Faith: Say it. You think you're better than me.
Buffy: I am.
"Enemies," Buffy the Vampire Slayer
As has happened so many other times, this blog was supposed to be about one thing, but as it turns out, it's really about something else. This time, though, the epiphany came before I even started writing and was instead a result of my research, and by research, I mean . . . well, you'll see what I mean.
A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a status on Facebook about people who date multiple people and asked how one would end things with the not-chosen people upon choosing which person to exclusively date. I'm a reader of comments, and one comment in particular got my attention. I go ghost, a guy said, and when she commented something about it being better to let the person know, he said it definitely wasn't because that would hurt someone's ego. In my usual reserved fashion, I commented that the guy was either a pussy or dumber than dirt because, come on. Who really, truly thinks it would hurt someone's ego less being treated like they didn't even exist? Who really thinks ghosting is okay?
Well, actually, a lot of people, disgusting as that might be.
Whenever I'm complaining about a guy, which, admittedly, happens a lot, the first thing that comes out of someone's mouth is block him--even if the person in question didn't do anything wrong. If I mention I think I'm losing interest or I'm not sure how I feel, block him is the first thing I hear. I could say someone is really nice but I just don't like him like that and block him is about half the people's advice. People I know are also often talking about or posting about the people they've ghosted/blocked/ignored. It's becoming a socially accepted norm, and honestly, no matter how hard I try to put myself in the ghoster's place, I just can't understand.
I can't understand how anybody could truly think it's better to just up and end communication with someone they've dated or been seeing or even only regularly communicated with, with no explanation at all, and I think that it's one of the biggest indicators of weakness in character. I also think that the spineless, chickenshit, avoidant people who do it are lesser human beings.
If you're sitting here reading this, and you're one of those people and you're like, I think that uppity bitch is saying she's been better than me! Let me assure you right now: You're absolutely right. I am exactly saying that.
I am stronger than you.
I have more integrity than you.
I am more compassionate than you.
I am a better human being.
You could try to justify your actions by saying you don't owe anybody an explanation. I've seen the notion a million times. Nobody owes anybody an explanation for anything. You don't anyone anything except yourself.
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit a million times.
People absolutely owe people the decency of treating them like human beings. To not even acknowledge someone is just so horrendous that typing this is making me mad.
Other things people claim is that it's just easier or they don't know how people will react. Well, to the latter, no, you don't know how somebody will react, but most of the time, the person will just accept it and move on. They may feel bad--they'll probably feel bad--but they'll be okay. For the people who are going to react badly, believe me, being ghosted isn't going to make them react in a better way. To the former, again, that's just another excuse. Telling someone you're not interested isn't that hard, and here comes my aforementioned research. I'm going to show you how much "effort" it takes.
That last photo, the one on the left? That, in conjunction with the Facebook comment about ghosting people, is what prompted this post. When D, a guy who I've seen very casually since a year ago January (actually, you've heard of him--he's the D from my diagram o' sex), texted me asking how I was doing, I wanted nothing more than to not answer back. As you can see from our earlier texts, communication isn't his thing, and truly, if anybody deserves to be ignored, it's probably him, and I wanted so badly to just ignore him as is the way-to-end-things d'jour. But I couldn't. No matter how much I wanted to and no matter how bad he had been at communicating with me, I just couldn't not answer back.
A few days later as I lay in bed in the middle of the night unable to sleep, I started looking through my old texts. I don't remember if I was looking for anything in particular, but looking for or not, I started seeing a common thread. After seeing a few end-things-in-a-nice, yet-direct-way texts, I started to deliberately look for them; once I had finished all the texts still on my phone, I looked in Instagram and on Facebook as well. And then came the screenshots.
See? I said to myself. This is what people should do. And I thought about how even though sometimes it's hard--take, for instance, that last one to a guy I was seeing for a little over a month who I knew liked me so much. That was an extremely hard one to send--it's easier than taking what some would call the easy way out because then I wouldn't be able to stand myself. The "easy way out," for me, wouldn't be easy at all.
Now, this whole process of reading my old messages and taking screenshots took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I didn't just read the little snippets you see. I read whole threads. Because it took so long, it wasn't until I was done, when I was looking at all the screenshots, that I thought to myself, Wow, this is kind of a lot of instances me ending things and, deciding to count, realized my "kind of a lot" equals 17.
17!
(*We're transitioning into the epiphany here*)
And that's only the conversations I still have or I'm showing you or the people I talked to long enough to be relevant to mention. Since they disappear, I don't have any conversations that were had on dating apps before I unmatched someone. There's also the text I sent when I ended things with the motherfucker I wrote about in my last post, the one I sent in December before I even had any idea he was seeing someone else, but that one is way too personal to show.
Add those to the 17 and we're at maybe 20 I could think of for sure, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying it's probably more. Oh! Dly. 21 for sure. Plus I was seeing someone from the beginning of December to right after my birthday--like seeing someone, seeing someone, not just talking, not just having sex (in fact, it was the lack of chemistry when we finally did have sex which caused my interest in that one to wane)--who I also ended things with although with him there was no direct telling just sort of a (thankfully) circumstantial petering out.
Obviously (at least, I think it's obvious), I didn't have actual relationships with all of those people, and for the sake of organization, I separated them into lists. We've got Only Spoke To, Met/Knew, and Dated/Was Seeing.
Of those 21 guys who I "ended things with" since the summer of 2018, 8 fall into the Only Spoke To category. Either we matched on a dating app or they added me on Facebook and slid into my DMs. Some I only talked to for a few days, but a few of them I talked to pretty regularly for a few weeks. The commonality among them is at some point I decided none of them were for me.
The next category is Met/Knew. This category, which has 7 people, consists of a varying range of people, from a guy I worked with at Miramar who started coming into my room every day which is totally reminding me of another guy who worked at Miramar who did the same thing, eating lunch with me and my friends and coming in during my planning period to talk, so I guess that bumps this category up to 8 and the overall number 22, to a guy who started talking to me at Publix to another one I met walking across a street and goddammit, that reminds me of the guy I worked with at Red Chair who I hung out with once and then wouldn't leave me alone, so I guess now we're at 9 and 23, and oh, shit, there's the guy with the humongous beard despite not having one in his photos who, after I went to lunch with once, offered to shave it for me when I said it was a deal breaker, and honestly, if anything is a deal breaker more than a big, bushy beard that looks like it belongs on a lumberjack, it's some guy offering to shave off that beard for someone he barely knows.
Some of the people in the Met/Knew category I knew pretty well, like the two from MHS and perhaps surprisingly, the guy who I met crossing the street who happens to live in my complex and I became friends with, and some, like the car salesman who got my number when I was looking for a car for Griffin or the weirdo I met in the grocery store who still texts me, who, in fact, texted me earlier this week despite my telling him over a year ago I wasn't interested and wouldn't answer any of his texts, I barely knew at all. Again, the biggest thing these guys have in common is that they were irl interested but I really had no interest in any of them at all.
Our last category is Dated/Was Seeing, and except for the motherfucker from my last post who I stopped seeing because I liked him too much and I knew it wasn't good for me, these are all guys that, for the most part, I actually liked until something happened to make me not like them anymore. I can pinpoint most of the causes--shitty communication, shitty sex, lost momentum--but some were just me.
Or maybe, actually, all were just me.
I just discussed 24 people--24!--who in the last not even two years I decided I didn't want, and of the two I did want in that time period, La Dispute Guy and M, one of them told me the first week that after being "wifed up" for all of his 20s, he was very happy being single as he approached 31, and the other one was an emotionally unavailable overgrown emo/scene dude who lived in Sebastian, which is almost 150 miles away. Also since it's relevant to the conversation, now is probably the time to admit to you, and in admitting it to you, to really truly acknowledge and admit something to me, that other than a guy I went to high school with who I've dated off and on since 2015 in such a casual way on both our ends that I feel like he doesn't really count, the only other guy who's held my interest and continues to do so is a 23-year-old guy I taught about eight years ago who lives several states away and DMs me when he's drunk.
Griffin says I'm picky, but after seeing all those screenshots, one next to the other, after writing this post, after thinking about the people I fell for and the people I didn't, and after spending more than a month in my house entirely alone (with the exception of a nephew who goes back and forth from here to his grandma's and who, when he's here, is confined to his room), I don't know that picky is the word.
I could think of a few possibilities--scared, damaged, broken, deranged--but honestly?
I'd rather not.
Buffy: I am.
"Enemies," Buffy the Vampire Slayer
As has happened so many other times, this blog was supposed to be about one thing, but as it turns out, it's really about something else. This time, though, the epiphany came before I even started writing and was instead a result of my research, and by research, I mean . . . well, you'll see what I mean.
A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a status on Facebook about people who date multiple people and asked how one would end things with the not-chosen people upon choosing which person to exclusively date. I'm a reader of comments, and one comment in particular got my attention. I go ghost, a guy said, and when she commented something about it being better to let the person know, he said it definitely wasn't because that would hurt someone's ego. In my usual reserved fashion, I commented that the guy was either a pussy or dumber than dirt because, come on. Who really, truly thinks it would hurt someone's ego less being treated like they didn't even exist? Who really thinks ghosting is okay?
Well, actually, a lot of people, disgusting as that might be.
Whenever I'm complaining about a guy, which, admittedly, happens a lot, the first thing that comes out of someone's mouth is block him--even if the person in question didn't do anything wrong. If I mention I think I'm losing interest or I'm not sure how I feel, block him is the first thing I hear. I could say someone is really nice but I just don't like him like that and block him is about half the people's advice. People I know are also often talking about or posting about the people they've ghosted/blocked/ignored. It's becoming a socially accepted norm, and honestly, no matter how hard I try to put myself in the ghoster's place, I just can't understand.
I can't understand how anybody could truly think it's better to just up and end communication with someone they've dated or been seeing or even only regularly communicated with, with no explanation at all, and I think that it's one of the biggest indicators of weakness in character. I also think that the spineless, chickenshit, avoidant people who do it are lesser human beings.
If you're sitting here reading this, and you're one of those people and you're like, I think that uppity bitch is saying she's been better than me! Let me assure you right now: You're absolutely right. I am exactly saying that.
I am stronger than you.
I have more integrity than you.
I am more compassionate than you.
I am a better human being.
You could try to justify your actions by saying you don't owe anybody an explanation. I've seen the notion a million times. Nobody owes anybody an explanation for anything. You don't anyone anything except yourself.
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit a million times.
People absolutely owe people the decency of treating them like human beings. To not even acknowledge someone is just so horrendous that typing this is making me mad.
I saw this on Twitter tonight, and I was like, I need to screenshot this for my blog! Since when did communication become such an insurmountable task?
Other things people claim is that it's just easier or they don't know how people will react. Well, to the latter, no, you don't know how somebody will react, but most of the time, the person will just accept it and move on. They may feel bad--they'll probably feel bad--but they'll be okay. For the people who are going to react badly, believe me, being ghosted isn't going to make them react in a better way. To the former, again, that's just another excuse. Telling someone you're not interested isn't that hard, and here comes my aforementioned research. I'm going to show you how much "effort" it takes.
That last photo, the one on the left? That, in conjunction with the Facebook comment about ghosting people, is what prompted this post. When D, a guy who I've seen very casually since a year ago January (actually, you've heard of him--he's the D from my diagram o' sex), texted me asking how I was doing, I wanted nothing more than to not answer back. As you can see from our earlier texts, communication isn't his thing, and truly, if anybody deserves to be ignored, it's probably him, and I wanted so badly to just ignore him as is the way-to-end-things d'jour. But I couldn't. No matter how much I wanted to and no matter how bad he had been at communicating with me, I just couldn't not answer back.
A few days later as I lay in bed in the middle of the night unable to sleep, I started looking through my old texts. I don't remember if I was looking for anything in particular, but looking for or not, I started seeing a common thread. After seeing a few end-things-in-a-nice, yet-direct-way texts, I started to deliberately look for them; once I had finished all the texts still on my phone, I looked in Instagram and on Facebook as well. And then came the screenshots.
See? I said to myself. This is what people should do. And I thought about how even though sometimes it's hard--take, for instance, that last one to a guy I was seeing for a little over a month who I knew liked me so much. That was an extremely hard one to send--it's easier than taking what some would call the easy way out because then I wouldn't be able to stand myself. The "easy way out," for me, wouldn't be easy at all.
Now, this whole process of reading my old messages and taking screenshots took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I didn't just read the little snippets you see. I read whole threads. Because it took so long, it wasn't until I was done, when I was looking at all the screenshots, that I thought to myself, Wow, this is kind of a lot of instances me ending things and, deciding to count, realized my "kind of a lot" equals 17.
17!
(*We're transitioning into the epiphany here*)
And that's only the conversations I still have or I'm showing you or the people I talked to long enough to be relevant to mention. Since they disappear, I don't have any conversations that were had on dating apps before I unmatched someone. There's also the text I sent when I ended things with the motherfucker I wrote about in my last post, the one I sent in December before I even had any idea he was seeing someone else, but that one is way too personal to show.
Add those to the 17 and we're at maybe 20 I could think of for sure, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying it's probably more. Oh! Dly. 21 for sure. Plus I was seeing someone from the beginning of December to right after my birthday--like seeing someone, seeing someone, not just talking, not just having sex (in fact, it was the lack of chemistry when we finally did have sex which caused my interest in that one to wane)--who I also ended things with although with him there was no direct telling just sort of a (thankfully) circumstantial petering out.
Obviously (at least, I think it's obvious), I didn't have actual relationships with all of those people, and for the sake of organization, I separated them into lists. We've got Only Spoke To, Met/Knew, and Dated/Was Seeing.
Of those 21 guys who I "ended things with" since the summer of 2018, 8 fall into the Only Spoke To category. Either we matched on a dating app or they added me on Facebook and slid into my DMs. Some I only talked to for a few days, but a few of them I talked to pretty regularly for a few weeks. The commonality among them is at some point I decided none of them were for me.
The next category is Met/Knew. This category, which has 7 people, consists of a varying range of people, from a guy I worked with at Miramar who started coming into my room every day which is totally reminding me of another guy who worked at Miramar who did the same thing, eating lunch with me and my friends and coming in during my planning period to talk, so I guess that bumps this category up to 8 and the overall number 22, to a guy who started talking to me at Publix to another one I met walking across a street and goddammit, that reminds me of the guy I worked with at Red Chair who I hung out with once and then wouldn't leave me alone, so I guess now we're at 9 and 23, and oh, shit, there's the guy with the humongous beard despite not having one in his photos who, after I went to lunch with once, offered to shave it for me when I said it was a deal breaker, and honestly, if anything is a deal breaker more than a big, bushy beard that looks like it belongs on a lumberjack, it's some guy offering to shave off that beard for someone he barely knows.
Some of the people in the Met/Knew category I knew pretty well, like the two from MHS and perhaps surprisingly, the guy who I met crossing the street who happens to live in my complex and I became friends with, and some, like the car salesman who got my number when I was looking for a car for Griffin or the weirdo I met in the grocery store who still texts me, who, in fact, texted me earlier this week despite my telling him over a year ago I wasn't interested and wouldn't answer any of his texts, I barely knew at all. Again, the biggest thing these guys have in common is that they were irl interested but I really had no interest in any of them at all.
Our last category is Dated/Was Seeing, and except for the motherfucker from my last post who I stopped seeing because I liked him too much and I knew it wasn't good for me, these are all guys that, for the most part, I actually liked until something happened to make me not like them anymore. I can pinpoint most of the causes--shitty communication, shitty sex, lost momentum--but some were just me.
Or maybe, actually, all were just me.
I just discussed 24 people--24!--who in the last not even two years I decided I didn't want, and of the two I did want in that time period, La Dispute Guy and M, one of them told me the first week that after being "wifed up" for all of his 20s, he was very happy being single as he approached 31, and the other one was an emotionally unavailable overgrown emo/scene dude who lived in Sebastian, which is almost 150 miles away. Also since it's relevant to the conversation, now is probably the time to admit to you, and in admitting it to you, to really truly acknowledge and admit something to me, that other than a guy I went to high school with who I've dated off and on since 2015 in such a casual way on both our ends that I feel like he doesn't really count, the only other guy who's held my interest and continues to do so is a 23-year-old guy I taught about eight years ago who lives several states away and DMs me when he's drunk.
Griffin says I'm picky, but after seeing all those screenshots, one next to the other, after writing this post, after thinking about the people I fell for and the people I didn't, and after spending more than a month in my house entirely alone (with the exception of a nephew who goes back and forth from here to his grandma's and who, when he's here, is confined to his room), I don't know that picky is the word.
I could think of a few possibilities--scared, damaged, broken, deranged--but honestly?
I'd rather not.
