The Best I Ever Had
I have a friend, we’ll call her Amanda. Amanda is the most amazing person. The very first time we met, she was so kind and welcoming and warm and her energy was kinetic and as our friendship grew, I was always surprised by how understanding and accommodating she is to everyone, including absolute strangers. So the first time I heard her boyfriend was a fucking loser, I was genuinely surprised. When they’d met, he was unemployed and living with his mom. She was sympathetic about his financial situation so she paid for everything and drove him everywhere for most of the time they’d been together, nearing two years. The first time she told me they didn’t have a “traditional” relationship, I was confused. In the early stages of their time together, he’d expressed that he wasn’t ready for a relationship but two years later, he had still continued to skirt the issue, answering in rhetorical questions and vague responses. Having wasted plenty of years of my own life on mama’s boy losers, I had the feeling he might be a deep down piece of shit but I kept that to myself. According to Amanda, he was the most gentle, sincere, and caring man she’d ever dated. He talked to her with love and respect and had never done anything to hurt her, so putting a label on something seemed trivial in exchange for the happy and secure relationship they shared. He promised he wasn’t with anyone else and that their relationship was monogamous while he continued to work on himself and his future, which he claimed was his reasoning for holding off on further commitment. The way Amanda explained it, she’d spent years dating men who mistreated her, emotionally, mentally, and physically. To finally have someone who understood her and loved her was enough.
Last week Amanda came to work in hysterics, tears streaming down her face, eyes red, sobbing uncontrollably. She woke up to a message on Instagram from a strange girl asking about her boyfriend. Apparently, she’d seen her name on his phone when he was sleeping over and was concerned she might be his girlfriend. Amanda, obviously distraught, asked for some kind of confirmation; surely this couldn’t be the tender man she’d been with the last two years of her life. And then a flood of screenshots, text messages, and a Ring video came through. It was undeniable that it was, in fact, her boyfriend, as he kissed the girl goodbye after spending the night at her apartment. Now Amanda, sick to her stomach, unable to eat, sleep, or even function, missed work because she couldn’t control her range of emotions, her entire world crushed. She locked herself in her house for days, replaying and overthinking. Two years gone. The love and intimacy shared a complete joke, all by the best man she’d ever had.
And this made me think a lot about the kind of guys I’ve dated: bad guys, mean guys, indifferent, uncaring, insensitive guys. Whores, liars, users, and fakes. The list goes on and on. And I’ve adapted myself and the way I love to this endless parade of disappointment. In turn, I’m distant, cold, and uncaring, terrified that being vulnerable to someone or honest about how I really feel will, again, result in just another heartbreak. When I was young, before I knew what heartbreak was really about, I dated a guy I met at work and I thought he was wonderful, until I found out he fucked a bartender I worked with in the parking lot on the night we met. Many, many years later I ran into him and he was still a womanizer and a cheating piece of shit. After that I married a man I never really loved thinking that might be easier but it wasn’t. He didn’t cheat on me but he didn’t really do anything else either, like work or contribute, for almost a decade. Shocked that I made it out of that relationship alive, I met someone just like Amanda’s boyfriend, who at first seemed kind and sweet. We had an amazing time together until years later I realized I was his fake girlfriend, the one he brought around his mom and who fixed his problems and let him stay rent free while he fucked his way through every bartender in town. Later I’d have a very short long distance affair with a narcissist who to this day is completely unable to see that he is anything but the center of the universe. I spent two years and many tears recovering from him so when I unexpectedly met someone that was kind and warm, consistent and available, interesting and knowledgable, motivated and passionate, I really fell hard. Because, just like Amanda’s boyfriend, he was the best guy I’d ever had.
But what is the best? That’s like being the fastest runner in a potato sack contest. What are we really talking about here? When you’ve been so starved for love and affection and attention and respect, even the most modicum amount seems like being showered. When someone simply acts like a human being or, dare I say, gentleman, people who are used to constant rejection and abuse tend to make more out of those acts than fully functioning adults. Maybe in a utopian world where decency is common, these men are not special at all and this magical treatment is simply the bare minimum. Answering a phone call, returning text messages, showing up on time, being nice all seem like acts of grandeur when it’s really just common courtesy. And some of us put a lot more meaning in all of it than it really deserves. After two years, Amanda got cheated on by a jobless dude who roommates with his mother. Wildly attractive, empathetic, smart, vivacious Amanda got cheated on by a fucking runt swiping right on bitches in a two mile radius from the comfort of his mom’s couch. All because he was “nice”: he didn’t beat her, he didn’t yell at her, he didn’t call her names. But honestly, that doesn’t mean he’s a “nice guy”. He’s just a lower rank asshole on the sliding scale of dickheads. As for me, every new heartbreak is not sad but rather liberating because each time I learn a little more about myself, what I want, what I’ll put up with, and more importantly what I won’t. So even though the last one might have been the most amazing person I’ve spent time with so far, it’s all relative to my experiences. Maybe he was never that great. Maybe he was just better than the litter of miscreants I’ve left in my wake. And just maybe, the next one really will be the best I ever had.