Friday, August 19, 2011

I Bet You Think This Blog is About You, Don't You?

Let’s face it – dating today is not what normal people would call fun. It's a total pain in the ars. 

I remember when I was younger, I loved, loved, LOVED to date! It was all so exciting to sit at home and paint my nails with my girlfriends while we talked about boys and read gossip mags and waited for them to call us at home and ask us on…gasp…a real date! Or even the mere anticipation of coming home and checking your messages on your answering machine, and finding that the one that you'd had your eye on, had actually called you and left you a message. Oh, the butterflies! The excitement! The stories! Ahhhh, I loved that feeling!!

Things aren’t so simple anymore. Maybe it's getting older, or maybe it's society, but dating today is like some sort of torture. Quite honestly, I would rather have a rectal exam.

Dating when I was younger was long before the days that we were suddenly overloaded with technology and Internet and cell phones. Advanced technology is the root of all dating evil today. Texting can be done quite sneakily, and another girl can send a racy picture to your boyfriend in less than 20 seconds. One of my girlfriends told me that, literally, right in front of her, her boyfriend received a completely nude picture from one of his many bimbo female friends. This girl not only sent the picture of her new boob purchase to him, but to every single guy in her contacts list. I mean, how is any normal woman supposed to compete with that?! There are a lot of crazies out there. Actually, an older Sex and the City episode called Freak Show comes to mind, when I think about dating in 2011.

 
***

Last year was a pretty awkward year for me - I turned 30 and essentially lost my mind. I broke up with my boyfriend, Kim, of almost 5 years, I went out every night, and hung out with a douche bag DUI attorney on a pretty regular basis. I started hanging out with a completely different crowd of people. I changed my hair, lost almost 25 lbs, but I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing. All I did know is that I was turning 30, and my life seemed as though it was rapidly dissipating.

Let’s begin with the douche bag lawyer. I shall call him…Nat*.

Nat was a particularly unique and heinous brand of douche bag. Please note that I say, "was" because I no longer converse with him, but I imagine he is still just as ridiculous now, as he ever was. I see his Facebook posts now and again and I can't help but laugh. He is way beyond completely full of shit.

When I first met Nat, I knew he was the way he was. I knew he was special. I knew that he was notorious for preying on married and other unavailable women. It was a game to him. Remember a young fellow by the name of Sebastian from, Cruel Intentions? Yes, Nat wasn't too far behind Sebastian. Nat would use women and then throw them away like last month’s issue of Cosmo. Nat was a pig. Oink. But Nat never had any problems finding self-deprecating, insecure women to fill the gaps in between all of the other women he was “seeing” that particular moment. I say, “seeing,” because Nat wasn’t really a “dating” kind of guy. He did, however, “hang out” with the women that he slept with from time to time. He usually categorized his hangout ladies by the days of the week: Keri on Mondays, Cathy on Tuesdays, Becky on Wednesdays, Robin on Thursdays, and so on and so forth, changing his women every month or so (brilliant, really - less confusion that way).

Even knowing all of this, I somehow fell face first into Nat’s trap. His life somehow seemed intriging, and maybe almost a little glam. Now, please - don't judge me - I am not a stupid girl! I have always been exceptionally smart when it came to men. I have always followed all of the rules when it came to dating and men: don't be too clingy, always play hard to get, never, ever, get overly jealous, blah, blah blah. Nat managed to ruin all of that, and turn me into an insane, jealous, overbearing pushover. Oh, he was good. He was real good. I fell for his lies and I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But even though I kind of liked him, I never trusted him, and rightfully so. He wanted to be able to do whatever he wanted with other women but freaked out on me when he found out that I was talking to other men. Why wouldn't I be? I just got out of  the longest relationship I have ever been in! Not to mention, I was never completely certain that I should have ended that relationship to begin with! I loathed myself on a daily basis and was vey sad that I broke up with a man that made me happy from the very beginning an potentially ruined the rest of my life. Something was missing, and I knew the whole time all of this crap was going on that it was Kim.

At one point, I made the decision to once and for all, rid myself of all of bullshit, so I stopped calling and texting Nat altogether. But it wasn't easy. He was charming, you see. I knew he was seeing a new girl and of course I was a little hurt by all of that, but I just couldn't be the side show freak anymore. But anytime I would back off and try to get away from the little insect, he would sneak up behind me and, POW! He would suck me right back in. This went on for months. If he was feeling neglected by his new girl, he would get ahold of me and would act like he was interested in me again. Nat loved the idea of winning me back only to hurt me again. Finally, I really did call it quits, once and for all. It took awhile, but I finally did it, and It was the best thing I could have done, because Nat was poison. Toxic. Now he is someone else's problem. Thank God.

Nat was single-handedly the biggest mistake of my life.

Or was he?

Looking back on this shit-show disaster of a situation, I might have never figured out what I really wanted. Kim and I got back together after almost a year of being separated and we are actually better and happier now than we were before everything fell apart. We both fought it for the longest time, and then finally realized that we really were made for each other. So, in hindsight, I have to look at the situation as a blessing, not as a moment of sheer insanity on my part. I've have a pretty hard time forgiving myself for everything that has happened in that time period. But maybe everything really does happen for a reason.


* Name is fictional.

Shannon Barno
August 17, 2011