It would be all too easy to blame my serial dating on my parents’ very messy, very public divorce. It would be all too easy to cite an over-generalizing quote by Sigmund Freud concerning paternal issues. It would be all too easy to overanalyze my situation and claim that, in my relationships, I look for the love that my parents, after twenty-seven years of marriage, let go of. It would be easy, but it would also be unfair and just plain wrong. After all, when I met my first boyfriend, Michael Negie of Donna Klein Jewish Academy, I was only five-years-old and my family still went on vacations to Club Med together and ate dinner promptly at 6 o’clock each night. No, this obsession, this addiction, seems to be something innate inside of me. Being in a relationship is, if nothing else, my natural state—it’s what feels comfortable to me. For the first time since I was thirteen, I am actively fighting against this. At 19 years old, I am single and I am terrified.
My first boyfriend might have been Michael Negie (he was also, technically, my first husband—we got married on the playground. The bride wore Gymboree and the groom wore Baby Gap), but my first relationship was with Jeff Alden. We began dating in the winter of eighth grade, our relationship consummating at the Annual Eighth Grade Winter Dance and developing into a sweet, innocent connection. Our mothers would drive us to the movie theatre and we would blissfully hold hands. We would ride our bikes to each other’s homes and sit across the room from one another, petrified to touch the other one. Sometimes, if we were feeling particularly confident, we would engage in the kind of kiss that is typically reserved for PG movies or television shows on The Disney Channel. It was all sweet fun. We said “I love you” without any concern for the gravity of those three little words. We had no concern for anything. I was actually the one to end things with Jeff. I broke up with him the summer before entering high school—“I want to be single in high school,” I remember telling him. “I want to be able to go out with my friends and not have to worry about having a boyfriend.” I was certainly lying to him, but I don’t remember if I was lying to myself as well—I don’t remember if this is something I actually believed or if I just wanted to be with someone fresh, someone new.
It became very clear very early on that being single in high school was not in the cards for me. The first day of my freshman year I locked eyes with a boy two years my senior. “I must meet him,” I told my friends. I didn’t know anything about him—not that his name was Jake Giorgio, not that he drove a shiny red car without a single concern for speed limits, not that he did not have a single concern for any limits, and not that he would break my heart in a way I wasn’t aware it was capable of breaking.
I met Jake formally at the Homecoming Dance, which, at the time, felt like the most important event in the world. At the time, I was having difficulty adjusting to high school—my group of friends had shifted, my father had recently moved out, and I was having difficulty in my classes, but when Jake asked me to slow dance, all of that faded away into oblivion. All that mattered was the way his arm felt draped around my waist. After the dance we began seeing each other daily, much to my mother’s concern. She did not approve of her youngest child dating someone older and, somehow, her disapproval made our relationship seem more significant. I felt like we were part of some great love story—the two teenagers who had to sneak out in the middle of the night to steal kisses from one another.
Jake was the first person I fell in love with. His was the first body I got to know as well as my own. His was the first brain I got to know as well as my own. Everything that happened with Jake was incredibly intense; from our first passionate kiss in his shiny red car to our first passionate fight in his bedroom. Our relationship ended just as it began—fast. One moment we were lying in his bed, holding hands and sharing secrets. The next moment I was finding out that he cheated on me and sobbing my eyes out in the way that you can only after your very first heartbreak. I remember blaming myself for him cheating on me. I felt that had I been prettier or smarter or funnier than he would not have felt the necessity to stick his tongue down the throat of another girl. It would take years for me to realize that his actions were a result of something within him, not anything having to do with me. There is that idiom about how it’s “better to have loved and to have lost than never to have loved at all” and, while I generally agree with the idea that it’s better to feel pain than no emotion; it’s better to have heartbreak than complete numbness, I often wonder if my life and my views on relationships would be better had I not fallen so deeply in love with this boy who had a penchant for getting high in his attic alone (this made we want to save him) and ignoring me (this made me want to be better for him). Perhaps I would not be so dependent on having a romantic relationship in my life had my first serious one not been so complex, but, alas, it was and, alas, I am.
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After Jake, I found myself full of bitter resentment for love and anything surrounding it. My mouth filled with pregurgitative spit at the sight of couples holding hands. I rolled my eyes at romantic comedies starring Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, and the like. I became particularly fond of saying statements like, “Love is not real” or, even more, “Love is not worth it.” This angst only lasted for a few months, however. Jake and I ended in November of my sophomore year and by February I was already texting Zach daily, falling right back into my old patterns and not trying at all to resist them. Zach and I dated for a little over a year, most of the time spent struggling through a long-distance relationship. He went to college in Boston and I was still a high school student in South Florida. With Zach, so many of the other defining parts of my personality and life just faded away. I was defined by being his girlfriend. Rather than attend events at my high school, I would stay home to talk on the phone with him. I really did not have any friends while I was with Zach—I spent most of my weekends visiting him or making money to visit him. I really did not make any of my own decisions while I was with Zach—he was adamantly against smoking and drinking, so I opted out of those typical teenage activities, which, yes, was very possibly a good decision, but it wasn’t my good decision. I would have rather I destroyed IQ points with liquor stolen from my parents on a Saturday night, if that was what I wanted, but I had not stopped to think about what it was I wanted. I knew that I wanted a boyfriend. That was the most important thing to me, so I did not even consider the sacrifices I was making to have that. I did not even stop to think if there were better options out there for me. Even a silly thing like what bands I liked and what movies I found appealing were altered during my time spent with Zach. I was not my own person. I was his person. I went from being Jake’s to Zach’s and I had no idea how to stand alone.
Zach and I broke up before I entered college for reasons similar to my break-up with Jeff four years earlier—I wanted to be single in college. In fact, the one goal I had set out for myself was to remain single throughout my entire freshman year. After all, you only get to be a freshman in college once, right? I found myself in a relationship by November. I say “I found myself” because that’s really what it felt like—that I had just fallen into it, without any control or consent. I met Jon my first day of freshman year and we bonded instantly as close friends. For awhile, things were strictly platonic, but I soon realized that he was looking at my differently and that I was beginning to look at him differently. Right before Thanksgiving Break we kissed each other and it felt right—I felt like I could be myself around him. Jon and I fell in love in a way I never have previously. He was my best friend. We told each other everything. We were insanely attracted to each other. We even studied abroad together and it was during that experience that I watched our relationship slowly, but surely die and, as I did so, I had a strange thought, a thought I had never had before—I want to be single. Not “I want to be single because I am moving to a different state or a different school,” but “I want to be single because it’s time for me to learn how to stand alone.”
I often find myself saying that I was a way more interesting person when I was thirteen. On the surface, this statement makes no sense. When I was thirteen I piled on orange makeup and spent the majority of my time perfecting my MySpace profile. But I also had really sturdy and strong notions about love. I imagined how massive it would feel when I fell in love and I was determined to hold out for a love like that. Undoubtedly, I have been in love, but I would never describe that love as massive and I’m unsure exactly when I decided I would be okay with that. I assume it was somewhere around the time that I decided I would focus more on my relationship with males than my relationship with myself. For years, I have put an extreme amount of effort into my romantic relationships. I have flown across the country for a boy, I have used all my babysitting money to buy concert tickets, and I have failed exams because I was up all night on the phone with a boy. Undoubtedly, I have taken risks in an attempt to tap into the inner psyche of whatever boy I was in a relationship with at that time. And, yet, I have never taken the time to get to know myself with that same passion. I want to commit the same time and energy that I have to Jake and Zach and Jon to me. I do not believe I can have a successful relationship until I begin to feel secure standing alone. It is time for me to look at all the incredible things in my life and in myself and gain security from those.
Although I truly do want to be single, I have found it incredibly easy to go back to my old habits these past two months. Recently, I found myself in the apartment of an attractive male. We discussed the fact that we both were not interested in having a relationship, but I still felt myself developing a crush on him. Admittedly, I felt safe and desired with him, which is something I find difficult to feel when I’m standing alone. A few days after I spent the night, he rejected me, giving me an inappropriately serious speech for our casual relationship. Four years ago, three years, ago, two years ago, one year ago I would have tried harder. I would have altered bits and pieces of my personality in an attempt to woo this human. But I cannot do that anymore. I cannot, and will not, focus on a relationship with a boy I hardly know. Instead, I am choosing to focus my time on a relationship with a girl I have neglected for far too long.
Sources:
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