Hollaback Girl

I remember being a little kid and hearing my older cousins or friend's older siblings tell of their crazy stories about sex and dating and I remember wishing I had stories. Well now I got some stories. The blog from the other day about faux pas and deal-breakers was a lesson that I learned from being out on the field all these years; if someone likes you they like you despite you eating to much or saying too much. I think women try to attach a reason for why a guy didn't call in making up these rules. Well it must be because I was wearing granny underwear or I hadn't shaved my legs or I finished his meal and got dessert. No! That's not it at all. He just isn't into you. Those stories were embarassing but they were all me being me. Unfortunately as much as I sometimes wish I was quiet and small and demure and ladylike and neat, the brash, rash, loud me always forces itself out; usually at the most inoportune times.

Anyway, the real faux pas women committ are none of those surface offenses. I have lived the real ones too, the embarassing, not funny, sad ones ones. In doing so I learned how to protect myself and when to put myself out there, when not to, not to ever get ahead of myself, never to assume, always to take relationships slow and to separate the rejection from how I feel about myself. Obviously, I am a work in progress but trusting your gut and doing what you want and not trying to dissect what someone else is feeling from their tone or by listening 10 times to a voicemail they left you is paramount.

I remember waiting for a call from Brooklyn that never came and literally falling asleep with the phone on my pillow. Now if I am in that bad place, I turn off the phone. I remember driving Brooklyn to a wedding he was going to with someone else. I thought by driving him to Long Island for the wedding, he'd see that I was the better girl and he'd want to be with me officially and monogamously. Brooklyn's no dummy. If he could sleep with me and get me to take him to Long Island in my parents' car to go to a wedding as another girl's date, why wouldn't he. I was afraid to give him an ultimatum that it was me or her, that he couldn't have me when he wanted me and then do his own thing when he wanted to because I was afraid he wouldn't chose me. So I played these games and tried to make myself so ingrained in his life that he would be lost without me and realize how great I was and only want to be with me. It eventually happened. But not soon enough. He used me for a long, long time. And I allowed him to. Brooklyn didn't have enough integrity to tell me that given how I felt about him, I should probably keep my distance because he did not feel the same way or give it to me straight so I could make a decision. Despite that, I know I would have fought hard to be with him in whatever way he would have me. I had no pride when it came to Brooklyn. Integrity is part of my list now after realizing how different I would be and my relationship with Brooklyn would have been if he had taken responsibility and been honest sooner, before I had one foot out the door.

Staten Island was plain old psycho. He and I had insane sex. He called me his sexual soul mate. I think I mistook our sexual connection for a real connection. How could someone who knows how to please me so well not be my soulmate. In retrospect, I think I was addicted and obsessed with the sex, not with him. I know now that the two must be evaluated separately. He was ridiculously paranoid and over the top jealous. He'd pout when he didn't get his way. He had no qualms calling me 20 times in a row when I was out with my friends. He had the gall to accuse me of lying to him when on the Sunday after my grandfather died, I told him I had to be with my family to send cards out to people who had attended the funeral. I listened when he called me 'the girl that fucked up my world,' and satan, when he ranted and raved about how insensitive I was and how awful I treated him and how he blamed me for his failing the bar exam the first time he took it. As soon as we were having sex, our communication was flawless. We were loving, we anticipated each other's needs and wants, we laughed, we were giving; our sex life contained all of the elements that made a good relationship. Good sex is great but it doesn't translate into a good relationship.

And I will never let anyone talk to me the way he did. Ever again. First of all it was unwarranted. I wasn't doing any of the things he was constantly accusing me of. Secondly, even if I had been, there are better, more appropriate, more mature ways to handle a situation like that without berating someone you supposedly love. Then he had the gall to cheat on me and use the old Ross excuse from Friends that we were on a break. He was always breaking up with me and then wanting me back so I can't recall if we were actually on a break then and if so whether it was to gain perspective or whether it was official and we could see other people. He was the guy who broke up with me on my 24th birthday in the same phone conversation (I can picture myself sitting on the floor in the bathroom in my parent's house at 2:00am crying on the phone with him) in which he first told me he loved me. Have you ever? And when I asked why he couldn't have waited until after my birthday, he snidely responded, "you'll have other birthdays." Unfortunately that was neither the first or last time he broke up with me. What an asshole. Actually I was the asshole for allowing him to constantly pull that shit. For two years I put up with the Staten Island show, never knowing which personality I was going to get when I picked up the phone.

Interestingly, on a trip to the beach one summer when we acknowledged that we were doomed as a couple, we created who we envisioned the other's perfect mate was. The guy he sculpted for me was Illinois. Out-of-the-box, unorthodox, creative career, gets off on cooking and watching me eat what he made for me, from the midwest, tall, broad shouldered and lean, tawny in coloring, handy around the house, someone who'd dance with me and be spontaneous with me. Sadly, respect was nowhere on that list. Needless to say I learned a lot from my relationship with Illinois. I will never compromise like I did for him. I will never do all the work in the relationship. I will never be with someone who feels free leaning on me but whom I can't lean on.

You have to respect yourself to command respect. I guess that's the true lesson.