Broken Hearts Damaged Goods

Aug 21, 2010

Classes will be starting Monday.  I can’t wait.  I’m
really glad the summer is coming to an end.  It’s not that I’m really excited
for all the homework, or for the warm weather to go away, or for the fact that
I will have to be that ugly pale shade of winter again.  It’s just that I’m
getting my first apartment.  I moved into it today.  I think Megan and I have
it all set up.  We still have to buy some posters and stuff for the living room
to make it feel more like a home.  I’m already liking it a lot better than the
dorms.

The best part about having my own place is that it
should help my relationship with Steve.  It’s not that we didn’t see each other
over the summer, but it was harder for us to have some alone time when we had
to go visit each other at our parents’ houses.

It’s hard to sustain a relationship when you go from
being able to have sex in the dorms (while not disturbing your roommate) to not
being able to have sex for three months.  I don’t want to make it sound like
the sex is important.  It’s just that we hadn’t been a couple that long before
the summer break, so the sex was kind of an integral part of our relationship.

Maybe I wouldn’t care so much about him coming over
tonight, except that...  I kind of want to prove that we are still a strong
couple.  We were only together for two and half months before school let out. 
There was some getting to know each other stuff that we did, and then there was
the sex.  Okay, there was more of the really great sex than the “we’re
developing a deep and meaningful relationship” stuff, but the sex was the best
I have ever had.  When you have something like that, you don’t really want to
see it end.

That’s what made the summer suck so bad.  It was
texting, phone calls, and Facebook chats, and the occasional visit.  I mean, it
was nice and all.  It’s just that you can’t cuddle up to a text, or make out
with the phone.  And it’s not that I just like him for the intimate things. 
But when you are in a relationship, you do want to actually touch the person. 
Talking to the person just isn’t the same as feeling that person being there.

I know this makes me sound shallow.  I don’t mean to
be.  I love Steve.  I know I do.  When I had other guys hit on me this summer,
I told them I had a boyfriend.  I didn’t even think about hooking up with
somebody else.  I could only think of Steve.

It’s just that I know that sometimes couples
breakup during this time of year.  They can do the long distance thing over the
summer because it keeps them from feeling alone, but when school starts, they
find that they have changed.  It’s hard to have a relationship when neither of
the people are the same.

If the sex is still great and we are able to talk
after it, I think we will have survived the summer as a couple.  If the
conversation isn’t that good, hopefully the sex is still great. 

Do couples have to get over that initial awkwardness
again?  Will it be like our first time together again?  I hope not.  I would
like for us to still be in sync with each other.  That has to count for
something in the relationship.

Aug 22, 2010

The sex was amazing.  It was quite possibly the best
we have ever had.  We just kind of flowed together.

The after sex was...  I mean, he held me as he was
waiting for the next round, but he seemed really disinterested in me.  I was
talking to him, and he didn’t even try to pretend to listen to anything I was
saying.  And I can’t blame it on him being tired.  He didn’t have that
after-sex bliss to him where he was totally relaxed and could have fallen
asleep.  He was just tolerating my babbling about my thoughts and feelings.

I hate when guys are polite after sex.  If they just
want to bang you and leave, I wish they would.  At least you know where you
stand with them.

The bad part is that I can’t really get mad at him. 
I mean, I want to, but then I run the risk of losing him as a boyfriend.  It’s
just better to tolerate him tolerating me.  I mean, it’s not really that
important to have meaningful time after sex as long as the actual sex is good.

If you think about it, we’re a lot better than some
couples.  Some couples have terrible sex where the woman has to fake the
orgasm.  She doesn’t break up with the guy because the emotional stuff is
satisfying.  It’s better for me to have to fake certain societal niceties in
order to have the great sex.  I mean, what difference is it than faking other
forms of politeness like asking somebody how they’re doing when you could care
less?

At the end of the day, all we really want is to have
some sort of human contact and to know that somebody cares about us.  If he
cares enough to fake politeness, then he must care a lot about me.

I don’t know.  Maybe my expectations were too high. 
Maybe it is easier for couples to pick back up on the physical parts of their
relationship than on the emotional stuff.  People change, but their sex organs
remain the same.

It will get better.  We’re going out tonight with
Jack and his girlfriend, Brittany.  I will see how we compare to them.  They’ve
been a couple for a long time.  I know they started seeing each other in high
school.  They’re a nice, solid couple.  I’m sure they had to go through what
Steve and I are going through.  If they made it through this, I’m sure that
Steve and I will.

Aug. 23, 2010

Dinner sucked.  The food was good.  I just received
more attention from the waitress than I did from my boyfriend.  Steve spent the
entire evening talking to Jack and Brittany.  I know that he is living with
Jack and got to hang out with them all summer, but it still makes me mad.  I
felt like an outcast.  Even Brittany didn’t try to have female conversations
with me.

Jack was the most civil one.  He tried to find out
what I did this summer and find out about me, but Steve kept turning it back
onto himself and all of the fun stuff that the three of them did this summer.

I do like Jack, as far as best friends of your
boyfriend are concerned.  A lot of my pervious boyfriends’ best friends have
merely tolerated me.  I could tell that they hated me, but were too polite to
say so.  Jack has always been nice to me.  He’s a lot of fun to hang out with,
and he’s just a really nice person.  I think he knew I was having a bad time,
but he couldn’t get Steve to see it.

I did like watching how Jack interacted with
Brittany.  He dotes on her.  When she talks, he hangs on her every word.  Steve
hasn’t done that with me the entire time that we’ve dated.  Maybe it’s
unreasonable to expect him to.  I mean, Jack and Brittany have been dating
since their junior year in high school.  That puts them together now for four
years, which is a really long time.

My longest relationship was just short of a year. 
James Michael Finch, the first guy I ever slept with, managed to break up with
me the week before our one year anniversary.  I knew that the relationship had
been bad for awhile.  It’s just that I didn’t want to admit it, especially
since he was the first guy I ever slept with.

I remember thinking at the time that I really wanted
to celebrate my one year anniversary with this guy, even though I cared very
little for him.  And even though I didn’t love him anymore, I still thought it
was terrible of him to break up with me right before our anniversary.

I mean, I admit that the break up was for the best,
but at the time, I did a lot of things that were stupid.  I ended up spending
the night that would have been my anniversary with Mark Washington.  It was
some of the best drunken sex that I can remember, which sounds a lot worse than
it really is.  I mean, I’ve never blacked out from drinking and woken up with a
guy that I didn’t know.  I just meant that of the times when I have used
alcohol and men to make myself feel better, Mark was among the best of what I
was wanting him to do.

I know it’s not right. And I wish I could say that I
learned a lot from that break up.  Break ups, I mean... It was a cycle of
sleeping with Mark to get over James and sleeping with James to try to not
admit that our relationship was a failure.  In the end, I was sleeping with two
guys without the other one knowing about the other.

Prom was hard that year.  I ended up going with Mark
because James and I were just screwing around.  He was kind of seeing somebody
else.  As soon as we broke up, this girl, Marissa Canfield, pounced on him. 
She didn’t care if she got used as a rebound.  She liked him that much.  Of
course, I always thought that she was a slut.  And I don’t mean that in a
bitchy, jealous way.  She was just...  She wasn’t very pretty.  There was
something about her overly big eyes and crooked nose.  You know how people tell
you not to make a funny face because it could stick that way?  Well, Marissa
looked as if she had been pressing her nose up next to a window and saw
something shocking when somebody smacked her on the back and her face got stuck
that way.  And I can’t really blame a girl like that for being a little
slutty.  She would have to be for any guy to go after her.  Again, I don’t mean
that to sound super bitchy.

Anyway, I went with Mark to the prom, had a quickie
with James, before going to the hotel room with Mark.  You hear all of this
stuff about your senior prom being special and magical.  Mine was a kind of
cheap orgy that I wouldn’t mind to forget.  Unfortunately my mom has pictures
of the prom party.  I know that I shouldn’t wish for my parents’ house to catch
on fire, but there are some things that I wouldn’t mind to see destroyed.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that I should have
learned from that whole experience and become a better person, but I didn’t. 
All I learned from it was a lifestyle pattern that I’ve been trying to avoid,
but yet, I still keep repeating it.  It seems like the harder I try to have a
healthy relationship, it deteriorates into sex with a guy that I no longer care
for, but don’t want to break up with.

That’s the problem I’m having with Steve.  I know
that the relationship is failing, but he won’t change to fix it.  He’s going to
come to me some day and say that it would be in both of our best interests to
call it quits.

I look at couples like Jack and Brittany and wonder
how they do it.  How do they keep the actual relationship alive?  The only
thing I can keep alive with a man is his erection.  All of the other useful
parts just die away.  I mean, I’m writing this as Steve is passed out on my
bed.  He’s dead to the world.  And I wouldn’t be writing right now, but we have
sex, he dismounts, and passes out facing away from me.  That’s not much of a
relationship.

I don’t think I’m asking for too much for a guy to
hold me close to him like he never wants to let me go.  I just want to feel
like I’m important to somebody.  But I look at Steve laying there with his
mouth open, drooling on my clean sheets, and I think, “If I could carry on a
conversation with a vibrator, I would replace you in a second.”

I shouldn’t think that way.  It’s just that...  I’m no
longer in love with him, but I don’t want to admit it.  I’ve had too many
failed relationships.  I know that it shouldn’t matter to add another dead one
to my tally, but the cycle has to end at some point.  Friends from high school
are starting to get married.  If I don’t stay with Steve, I’ll end up with something
worse.

I mean, he’s not really that bad.  He’s responsible,
gets decent grades, has a good chance of getting a great job, and... is better
than a vibrator.  At least I will get some enjoyment out of the relationship. 
And our kids would be really cute.

If I think about it long enough, I think I could
stay with Steve just for the kids.  Maybe If I go to bed now, snuggle up to him
and think about our kids, I might be able to actually feel what I know I should
be feeling for him.  He might even put his arm around me.  And I might be able
to fall asleep with the belief that somebody loves me and wants to be with me...
and not just for our kids, which we haven’t had yet.