catheroominations

The post below was written by an anonymous blogger participating in Blog Share 3.0.. I too have posted an anonymous post…somewhere out there. I enjoyed the opportunity to say whatever I wanted to and not be held accountable. During the last Blog Share, although I did not participate (procrastination gets me every time!) I found a lot of new feeds to add to my Google Reader…thus contributing further to my procrastination.

Here’s a topic that I LOVE, but never get to blog about (ok, not NEVER, but RARELY, and even then it’s not a good idea): Ex-boyfriends.

Ex-boyfriend observation #1-I think about my exes sometimes, as I think most people do, but I rarely, if ever, picture them thinking about ME. If they do, I wonder what they remember, and what they picture me up to these days.

Ex-boyfriend observation #2-Lately, I have noticed that several of my exes have married girls who are, well, they are the ANTI-ME. Like, they are teachers and church ladies and high maintenance sorority girls and such. What does this MEAN? What I’m AFRAID it means, is that I am not what many guys consider “the kind of girl you marry”. And, okay, fine, that may have been true at certain points in my life, but I’m normal now! Pinky swear! Anyway. It makes me wonder. TELL ME WHAT IT MEANS I’M SORT OF OBSESSING OVER THIS!

Ahem. So, I thought it might be fun to talk about the Key Players, as long as we’re being all anonymous:

Relationship Failure #1: My high school sweetheart. We started dating after he took my BEST FRIEND to prom, while I went with another guy, and we ended up making out on the dance floor. Um. Oops. I was a freshman, and he was a junior. He was my first love, my first sexual experience, my first everything. I loved him like crazy, and our relationship was sweet and wonderful and everything you would hope for in a first love. When he graduated, he joined the Air Force, and I was CRUSHED. We dated long-distance for two more years, until I went off to college, where I broke up with him OVER EMAIL. I feel like shit about that to this day. Years later, when I found out he was getting married, I called him crying, and told him how sorry I was. He said, “Oh, sweetie. I couldn’t wait for you forever!”. Knife. To. Heart. I still have all the cards and letters he gave me in my hope chest at my mother’s house. I haven’t gotten up the nerve to throw them away.

Relationship Failure #2: My long-term college boyfriend. We dated about a year and a half. I was never in love with him, looking back, but he was exactly what I needed at the time. When we met, I was, uh, kind of wild. I was “sowing my oats” OR WHATEVER after dating my high school sweetheart for so long. Anyway, I was going a little off the rails. We met at a bar, and when he asked me out, I thought he was just another guy in line for a hookup or meaningless whatever. But, during our date, we drank and talked for hours and he revealed that he was deeply religious and also was a VIRGIN. Whoa. But, I liked to think that my Type was that I Had No Type, so we continued to date. What I loved about him was that he was a genuine Good Guy and a true gentleman. He adored me, and treated me like a queen, and valued and respected me, and taught me to do the same at a time in my life when I was most definitely not headed down that path. Unfortunately, we had a lot of differences in upbringing and politics and general philosophy, and so we fought a lot. We finally had an amicable break-up, after both of us realized we were never really meant to be together, but I will never forget how he taught me that you can care deeply about someone who is dramatically different from you. The last time I saw him, I was with my new boyfriend, and when they ran into each other at the bar, he said to New BF, “She’s a great girl”. He didn’t have to do that, but that was totally Him.

Relationship Failure #3: My first serious boyfriend after college. I consider him my first Adult Love. I fell hard and fast for him when we met during a week of national training for the company we both worked for (he worked in an office across the country). Three weeks later, he came to visit me, and we spent a whirlwind, this-is-out-of-the-movies week together, from which we emerged officially “dating”. Our relationship is the closest I have ever come to a love-at-first-sight situation, and our chemistry was unbelievable. I adored him and worshipped the ground he walked on, and I had done the long-distance thing before, so I wasn’t worried, in the short-term. We saw each other about every other weekend for nearly a year, taking turns flying back and forth and using up all of our money and vacation time on seeing each other. Our relationship was full of huge ups and downs, since I was miserable when we were apart, and practically high on life when we were together. Also, he was from the NYC area, and when I would visit we would see plays and visit restaurants and hang out in all of the greatest cities along the east coast. It was amazing to a small-town girl like me. Predictably, I was so into him that eventually I started talking about moving to be with him. He was into it, at first, and I went to several job interviews that didn’t pan out, but eventually I noticed he was sort of…NOT into it anymore. Still, when he broke up with me one night over the phone, I was shocked and devastated. And heartbroken. He contacted me recently, after several years had gone by, and apologized for what happened. And admitted that although he is now married, he has never felt about anyone the way he felt about me. Sigh. Thanks? I guess? It’s hard to hear from him, but overall I do appreciate his words, and the validation that I didn’t HALLUCINATE what happened between us.

So! There you have it! I feel much better now! Also, all three of these guys are now married to perfectly wonderful women who are most emphatically Not Me. In fact, I daresay their wives ALL fall into the Anti-Me category. It makes me wonder. It really, really does.