This one is going to be hard for me. I won’t necessarily have answers, but I’m just documenting this realization.
So. I have this knack for liking/loving unavailable men. It’s been happening since I can remember. From one of the men I met on Bumble here in the last several months, to someone I went to school with. It’s been going on for a long time.
The first guy that I remember was, let’s call him Abram. He was sooo good-looking, was one of our star basketball players, a farm boy, and just all around what I thought I wanted. My crush on him began in 6th grade, and lasted until he moved to a rural school after our 8th grade year. He really liked the other girl in our class, they dated for a while, and then broke up. He was available our 8th grade year, and I thought I had a chance with him. He sat next to me in one of our classes that year. I was ecstatic because for the first time I felt like he actually acknowledged that I was one of his peers; a person. I just fell in love. He found out, wrote me a note that we would never be more than friends, and then told me that there was someone else in our class that liked me (there wasn’t). However, he still showed me some of the attention that I craved, and I interpreted that as interest in being more than just friends.
The second guy was another person I went to school with. Let’s call him Allen. I started crushing on him somewhere in our 9th grade year. I had been going to school with him since we were in the 6th grade. He was kind of a loner, into sports, played the sax in our school band, and read a lot. He really liked history. Around our 9th grade year, our class became really close (there were only like 8 of us). He, my other friend, and myself all began to hang out quite a bit. It was thrilling, and I grew to like him so much. Any interest he showed I interpreted as romantic interest. I thought that we were meant to be, and I prayed and prayed and prayed to God (seriously) that he was the one for me. I begged God; cried over it even. The Christmas break after we graduated (Well, I got my GED), he was home from basic training. I asked my friend to tell Allen that I liked him, and if he could see us having a future. The answer? No, we were just friends. Allen and I didn’t really talk after that. We all met up one more time a couple of years later, and that was the last time I heard from him.
The third guy, let’s call him Cole. He ran an ice cream shop. Y’all this one is really ridiculous and funny because I’m lactose intolerant AS FUUUUUUUUCK. I was 19-20 when this happened, and I was losing a shit ton of weight. Cole’s ice cream shop happened to make sugar-free fat free frozen yogurt. I was on a super restrictive diet, and would often run by the ice cream shop to hang out and eat lunch. The sugar free, fat free ice cream was only about 100 calories...that was lunch sometimes. Again, he showed me some of the attention I craved, and I interpreted it as romantic interest. This went on for a few months until I mustered up the courage to make a move, and ask him out. He rejected me, and I fell apart. I had started using him as my motivation to get “healthy” (eating 1200 calories a day, and walking obsessively each night). I’m almost certain he knew that I liked him, btw. Like how could he not. I went to see him almost every day to get my Cole/ice cream fix. When he turned me down he had said that he was taking someone else on a date...they are married and have 2 kids now.
As I get older this kind of gets worse. These three guys were unavailable, yes. But they would throw me some of the crumbs of attention I craved, but weren’t actually interested in me beyond that. For some reason that I’m going to talk to my therapist about, I have a really, really hard time just being friends with guys. I think some of it has to do with believing that you can’t just be friends with guys. It’s always supposed to lead to heartache--someone getting hurt. Some of this is indeed purity culture. The other part? I don’t know. It’s some sort of fucked up thing. Anybody have some insight?
I am actually going to do this one in four parts because the next three are really difficult for me to get into. There’s still some pain associated with those former relationships that I will write about, and it’s really, really evident that I was the friend with emotional and presence benefits. Completely. Not physically though.
So part 1. Eh.
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