Not-Advice for Past-Me about bad relationships
Last night I tried to give a friend some advice, because he seemed to be going through some stuff that was similar to some stuff I went through earlier in life. My friend didn’t know how to get over a girl. I told him that it takes time. It takes working on you. It takes doin’ it with other people. I stand by that answer. Unfortunately, I know that if anyone had given me that advice at the time, I wouldn’t have taken it. I mean, plenty of people did give me advice at the time, and I didn’t take it. There are some things in life you sort of have to learn on your own, I guess. So, instead of giving advice, I’m just going to share on here a bit of what happened to me, and what I learned from it, and maybe it’ll make some other people learn it on their own just a little bit faster.
Off and on for about seven years, I had a very unhealthy relationship with a girl I knew from high school. It started just after graduation, and lasted a couple of years past college. It was long-distance and—because of the age of the internet at the time—manifested itself mostly as AOL Instant Messenger conversations and e-mails. At its best, it was a co-dependent friendship, at its worst it was adultery. Dramatic highlights include sending emails urging her not to marry her fiancé, her calling off her wedding at the last minute, and me writing a screenplay about her. The drama culminated in tears and confessions of love over the phone as she drunkenly drove back to the husband, our phone call interrupted as I heard her crash her car into a semi-truck on I-5.
Looking back, I barely recognize the person I was then, this Past-Me. He was a young man forged by bad romantic comedies, insecurity, and loneliness. I couldn’t shake the—very wrong in retrospect—feeling that THIS GIRL JUST UNDERSTANDS ME, MAN. We were meant to be together because we had a class together in high school or something. It was much easier for me to believe that I’d found the perfect girl for me and she was just unattainable, than it was to consider the other possibilities: that I hadn’t found the perfect girl yet, or that there are many perfect people out there for everyone.
Now that I’ve been in other—healthy—relationships, not only do I not understand how I could have let this girl be a part of my life for so long, I don’t understand how any of her other relationships were possible. We spent so many hours a week chatting on instant messenger while she was dating, engaged, and married. How did she have three hours every night to chat with me? How did those poor dudes feel? It turns out I was just one of many horrible relationships she left her in wake.
It seems so silly now, but I needed to tell her everything that happened in my day, or it wasn’t real. If a tree falls in the woods and you can’t IM someone about it does it really—It didn’t feel like it happened unless she knew. Past-Me thought that meant we were meant to be together, but now I know it meant a lot more than that. It meant I was unhappy. It meant I needed to live my life in a different way, a way where I was living it for me instead of other people. I needed to have more healthy friends in my life, more people to hang out with and talk to. Only after having those other two things should a relationship even factor in, and it definitely shouldn’t factor in with someone who has a fiancé or is married.
It went on for seven years, but there were several long breaks in there, lasting several months or a year. We always somehow convinced ourselves that the friendship was worth it. Sometimes we talked like we were friends, sometimes we talked like we were in a relationship, but now I can see that we were always very far away from both of those things.
If I could tell my friend one—fuck my friend—okay—if I could go back in time and give Past-Me one piece of advice, it would be that life is too fucking short. I was using my twisted friendship with her to not put myself out there for real with better friends and other girls. I’m pretty sure it was a defense mechanism to protect me from experiencing anything real, which worked out pretty well, except I didn’t experience anything real.
I would tell Past-Me that there is no “The One.” There are a lot of experiences out there with a lot of great people, and every day you’re spending chatting on the internet with “The One” is a day you could get out there and experience something real. I would tell Past-Me that no one who stays in a relationship with someone else is worth pining over.
Even now, reading over what I just wrote, I see I’m still blaming myself for so much of what happened. Not that I shouldn’t take some responsibility—I mean, I was there—but there wasn’t a moment in our friendship or our relationship that she wasn’t using me. A straight up affair is easier to see, it’s easier to see that someone is using someone else to fill out what is lacking in their real relationship. This was harder to see, that our unhealthy friendship was filling the holes in herself and the holes in her relationships.
Because of the nature of the internet, I wasn’t able to get the full picture of her. Like an airbrushed swimsuit model made entirely of text messages, all the negative gaps filled over smooth—she was able to hide her mental illness, and I was able to have my perfect woman from afar. Only, well, not really, of course. The same thing happens on first dates, as you build up that person in your mind before you know anything about them. The difference here is that the first date lasted seven years.
My friends thought I loved the drama of it, but I didn’t. I loved the story. Everything meant more because we were kept apart by circumstance. I met her in a poetry class in the sixth grade, for fuck’s sake, I wrote a screenplay about a fictionalized version of us. I wasn’t in love with her, I was in love with the idea of dramatic love. I was in love with the arc of our characters, the storytelling of it. It took me another decade to learn that I needed to fulfill those desires on the page and not in my personal life.
Real love doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t stay in other relationships. Real love makes you happy. It’s honest and real. It’s a partnership. The hardest thing to convince Past-Me would be that it wasn’t love. But it wasn’t. Not even close.
Not that love isn’t complicated. Sometimes you fall for someone who isn’t right for you. Sometimes you find someone who is right for you, but one of you isn’t in the right time in their lives to make it work (and usually that person is me). The most important thing I’ve learned in life is to just keep moving. Spend a moment to mourn the outcomes of fate, and then keep on living your life. Every day you feel sorry for yourself is a day you aren’t living.
Your brain and your heart and your genitals might say otherwise. They might argue with you and nag at you. Another thing I’ve learned is that sometimes your brain or your heart or your genitals can’t be reasoned with. Sometimes your brain, your heart, or your genitals are stubborn, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still wrong. And that’s not something that stops because you get in a healthy relationship or you find love. Your brain and your heart and your genitals are still going to fuck with you on the daily. You’re gonna smell a thing that reminds you of a past lover who was no good for you. You’re gonna want to call or text or email people that you know you shouldn’t. The most important thing to learn about this stuff is that it doesn’t mean shit. Your brain is gonna be wrong, your heart is going to be wrong, and your genitals are going to be wrong. FOREVER. It doesn’t mean that the unattainable girl is perfect for you and it doesn’t mean that the healthy relationship you’re in now is wrong for you.
I’ve gotten sidetracked a little. My friend didn’t know how to get over a girl. I used to have a similar problem. Doesn’t matter if you know the girl isn’t right, the human brain can be a beezy. I used to think I would never get over her or the things she did to me. Now I think about her only two or three times a year, and never in a fond way, and only in passing. I wish I had listened to my friends’ advice then, but c’mon, I probably wouldn’t even have listened to a time-traveling Future-Me (Yo, Past-Me! Buy some Apple stock! Don’t eat so much Jack in the Box! Skip those Matrix sequels!).
You’ll get over it. You’ll get over her. But you need to stop talking to her. You need to stop thinking about her. You need to stop worrying about thinking about her. We live in the future now, and in the future it’s hard, because in the future it’s easy. It’s hard because it’s easy to text someone or e-mail someone or chat with them on Facebook. It’s hard because it’s easy to obsessively check someone’s social media presence over and over again. In the past, you could run away from your past and start new. Technology brings us all together, even with people we shouldn’t be together with anymore. It’s hard, but not impossible.
It feels like you’re never gonna be right again. You will. It feels like there are no other girls out there for you. There are, there are so many, they’re an unlimited resource and they’re making new ones every day. So relax, and live your life, and grow as a person, and keep yourself open to the new possibilities that are like all around you, man, dig? But you’ve got to stop talking to her, because it’ll freeze everything in your life except for your life, and that’s the only limited resource you got.
Bah, I said I wasn’t going to give advice, and now I did. Look. I told my friend that it takes time. It takes working on you. It takes doin’ it with other people. I stand by that answer.