humankind—that leads someone to such a lack of loyalty and respect, such a lack of understanding of what it means to love another human being?
She is an extreme example, but extreme as she may be, this phenomenon (for lack of a better word) that she epitomized, is at the cornerstone of many relationships.
A friend of mine was in a relationship for about half of our freshman year, and when it finally came to the break up, I must admit I was relieved, for they had one of the most toxic relationships I had ever seen. Her problem was that she was so dependent upon him (or rather the idea of the relationship) that the twenty minutes that separated them between her in college and him in high school was too much—something she complained about like the Pacific Ocean divided them.
Her dependency was not subtle either. I might have seen her only a few times without her cell phone in her hand, texting him, or even more notably, checking his location. She would get mad when he wouldn’t respond fast enough. One night she said, “why hasn’t he texted me back? I know he goes on break at 7:30.” It was 7:32. And when he finally did respond, he was never saying the right things, according to her, and she would get angry.
But once I overheard one of their phone calls in which she said, “I didn’t need to get angry. I just wanted attention.” And that was the epitome of their relationship—the epitome of any superficial relationship. Replace the phrase, “to get angry” in her statement with anything else, and it still makes sense. “I didn’t need you to respond. I just wanted attention.” “I didn’t need your presence to know my own worth. I just wanted attention.” “I didn’t need to be in a relationship with you (or with anyone). I just wanted attention.” And perhaps the attention some of us so desperately seek is the reason we dispose of others so quickly, and pick up another just as fast.
The ex girlfriend of mine I previously referred to is a prime example of this. She was one of those humans who I assume was not taught that the foundation of love comes from trust and loyalty, not lust and admiration. Only when I started to address her flaws did she begin to pull away from me and seek approval from another, the way I gave the approval she sought when she pulled away from her previous ex. Perhaps those of us who serial date are all guilty of this—reveling in the attention we get from someone who doesn’t yet understand our most dangerous flaws.
We learn so little of people this way. We take what information we like and dispose of what we don’t, just as we will eventually dispose of that person as a whole. We build no foundation, and establish nothing of value, no connection, so that in the end all that happens is someone—or both people, but usually one much more so than the other—gets hurt.
Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced it myself—experienced it so violently—that I recognize and empathize so vehemently every time I see the slightest clue of a relationship of this nature. It isn’t love, unless you learned that love is using someone to ascend your own self-esteem and assess your own worth; and if that’s what you learned love to be, I shall be the one to break it to you that you learned wrong. Yes, love is in the eye of the beholder as there is no concrete definition, but no one should behold love as the latter. There is a—in our society, blurry—distinction between giving love and seeking attention.
One of the last things my ex ever said to me was, “why would I have wanted to stay with someone who never made me happy?” And I responded, “then why did you?” After hesitating she said, “I didn’t have a choice. I was lonely and you were there.” So it was loneliness that was the fuel of our relationship for ten months—loneliness that wasted over a year of my life on someone who found me disposable. It was loneliness, even if it belonged to someone else, that caused my heartbreak.
Yes, I loved this girl. This is certain. And no, she did not love me. This is also certain. And I can promise you that the heartbreak of such a realization, no matter one’s age (and maybe even more so when one is young, innocent, and naive) is a kind of pain that is special in its nature and detrimental in its effects.
Sometimes there is a decision we have to make between being single and learning to appreciate oneself on one’s own, or being in a relationship with the most convenient person available. Perhaps this causes some people to fall into the “not having a choice” mindset, where “not having a choice” really means being too cowardly to make the right choice—to admit that we cannot be alone with ourselves.
The fact that many of us fear to acknowledge is that if we desire a relationship so much, if we live inside the “not having a choice” mindset, it’s probably in our greatest interest that we remain alone. Single by choice is sometimes the most powerful thing a person can be; it’s respectable at the least. It is no one else’s responsibility to drive out our loneliness, only our own. If we rely on someone else to determine our worth for our whole life, we’ll never know who we are.
My best friend Kelli put it perfectly: “If you feel that way about being single, then you need to be single.” “That way,” refers to having a stream of faces and names flow through one’s brain, imagining being in a relationship with any one of them. Faces and names are all they are, not people. You don’t know or appreciate her personality, don’t know what she has been through or where she is going, don’t know what makes her laugh or what makes her hurt—don’t know what makes her who she is. All you know is that she could heroically step between you and your loneliness, and that is all you care to know. And maybe one day you will dispose of the combination of a face and a name and finally realize you know nothing of love, but instead of desperation.
I met her on social media—the way to doom any relationship from the start, though the LGBTQ+ community would be reluctant to agree with this. Our connection was intangible—the particles of SMS’s that floated through the air around us.
So I guess what I’m really trying to tell you is that I knew nothing about her except what I wanted to know—more accurately, what I wanted to be true. Therefore, what I knew was that she was someone I could count on, someone I could trust, and eventually, someone who loved me. That is the important part: she was someone who loved me. At least that’s what she claimed. But heaven forbid we ever believe someone we have no real reason to trust.
Our relationship was a thing of shadows—something that appeared from the outside to exist, to thrive even, but was really intangible. All the trust and the love I would have sworn was there existed only in my mind. It was the cruelest illusion I have experienced in my young lifetime, and I can’t bring myself to believe there are things much crueler than pretending to love a person when you really don’t. I can’t bring myself to believe there is anything that shatters a heart quicker, or buries someone’s will to love quite like that.
A piece of a piece of a piece of an anecdote about her: she cheated on me, she cheated on the girl before me, and she ended up cheating on the girl she cheated on me with. Inevitably (though I didn’t know it was inevitable until I looked back on it) she viewed me as interchangeable. I might as well have been out of her mind before I was ever in it, because to her I was simply a vessel—a stepping stone to the next, just like the one before me was a stepping stone to me.
What on the surface appears to be a case of horrific disloyalty (while it very well may be), quite possibly has a root below what is obvious. What is it about a person—about humankind—that leads someone to such a lack of loyalty and respect, such a lack of understanding of what it means to love another human being?
She is an extreme example, but extreme as she may be, this phenomenon (for lack of a better word) that she epitomized, is at the cornerstone of many relationships.
A friend of mine was in a relationship for about half of our freshman year, and when it finally came to the break up, I must admit I was relieved, for they had one of the most toxic relationships I had ever seen. Her problem was that she was so dependent upon him (or rather the idea of the relationship) that the twenty minutes that separated them between her in college and him in high school was too much—something she complained about like the Pacific Ocean divided them.
Her dependency was not subtle either. I might have seen her only a few times without her cell phone in her hand, texting him, or even more notably, checking his location. She would get mad when he wouldn’t respond fast enough. One night she said, “why hasn’t he texted me back? I know he goes on break at 7:30.” It was 7:32. And when he finally did respond, he was never saying the right things, according to her, and she would get angry.
But once I overheard one of their phone calls in which she said, “I didn’t need to get angry. I just wanted attention.” And that was the epitome of their relationship—the epitome of any superficial relationship. Replace the phrase, “to get angry” in her statement with anything else, and it still makes sense. “I didn’t need you to respond. I just wanted attention.” “I didn’t need your presence to know my own worth. I just wanted attention.” “I didn’t need to be in a relationship with you (or with anyone). I just wanted attention.” And perhaps the attention some of us so desperately seek is the reason we dispose of others so quickly, and pick up another just as fast.
The ex girlfriend of mine I previously referred to is a prime example of this. She was one of those humans who I assume was not taught that the foundation of love comes from trust and loyalty, not lust and admiration. Only when I started to address her flaws did she begin to pull away from me and seek approval from another, the way I gave the approval she sought when she pulled away from her previous ex. Perhaps those of us who serial date are all guilty of this—reveling in the attention we get from someone who doesn’t yet understand our most dangerous flaws.
We learn so little of people this way. We take what information we like and dispose of what we don’t, just as we will eventually dispose of that person as a whole. We build no foundation, and establish nothing of value, no connection, so that in the end all that happens is someone—or both people, but usually one much more so than the other—gets hurt.
Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced it myself—experienced it so violently—that I recognize and empathize so vehemently every time I see the slightest clue of a relationship of this nature. It isn’t love, unless you learned that love is using someone to ascend your own self-esteem and assess your own worth; and if that’s what you learned love to be, I shall be the one to break it to you that you learned wrong. Yes, love is in the eye of the beholder as there is no concrete definition, but no one should behold love as the latter. There is a—in our society, blurry—distinction between giving love and seeking attention.
One of the last things my ex ever said to me was, “why would I have wanted to stay with someone who never made me happy?” And I responded, “then why did you?” After hesitating she said, “I didn’t have a choice. I was lonely and you were there.” So it was loneliness that was the fuel of our relationship for ten months—loneliness that wasted over a year of my life on someone who found me disposable. It was loneliness, even if it belonged to someone else, that caused my heartbreak.
Yes, I loved this girl. This is certain. And no, she did not love me. This is also certain. And I can promise you that the heartbreak of such a realization, no matter one’s age (and maybe even more so when one is young, innocent, and naive) is a kind of pain that is special in its nature and detrimental in its effects.
Sometimes there is a decision we have to make between being single and learning to appreciate oneself on one’s own, or being in a relationship with the most convenient person available. Perhaps this causes some people to fall into the “not having a choice” mindset, where “not having a choice” really means being too cowardly to make the right choice—to admit that we cannot be alone with ourselves.
The fact that many of us fear to acknowledge is that if we desire a relationship so much, if we live inside the “not having a choice” mindset, it’s probably in our greatest interest that we remain alone. Single by choice is sometimes the most powerful thing a person can be; it’s respectable at the least. It is no one else’s responsibility to drive out our loneliness, only our own. If we rely on someone else to determine our worth for our whole life, we’ll never know who we are.
My best friend Kelli put it perfectly: “If you feel that way about being single, then you need to be single.” “That way,” refers to having a stream of faces and names flow through one’s brain, imagining being in a relationship with any one of them. Faces and names are all they are, not people. You don’t know or appreciate her personality, don’t know what she has been through or where she is going, don’t know what makes her laugh or what makes her hurt—don’t know what makes her who she is. All you know is that she could heroically step between you and your loneliness, and that is all you care to know. And maybe one day you will dispose of the combination of a face and a name and finally realize you know nothing of love, but instead of desperation.