Ever risk your own safety for the sake of someone you were in love or lust with? Lose a job? Spend far more money than you could afford?
Well, if so, this is the thread to admit to it. No poll this time.
Now, to answer my own question:
Some years back, I lost the best job I’d ever had rather than reveal that a certain misdeed had been committed not by me but by a coworker I was sleeping with. That was definitely stupid of me, as I knew the relationship was doomed for other reasons. I’m not sure I’d call my motivation lust rather than love. My coworker had a young child and I thought I could probably handle being unemployed better than she could
Spent way more money than I could afford continuously for about 6 months moving in a woman I was dating and was totally in love with. She made no effort to get a job or do anything to benefit me or us as a couple. She ended up losing her previous living arrangement due to unemployment, I offered to take her in, her I could handle/afford, her 3 teenage kids ended up being way more than I could keep up with financially even part time. Of course any time I made the effort to make things better for the kids she was all lovey dovey and appreciative but I knew it was unsustainable. Then one day I hear her talking to a friend on the phone, and saying “If I have a b/f its Bob” (and my name aint bob)
That day I told her no more weekend visits from the kids unless she got food stamps or at least a part time job to help cover the costs. After 2 weeks of stalling or and empty promises begging for them to visit, I stuck to my guns, she applied for and recieved just shy of $300/mo in food stamps.
She spent the next 6 weeks housesitting for a friend who went to europe and took most of her stuff with her.
at 2 weeks I informed her I was moving and would not be able to take her with me, and that she needed to find another living arrangement. Then I got daily guilt trips of how she loves me and how shes going to miss me, and on and on and on. I have been out of that place for 2 months, she is down to about 3 text messages a week of how she misses me…and in about 6 months my finances will have recovered to the day she moved in…
I was stupid enough to believe she was getting seperated. After way too long when she kept saying it wasn’t a good time to tell him, I told her over dinner it was over and we never spoke again.
Almost everything I have done for romantic love was stupid and absolutely everything I ever did for lust was stupid. (But it was fun.) Sleeping with my boss was probably the dumbest and I did that twice and never got fired over it. Then I slept with an employee (we’re married now). Not smart. But fun.
Skald, do you regret what you did? I don’t mean the outcome, of course you regret that. But do you regret doing it?
The stupidest thing that comes to mind is taking off my clothes in my car while parked after hours in the park. I was 17. And yeah, we got caught by the police.
For lust: I have had casual sex with men that I didn’t know. Mostly because I was lonely and wanted intimacy more than sex, I wanted to feel wanted and of course after sex I wasn’t wanted anymore, I had severed my purposed, leaving me feeling dirty & lonelier than before.
For love: In my one true relationship, He and I had very different views on sex & love. I went to a sex club with him to try and understand him better. I was also encouraged by my therapist at the time to challenge by beliefs & values and he reminded that relationships are about compromise.
In hindsight, for me, sex & love are not worth the effort they require or the heartache they cause. Of course that means I would almost certainly still be living with my mother, which isn’t a pleasant thought, but at least I would be severing a purpose by being there to take care of her.
My gf and I have been together seven years now. The night we met she was still married, recently separated. I asked her out, she politely declined.
Armed only with her first name and general area of residence I proceeded to stalk her. Through a series of flukes, I found her, and left a note on her windshield a week after our first meeting. Luckily for our relationship, she did not call the cops.
Yeah, the guy was a moron, and totally not worth it. I’m glad your story has a happy ending.
Oh, also on the “totally stupid” spectrum. I had a crush on a boy in 6th grade, and I saved up my money to buy a $300 Detroit Redwings jacket just to impress him. I did not watch hockey.
Hell, I did that last week. It was fun. The only stupid thing about it was not noticing at the time that the seatbelt thingy was scraping 37 layers of skin of my knee.
I stayed at my undergraduate institution because of a GF. I had been accepted at both Harvard and Chicago. Before the year ended, she had ditched me, but I had blown off the other schools.
Looking back (that happened 53 years ago), I have had a long and generally happy life so maybe it wasn’t so bad what I did.
I dropped out of college to spend more time with my girlfriend. In doing so I walked away from a full, comprehensive scholarship that would have allowed to get my nursing degree without paying a single dime out of pocket. They even paid my gas money! At the time I dropped out, I had actually been accepted into the RN program. At the time there was a ~25% of getting in,and I had made the cut the year before. But, I was in love, so I simply walked away. I got a CNA license out of it, so it wasn’t a total waste.
Not only the stupidest thing I’ve done for love or lust, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, period.
Although we did get married, we’re still together, and that was 11 years ago. So it worked out, although it was monumentaly stupid.