For no one
Mar. 26th, 2008 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May,
If she think not well of me,
What care I how fair she be?"
- George Wither (English poet, satirist, lovemonger)
I'm thinking more seriously now about yesterday's journal entry and the things I've learned from the women who've dumped me, and I'm having a tough time coming up with a singular profound lesson.
It should be noted that I've only been dumped a handful of times, and by only two women. (They each had to swing the hatchet a few times to cut all the way through.) I believe this fact speaks both well and ill of me, so I will not belabor its significance here, except to state my general belief that quality is just as important as quantity.
Of course, when I consider all the rejections -- the times when I was not even allowed to enter into a relationship before I could be thrown out of it -- my aggregate experience becomes more robust and illuminating. Some of these nuggets of wisdom include "never leave a romantic note on a woman's car windshield" and "always position yourself between your date and her escape route."
But for these purposes, I will confine myself to the hard-earned knowledge that can only come through a good dumping:
Cheating is just a really fancy way of lying. In the immediate aftermath, the image mere idea of your "special someone" with their "special someone else" can be a haunting, even nauseating thing to imagine. But as the sharp pain turns to a dull ache, the more it becomes clear that the sexual attraction was simply incidental -- that the act of cheating is a long-term, high-risk, interest-bearing investment in deception that vests before the tryst is even consummated. It requires a person to lie for days, weeks or months straight, drawing down an entire relationship's worth of trust until the cuckold is destitute. Ultimately, the offended party dismisses the sex, realizing that he is the one who got screwed.
Sex is complicated. Well, not literally. Intercourse is dangerously simple, which I suppose makes sense since it was originally designed for primates and other relatively stupid organisms. Sex without relationships and relationships without sex are relatively stress-free. But when you combine the two, you have to be very careful about the timing. It is like knowing when to take a souffle out of the oven: too soon, and it collapses under its own weight; too late, and it burns to a crisp.
And while sex can be great for the body, it can really mess with one's head, particularly if the lovers are young and naive, and still have sweet, sentimental notions about what sex means. It's another one of those timing paradoxes: it is psychologically better to be jaded before having sex, but how can one become jaded about sex without having some seriously jading sex? It might simply be easier to follow Francis' Corollary: Never say "I love you" while naked. What you lose in romance you gain back in peace of mind.
The term "making love" should be avoided altogether.
Take the high road. A dumping can be a pretty traumatic experience, no matter the circumstances. Future dumpees, you may feel compelled to take your shirt off and beat your metaphorical chest in a boorish demonstration of personal pride. You may get the urge to etch profanely intimate drawings or details on bathroom stalls and public buildings. You may be tempted to employ a "scorched earth" strategy, leaving the burning embers of your relationship like General Sherman clip-clopping through Atlanta. This is all natural -- and, to the casual observer, mildly entertaining -- but I regret to inform you that it won't do you much good.
Your friends may publicly support this kind of primal scream therapy, but deep down they will think you are a loser. It certainly won't curry any favor with future dating prospects because they can smell the bitter from 100 yards away. And it probably won't bring your lover back -- and if it does, you had better run like hell because that person is a !#&%ing psycho.
No, it is better to channel that energy into something beautiful, like a great blues album, or at least something quiet, like crossword puzzles. Best to avoid blogging for a while.
That is the sum total of my enlightenment. It is perhaps instructive to remember that these dumpings all took place before I turned 24, so perhaps these life lessons are only relevant to the post-adolescent and the emotionally immature. That at least covers pre-teen girls and all men under 50.
Also, given the time elapsed since these dumpings and my enlightened perspective thereof, it is impossible for me in retrospect to take the rejection too personally. The guy they dumped doesn't really exist anymore -- nor, for that matter, do the girls who did the dumping.
In any case, I cherish the memory of those relationships and I am indebted to my ex-girlfriends for their contributions to the cause. In fact, one of these women I now consider to be a valued and caring friend. The other I consider to be a soulless, heartless, emotionless surgical robot, programmed to perform cardiothoracic vivisection and then make quippy nonsequiteurs about mundane shit like the weather.
I know, I know -- But sometimes it's just faster to take the low road.
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May,
If she think not well of me,
What care I how fair she be?"
- George Wither (English poet, satirist, lovemonger)
I'm thinking more seriously now about yesterday's journal entry and the things I've learned from the women who've dumped me, and I'm having a tough time coming up with a singular profound lesson.
It should be noted that I've only been dumped a handful of times, and by only two women. (They each had to swing the hatchet a few times to cut all the way through.) I believe this fact speaks both well and ill of me, so I will not belabor its significance here, except to state my general belief that quality is just as important as quantity.
Of course, when I consider all the rejections -- the times when I was not even allowed to enter into a relationship before I could be thrown out of it -- my aggregate experience becomes more robust and illuminating. Some of these nuggets of wisdom include "never leave a romantic note on a woman's car windshield" and "always position yourself between your date and her escape route."
But for these purposes, I will confine myself to the hard-earned knowledge that can only come through a good dumping:
Cheating is just a really fancy way of lying. In the immediate aftermath, the image mere idea of your "special someone" with their "special someone else" can be a haunting, even nauseating thing to imagine. But as the sharp pain turns to a dull ache, the more it becomes clear that the sexual attraction was simply incidental -- that the act of cheating is a long-term, high-risk, interest-bearing investment in deception that vests before the tryst is even consummated. It requires a person to lie for days, weeks or months straight, drawing down an entire relationship's worth of trust until the cuckold is destitute. Ultimately, the offended party dismisses the sex, realizing that he is the one who got screwed.
Sex is complicated. Well, not literally. Intercourse is dangerously simple, which I suppose makes sense since it was originally designed for primates and other relatively stupid organisms. Sex without relationships and relationships without sex are relatively stress-free. But when you combine the two, you have to be very careful about the timing. It is like knowing when to take a souffle out of the oven: too soon, and it collapses under its own weight; too late, and it burns to a crisp.
And while sex can be great for the body, it can really mess with one's head, particularly if the lovers are young and naive, and still have sweet, sentimental notions about what sex means. It's another one of those timing paradoxes: it is psychologically better to be jaded before having sex, but how can one become jaded about sex without having some seriously jading sex? It might simply be easier to follow Francis' Corollary: Never say "I love you" while naked. What you lose in romance you gain back in peace of mind.
The term "making love" should be avoided altogether.
Take the high road. A dumping can be a pretty traumatic experience, no matter the circumstances. Future dumpees, you may feel compelled to take your shirt off and beat your metaphorical chest in a boorish demonstration of personal pride. You may get the urge to etch profanely intimate drawings or details on bathroom stalls and public buildings. You may be tempted to employ a "scorched earth" strategy, leaving the burning embers of your relationship like General Sherman clip-clopping through Atlanta. This is all natural -- and, to the casual observer, mildly entertaining -- but I regret to inform you that it won't do you much good.
Your friends may publicly support this kind of primal scream therapy, but deep down they will think you are a loser. It certainly won't curry any favor with future dating prospects because they can smell the bitter from 100 yards away. And it probably won't bring your lover back -- and if it does, you had better run like hell because that person is a !#&%ing psycho.
No, it is better to channel that energy into something beautiful, like a great blues album, or at least something quiet, like crossword puzzles. Best to avoid blogging for a while.
That is the sum total of my enlightenment. It is perhaps instructive to remember that these dumpings all took place before I turned 24, so perhaps these life lessons are only relevant to the post-adolescent and the emotionally immature. That at least covers pre-teen girls and all men under 50.
Also, given the time elapsed since these dumpings and my enlightened perspective thereof, it is impossible for me in retrospect to take the rejection too personally. The guy they dumped doesn't really exist anymore -- nor, for that matter, do the girls who did the dumping.
In any case, I cherish the memory of those relationships and I am indebted to my ex-girlfriends for their contributions to the cause. In fact, one of these women I now consider to be a valued and caring friend. The other I consider to be a soulless, heartless, emotionless surgical robot, programmed to perform cardiothoracic vivisection and then make quippy nonsequiteurs about mundane shit like the weather.
I know, I know -- But sometimes it's just faster to take the low road.
