Whether you want to admit it or not, you know this story all too well—he’s awful. He doesn’t care about you at all. You are literally a 2am call on a Friday night, if even that. All of your friends hate him. They start to moan and groan at the mere mention of his name. You can’t bring him up in conversation because if you do, you have to join in on their tirades about how if they could, they would hit him with a garbage truck. Then you go on a rant about how much you hate him. But deep down…you don’t really believe what you’re saying about him. You know he’s bad—but you can’t stop going back. And you know it’s stupid.
I wrote the book on being dumb when it comes to boys. I don’t think that there has ever been a time when I haven’t made awful decisions regarding my ‘love life’. Boys will always come and go…but some never stay away, and you can never stay away either. And those are always the worst ones.
I never got my heart broken until about a year ago. I don’t even know if I can really call it a ‘heart break’—there really weren’t feelings involved on either of our ends. Our thing, whatever it was, didn’t last past a few days. In hindsight, I feel as though the entire ‘thing’ from the very beginning was just too good to be true. When I first met him, he appeared to be the nicest boy I had ever met. And I have met tons of boys. None of them have ever been that nice. To this day, I can still say I have never met a boy that was so caring, so smiley, so interested. In hindsight, the fact that he was so good at being manipulative enough in such a short amount of time, to make me seriously believe that he liked me, was borderline sociopathic.
To make a long story short (and I mean a really long story that all of my friends are exhausted of hearing over and over again), he ghosted me. And nothing broke me like that.
Don’t get me wrong– I don’t mind the whole cut and dry thing. In fact, to be quite honest, I genuinely prefer it. We don’t have to talk every single day. You can hit me up when you feel like seeing me, and vice versa. You don’t need to shower me with compliments and make me think that I am more to you than the former. I am always down for you, if you keep it real with me 100% of the time. Basically, you don’t have to lie to kick it. And that is exactly what he did. As a quick side note, I truly don’t understand the obsession some men have with lying to women just to get them to hook up with them, but that is tea (and shade) for another time.
I promised myself, between an entire summer of sobbing on the phone to my best friend and the new school year starting, that I would never ever, under any circumstances, speak to him again. I swore the entire summer that if he ever texted me again, which I highly doubted, I’d either leave him on read, or cuss him out and then block him. Fast forward to the first week of school—neither of that happened.
After that first weekend back to school I decided—no matter how stupid I looked, or how good of a manipulative liar he is, or what my friends would think about how dumb I was being (I typically kept the whole thing a huge secret—I usually escaped from them at parties or the bars and “promised to be back” as I hauled ass over to his house)—if he called me, I was going.
I think we all have that one person who makes us stupid. They suck—it is clear as day that they are bad for us in every way, shape, and form. They say exactly what they know we need to hear in order to get us to shut up. They are never actually sorry for anything. If you even try and press and issue, they’ll silence you by telling you how much you mean to them, back then and now, knowing that that was never, and never will be true. “I was just going through a lot”, “I didn’t mean to do that to you”, “You deserve better”. But for some reason…they could call us at 2am, and we’re on our way over. We more than likely will regret it in the morning, and it’s weird for us to know this subconsciously as we make plans to head over. Yet, we still go.To answer the pressing question resting on the tip of your tongue; no. You don’t have feelings for them. Absolutely not. Then why do you keep going back if they made you feel that way? Because—it is just nice to feel wanted in any way. It’s not them specifically. It could be anybody else. They themselves are not that special.
Its’ stupid, but the truth is, knowing that you are sought after is one of the greatest feelings. It also makes you do very, stupid things. You are very well aware at this point that they don’t see you as anything more than a late night call to make them feel good for a few minutes, but them still keeping you on standby after treating you like absolute shit makes you think; I didn’t do anything wrong to them. It really is them, and not me.
Pause.
You’re going back because you need the reassurance that things are still ‘good’. That you still mean something to them, even if it’s just a booty call.
It is important to know that no matter how many times they come back, especially when things ended because they decided to treat you badly, they are still that person who did those things. They keep you on standby. It is never on your terms. You are disposable to them. They will continue to treat you that way. And they do not care about you. In fact, the only reason they keep hitting you up is because they worked you so well, they know you’ll always have a soft spot for them. They know that at one point, they made you feel so good and so sure of yourself with them, they could make you do anything. Manipulation is a hell of a game.