Broken Hearts Damaged Goods

by Gunthridge, Jack

  This, however, does not fully explain the woman in question’s behavior the remainder of the night. It is reasonable that she would become upset when my ex-girlfriend implied that she was a slut. It is reasonable that she would lock herself in the bathroom at the party. Just like it is reasonable that I would pretend to be having sex with her in the bathroom. (There are times in your life where you find yourself in unusual situations and you have to improvise on what normal behavior would constitute. Faking sex in the shower to cover up for another person’s crying due to being insulted is reasonable in this context.)

  What becomes troubling behavior to understand is how the woman whose virtue came into question started to give a detailed history of her previous sex partners. Granted that a reasonable man is not dating this woman, she would have no reason to withhold this information from him. Both parties know that they are using each other for their own romantic rehabilitation.

  In this instance, it seems like the woman sees the man as a close friend. Her sharing then would be seen as a way of discussing what is really bothering her and why she does the things that she does.

  A reasonable man in this case would see the woman as a person that longs for love and has looked for it with the faith of a child. She gave her previous lovers all of her heart, and they refused to recognize just what they held in their hands. Throughout it all, she never gave up her faith in love and being loved.

  She was a reasonable woman. She just never figured that men would never be able to see what she was offering.

  The tragedy of the situation is that the reasonable man and the reasonable woman will continue to be reasonable and do everything that is in the best interest of the other person and then part ways, wishing each other the best of luck with their newly mended hearts in a world where such hearts cannot exist long.

  I Saw Her Again Last Night II

  By

  Jack Webber

  When going through romantic rehabilitation, there is always a choice that one has to make. Should you see your ex that you are trying to get over, or do you avoid them? The right answer to this question depends on the situation and the person. Seeing your ex could lead you back into temptation and long for the so called “golden days.” On the other hand, seeing them might also prove that you have moved on and feel nothing for them.

  I have no idea how I am actually doing in the rehabilitation process. A self-audit is not high on my list of priorities at this time. To look at how I am coping with everything would just draw attention to the very thing that I am trying to forget and move on from.

  When I saw her last night, I didn’t feel the intense feelings of longing that I had even as recent as last week. She seemed more like a stranger that I knew extremely well. This made the confrontation awkward. Knowing your enemy intimately makes you go for the lowest of blows in order to achieve a decisive victory.

  I should have wanted a victory in the same sense that she did, but my few remaining feelings for her kept me doing this. I merely finished the confrontation. I wasn’t interested in a victor and a defeated the way that she was.

  Knowing the “enemy” the way that I do, I was a little taken aback by her behavior. Considering that I was the one that was cheated on, I don’t know why she would care who I spend time with after the breakup. But she is an extremely self-conscious woman, who has never thought of herself as beautiful. It didn’t matter that I would tell her that I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She never once found herself to be even remotely attractive.

  I know that her attacks on my date were a defensive attack caused by her own insecurities. It meant that she thought that the woman that replaced her was superior in many ways. It also means that she is starting to doubt her decision to admit to the affair. She sees herself as a downgrade from the woman that she replaced.

  If I were still madly in love with her, I would have told her that she didn’t need to compare herself to other women. I would have told her that she was beautiful. And I might have cared that a beautiful woman didn’t have any measure of self-worth.

  Instead I found this woman that I knew so well to be horrifically ugly. When she said, “My God, Jack, you don’t just give a diamond ring to the first girl that will fuck you”, I couldn’t help but to respond, “That girl has shown me more kindness than you did in four years, and you have just shown that she has more style, grace, and beauty than you could ever hope to have.”

  And that seemed to be the end of the confrontation. I left to comfort a woman that was deeply hurt by having her virtue challenged by a known cheater. By comforting my date, I found a beauty that I thought only my ex possessed. This new beauty seems more pure in its longing to be loved, desired, and appreciated for who she really is.

  Despite having a night of discovering something that I once thought existed in my ex, I was still haunted by my former love later that night. She taunted me in my sleep and made me question that I would ever find somebody to replace her. She reminded me of the great things that we once were. She told me that she still cared for me. And when I confronted this ghost of my dreams about the fact that she was the one that left me, she said, “What could I do, Jack? You were killing me and our relationship. I had to leave. If I cheated, it was because I needed out and didn’t want to hurt you.”

  And knowing her the way that I do, I almost believed these words. She would have told me these things and placed the blame on me for her cheating on me. And I couldn’t argue with her.

  Maybe I am to blame. Maybe I didn’t love her enough, or expressed my feelings for her. Maybe I didn’t make her feel that she was truly beautiful. If I had done these things, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen for a man that could make her feel the things I never could in the four years that we were together.

  Even though I know her words were not real and that she is dealing with her own feelings of insecurity after the breakup, I can’t but help to believe that she would tell me these things if she wanted to cause me even more pain. Her respect for our previous relationship and what was once real has kept her from truly hurting me.

  Instead, she will strike out at the person I am currently with. They are collateral damage. She doesn’t care if they get hurt. I do. I don’t want anybody else to feel what I have felt the past couple of weeks. I don’t want anybody else to become a casualty of a failed relationship. If I have to suffer for the sake of others and deal with her ghost on a nightly basis, I am willing to do that. Nobody else will get hurt because of me.

  Sept. 24, 2010

  Jack has been different this week. He still has his moments of melancholy where he is silent and lost in thought, but he has also been more outgoing and wanting to do things. He has been seeing his friends and talking to them.

  Tonight, Jack and I went to the movies. It was kind of a date. I don’t want to officially call it a date, especially since Megan has been getting on to me about trying to read too much into everything I do with Jack.

  Anyway, the other night, Jack and I were in bed. He has his left arm around me and he’s playing with my hair with his right hand. We were just talking about stuff like we do, and then he goes, “What are you doing Friday night?”

  I was caught a little off guard, but I told him that I didn’t know.

  He then said, “Well, I would like to take you out to a dinner and a movie... if you don’t have other plans.”

  He seemed kind of nervous and acted like I was going to say no. He was really cute, actually.

  I made sure that I didn’t use the word “date” all week with him. I didn’t want him to think that I thought we were dating and scare him off. Taking me out to dinner and a movie on a Friday night could mean something else to him than what I would like to think that it means, so I just had to find other ways to define it. We were two friends of the opposite sex spending time alone together where the man agreed to pay for everything and the man asked if I wanted to do this with him.

  So despite this being the technical definition
of date, I did not call it a date and neither did Jack. And maybe I don’t really care about defining what tonight was. It was nice to get out of the house and to spend time with him.

  He seemed to be a different person tonight when we were out. It wasn’t like a Jekyll/Hyde thing or him having different moods as he is dealing with the breakup. And I can’t really define what was different about him tonight.

  He was sweet, kind, and caring, but he is usually that with me. He seemed interested in what I was saying, but he has always done that, even when we didn’t really know each other. So I can’t really say what was different, especially at dinner.

  Dinner was at the local Italian place, which happens to be my favorite restaurant. He had been asking me questions all week trying to figure some place to take me. I wasn’t going to tell him where I liked to eat in town. I didn’t want him to try to treat me to a perfect date when I was pretty sure that he wasn’t considering this a date. It would hurt too much later to know that everything that I thought was perfect was just to make me happy and not done out of any sort of feelings for me.

  Anyway, he was able to figure out my favorite restaurant. He even made us reservations. And it was just a perfect dinner that I would have killed to have with any guy that I was dating, but there I was with a guy that I’m crazy about and not actually dating.

  And I can’t say what was different about him at dinner. Maybe it was just that he was out of the house. I think he is feeling a bit trapped in there all of the time. It’s our safe place where we are free to make out with each other, discuss our deepest thoughts, fears, regrets, etc. To go out in public together and to know that people can see us and possible overhear something that we could say might have altered the way he acted with me tonight. But it wasn’t like we were putting on a show like we did last weekend at the party.

  After dinner, we walked around the mall for a little bit before going to the movies. At one point, he took my hand. He didn’t just do that guy trick of testing the waters by accidentally bumping his hand into mine as we were walking. He made a clear decision to hold my hand, and yet it was completely natural and didn’t feel like a guy putting the moves on me.

  I don’t want to say that he was putting the moves on me. I don’t know that he was or ever has. When I smiled at him as he took my hand, he said, “I need to hold onto you. You’re all I’ve got right now.” It was extremely cheesy, but it was also very sweet and heartfelt.

  It felt good to hold hands with him. I haven’t done that with a guy in a very long time. I don’t know why. I haven’t been holding hands with the majority of the guys that I’ve dated lately.

  It seems that the more intimate I have become with men physically, the less intimate I have become with men emotionally. That is the thing that I am finding about being with Jack. I’m okay with us not fooling around or having sex because I am spending so much more time getting to actually know him. And he does things like holding my hand, or holding me as we are talking.

  Maybe he thinks of me as just a friend that is helping him to get over a breakup, but it feels nice to actually be a part of somebody’s life and to be needed and wanted for something other than my sexual skills.

  And it was nice to be on an actual date tonight with him where the guy paid for the dinner and movie. It was a simple date, but I haven’t had a really nice date like tonight since a long time before Steve.

  Maybe guys have changed from what I remembered wanting from them as I was growing up. Maybe I just accepted the reality of what men were like instead of demanding my expectations from them. Either way, I had a really good time tonight with Jack. I was able to watch the movie with him, and not have him try to make out with me throughout the film. He did play with my fingers in a cute, loving way during the movie, but it was more of that emotional connection kind of way than in the physical getting off sort of way.

  It was just such a perfect date that I forgot that he was living with me. We were standing at the front door. We were holding hands and facing each other. I told him that I had a really great time tonight and then went in for that perfect kiss to top off the evening.

  The kiss was amazing. I don’t want to read something into it, but I think he put his feelings into it, too. And then there was this awkward moment where I didn’t know what he was wanting, so I just smiled.

  He then seemed a little sheepish and asked, “Do you have your key? I mean, I like kissing you out here and all, but the neighbors are kind of looking at us.”

  And then I remembered that I was living with the guy that I had just had the best first date of my life with.

  There’s not really a good way to recover from a situation like this, at least not gracefully where you don’t give away that you like this guy. I ended up just apologizing, taking out my key, and then dropping my key. I started to bend over to pick it up, but then eyes caught a glimpse of his crotch, which looked nice in his jeans. And then I thought that bending over so that my head was in his general crotch area wasn’t a good idea, so I said, “Can you pick that up for me? All I can think about right now is giving you a blowjob.”

  And as soon as I said it, I realized just how bad it sounded. And there was a moment where I contemplated whether I should try clarifying that statement by what I really meant to say, or whether the clarification would come out even worse than the original statement. But thinking that what I said was pretty bad, I decided to blabber out a clarification.

  “Not that I’m mentally obsessed about giving you a blowjob right now. I just meant that I thought it might be awkward for me to bend over right now with you positioned the way you are to pick up the key. That’s all I meant by saying that I was thinking about blowing you right now.”

  Which I then felt that my clarification needed a clarification. I didn’t want to leave him with the impression that I was opposed to pleasuring him in that way. Ideally it would lead to him pleasuring me, which I would like very much. And it was out of that desire that I started to issue my clarification.

  Thankfully before I got too far into this clarification, he had picked up the key, pulled me closer to him, and started to kiss me while opening the door. He then just gently led me inside and closed the door behind us. His kiss was soft and sweet. It wasn’t like a guy leading me back to the bedroom, especially after I had initiated a conversation about blowjobs. And that is what kind of threw me off. So when I opened up my eyes and saw that beautiful face of his, I didn’t quite know what to expect.

  I certainly didn’t expect him to say, “So is it okay if I call you sometime so that we can go out again?”

  “I would like that very much.”

  I’m not going to read too much into him ending it like an official date. I think he was just trying to get me past the awkwardness of everything that I had just said, which makes him just a little bit cuter than what I already thought he was.

  He then kissed me on the cheek and whispered in my ear, “I’m going to get ready for bed. I’ll see you there later, but Megan is kind of looking at us like she is wanting to talk to you.”

  So Jack went to bed, and I went into the living room to talk to my best friend, whether it was to get a lecture or to share all of the details of the night’s activities. It ended up being okay. She wasn’t lecturing me. She just wanted to know what was happening between me and Jack, especially after she saw the way that we entered the apartment.

  I told her that the kiss wasn’t really what it seemed and explained the whole date evening with him. And when I got to the part about the blowjob outside, I mean, the discussion about the... Anyway, when I described the events leading up to his graceful exiting of my awkward moment, she understood what she saw a little bit better. But she did wonder whether he felt anything for me, or what was going on between us.

  And I didn’t know what to tell her. Not having ever dated a nice guy before, I don’t know how to exactly take most of what Jack does. And it makes it harder in that we have this agreement where we are just using each o
ther to get over a broken heart.

  What confuses me the most is that he seems reluctant to be intimate with me. He seems comfortable holding me, kissing me, playing with my hair, and caressing me, but he has never tried to touch any of my sexual parts. I’ve just never been with a guy that didn’t at least try to cop a feel by this point in our relationship, I mean, at this point in the amount of time that I have spent with him.

  I don’t know if when he touches me and kisses me that he is thinking about her, and that he won’t do other sexual things because he knows that I’m not her. And I would ask him, but there is no good way to bring up something like this.

  Besides, maybe it doesn’t matter. I know that he is going through a hard time right now. And I am truly thankful to have him in my life right now. He makes me feel... like I have never felt before when I was with a guy. The actual definition of our relationship is relatively unimportant in that context.

  When I made it to bed later that night, I found him lying there peacefully. He looked really beautiful with his arm flung up over his head. He looked like he wanted to be there and belonged there. And I would have stayed there admiring him, but I felt that was a bit creepy. So I tried my best to get into bed without disturbing him.

  And I thought I had done a really great job of that when he rolled over on his side and put his arm around me. “You know, if I’m going to call you, you’re going to have to give me your number.”

  I can’t tell you how happy it made me that he said that to me. Although, considering that we have been sleeping together for three weeks now, it seems like we should have given each other our numbers before this. I tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal, though. I figured this was the best thing to do since he had already started to cup my hand into his, playing with my fingers, and scooted closer so that he could spoon me, which gave away his hard on. I know guys can get those for any number of reasons, but I would like to think it was me and that he had been nursing one for as long as I was out there talking to Megan.