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Pry Another Day
I met my boyfriend
at college. We devoted all our time to each other until senior year, when
he began to devote time to his friends. This caused us to fight a lot,
and he kissed two other girls. Although I still thought he and I might
get married someday, I broke up with him. While we weren’t together,
I dated other people. I was completely open and honest about this with
him. He claimed he still loved me, and swore he wasn’t seeing anyone.
I eventually got him to confess he’d slept with someone when we
were broken up! And not just one girl, but several! We spent more time
apart so I could get over this shocking news, but we’re now together
again. Was I right to give him another chance? Do you think he’ll
cheat on me? --Still Disturbed Love
is many things, but if you’d like to be in it for a while, try not
to see it as a permission slip to crawl into your partner’s head
and vacuum up everything inside. In demanding full disclosure, especially
after you’re out of the picture, you’re right up there in
Fantasyland with all the people who are getting married for the third
or fourth time. (Excuse me, but at what point do these people have a hard
time saying “’til death do us part” with a straight
face?)
You’ve heard that song, “To Know Him Is To Love Him”?
Great in concept. Unfortunately, in many cases, to “know, know,
know” somebody isn’t to “love, love, love” them,
but to find them progressively unappealing. Of course, this notion runs
contrary to what I call the Informational Superiority Complex: smug couples
who claim you don’t have a “real” relationship unless
you know “everything” about the person you’re with.
They’re wrong. That’s not a “real” relationship,
it’s a “too-real” relationship. People aren’t
pretty. They just “clean up good.” They clean up best from
a moderate distance -- never letting their partner get close enough to
notice that they pick their nose, bite their toenails in bed, and eat
spaghetti with cream sauce without utensils. In addition to their vile
habits, most people are largely dull. Hence, a person who’s a completely
open book is probably someone whose partner’s about to put them
down to see what’s on TV.
What you
do need to know about your boyfriend is the big stuff: hopes, dreams,
fears; is he a good guy, does he want what you want from the relationship,
does he genuinely care about you? You can’t get that information
by standing on his chest and yanking it out of him with giant tweezers,
or by putting your stream of consciousness on a news-ticker and expecting
him to follow suit. You look at what he does and who he is over time --
with the naked eye, not the electron microscope.
About this lashing out and kissing other girls business -- no, it wasn’t
right, but what does it say about the future? My guess -- that you’ll
need a life of your own if you want to be part of his. This brings us
to the “shocking news” -- he saw other women, some of whom
were naked at the time. Hello? Do we have a problem understanding what
“broken up” means? Repeat after me: “Bye-bye! Bye-bye!”
Apparently, you see it differently. Too bad you were so much better at
gathering news than delivering it -- most notably, news of your creative
take on breaking up: “You sit around twiddling Mr. Winky while I
date a few people and decide whether to take you back.”
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