Broken Hearts Damaged Goods (12 page)

By

Jack Webber

T
here are moments in
your life that you thought would only happen once, and then they happen again
and seem to be just as special.

When I danced with
Liselle this weekend, it was not the first time that we have danced together.  There
shouldn’t have been anything extraordinary about it.  I’ve known her longer
than the time that I danced with Brittany for the first time.  And yet in many
ways, dancing with Liselle was by far superior to that first time with
Brittany.

Comparing the two women
and the two events, I can only hope to understand myself a little bit better.

In terms of clothing,
the women seemed to be identical.  Brittany wore a jade green dress.  Liselle
wore a dark blue dress.  Both looked amazing in them.  Brittany looked so good
that I found the courage to ask her to dance when I didn’t even know her.

I can’t hold this
against Liselle, since I have known her before the dance.  I wanted to dance
with Liselle because she looked so hurt by what my family was saying.  I wanted
to hold her close to me and take the pain away.  She is too beautiful to be sad
on my account.

Being a guy, I can say
that in terms of dancing ability, both women are equal.

My first dance with
Brittany had me extremely aroused.  I was a horny teenage boy.  I should give
Brittany some points for agreeing to go out with me when the first thing she
noticed about me were my raging hormones.

But Liselle gave me
great conversation as we danced.  And when I was dancing with her, I didn’t
want the dance to end.  And bonus points should be given to Liselle for
encouraging my hormones during the lighter moments of the dances.

So what made the dances
so special and yet so different?

As much as I hate to
admit it, my dance with Brittany was special because it was an illusion.  I’ve
been telling myself that it was something special for so long because it made
for the telling of a great love story.  It would be a story for our kids.  But
as I look at it, I was just a horny teenage boy, who saw an attractive girl,
asked her out, and ended up dating her for four years.

And as I am learning,
most of my relationship with Brittany seems to have turned out to be a lie and
nothing more than a tale that I believed for so long.

But what made dancing
with Liselle so wonderful was that she was dancing with me.  It was the way
that she looked at me and put her head on my shoulder.  It was what she said to
me and didn’t say to me.  It was what my parents said to her and the pain that
I wanted to take away from her.

All of my life I have
been trying to write the perfect love story.  Over the years I have written out
all of the girls before Brittany.  Those romances were so short lived and
junior high that I could do so without any real moral problems.  But I stayed
with Brittany for far too long to not consider her a part of my life.

Maybe I was trying to
force a happy ending on a story that it didn’t belong on.

But now I am stuck with
a love story that comes out of the ashes of an illusion.  How do you create a
love story with a beginning like that?  Do you tell your kids that you met
their mother after some other woman rejected you?  That’s not very romantic.

My brother could tell
that I was in love with Liselle.  Maybe he knows me better than I know myself.

I know that I care a
great deal about Liselle as a person.  I have no idea what love is right now. 
I just know that the dance with her was special because it was with her and
everything that she means to me.

By

Jack Webber

A
lthough Brittany and I
started dating without any help from our parents, the fact that our mothers
worked together didn’t hurt our relationship.  It meant that we got instant
approval from the powers that be.

And it wasn’t just that
Brittany and I became a power couple within our families because of who we
were.  I had the extra responsibility of the fact that I was the middle child
with an older brother that was not known for long relationships and a little
sister that was known for lengthy relationships with guys that were a little on
the unusual side.

Brittany and I were
seen as a normal, well-adjusted couple that could go the distance.  In our
relationship, my mother saw the real opportunity for one of her children to get
married to a person that she would like for us to get married to.  And it
didn’t hurt that she would have liked the possibility of Brittany’s mom as an
in-law.

I didn’t notice it at
the time, but there was a lot of pressure on us to be this couple.  It wasn’t as
bad in the beginning as we were getting to know each other.  After the one year
mark and as we were starting to show that we could last as a couple during the
college years, the pressure began to grow.

There were more family
events where we were barraged with questions about when we were going to get
married.  It hung over us like a cloud.  We laughed it off saying that we still
in college and that it wasn’t a good time to get married, but there was a
feeling as if our marriage was just a matter of time.  We were even being
treated as a married couple.

I was invited to family
events with Brittany’s family.  Our parents even worked out Thanksgiving and
Christmas dinners, so that Brittany and I could make it to both sides of the
family.  We both went on family vacations with each other’s family and received
presents from what was supposed to be our future in-laws on our birthdays and
Christmas.

I know that my mom
wants me to get back together with Brittany.  It doesn’t matter to her that she
cheated on me.  That could be forgiven.  My mom just wants me to go back to
dating a type of girl that she would approve of.

I think this is unfair
to Liselle.  She is being compared to Brittany without even getting the chance
to be herself.  My brother and dad seem to like her.  Guys are always more open
to the idea of dating another person.  Women are harder to please, especially
your mother.

My mom will say that
she wants what is best for me.  Staying with somebody that cheated on me is not
the best thing for me.  And maybe that’s not what she is trying to tell me. 
Maybe she just wants me to be careful as I learn to get over the heartache.

Spending so much time
with Liselle probably isn’t the smartest thing I’ve done.  I thought that when
we started this that we would just use each other to get over the previous
relationship.  Once healed, we would go our separate ways and be better off. 
The self-destructive behavior that typically befalls people in our situation
wouldn’t exist.

I’m finding, however,
that I do care for Liselle.  I’m just not sure how deep that caring is.  I’ve
tried to scale it back lately, since I am getting the feeling that Liselle is
looking to me as a lover.  I like her too much to try to go down that road with
her when I’m in the shape that I’m in.  I don’t want to hurt her by my
inability to love.

And I know that I
shouldn’t feel this way, but I feel like I disappointed my mother by breaking
up with Brittany, like it is somehow my fault that Brittany cheated on me. 
It’s not like I haven’t thought about the breakup and wondered if I did
something wrong that would have caused her to cheat on me.

Being a guy, I will never
tell my mother that I feel like a disappointment.  I also won’t tell Liselle
the full extent of the rehab that I need.  Women can say what they want about
guys not listening because we are too busy trying to fix the problem.  Women
are always too busy trying to fix men to ever hear our problems.

Oct. 15, 2010

Jack took me out for a
hayride tonight.  I don’t know if this was a date or not.  We had been going on
dates, and then he decided that it would be better if we didn’t date because it
would only end up hurting me.  Then he went down on me, invited me to a
wedding, and stood up for me in front of his parents.  So I’m not exactly sure
what is going on in his head.

He is picking things to
do with me that are romantic in tone.  And he has been very affectionate in bed
as well as elsewhere.  It’s been a long time since I have felt this way about a
guy.  Usually a guy will have his hands all over you because he gets off
touching you.  With Jack, you can tell that he’s not touching me because the
boobs just happen to be attached to me.  He’s touching me.

Maybe he was right to
not date me anymore because he was afraid of hurting me.  We were only sleeping
together and being romantic because it was a way for us to keep from hurting
somebody else.  We were both hurting when we made this agreement.  To think of
our pain at a moment like that wasn’t exactly possible.

The rehab part of the
plan has worked wonderfully.  When I first met him, I had been sleeping with
guys on the first or second date.  I would even sleep with guys that I brought
home from the bar without them even taking me out first.  I had forgotten what
it felt like to have somebody actually care for me and want to be with me.

We still haven’t had
sex.  I think he is afraid to.  It’s not because it will be his first time.  I
think he is afraid that if we have sex that it will be finally closing the door
on the Brittany era of his life.  She might have slept with somebody else, but
he still carries a glimmer of hope that they will get back together.

I bought a box of
condoms the other day and put them in a place where he would see them.  He made
a comment to me about them.  I told him that I just wanted to be prepared in
case things started to go in that direction some night.  Then I laughingly added
that if I didn’t use them with him that I would use them with the next guy that
came along.

He seemed kind of hurt
by this, and I regretted it as soon as I said it.  I tried to apologize.  “I’m
sorry.  There’s just times when I wonder how long we’re going to last.  I mean,
we are just using each other.  Neither one of us had said that we care about
the other.”

Jack kissed me on the
forehead and held me closer to him.  “I’m not a stray dog.  You don’t have to
worry about my owner coming here someday and asking for me back.”

And he was right.  Our
former lovers aren’t going to want us back, but that doesn’t mean that we
aren’t stray dogs with no owner and no place to go.

I love him.  It would
be easier for me to just have sex with him, at least then I wouldn’t care about
him and the possibility of losing him.  But as it is, I am falling for him more
and more each day.  I know that he has had his heart broken, but I could love
him more than she did.

Sometimes I think he
knows this.  There are times that I know that he cares for me.  Then there are
times that I know that he is thinking about her.

I’ve thought about
telling him how I feel about him, but I think that usually ends up scaring a
guy away more than helping a girl out.  Guys see it as being too strong and
sometimes creepy.  I don’t want him to think that I’m some crazy, psycho girl.

So I can go on loving
him and hope that someday he will truly love me in return.  I will have to put
off these feelings that he won’t be healed in time to love me.  I will just be
healing him for the next girl that is fortunate enough to date him.

Halloween is coming up
in a few weeks.  I will see what he decides to do for a costume.  We’re
supposed to go to some parties.  I’ll see if he wants to do a couple’s
costume.  That is usually a pretty good sign that a guy likes you.

After that we will have
the holidays coming up.  I would like to invite him to my parents’ place for
Thanksgiving, but I think this would be some of the psycho, creepy girl
behavior. 

And then will come
Christmas, which will have to be celebrated a little bit before since the
semester leaves before the actual holiday.  I want his gift to be special. 
I’ve already been thinking of things to get him that would be appropriate for a
friend to give him while still showing him that I care for him as something
more than a friend.

I wish I were a guy. 
Then I could just tell him that I love him and give us some sort of official
status.  Women have to wait for the man to make up his mind.  You never know
whether to encourage the man and make him feel safe to tell you what you think
he is feeling, or whether you should act like you don’t care, so that he wants
you even more.  Either way, it hurts waiting.

By

Jack Webber

T
he other night in bed,
I was morbidly curious as to what first attracted her to Steve.  Having known
Steve for the majority of my life, I wanted to see how I compared to what she
found attractive.  The actual intelligence of this is questionable.  The woman
has said that she thinks I am good looking and have a sexy body.  She seems to
want me to love her.

The problem is that
although women think they are being obvious, their clear signals oftentimes get
confused.  Was she touching her hair just then because she was trying to signal
her interest in me, or was it in her face?  Was that slight touch accidental or
on purpose?  And when they say that you are handsome, do they mean it, or are
they saying it because they would want somebody to tell them that?  If guys are
supposed to tell a woman that the dress looks good on them, then what is the
point of asking us if it makes them look fat?  Are they wanting a lie?  If we
love them enough to spare their feelings with a lie, is that better than a
truth?

And that is what
confuses me about women.  Sometimes something means one thing.  Another time it
means something entirely different.  So when I asked her what attracted her to
Steve, I didn’t know how to take her answer.

At first, she avoided
the question.  Do I take that as she is completely over Steve?  Or do I take
that as she is not over Steve, and she doesn’t want me to compare myself to him
because I would lose in the comparison?

I let her not answer it
the first few times, and I would let it drop for a few minutes before bringing
it up again.  After about an hour of slipping it into other conversations after
having promised her that I would let it go, she finally answered it.

She said part of what
attracted her to Steve was the fact that he had jet black hair and blue eyes. 
She said that she has always found this combination sexy.  And then she started
talking about
The Little Mermaid
and how that was her favorite of the
princess movies.  She wanted to save a prince, give up something of herself in
order to get a chance to be with the guy, and then get the guy to realize that
she was the one that saved him.

And all I got from that
was that she liked Steve because of his black hair and blue eyes, which is what
I told her.  And then she got mad that that was all that I heard from her
story.  She then said that although Steve fit the bill of her prince in terms
of looks that he wasn’t really the prince that she had been looking for.

I then asked her if she
thought I would look good with my hair darker.  I already had blue eyes.  My
hair was a lighter shade of brown.

This question then made
her mad.  She said that she liked me the way that I was and that I shouldn’t
compare myself to Steve.  She then said that women sometimes find one thing
attractive with one guy and then something completely different to be
attractive with another guy.  There is a guy variance of sexy qualities.

I’m just trying to
figure out what she likes so I can try to see if I meet her requirements.  Instead
she gives me a shifting scare of what she finds attractive.  Does she really
think I’m attractive, or is she just telling me that?  Does she want me to
change without telling me that she wants me to change?  Or could she possibly
really think that I am perfect the way that I am?