not evil, just stupid?
I think your comments have actually made me reconsider how evil I was to S. Thank you. This post also helped, since it seemed so clear on reading it that Timna's advice to her daughter to be kind, but honest was right. As I commented there, I wish I had learnt that lesson in high school.
Even if I can accept that maybe I wasn't completely evil, though, I still feel stupid for letting S manipulate me into going along with what he wanted. Or, even without giving up any of the self-blame, for convincing myself that I might want the same things, even though I really knew I didn't.
But, maybe B* is right, and I did end up somewhere I needed to be, despite the idiocy that got me here.
posted by Lucy @ 10:00 PM
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comments
9 Comments:
Not stupid. Just human. Just like the rest of us.
Welcome to the club!
What phantom scribbler said.
And even if you had learned the lesson in high school, someone probably still would have got hurt, just back then instead of later on (I'm speaking from experience here :S ). Maybe you learned the lesson a little later than some other people, but you still learned it on the first go.
And some people just don't let you be honest. They take your honesty and ignore it, convince themselves you are mistaken, and try to wheedle or manipulate you into keeping up the pretense a little longer. It sounds to me that S was one of those people, and that he gave you the message right from the start that he would rather you were kind than honest with him. Which, in the end, isn't kind at all.
But the fault was his as much, if not more, than yours.
I guess I was assuming the stakes were lower in high school, but maybe not; I wouldn't know.
I haven't had the opportunity to see whether I actually learnt the lesson well enough to put into practice, too, but I hope so.
"Just human." That's completely brilliant. So I absolutely agree.
You learned something from the experience. You're such a wonderful person that more opportunities for love will come along. And knowing what you want and deserve from a man (or starting to learn those things) only helps. Oh, and the stories where things go well and you meet someone who's all amazing and cute will be fun to read too. :)
I think when you have tried to be honest with him, he didn't listen, so you have been a bit stuck in this situation. I wonder what outcome you could hope for that would have been better? Like maybe hoping that he would have said, "Okay, I understand, it just didn't work out," and then it would have been done? It would take an extremely mature person to react like that. I don't know if I could have reacted like that, at least not at first... but he still should not have tried to talk you into anything! (So I agree with styley, that people don't always let you be honest.)
I also think the stakes can FEEL higher in high school, because adolescents imagine huge social consquences (which sometimes will actually happen, other times will not). I haven't read Timna's post, but imagine being honest with someone and then there is a ripple effect where he tells his friends bad things about you, they tell others, etc. Rumors don't spread that quickly after junior high or high school, I don't think.
I really and truly believe in the relationship-as-mechanism theory. I don't think all relationships are like this, but I do believe that the relationship can be a catalyst to take you in a new direction in your life. (I guess in some ways, I have to believe this to make sense of some of my failed relationships, though. I don't think it's something I'm making up just to feel better, though.) Ultimately, I think we are a product of our life choices and many of them (most?) are not good or bad or dumb or smart, they just are. And we make the best out of what we have, we learn what we can, and we try to forgive ourselves. The self-forgiveness is the hardest part, yet the most important, I think.
I think what would've been better would have been to be honest (with myself and him) way earlier, instead of letting things get so far. But then I wouldn't have ended up here...
Great! Now can we tackle the "heartless" and the "bitch" parts?
Oh, and one more thing. I'm still totally envisioning you with laser beam eyes, evil or not.
It's not necessarily easier when it happens in high school because, as B* correctly noted, the stakes feel higher. Even if no one is moving across the world, etc.
I totally did something similar in high school. He was one of my best friends. And I kind of liked him at first, but was also entirely clueless. And then he asked me out, and I was too much kind and not enough honest, and made up some excuse about not being allowed to date yet. Which, of course, he took as "But we're really dating, it's just that my parents can't know."
I was so pleased to discover that it hadn't affected our friendship! He was wanting to spend even more time with me! And then he kissed me, and I freaked out and ran away and never talked to him again.
QWPtEHB? Or just human, a bit naive, and scared? We don't start off knowing everything about relationships, or instantly mature. And sometimes things don't end as cleanly as we'd wish. But we've all obviously learned and grown since then.
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