I dated a quick-witted, beautiful, similarly-minded girl during my first two years of high school. As I still recover from the emotional damage, I've taken up the opportunity to write a list of revelations, or rather, things I've discovered after over a year of brooding over exactly what happened and why. I hope those who read it gleam something. I'm also doing this for my own cathartic purposes, but a little feedback would be muchly appreciated.

Basically, I meet her. I like her. We start dating. Everything goes cutesie. 2 months before we hold hands, another month before we hug. A month later we kiss. It could be a Molly Ringwold (sp?) movie. Then everything goes to shit. I become paranoid and possessive...confused. I treat her like crap. I'm convinced I love her, but love shouldn't be this much of a bitch...should it? I get scared, confused, and use her as an emotional punching bag because I think it's all her fault. A week after we break up, my psychiatrist puts me on Prozac, and I'm treated a year and a half for depression. In the meanwhile, I talk to her sometimes. We hang out. I finally let myself fall out of love with her...the way I saw love should be died, and I felt relief.

Revelations:

It would have been much better if I had had previous experience with relationships beforehand. She was far too special to be "broken in" on.

The idea of "learning about myself" and "changing who I am" would have been much better if I didn't have to leave her in order to fully do so.

I am a jealous, passionate, intense psychopath. These extremes, however, I can attempt to curb. Being more aware of them will allow me to do so.

Either it was a sweet coincidence, or being with her cultivated these preferences, but as far as I'm concerned, her looks/appearance/body type are what I look for ideally in a woman.

While my love of her was genuine, my inner monsters created surrounding baggage which overall took from this love. As the baggage grew larger and more unmanageable, my ability to juggle both my feelings and "twisted obligations (as per the baggage's dictation)" was hampered terribly.

I was full of joy, yet still stricken with a bit of unhappiness that grew as the time went on. This unhappiness was a direct result of the baggage. While I viewed it as belonging to something else (her fault, perhaps? Me feeling unloved...?), it consumed the whole of me and in turn what kept me afloat.

There is such a thing as true sacrifice. There is also a thing of self-indulgent sacrifice. My love became toxic, an addiction. This addiction grew and grew until it hardly resembled anything love-related, but it still used love's name to act. I made a huge mistake in letting myself walk over her and destroy what was my social life. She became it wholly. Complete sustenance from another person is not high school appropriate.

I used the excuse of "eh, I don't really like them anyway" to justify ditching my friends for alone time with her. This is untrue, as I have learned through recent experience that I really like my buddies.

I have the tendency to become so engrossed in the situation that I am unable to read what other people want/need. I am manipulative enough to get people to do what they don't want to do. I am also manipulative enough to convince myself that the fact that they did succumb is either their own fault, or an indication that they really wanted to do...whatever...all along.

My desire to be loved was twisted into something it shouldn't have been. I became to (unfairly) associate love with an undying obsession and full displays of attention. This came along because I attached my feelings to my actions.

When I didn't see her becoming as intoxicated with me as I was with her, I automatically judged her love as false, and dealt with this frustration by being a complete shit-faced cockmaster.

For whatever reason, she lacked the backbone to stand up to me. I don't mean to blame her, but my attitude was weaned off something. So I shouldn't exploit other's weaknesses when I'm aware of what I'm doing. Bad plan.

The best parts of the relationship were before everything became too intense. Physically intense, emotionally intense.

Love doesn't exist to be selfish. Love, however, is blind, and I lost my way halfway into the relationship. I had no idea what path I was taking. Instead of taking time to understand what was going on, I plodded on, wholeheartedly believing that the concept of "love" would protect me from anything that could go wrong.

Love itself is not very high maintenance. However, the surrounding events that could taint the perception and enjoyment of love requires precision care.

I lost my own backbone. I agreed to things I didn't want to for fear of hurting her. I lost my own voice, and lashed out in frustration by unfairly martyring myself. To agree, or to disagree...but it's terribly unfair, wrong and mean to agree but blame her for my own decision, expecting a reward for being so bloody "generous."

Fact is, at the time, I was depressed, insecure, scared, lost, and immature. I'm probably still all of the above, just to a lesser degree. Of the two of us, neither was ready for a relationship. She was probably closer to it than I was, but she wasn't anywhere near being able to handle me.

Reciting goofy mantras to one another (like "ITAILY"[I tentatively assume I love you] or "My one, my only, my forever," or even "I love you") is cute, but their core sticks in one's mind, even as late as today.

I don't doubt that I loved her; I just realize that I was too young and stupid to understand how I should conduct myself.

I don't regret ending the relationship. I don't regret anything I did during it. For its educational value will prevent any similar events from ever happening again. I'd rather be jaded than naive. My only wish is that it could have been with somebody else. She learned less than I did, I'm sure, and had to endure an awful lot for the sake of my own pettiness. Looking back on it, I loved her more than my stupidity displayed, and louder than my words spoke.

Overall, the lesson is "BE AWARE." Be aware of what you're really feeling, what you're really wanting, how you're affecting her, how you're affecting yourself, and how you can change things to be more favorable. Becoming distracted and not seeing things how they really are will turn the relationship inside-out and upside-down and completely ruin things. The only truth in love is the love itself. Cultivate it, keep it alive. Preserve it. Protect it.

...anybody else have any "obvious things I learned the hard way"?

NOTE: I stopped liking her for about 8mos.-year, but lately, I've found myself spending more time with her. This has brought alive feelings that once existed, and I am afraid. I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to give it another shot. I'm afraid I'm setting myself up for disappointment by allowing myself to fall back in love with her. I'm stuck between telling her how I feel and not. I'm a senior, so I don't have much time left (second semester starts tomorrow). Any advice, encouragement, flaming would be well-received.

Thanks for listening.

quote:We start dating. Everything goes cutesie. 2 months before we hold hands, another month before we hug. A month later we kiss

Am I to understand you dated for four months before you kissed? Dear god.

But seriously you'll be fine, you just got a pit possesive/paranoid but that'll fade as you get more comfortable.

The part about breaking in to the dating thing is what happened to me, but what are you gonna do? You had no idea that she was going to be that much of a special person to you.