The advent of social media has
turned us in to a bunch of schadenfreude
obessed stalkers. We can now look up
anyone who has ever wronged us and laugh at their failures. If you don’t have a friend on Facebook who
is solely there to make you feel better about yourself, then I will be the
first to admit that you are a better person than I.
I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed last week,
instead of doing something far more productive which is pretty much the norm
when I came across some current photos of the guy who brushed me off last
January. My reaction was, "I’m
Glad I didn't end up going out with that guy. He is not attractive without the
beard.”
That is
the funny thing about rejection. Sometimes, having a possibility removed leads to
the best possible outcome. I think an easier way of explaining it is that idea is the,
“Man, I just dodged a bullet there”, feeling.
When it comes to dodging bullets I think back to the last guy I went out
with and thank fate, the gods, or the butterfly flapping its wings in Argentina,
whatever made sure that relationship never went anywhere.
The
last time I went out on a date was nearly two years ago. (Yeah I know.) I had
gone on one successful casual outing before with this guy, and for our second
outing I hitchhiked down to Knoxville to spend time with him. What followed was
an awkward encounter in which we sat on opposite ends of his couch, not
speaking, drinking individual bottles of schnapps out of paper bags while watching
Phantasm. (Not that I have anything
against the Phantasm movies. I got lucky once after watching Phantasm II. ) When the movie was over
the guy told me he was just not interested in having any kind of relationship because
his life was just too uncertain at the moment.
Apparently,
a few weeks later happened to a better time for him because that’s when he started
dating this size zero brunette. I wrote
the guy off as a douche bag, went through a stage of “forever alone”-ing and
life went on.
As time
passed, this guy began to remove himself further and further from his friends,
turning down invitations for outings and parties in order to spend more time
with his girlfriend. It happens, we all know it does, but eventually after that
new-girlfriend/boyfriend smell fades away they come back. Only this guy didn’t.
He had close friends wondering if they had said or done something to piss him
off, but basically he abandoned everyone from his former life in favor of
spending more time with his girlfriend. He switched his major to her major in
order to be constantly close to her. His
life is a constant orbit around her. When
she is not present, he falls apart. A mutual acquaintance told me that he was incredibly
torn up when his girlfriend went to see Lady Gaga without him. He said that he
was jealous of Lady Gaga because she with his girl that night and he wasn’t.
I
wonder if Mark David Chapman ever said that about John Lennon.
The more I hear about this guy, the more I feel bad for the
girl he’s dating. Now maybe everything is just happy puppy dogs and glittery
unicorn farts for them, but to me it doesn’t seem to be healthy to have someone
constantly fluttering around you like a moth to a flame. There are a lot of people I care about, but I
also know that the more time I spend with them the more likely they are to piss
me off. No two people get along all the time.
If I
had continued to date this guy and he started acting that clingy around me. It
wouldn’t have been long before I would have clocked him in the face. So
everything worked out in the end, right?
There
is one thing, however, that disturbs me to the point where I shudder and again
thank the heavens that all I ended up with was an awkward experience. This guy
is so creepily obsessive with current girlfriend, should anything ever happen
and she has to break up with him he will be devastated. He changed his entire life plan to sync up
with hers. He alienated his former support group. If she goes, she takes part
of his identity with him. This guy will be broken.
Then it either goes one of two ways, he
becomes really depressed, or she’s come home to find her pet rabbit boiling on
stove.
So the next time you get rejected, don’t be sad.
Just tell remind yourself it could have ended up with that person holding a gun
to your head screaming, “If I can’t have you, no one can.”
