A look back at my past relationships. No hard feelings.
ISSUE 3
By: Anonymous
Serial dating. Flings?
Not sure what you would call my past endeavors with romance. That’s what’s toxic.
The inability to be secure in your own relationship with yourself. I guess it must have started when I watched my parents fall out of love with each other. I was 12- maybe 13? However old you are when entering seventh grade. Maybe I’ll go into more detail when I become a famous author. I love my current relationship with each of my parents, and forgive the past. I will say, it has been a trend in my family to fall out of love with one another, and quickly move on- possibly not confronting the emotions lingering behind them. My dear grandma, watching the man she supported at his lowest and most unsuccessful point, become a mega CEO and leaving her behind the way Jordan Belfort did to his first wife in The Wolf of Wall Street. The brown haired less attractive than Margie Robbie future ex-wife, watched him fail time and time again. She stuck with him, only to end up opening the door to a cab and her once struggling husband snorting coke off of Margot Robbie’s tits. My grandma told me about the life she once had with her past husband. Living in Idaho, he made minimum pay as a Pillsbury salesman. She spent hours making him signs to pass around. Then he jumped to the top, and she was left with the two kids they had together. Whoops. This is the way I thought relationships were supposed to be. Short, temporarily enjoyable, and then onto the next. You could easily end one with cheating. That was a great excuse to break up with someone, because for the most part they would break up with you first. Sometimes I wished the other person would betray me so that I could break up with them. I already had an idea of who I wanted to date next, just like my mom showed me when I was that naive seventh grader who never got the blond haired boy she sat next to during the first “welcome to the next six years of your life! Good luck 12 and 13 year olds!” meeting. Then, three years later it worked out for a split second. The chubby seventh grade boy who sat next to me in assembly. HAHA! On to the next, on to the next, let’s keep moving along here, onto the next.
I kept falling more and more out of love with myself.
I would push every bit of energy I had, into making sure I was never romantically uninvolved.
I couldn’t imagine being alone. I needed that step above a best guy friend. I dabbled in flings, relationships, dramatic fall-outs...you name it. I built up a questionable reputation for myself, beginning with my tenth grade saga with a couple different men. I loved it. I was not alone, and always had these two options. At this point I had been in and out of perhaps four different “relationships.”
Junior year! I couldn’t have cared less about myself. Onto the next.
Concerts, late nights at luxury hotels with friends, Uber limos (??), and fake ID’s that surprisingly got us into the tackiest clubs in Chicago. This was an incredibly fun and memorable time in my life. I also really enjoyed the thrill of devoting all of my time to the two years older, edgy, go-getter man that never really gave a shit about me. We became friends, I think he’s doing something with a start up in New York? Maybe even his own. Nice guy. Four years ago, the day after a Flume concert, we even got breakfast together. I was in another relationship at that time, and it was probably one of the most debilitating experiences on my poor mental health. My first real look at toxicity. Before we get to that, let’s talk about senior year.
I spent the entire year fixated on a man who treated me less than ideally.
We are actually on wonderful terms, and he sent me a kind message when all was said and done. Senior year was a mix of late night study sessions and driving him back to his house. Games! I loved the games! So did he. There were some tears, drunk nights in Hawaii, and his most classic basement house parties. Our time together was more fun than toxic, but again here I was with yet another man. I couldn’t remember the last time I had just been happy with myself. A few years later, yet again, we are totally normal. Friends even. How funny that this saga ended with me driving five hours back to Saint Louis, and meeting my now boyfriend of three years. I thank you for that.
Freshman year of college.
I chuckle when I think back to those days. Bleach blonde, ten pounds heavier, almond obsessed me. The nights spent pre-gaming and getting ready in different friends’ rooms will always stand out to me as some wonderful memories. Drives to LA, Bel Air, Malibu, Laguna, and Newport. So many concerts and night clubs. Kendrick Lamar’s birthday party, a dinner with Jon Mayer, sneaking into Chris Brown’s VIP table, and my summer spent living in West Hollywood. The best food I’ve ever had. The internship of my dreams, back when I wanted to edit movie trailers like Cameron Diaz in The Holiday. During all of this fun, came toxicity in a form that I can’t even find the words to describe. Yet still, I didn’t want to leave because I didn’t want to be alone. My most classic tale. When he would leave me, every other day, I would find comfort in other men who I didn’t care about. I liked that they wanted to be with me more than the toxic guy did. I didn’t care if they were some fancy Spanish prince, I was so devoted to my toxic push-pull relationship.
On to the next,
My train stopped when my current boyfriend asked me to dinner, exactly one week after my toxic relationship, that took up a year and a half of my life, ended.
I haven’t mentioned my current relationship and the past history that came with that. What is so interesting to me, was how calmly the relationship had ended. After the most spectacular summer, there it went. There were no long texts exchanged, or vicious words thrown at each other. Maybe that is why we stand so strong today. He wasn’t toxic, and isn’t toxic. The last time I had seen him was when he visited me in LA, a week before he posted a picture with the pretty wallflower he dated for less than a year. She seemed extremely nice and not toxic, compared to the relationship I forced myself to stick with. He left LA, and, heartbroken, I threw myself into that year and a half of highs, lows, pushes, pulls, tears, laughter, and uncertainty.
I decided that I would forever cut ties with my toxic tendencies, or involving myself with red flags.
When I made the decision to finally enter a healthy relationship, I made the decision to detox my past relationships tendencies from my life. New slate. Fresh start. New canvas. I finally was/ am able to love both myself and another person so dearly.
