36 posts tagged “boy”

I have known for a long time now that I am not a fan of labels. In every relationship that has mattered to me (and I really only consider there being two, my high school 'sweetheart' and the boy), I have always disliked using the terms 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend'.

Let me clarify that I am not opposed to these labels in use by other people.

But personally, I feel that the terms just don't do justice to what I felt when I was with these people. For me, the time I spent with these people and the things we did were far outside what comes to mind when the term boyfriend is then applied. I never became comfortable calling my high school sweetheart my boyfriend, and I didn't like to use the term on the boy, either.

When I was dating the scientist, and I heard him introduce me as his girlfriend, I was horrified. My biggest fear when being with someone is that they want to somehow pronounce ownership of you. O and I were discussing the fine line between taking pride in your partner and trying to have possession of them. It's easily crossed. I have dated more than one guy where I have felt like a trophy, something to be shown off with pride.

With marriage, I am beginning to have the opinion that it is just another label that I don't want to have. I haven't been witness to too many happy marriages. What I have seen is a lot of marriages that stay together not because people are happy together, but because well, they're "married". It's a contract of sorts, isn't it? Some would call it a formal commitment to each other.

In my mind though, there is something beautiful about choosing to be with someone and wanting to be with someone without having to be with them. With the boy, we went through this period right before we broke up where neither of us was happy because both of us weren't sure if we still wanted to be together. And we stayed together and stuck it out for months, because we had said things like forever, and the rest of our lives, and we didn't know that our feelings about those words could change as we became different people. The worst thing about that whole period was that we both stuck it out because on some strange level we thought we had to.

And how awful, how weighty would that obligation feel, how heavy would that burden be if you signed a contract?

I don't want someone to be with me because they have to. I don't want someone to work out differences and fights and all that jazz because we signed a contract saying we are bound for life because nothing is ever that certain. I am not sure that 50 years from now I will still want to be with the kind of person I want to be with right now. If that happened, it would be fantastic. But I don't want to bind someone to me for life. I want to know that they want to be with me not simply because they have to.

It is not that I am afraid of labels like marriage and 'girlfriend' and 'boyfriend'. It is that I do not believe that they are enough.

I need to stop denying that SF and I are anything more than friends. Because we are everything more than just friends.

The problem is, once I accept that we are more than friends, that he means more to me than just the possibility of hanging out and getting laid, it opens up a world of emotions, a whole Pandora's box of feelings that I have closed myself off to since the boy. It opens me up to fears that I haven't dealt with or faced and it opens me up to the idea that I can be hurt again. It forces me to realize that in order to really be with someone, I'm going to have to open myself up to feeling things again.

He's been in Europe for three weeks now and I don't feel like there has been any huge distance between us. He emails me at every opportunity, calls me maybe once a week, and sent me a birthday card that he made for me from Greece. He has started to mean more to me than just a friend, or just a guy I want to date. And this, I am afraid of.

The one thought that constantly recirculates in my mind is a fear that he is not over his most recent ex, someone I was friends with for many years and someone I truly admire. He has been with someone even I consider amazing, and yet how must I compare? Is it justified to compare and can one even do it? Is it like asking me if he is better than the boy? I can't compare him to the boy because they are so different. Because I, right now, am so different from who I was when I met and was with the boy. I wonder if it is the same on his part; that he is a different person, and that I am so different from his ex and my friend that you cannot compare us. But when I look at her, the one he loved last, I am struck mostly by how similar I think we are and I remember how similar we were when we were closer. It's unnerving.

By denying that I am interested in him as being more than just a good time, I am able to keep these thoughts and fears at bay. Accepting that he means more to me than that, well... it carries with it a whole host of consequences that I am going to have to deal with. Hm.

I am not quite conscious of my fear of being vulnerable to pain.

I have this self-image of being strong and having an ability to leap head-first into relationships without fear but lately I have begun to doubt this idea.

I caught up with my good friend O the other night for drinks and we analyzed me again. Such self-analysis borders on narcissism sometimes, but I don't really care. I always find little nuggets of truth about myself and such self-discovery is to me worth more than feeling a little arrogant.

Anyway, O believes that I have always played it safe when it comes to relationships, and I can see what he means. I have almost always gone with a sure thing when dating, and the exceptions to the rule would be the boy and my high school 'sweetheart', both of whom I had to take a gamble on. Even the scientist was a safe bet. These are boys with whom I will be in control of the relationship and thus have the ability to avoid getting hurt. And I never did it consciously.

With SF, well... I feel like it is crazy that anyone like him is interested in me. I feel almost like he is out of my league. When I explained this to O his eyes widened. Since the boy and I ended things he has been on my case to find someone who challenges me and who I have to take a gamble on. I adore O... who told me to just go for it with SF. Why am I holding back, he asked.

To be honest, it is because I don't want to overkill whatever it is that is between SF and I. I don't want to cling, I don't want anyone to feel trapped, I don't want to put anyone in a cage and label them boyfriend... because I don't want to feel trapped, caged, and labeled. I just want someone I can be with, who makes me happy and who I can make happy. And I am afraid that if I just 'go for it' with SF while he is in Europe, then that is what will happen and neither of us will be happy then.

But then again, maybe that won't happen. Perhaps this is a leap of faith worth taking.

I spent last night with my head in a toilet bowl. I drank too much tequila too fast - I don't remember how much I drank. I stumbled off to my bed fairly early.

I spent the day in bed, unable to keep any food or liquid in my stomach for more than 10 minutes before having to run off to the bathroom again. The mother of all hangovers. Not a headache-y feeling but the worst nausea. And I couldn't even stand up without feeling it. My favourite nurses (both drinking last night with me... except I was so drunk I couldn't go to the bar last night) both called me today to make sure I was still alive.

I don't know why I do that - I felt the need to get horribly drunk last night and be completely self-destructive. It's so strange how I run from polar opposites. Sometimes I am so confident and my self-esteem skyrockets, but then I have incidences like last night where I feel so shoddy about myself that I try to self-destruct. Oh boy, did I ever.

I don't understand myself sometimes.

Tonight I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again. I remember the first time I ever saw it was with the boy and I remember giggling at the happy memories Joel has with Clementine, because they reminded me of the happy times I had with the boy. After watching it I felt lonely. I still feel lonely. Maybe because I see the relationship my nursing friend has with her significant other and I love them together. I want to find someone who is right for me. Who clicks with me. Who gets me.

I thought I had found that with the boy and that's why I put up with so much shit from him. Watching that movie tonight reminds me that I don't regret having dated him for so long nor do I regret it ending. It happened that way and I doubt that even if we had started again things would not be different. I love this movie. I wish I could just move on from my relationship with the boy.

It has occurred to me recently that maybe I am not over him yet and this is so frustrating. How long will it be before I stop trying to date people who are his polar opposite? Lately all I've been dating are guys with good credentials. The good on paper guys. The guys who are excelling in school, join all sorts of things, etc. I don't bother getting to know them as much as I'd rather know their credentials first. But with the boy, he caught me off guard. I knew him first. I don't do that anymore. Why?

My thoughts are everywhere tonight. I am so tired.

I looked at pictures of myself recently and I am so unhappy with my body image. I have always felt better naked than clothed but recently... I have gained a ridiculous amount of weight this year and I'm really unhappy about that. I don't know what to do about it. I'm eating healthier but that doesn't really seem to be helping much so far? I don't know how or why this has struck me now in this way.

Suffice to say that right now I am frustrated with myself in more than one way. Dammit.

How did you create your username for VOX? What influenced your decision?
Submitted by Strive2Be.

Haha, it's just my nickname... what everyone calls me. I was surprised it was still available actually, since I don't have this as a username on any other site except maybe some forums.

As an aside, I've been pretty busy lately. The scientist has done nothing but annoy me from the moment I broke it off... I don't know what it is. I have been pondering lately what this says about my personality; am I a bad person to be so fickle with my feelings? Am I too hopeful at the start of relationships, only to have them fail because of flaws in the other person? Am I too picky, asking for too much from those I date?

I think I will take time now to get to know people before jumping. Maybe it's just that I jump too fast. And then later regret it. But I don't really regret anything that happened in the past two months with the scientist; in my mind it just didn't work out. He irritates the fuck out of me right now... did I already mention that? Haha.

I have been spending more time lately with the boy. Every time I do I am reminded of why I am not with him. It's a nice friendship we have. We are ridiculously used to each other's presence. I forgot how reassuring that could be... even if it is purely platonic now.

I'm not interested in any more relationships at the moment. I just want to meet people and have fun. I am feeling selfish and I don't think I'm ready for a relationship right now. I lack the patience for being with another person and there isn't any person in particular I want to be with, so why rush or bother? I enjoy my single life. I am not sitting here crying because I don't have a date... I am living because I don't have any :) Yay singles!

What's the biggest leap of faith you've ever had to take?

Hahaha I answered this question only because last year I answered a very similar one. The biggest leap of faith I had to take... was probably trusting the boy with my heart around this time last year.

And it's over between us but in the end, I'm glad I took that risk because now I look back and I can honestly say that on my part I tried and I don't regret anything about our relationship.

p.s. As a side note, I'm not with the scientist anymore. Long story to follow. I feel like my love life has been very adventurous in the past year and I'm proud of myself for adventuring.

Today, actually, this whole week, I could not stop thinking about the boy. I mean really thinking about him.

I feel like when I was with the boy I lost sight of who I was before I was with him, who I was while I was with him, and after we ended things, I began to have confidence in my identity again. And I don't know if I can blame him for losing myself. I don't think I can. It was more that we were so head-over-heels for each other that we started to almost... absorb each other's personalities. And we spent such an unhealthy amount of time together that it's a wonder we didn't lose ourselves earlier. Or at least figure out earlier that that had happened.

The scientist really annoyed the fuck out of me last week and this week. I fell so fast and now I am pulling myself up and taking a look at the situation and disliking it slightly. He tends to be over-analytical (haha, like myself) but doesn't seem to have a sense of humour about most things. And this... this does not impress me. My favourite thing about the boy and I was that we spent most of our time laughing and making jokes and doing fun things. And the thing I admired most about him was that he was just himself without any apologies; he wasn't lacking self-confidence by any means. And I know that above all this is a quality that I look for most in men. And thus far I have only been able to find it in a few.

The scientist so far last week has shown me an inability to relax and let things go, a lack of a sense of humour, and that he isn't all that self-confident. I'm starting to be unimpressed and now I am thinking too much about the situation. My mom tells me to use my heart instead of my head because I can tend to be a bit too sensible, but I can't help it. I just do not feel the same about him this week.

I will try to be optimistic about it. But it's pretty much the most irritating thing in the world when you want to move on from a certain subject and the other person just dredges it up again, and again... and again.

I also watched Juno tonight and thought it was adorable. I thought of the boy the entire time while watching it. When will he get out of my head? Soon, I hope.

So just when I think my life is drama-free more of it happens. Last week was Halloween. I was Carmen Sandiego. It was a costume that made me feel sexy.

I had made plans to go out with all different groups of social circles so I was pretty happy when we all ended up in the same place, basically a strip in this city where it's all bars and clubs. We decided to go to a pretty upscale place (that is attached to another upscale place, so it's really 2 bars for 1 cover). I was pretty psyched about it because I love drinking while I'm in costume. Halloween has never been so fun as in university when I discovered this wonderful combination. Hah.

Anyway, long story short, I run into Junior - my sexy, rugby playing, rock-solid bodied brief hookup from orientation week. We had finally decided to be just friends over the couple of weeks prior to Halloween. Halloween ended up being the ultimate test of our ability to be just friends - and we failed pretty miserably. I'm not gonna lie, it was one of the hottest moments I've ever had in my life. The sexual chemistry I have with this boy overwhelms even me.

We're going to continue to try to keep it at just friendship; I'm happy with that but still also left feeling like I want more sexy moments from him. I don't think he's right for me though... he's just so young sometimes.

That night also resulted in a drunk message and phone call to the boy. He came over. We talked for a long time - 3 hours of just talking. Catching up, reminiscing, talking about how we feel about our ended relationship. I saw him again last night - we watched a movie together, a movie which we both feel was made for us. Even if we aren't dating anymore and have no intention of dating again. We've both moved on, but I'm confused as to where we stand. I got a lot of closure from him during the conversations we had last week and last night. I feel like I can be friends with him. I'm very confused as to how this is going to happen. How do you turn a failed relationship into a friendship? I've done it before, with others. I'm not quite sure how this will go. Certain things feel so comfortable and then others feel so strange.

I'm confused as to how I feel or want to react to all of these goings-on in my life. But in more exciting news, I'm going to New York City this weekend with my BFF. I'll be there Friday, Saturday and Sunday so there's plenty of time to rehash it with my BFF while shopping and partying til I drop. Hopefully I'll come back with some clarity? Hopefully.

Lately I've discovered a new boredom with the men in my life. I'm simply not interested in anyone at the moment and it's a really new, strange feeling.

I've realized how difficult it is to be intrigued by people you meet. I mean, I try. I make conversation and I try to get to know people, but it's like once they tell me their life story I'm bored. Some guys are just terrible at conversation. I mean, that Chinese guy I went on a few dates with bored me by the third one. How do you run out of conversation after three dates?! Most of the time I was asking all the questions, and when I ran out it's like the conversation came to a standstill and all he could talk to me about were the t.v. shows he liked to watch. Boooooring. It's like he had yet to discover a life outside television.

I'm not used to not having someone to pursue or who is in the midst of pursuing me. But it seems that this is where my life is right now and I'm not sure how I feel about it. On one hand I sort of feel a little taken aback and uncomfortable, almost like I am undesirable. So it makes me question a lot of things about myself, like how I feel about my personal appearance, etc. A bonus is that I have a lot more time to think about school and focus on my extracurricular activities like coaching and running my political advocacy group.

In high school I had a slight obsession with my weight at one point and I can feel that issue resurfacing again. I'm about 7lbs away from my happy weight, and this is a result of a 10lb weight gain since the summer. I'm watching what I eat again and exercising like crazy so here's hoping that the weight drops off. I would love for my jeans to fit the same way again. People aren't noticing a difference (i.e. my current roommate and former roommate) but I personally can feel it and I'm not comfortable.

I randomly messaged the boy yesterday. I never talk to him anymore and the random run-ins with him around campus and our neighbourhood have stopped almost completely, which is nice to an extent. I'm not sure why I messaged him. Our conversation was stilted and slightly awkward.
Some part of me misses him.
I am trying not to miss him.

But these past couple of weeks have been hard, and coming up is November which is never a good month for me. I have trouble dealing with life, period, in November and for the past three Novembers I've always had him around to pull me up. Next month should be interesting. Expect a lot of angsty posting.

God. I think I'm about done here. I'm too exhausted to think anymore. I'm going to go fill my head with thoughts of schooling and extracurricular activities and exhaust my body physically by working out. Yay!

So last week, the boy randomly messaged me and said "Well, it's been a while since we've talked." No shit, buddy, maybe, because ummm... I don't know, you fucked another girl while you were still with me at the tail end of a 3-year relationship. Really. Come on.

I kept the chatter to non-personal subjects like baseball, and briefly showed off how my life is glorious without him in it.

At the end of the conversation (after I've said I have to go) he pauses for a moment and then asks me out for a drink, to "catch up". Excuse me? When did you get the impression that you deserve to be a part of my life? That you deserve to know what is going on in my life? You don't get that right, motherfucker. Not at all.

I told him I am too busy for the rest of the summer.

I still couldn't tell him to just fuck off.

Letgoletgoletgoletgoletgo. I am consciously trying so hard and it hurts me when I notice that there are still parts of me that are not yet able to let go. How long does it take to get over a 3 year relationship? Hopefully sooner than I think.