I was all set to make a wise-ass comment, but it looks as if they’ve all been done.
I can usually pick up attached-ness, but not always. I don’t know what it is, but people, both male and female, have a tendency to act single when they’re not seeing anyone. When you make eye contact with them, if they’re happily involved, they’ll usually just casually look away after a second. If they’re unhappily involved, and feeling guilty, they’ll very quickly look away. But if they’re single, and in the market, there’s usually something more there. The gaze will linger a mite too long, or they look pleased to have caught your eye. The ones you have to look out for are the unrepentant cheaters, and those you can usually smoke out just by listening to the way they talk and act. Keep in mind that all of this is based on my experience with flirting, which is minimal.
Cheating, on the other hand, I have plenty of experience with. Being cheated on, I mean. My ex-girlfriend is a case study. This woman was unbelievable! There are many who believe that all women are skilled at guile and deceit. I wound up with the ultimate counterexample. At the time the first incident occured, I was aware that the honeymoon had been over for a while. But when she met this guy at a club one night, I smelled trouble. For the next few days, he was all she could talk about. She started going places with him, first bringing be along, then leaving me home. She picked up on my feelings, and constantly scolded me for my uncontrollable jealousy. She had gotten a job that required her to work until the wee hours of the morning. She put in a good word for him with the manager, and he started working there too. I asked her to do the same for me, and she declined, saying it would be too weird or something like that. I offered to pick her up after work every single night, but she always caught a ride with him instead. In fact, she’d only catch a ride with me if there were no other options open. (And I later found out she explained me away to her coworkers as her cousin!) She started coming in later and later each night, until she was sneaking in when I was just getting up. Sometimes, she stank of alcohol. Every night, I tried ignite some passion with her, only to get the same response. All together now: “Not tonight, dear, I have a headache.”
And the truly unbelievable thing was, I didn’t see these signs for what they were. I was too naïve, too blindly in love. I believed that she would never do anything to hurt me. I knew that she craved attention, I knew she got bored easily, and truth be told, I don’t think she even liked women that much, in any sense. And I still believed her. I occasionally half-jokingly asked her if she was screwing around, and she swore up and down that she wasn’t. Defensive. Whenever the facts started to add up in my mind, I’d tell myself I was just being jealous. Hadn’t she warned me about that? So, I was sort of prepared one day when we went to a restaurant, and she took me aside, and I still remember her exact words, “I have a confession to make… I fucked (whatshisname)”. I kept waiting for the rest of the sentence. Fucked him, how? Fucked him up? Over? It became obvious that no more was forthcoming. After that, I don’t remember too much other than making a complete spectacle of myself.
Well, we stayed together for some reason, but now I knew what to look for. She went to a lot of parties and didn’t bring me. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, she knew I hated parties. Sometimes she’d say she was going over to somebody’s house, and she’d tell me who was going to be there, and I’d just say okay. Other times, I’d demand to go too, so that I could keep an eye on her (evem though I never said that). She never took me, of course. She’d come back, and swear nothing happened, but I could tell. Acually, a lot of the time, she may have sort of been telling the truth, due to her drunken state preventing her from remembering what happened. I later compared notes with a few friends, and guess what? I was right every time. The last time, I didn’t even fight it. I told her to just go off with him, if that’s what she wanted. So she did.
…You know something? I really didn’t mean to go on like that, it’s just that this is something that hurts me a lot, even today, and once I get started… Suffice to say, thanks to her little crash course, I know when I’m being cheated on. Sorry for ranting…
Heck is where you go when you don’t believe in Gosh.