Romantic Entanglements
Jul. 8th, 2015 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grimrose_eilwynnI'm here today to journal about my sordid romantic history. Oh the horror.
In high school, I regarded the immature boys and equally immature relationships I witnessed with a combination of distaste, bewilderment, and horror. All the people I was in love with existed only in books and on stages. I had no desire to be in a relationship and things pretty much stayed that way all through my being a teenager. I was that pale, sarcastic little girl with square dark glasses sitting in the corner, being all hipster and "EWW."
By the time I got to college, however, rigor mortis had set in, the death knolls of my rationality tolling along with it.
I began to get lonely and self conscious. Everyone else met cute boys and engaged in happy relationships with them, I thought. Why not me?
Most of my friends are girls, however, and I'm not a big partier. Deciding I needed to try to meet some people, I engaged in online dating. I started out on OkCupid, at my first college. Reckless and desperate for attention, I spent a lot of time flirting with older men online, talking sex, philosophy, and everything in between.
I went on dates with several boys, but there was never that magic click. Always, always, either I didn't like them or they didn't like me. There was also no... spark, no romance, with any of them. I'm a daydreamer at heart, and I had expected things like kissing, hand holding, cuddling, and joking around with each other. Instead, I got a lot of guys who awkwardly treated me like I was a very good friend.
Not that I never got any attention. I went on a first date with one boy. I decided I didn't like him and didn't want a second date. I told him this, politely, trying not to hurt his feelings. He immediately started enacting the dramatic teenager and talking about how we were "drifting away from each other." He began following me around everywhere online, and became obsessed with a person he thought I was via the Internet.
The more I heard from him, the more alarmed I became. He lived in a shelter, heard voices in his head, and talked about violence a lot. He also seemed somewhat depressed, misogynistic, and frankly just bizarre.
I told him I was not comfortable with being around him virtually anymore, and asked if he could please give me some space and leave me alone. He refused, and kept following me around everywhere online. I became very afraid and decided that -- since I'd taken a year off from school and was thousands of miles away by this point -- I needed to break his perfect image of me by being as cruel to him as possible. I called him a stalker, told him I hated him, and demanded that he leave me alone.
He left and it all went silent, but not before he threatened me and told me he hoped I "suffered." I put all my Facebook settings on privacy, shut down all my old other accounts and put up new ones under different pseudonyms, quit OkCupid, and tried to move on with my life. I never went back to my old school and I haven't heard from him in over a year.
When I went back to college at a new school in a different area of the country, I decided tentatively to try online dating again. This time, I tried eHarmony. I actually really liked the experience. I have found that on eHarmony, you feel safer and more secure -- perhaps because everyone pays money to use their account and thus has to have a job or family support and be fairly serious -- and you also get less weird sexual and drug comments and less questions on odd topics. While eHarmony has a reputation for being stodgy and Christian, I have found young people, unreligious people, and atheists all on eHarmony.
I met a boy and invited him to a local coffeehouse/pub downtown that played live music on weekends. (I almost always do the asking and think of the kissing first. I swear to God, I'd have made a spectacular boy.) I tried (on the recommendation of a therapist) to be more upfront this time -- I wanted to hold hands, etc. It seemed to work. Me and this boy, we went on a couple of dates, and then one night after a date I asked him shyly for a kiss. He kissed me just outside my dorm room after he'd walked me to my door, and that's how I got my first kiss. A couple of dates later, we were watching a movie on the couch in his apartment and I asked if we were boyfriend and girlfriend. He admitted he'd wanted to ask me the same thing, but had been too shy!
And with that, I was in a relationship.
I didn't exactly get my happy ending, though, is the thing. I pretty quickly figured out this was not what a relationship was supposed to feel like. I wasn't attracted to him at all, and had no chemistry with him! I'd walked into the relationship naively, thinking attraction and love were just supposed to magically happen at some point. I'd been so desperate to meet a nice boy, I'd ignored all the signs, hoping for the best.
But the attraction never happened. He was nice and sensible and he treated me well, but there was still no... spark. We never argued about anything, or did anything especially passionate. I never felt swept away. I never went through that phase where we had to do everything together. Making physical contact with him was actually desperately uncomfortable. I realized I'd made a great friend -- but not a great boyfriend. This was really frustrating to me. He was so nice to me and it would make it so much easier if I liked him that way! I felt cursed, or asexual, like something was wrong with me.
In the end, we spent our first Valentine's Day making a fancy dinner together at his place. We exchanged gifts -- I'd gotten him a shirt and a figurine from his favorite comic at Hot Topic, he'd made me Chocolate Frogs from Harry Potter because he knew I liked Harry Potter -- and then as we were watching a movie, he got very physically affectionate. He was pushing a little, you know. He was tired of waiting. Supposedly, everything was perfect.
Except I was desperately bored and uncomfortable, and I wished I wasn't, which strangely just made it worse.
I'd had no experience in this. I became increasingly panicked. How did one ask a boy to stop touching them? I tried everything -- leaning physically away from him, distracting him with some topic of conversation. He didn't even notice. What was I to do?
At last, at the end of the night, I blurted out how uncomfortable this had all made me. I told him it was all my problem, not his. I told him I thought he was a great guy. He asked me if I was attracted to him or in love with him, and I admitted I wasn't. I also admitted I didn't know what to do about that.
A couple of days later, I gave him a phone call and broke up with him. He seemed perfectly fine with it, and seemed puzzled, like he didn't understand why I hadn't just texted him -- which even in retrospect seems like a weird reaction. Was he acting? Did he not like me either? He was still weirdly pleasant right through the end.
In the end, he became one of my closest friends. Which is great, I guess. I have a guy friend. The only problem is, I'd wanted a boyfriend.
So, now I guess I've hit the "it's complicated" phase of my twenties.
In high school, I regarded the immature boys and equally immature relationships I witnessed with a combination of distaste, bewilderment, and horror. All the people I was in love with existed only in books and on stages. I had no desire to be in a relationship and things pretty much stayed that way all through my being a teenager. I was that pale, sarcastic little girl with square dark glasses sitting in the corner, being all hipster and "EWW."
By the time I got to college, however, rigor mortis had set in, the death knolls of my rationality tolling along with it.
I began to get lonely and self conscious. Everyone else met cute boys and engaged in happy relationships with them, I thought. Why not me?
Most of my friends are girls, however, and I'm not a big partier. Deciding I needed to try to meet some people, I engaged in online dating. I started out on OkCupid, at my first college. Reckless and desperate for attention, I spent a lot of time flirting with older men online, talking sex, philosophy, and everything in between.
I went on dates with several boys, but there was never that magic click. Always, always, either I didn't like them or they didn't like me. There was also no... spark, no romance, with any of them. I'm a daydreamer at heart, and I had expected things like kissing, hand holding, cuddling, and joking around with each other. Instead, I got a lot of guys who awkwardly treated me like I was a very good friend.
Not that I never got any attention. I went on a first date with one boy. I decided I didn't like him and didn't want a second date. I told him this, politely, trying not to hurt his feelings. He immediately started enacting the dramatic teenager and talking about how we were "drifting away from each other." He began following me around everywhere online, and became obsessed with a person he thought I was via the Internet.
The more I heard from him, the more alarmed I became. He lived in a shelter, heard voices in his head, and talked about violence a lot. He also seemed somewhat depressed, misogynistic, and frankly just bizarre.
I told him I was not comfortable with being around him virtually anymore, and asked if he could please give me some space and leave me alone. He refused, and kept following me around everywhere online. I became very afraid and decided that -- since I'd taken a year off from school and was thousands of miles away by this point -- I needed to break his perfect image of me by being as cruel to him as possible. I called him a stalker, told him I hated him, and demanded that he leave me alone.
He left and it all went silent, but not before he threatened me and told me he hoped I "suffered." I put all my Facebook settings on privacy, shut down all my old other accounts and put up new ones under different pseudonyms, quit OkCupid, and tried to move on with my life. I never went back to my old school and I haven't heard from him in over a year.
When I went back to college at a new school in a different area of the country, I decided tentatively to try online dating again. This time, I tried eHarmony. I actually really liked the experience. I have found that on eHarmony, you feel safer and more secure -- perhaps because everyone pays money to use their account and thus has to have a job or family support and be fairly serious -- and you also get less weird sexual and drug comments and less questions on odd topics. While eHarmony has a reputation for being stodgy and Christian, I have found young people, unreligious people, and atheists all on eHarmony.
I met a boy and invited him to a local coffeehouse/pub downtown that played live music on weekends. (I almost always do the asking and think of the kissing first. I swear to God, I'd have made a spectacular boy.) I tried (on the recommendation of a therapist) to be more upfront this time -- I wanted to hold hands, etc. It seemed to work. Me and this boy, we went on a couple of dates, and then one night after a date I asked him shyly for a kiss. He kissed me just outside my dorm room after he'd walked me to my door, and that's how I got my first kiss. A couple of dates later, we were watching a movie on the couch in his apartment and I asked if we were boyfriend and girlfriend. He admitted he'd wanted to ask me the same thing, but had been too shy!
And with that, I was in a relationship.
I didn't exactly get my happy ending, though, is the thing. I pretty quickly figured out this was not what a relationship was supposed to feel like. I wasn't attracted to him at all, and had no chemistry with him! I'd walked into the relationship naively, thinking attraction and love were just supposed to magically happen at some point. I'd been so desperate to meet a nice boy, I'd ignored all the signs, hoping for the best.
But the attraction never happened. He was nice and sensible and he treated me well, but there was still no... spark. We never argued about anything, or did anything especially passionate. I never felt swept away. I never went through that phase where we had to do everything together. Making physical contact with him was actually desperately uncomfortable. I realized I'd made a great friend -- but not a great boyfriend. This was really frustrating to me. He was so nice to me and it would make it so much easier if I liked him that way! I felt cursed, or asexual, like something was wrong with me.
In the end, we spent our first Valentine's Day making a fancy dinner together at his place. We exchanged gifts -- I'd gotten him a shirt and a figurine from his favorite comic at Hot Topic, he'd made me Chocolate Frogs from Harry Potter because he knew I liked Harry Potter -- and then as we were watching a movie, he got very physically affectionate. He was pushing a little, you know. He was tired of waiting. Supposedly, everything was perfect.
Except I was desperately bored and uncomfortable, and I wished I wasn't, which strangely just made it worse.
I'd had no experience in this. I became increasingly panicked. How did one ask a boy to stop touching them? I tried everything -- leaning physically away from him, distracting him with some topic of conversation. He didn't even notice. What was I to do?
At last, at the end of the night, I blurted out how uncomfortable this had all made me. I told him it was all my problem, not his. I told him I thought he was a great guy. He asked me if I was attracted to him or in love with him, and I admitted I wasn't. I also admitted I didn't know what to do about that.
A couple of days later, I gave him a phone call and broke up with him. He seemed perfectly fine with it, and seemed puzzled, like he didn't understand why I hadn't just texted him -- which even in retrospect seems like a weird reaction. Was he acting? Did he not like me either? He was still weirdly pleasant right through the end.
In the end, he became one of my closest friends. Which is great, I guess. I have a guy friend. The only problem is, I'd wanted a boyfriend.
So, now I guess I've hit the "it's complicated" phase of my twenties.
