OK, OK, I’m gonna add a fresh perspective to this thread. It’s long, but I want to explain myself and the situation. You see, I was the bad guy. I’m the one who left my girlfriend flat with no closure and broke her heart.
Here’s how it works. For purposes of this discussion, the girl’s name was Ellie. I had been seeing Ellie for a couple of months in college before realizing that she was flakey and manipulative. One day, I confronted her, and she admitted to what I had known for a while. She was cheating. I drop her flat, and I try to get on with my life.
Or so I think. As I said, Ellie was manipulative, and she managed to wrangle me back into her life. I had said that I still wanted to be friends and keep in touch, and I meant it. I honestly like Ellie. She was a good friend. She just had this way of fucking with her partners, that’s all. So to make a long story short, she gets me right back onto the game. And she’s still manipulative and all that . . . and meanwhile, it’s driving all of our college friends nuts!! Not my proudest time, ya’ know?
It just so happens that this whole low rent Melrose Place drama was unfolding during the last semester of college. At the time of graduation, we were fucking, but that was about it. I think that deep down inside, we were sick of the sight of each other. We were either going at it like epileptic bunnies or we were sniping at each other. And she was still playing the angles. She was either yelling or she was telling me about how she used to fantasize about marrying me. We split up for a week, she’d be . . . well, never mind what she’d be doing, but damn if I could go back, I just would have taken that last semester off and worked on a farm or something just to recuperate and recharge my mental batteries.
So we graduate. By that time, between school and my relationship with Ellie, I was beyond tired. And more than a little pissed off. And suddenly, I was all the way across the state. Just like that, I dropped the whole thing. I just decided I wasn’t going to call her, I wasn’t going to write her, and I wasn’t going to think about her. I hooked up with the first local girl who looked at me twice, and I tried to forget about Ellie. She tried calling and writing a couple of times, and finally she gave up. She sent me a last letter telling me how betrayed she felt and how she never wanted to talk to me again, and that was it. Months later, mutual friends would tell me how she would just start crying whenever my name came up. Somehow, she had found out about the local girl.
This was fine by me, because I was already headed for the army, and I didn’t want any attachments, least of all one with Ellie. In the army, I smartened up, I toughened up, and I met the woman I would marry. Ellie and college life gradually lost any relevancy as I entered the next stage.
So do I regret it? Sure. I think about how she hurt me, and then how I hurt her in return, and I really feel bad about what I did. Yes, I hurt a hurter. Yes, I manipulated a manipulator. Yes, I played a player. But none of that changes the fact that through my actions I became that hurter and manipulator. I had never done something like that before Ellie, and I haven’t done it since.
Why did I do it? Sigh, almost 15 years and half a lifetime later, I couldn’t tell you exactly why anymore. Maybe I was just ticked, and I wanted to give Ellie a taste of her own medicine. Maybe I wanted to be the bad guy for once. Maybe I wanted to get a taste of how it felt to be the god of hellfire. Maybe in the back of my head, I always meant to get back in touch with her, but the whole act took on a life of its own, and before I knew it, it was too late. Maybe I was just pissed off at her and not thinking clearly, and I let my anger get away from me. Or maybe I realized that the only way I would ever be free from Ellie would be to drive her away forever, so that there was no more chance of us ever meeting again, even for a cup of tea and conversation. At this late date, I really don’t know, but I suspect that it was a case of acting peevish and contrary and letting the whole shebang get out of control.
I would be lying through my teeth if I told you I didn’t think of Ellie from time to time. Then again, I realize that it’s not the healthy circuit that constantly drains the battery, and I realize that Ellie would have had to leave my life one way or another. I just wish that I had done it with more class. I took away three lessons from the end of this relationship:
- Always set your limits ahead of time in a relationship. Make sure the other person knows that you will not tolerate manipulation or infidelity before you both get too deep.
- Never, ever, ever commit any major action or make any important decision when you are angry or otherwise upset. The half hour you lose by putting off the decision while you go listen to Gregorian chants and meditate will be more than offset by the years you spend in regret and shame.
- Along those lines, never, ever, ever, ever commit vengeance. Vengeance isn’t for people who have something important in their personality that you lack. It’s for people who lack something important in their personality that you have. Vengeance for vengeance’s sake is a really bad idea, and if you have a shred of decency in you, you will regret committing it. I’ve learned to always take the high road, no matter what. In the end, I’ve thanked myself for it.
Sometimes I tell myself that I might still be good friends with Ellie if I’d known the lesson I do now. Then I tell myself that Ellie was the lesson. If I got smart in love, it was because of her and what I learned the hard way from her.
I’m not proud of what I did. If you want to take me to task over this, I wouldn’t blame you a bit. I can tell you right now that there’s not a whole lot you can shout at me that I haven’t shouted at myself over the years since this went down. All I can tell you is that it hasn’t happened since, and I’ve smartened up to the point where it will never happen again.