Anyone here have a friend or family member vouch for your ex’s sanity/compassion/personality? I knew of a guy named Jake (not his real name) on a different swim team (towns about 30 minutes apart) who I thought was cute. Didn’t matter; I didn’t know if he was smart or not, which mattered to me (even then) in high school. I vaguely tell my mom of Jake. In a cruel twist of fate, my mom sees a patient the next week, who turns out to be Jake’s aunt. She raves about how smart and talented he is, how he’s so “mature”…:rolleyes: Stupid me, I filed it away as a “maybe”. And, a month later, when I realized I didn’t have a date for the winter formal, I asked him. He couldn’t have been more thrilled. We chat on AIM in the weeks leading up to it, flirting and such. I’m excited; he’s really hot, I’m gonna have a great looking date. And if I get bored with him, he can blend in with our semi-mutual friends at my after party.
When we arrive at the dance (in his…convertible :smack:), we start walking towards the venue. We’re a quarter of the way there…when his parents walk up to us. They approach us and say they went to a restaurant nearby. Oh cool, I get to meet them, oh how fate works out! :rolleyes: It wasn’t till weeks later that I realize 1) the restaurant is 6 blocks away, with its own parking lot and that 2) they were probably just as psycho and creepy as him, and were also trying to see what I looked like. :smack:
Jake tries to make out with me on the dance floor MULTIPLE TIMES, tries to constantly be physically affectionate, tells me how crazy he is about me. I’m too busy having fun with my friends to be truly offended by it. Later, at my house at the after party, I push aside his attempts at affection, since my best friend locked herself in a bathroom with her ex, so I’m trying to distract her boyfriend before he realizes where she is (and, obviously, with who).
We date for the next couple of months, during which he 1) Tells me he loves me in a poem he wrote and recited to me on my front porch. It took every fiber of my being not to laugh at him on the spot. He later told me while we were making out in his car how excited he was for us to have sex! Uhh, buddy, we’re just kissing right now, and I pretty much told you outright that wasn’t in the cards for us. Especially now! One night when I didn’t take his calls, he called me 20 times in 2 hours when he realized I was hanging out with friends instead of with him. Later that night, he called my landline at 2am when I hadn’t called him back on my cell phone after the 20 calls that night.
I’ll never forget the look on my poor mother’s face when she woke me to give me the cordless phone…fear mixed with apprehension topped off with sadness. I knew then I had to end it, but had no idea how. I was sixteen, my first boyfriend and I kissed one time and were still good friends.
Things cool off, I’m trying to think of how to break it off with him…when he crashes his car and is rushed to the hospital. His stomach is pumped for taking pills (a mixture of god knows what) and alcohol. He did it because…he thought I was going to break up with him! Talk about a mind numbing experience for 16 year old me. I was incredibly naive to begin with, the whole thing really matured (or aged me, depending on how you look at it.) The guilt was just incredible.
After he recovers, I start slowly encouraging the idea that we should “be friends” for awhile. I broke up with him over AIM - for the deliberate reason that I thought he would freak out if in person or on the phone, and become self destructive. I claimed that I was crying too hard to talk, that it was very painful for me, but that I thought time apart would make him find himself and later we would be stronger together. Part of me feels bad for lying through my teeth, especially since I’m not the kind of person who would ever (or every has since) broken up with someone using technology.
And all because of a recommendation from my mom!
On the bright side, we broke up in March-ish. Next October, the first time I wear my winter coat of the new season, I find his poem in my pocket while in the locker room, we all hysterically at the absurdity of the whole thing.
