A puppy?
I know that it doesn’t sound good, but... A lot of times when I have tried to use men, I have gotten hurt even more. They were just a man trying to fill the role of something that I needed, but they never did. And then, here you were, this cute, little, heartbroken, puppy of a man that needed me. And it felt good to be needed and to have a man that was pretty drunk still have the wits about him to say no to me when I offered to sleep with him.
A puppy, huh?
Yeah, but what surprised me the most was the fact that you were potty trained. Of all of the drunk guys I’ve gone home with, you were the first one that didn’t piss on me in the middle of the night.
Does that happen a lot?
You’d be surprised. So when I say that you were a cute, little puppy that needed me, I mean it as a girl that has gone home with guys with the promise of food, shelter, and love. You were the male version of me. I couldn’t leave something like that out on the streets.
In many ways, it bothers me to have her talk about the number of guys that she’s been with. It’s not the actual number, and I don’t care about the number, even if I do eventually end up making love to her at some point in the future. What bothers me is that she can just so freely admit to having sex with guys that she didn’t care about.
And with her admissions comes a sorrow as if that was all that she deserved. I would almost say that she isn’t ashamed, but it’s not that. She knows that she can’t change the past. She has no desire to. She made her decisions, seems to know that they were poor and things that she wouldn’t do now, but she talks about them openly as if she is begging you to love her for who she really is.
She wants somebody to love her. Guys have made love to her, but they have never loved her. And as I think of Steve and what he used to tell me about her, I see that he missed so much of who she is as an individual.
I like that she thought of me as a puppy the night that Brittany left me. I imagine that I did look like something that you would see in those SPCA commercials where they show you images of animals that have been mistreated as a sad song plays and a celebrity asks you to help.
We’re both damaged goods. Animals that only wanted to be loved and cared for by the people we tried to be devoted to. In the end, we were mistreated and have been trying to cope with the wrongs done to us as if it was something that we did.
If I were ever truly honest with myself, I would admit that I love her. I love how she makes me feel, how she is totally honest with me, how she shows me all of her scars that she has received over the years, and how she doesn’t judge me for my scars.
And I know that there is a part of her that loves me and wants nothing more than to have me love her in return. This is what scares me. I still have visions of my previous master. Those scars haven’t healed.
I know what it is like to go unloved. Since I cannot be sure of my own heart right now, I don’t want to be another guy that ends up hurting her. That would hurt me more than anything else I have endured so far.
Oct. 11, 2010
The wedding was amazing. I decided to do my hair up, which took me about an hour with Megan’s help. She also helped me with the makeup. Thankfully we had enough time to get dressed and stuff before the wedding. I wanted to look perfect and not keep Jack waiting, especially since we made him get dressed two hours before we had to leave just so I could use the bedroom and then reveal the dress right before we left.
All of my efforts were worth it. I’ve never had a guy look at me the way that he did. I felt like a princess. He walked slowly over to me and whispered in my ear, “In case I forget to tell you tonight, you’re the most beautiful girl at the wedding.”
He then held his arm out for me to take. “Shall we?”
The wedding was about 20 miles outside of town, which gave us a little time to brief me again on everybody that was going to be at the wedding. He told me how to handle his mom, dad, grandparents, brother, sister, aunts, and uncles. We’ve been going over all of this for the past week. I just hoped that I wouldn’t embarrass him too much in front of his family.
When we pulled into the church’s parking lot, he got out, walked over to my side of the car, and opened the door for me. He then extended his hand for me to take and helped me get out. And he walked me to the front doors of the church with me clearly on his arm.
As we got inside, he started to slip his fingers in between mine. I found out that the guy coming over to us in a tux was his older brother, Max.
“What up, little bro? Mom was wondering who you were going to bring?”
With great civility, Jack introduced me. “Max, this is Liselle. Liselle, this is my older brother.”
Max then shook my hand and told me how great it was to meet me before he tacked on a, “So are you and my brother...?”
I deferred to Jack on that one. Thankfully, he didn’t waste any time to say, “We’re together.”
“Oh, Jack, man. You're going to have come up with something better than that. Mom and Nana are going to nail you on that. You’ve only been broken up with Brittany for a month.”
I was happy for Jack to say that we were together, but Max brought up a good point. It had only been about a month since the breakup with Brittany. It would look bad for me if Jack declared having strong feelings for me in that amount of time. And I didn’t want to be introduced to his mother as the girl that he has been spending his nights with for the past month. Mothers judge you on that sort of thing.
I think Max could see me looking at Jack as he was waiting to come up with another term for us. “Dude, if you’re going to introduce her as your girlfriend, Mom will be all over you two tonight. She won’t stop until she finds out how you met and what the first date was like. And don’t forget that Mom loved Brittany. She is still wondering what happened between you two.”
And then I think Max thought of how this might sound in front of me be he added, “Frankly, I think you’re a definite upgrade from Brittany. And in case he hasn’t told you yet, he’s totally in to you.”
“Do you see what I mean about my brother having no shame”, Jack said while blushing.
“I’m just trying to help you out. I can’t help it that you’re letting a beautiful girl like this carry on with you without giving her the proper title for your feelings for her.”
Jack became speechless at this point. Thankfully I remembered what he had told me about his brother, so I said, “With what he’s giving me, I’m not too concerned about the proper title.”
I then took Jack’s arm and walked into the sanctuary to take a seat. His brother just stared at us.
Jack thanked me for that and then asked me not to do that kind of stuff in front of his mom, grandma, or sister.
“You know, you’re going to have to define what we are before I meet your mother.”
“I know”, was all he said.
“And if your brother can tell that you are totally in to me, the women in your family will be able to tell.”
That’s when Jack just looked at me. “How do you want me to define us?”
I don’t know if it is something in us as women or whether it’s something that we learn as we grow up, but it always seem like a bad idea to let a guy know that you like him or to tell him how you would like to define your relationship with him.
Maybe it has something to do with guys’ innate ability to just copy what you say. If you say “I love you”, the guy will just repeat it. It’s not that this echo of your affection isn’t sincere. It’s just that you would like to hear it from him first.
“I want you to define us by how you feel about me.”
I wouldn’t find out his answer until later that night at dinner. We were sitting with his mom, dad, and sister. Jack called it the great inquisition where we were bombarded with questions about how we met, how long we have known each other, etc.
I didn’t come off very good during this part, but Jack kept trying to make my answers sound better. But there was no way to
explain the ring on my left ring finger, especially when Jack’s mother said, “You know, I saw on Dr. Phil the other day about how people that come out of relationships that have lasted a long time start to sleep around to get a feeling of self-worth. People do a lot of stupid things when they are getting over a break up.”
“Mom, the ring on Liselle’s finger is from me. I bought it to give to Brittany when I was going to propose to her. But a funny thing happened when I got down on one knee. She told me that she had been sleeping with Steve.”
Jack was more than a little defiant. And as he continued, he took my hand.
“I can’t tell you what is going on between me and Liselle. It’s not because I’m ashamed of it. I just can’t define it. I just know that when I am with her that I feel things that I haven’t felt in a long time when I was with Brittany.
And that ring is a promise to help to make me a better person. Despite what you might think of a person that you just met, Liselle is more worthy of that ring than Brittany ever was.”
“I have no doubt that you find a certain worthiness in her, considering that you have been sleeping together ever since the breakup.”
There was a look on his mother’s face that I have seen plenty of times on a mother’s face. I guess, fortunately enough for me, this time I was with Jack.
“I hate to tell you this, Mom, but two people of the opposite sex can share a bed and not have sex. Just ask any married man. Right, Dad?”
The entire table was shocked and speechless. Jack’s mom and sister were especially. Jack’s dad was just laughing. He didn’t even stop when his wife hit him
Jack then turned to me. “Would you care to dance?” And we exited the entire situation and danced.
I apologized for causing him so many problems with his family. He said that it wasn’t my fault and that his mom and sister really liked Brittany and thought that she was the one.
It felt good to be with him. I liked having his arms around me. I’ve never had a guy stand up for me before. I’ve had plenty of mothers hate me without ever having gotten to know me, so I was used to that. I ended up telling Jack this as we were dancing.
We talked a lot as we were dancing. We talked about very private stuff. And no matter how much we shared, there was always more. And we continued like this all night, even on the car ride home and once we got to bed.
Bedtime was nice. He only wore a pair of boxers. I started off wearing a tank top and a pair of panties. We just laid in bed, facing each other, with our arms around each other, and looking into each other’s eyes as we continued to share the deepest parts of ourselves that we haven’t shown to anybody in a very long time.
It’s not that we were ashamed of our secrets. It was everything that we wanted to get off of our chests. We just couldn’t find anybody that was worthy of keeping our secrets without judging us.
I do love him. I’m not going to kid myself, even if I won’t tell him. And the more that I am with him, the more that I love him.
His mom did apologize to me. She said that she was glad that I was taking care of her boy during this difficult time. And his father cut in while I was dancing with Jack. I danced with his father as he apologized for Jack’s mom and asked that I didn’t think poorly on his family. I told him that I couldn’t. I’ve thought better of the world since I’ve gotten to know Jack.
The Dance (II)
By
Jack Webber
There are moments in your life that you thought would only happen once, and then they happen again and seem to be just as special.
When I danced with Liselle this weekend, it was not the first time that we have danced together. There shouldn’t have been anything extraordinary about it. I’ve known her longer than the time that I danced with Brittany for the first time. And yet in many ways, dancing with Liselle was by far superior to that first time with Brittany.
Comparing the two women and the two events, I can only hope to understand myself a little bit better.
In terms of clothing, the women seemed to be identical. Brittany wore a jade green dress. Liselle wore a dark blue dress. Both looked amazing in them. Brittany looked so good that I found the courage to ask her to dance when I didn’t even know her.
I can’t hold this against Liselle, since I have known her before the dance. I wanted to dance with Liselle because she looked so hurt by what my family was saying. I wanted to hold her close to me and take the pain away. She is too beautiful to be sad on my account.
Being a guy, I can say that in terms of dancing ability, both women are equal.
My first dance with Brittany had me extremely aroused. I was a horny teenage boy. I should give Brittany some points for agreeing to go out with me when the first thing she noticed about me were my raging hormones.
But Liselle gave me great conversation as we danced. And when I was dancing with her, I didn’t want the dance to end. And bonus points should be given to Liselle for encouraging my hormones during the lighter moments of the dances.
So what made the dances so special and yet so different?
As much as I hate to admit it, my dance with Brittany was special because it was an illusion. I’ve been telling myself that it was something special for so long because it made for the telling of a great love story. It would be a story for our kids. But as I look at it, I was just a horny teenage boy, who saw an attractive girl, asked her out, and ended up dating her for four years.
And as I am learning, most of my relationship with Brittany seems to have turned out to be a lie and nothing more than a tale that I believed for so long.
But what made dancing with Liselle so wonderful was that she was dancing with me. It was the way that she looked at me and put her head on my shoulder. It was what she said to me and didn’t say to me. It was what my parents said to her and the pain that I wanted to take away from her.
All of my life I have been trying to write the perfect love story. Over the years I have written out all of the girls before Brittany. Those romances were so short lived and junior high that I could do so without any real moral problems. But I stayed with Brittany for far too long to not consider her a part of my life.
Maybe I was trying to force a happy ending on a story that it didn’t belong on.
But now I am stuck with a love story that comes out of the ashes of an illusion. How do you create a love story with a beginning like that? Do you tell your kids that you met their mother after some other woman rejected you? That’s not very romantic.
My brother could tell that I was in love with Liselle. Maybe he knows me better than I know myself.
I know that I care a great deal about Liselle as a person. I have no idea what love is right now. I just know that the dance with her was special because it was with her and everything that she means to me.
A Mother Reason for Rehab
By
Jack Webber
Although Brittany and I started dating without any help from our parents, the fact that our mothers worked together didn’t hurt our relationship. It meant that we got instant approval from the powers that be.
And it wasn’t just that Brittany and I became a power couple within our families because of who we were. I had the extra responsibility of the fact that I was the middle child with an older brother that was not known for long relationships and a little sister that was known for lengthy relationships with guys that were a little on the unusual side.
Brittany and I were seen as a normal, well-adjusted couple that could go the distance. In our relationship, my mother saw the real opportunity for one of her children to get married to a person that she would like for us to get married to. And it didn’t hurt that she would have liked the possibility of Brittany’s mom as an in-law.
I didn’t notice it at the time, but there was a lot of pressure on us to be this couple. It wasn’t as bad in the beginning as we were getting to know each other. After the one year mark and as we were starting to show that we could last as a couple during the colleg
e years, the pressure began to grow.
There were more family events where we were barraged with questions about when we were going to get married. It hung over us like a cloud. We laughed it off saying that we still in college and that it wasn’t a good time to get married, but there was a feeling as if our marriage was just a matter of time. We were even being treated as a married couple.
I was invited to family events with Brittany’s family. Our parents even worked out Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, so that Brittany and I could make it to both sides of the family. We both went on family vacations with each other’s family and received presents from what was supposed to be our future in-laws on our birthdays and Christmas.
I know that my mom wants me to get back together with Brittany. It doesn’t matter to her that she cheated on me. That could be forgiven. My mom just wants me to go back to dating a type of girl that she would approve of.
I think this is unfair to Liselle. She is being compared to Brittany without even getting the chance to be herself. My brother and dad seem to like her. Guys are always more open to the idea of dating another person. Women are harder to please, especially your mother.
My mom will say that she wants what is best for me. Staying with somebody that cheated on me is not the best thing for me. And maybe that’s not what she is trying to tell me. Maybe she just wants me to be careful as I learn to get over the heartache.
Spending so much time with Liselle probably isn’t the smartest thing I’ve done. I thought that when we started this that we would just use each other to get over the previous relationship. Once healed, we would go our separate ways and be better off. The self-destructive behavior that typically befalls people in our situation wouldn’t exist.
I’m finding, however, that I do care for Liselle. I’m just not sure how deep that caring is. I’ve tried to scale it back lately, since I am getting the feeling that Liselle is looking to me as a lover. I like her too much to try to go down that road with her when I’m in the shape that I’m in. I don’t want to hurt her by my inability to love.
Broken Hearts Damaged Goods Page 11