[listening to: Knock You Down by Keri Hilson ft. Kanye West, NeYo]

“Sometimes love comes around and it knocks you down. Just get back up when it knocks you down, knocks you down.” – Keri Hilson, Knock You Down.

That’s how I feel. Not the entire song (because I haven’t really listened to all the lyrics but that part above is accurate)

I need to get back up. Ex’s cannot be friends. I know that now.

so i was folding my laundry tonight and a thought occurred to me… how much stuff from ex-boyfriends do i have? i don’t mean gifts and the like, i mean just randomly acquired things.

- a grey t-shirt from abercromie that was b’s. i ended up getting it and sleeping in it.
- b’s floppy hat.
- several t-shirts, a pair of boxers that i sleep in, and a pair of starter shorts that i bum out in around the house…all were j’s.
- a quartz buddah statue that j’s dad had given him (and then he gave me).
- two of j’s maternal grandmothers silk scarves that he gave me after she died.
- j’s bath towel. i’m pretty sure he just left that here, like he did his butane grill, tv, tv stand, rice cooker, and mini-prep chopper.
- a glass jug that j used to store his spare change in, which now holds mine.
- mugs and glasses from j which now hold pens and odds and ends on my bookshelf.
- a ‘juno’ beanie hat from d.
- a serenity dvd (d’s)
- a broken bowling ball bag that was m’s.
- three of m’s dvds.
- and, ah… well, you get the picture.

a thousand other things are scattered throughout my room that remind me of them. i think its all really kind of silly, but i know there has to be a reason that i’m reminded of them everyday. i honestly haven’t kept these things because of the sentimentality of them. or, if i did, it was only for a little while and then they just sort of stuck around because they became part of my life.

Every love’s the love before

In a duller dress.

That’s the measure of my lore-

Here’s m y bitterness:

Would I knew a little more,

Or very much less

Dorothy Parker

 Every woman I know asks the same question when we get together.

Why is it that my past boyfriends / husbands can’t get over the relationships and can t move on with their new love interest?

In the book High Fidelity Rob Gordon goes from door to door talking to the women in his life and asking questions about why they broke up etc.

In the film A complete history of my sexual failures, Chris Waitt goes back to all his old girlfriends and wants to know why the relationships didn’t last. In both instances, s the story progresses, you find the man did terrible things to his girlfriends, from hitting on their mothers to accusing them of frigidity because they didn’t want to have sex with them. Inevitably, this is a high source of comedy because men relate to it so strongly.

Here’s the thing. Women never do this. We say “It’s over. Let’s move on.”

 Women cry, they mourn, they do the thing that has to be done… even if it lasts longer than the relationships itself, they will do what they have to do to get the connection out of their system.

Then they move on.

That is why it is a complete mystery to a woman when a man from her past calls her and wants to have “coffee” – especially when he is in a current relationship.

Although men claim these tete – a –tete’s are perfectly innocent, I think they have a lot more to do with “territory” than anything else. One of the reasons men can sleep around so easily is misogyny teaches them that any woman they’ve slept with, they “own” or have “claimed”. For a woman, she is told that she has been “claimed” and discarded, so that is why it hurts so much for a woman. But men, leave thinking they’ve added her to the list of women he can now claim as his own.

Hence the distress when ex’s – who they’ve not shown an interest in for years – marry another man or fall pregnant to another man. It is also the reason men have convinced themselves virginity is so important. If they are the first to fuck her, she is there’s forever. They can just go out and keep sleeping with lots or women and being the most important thing in their lives. It is deeply shocking to a man when he can’t just “go back” and re visit. The deep seeded assumption being, he can always pick up where he left off.

In romance novels once a man is interested properly in a woman that is it. He does not leave. However, one of the first things that distinguish the woman he finds himself attracted to is that she obliterates the memory of all women he’s ad before her. And that is yet another reason why so many intelligent women love romance novels.

You know that moment that happens right before a moment.  Before you fall on your ass on the ice, before he leans in and kisses you for the first time, before he gets down on one knee with a ring, the moment you know the SURPRISE is for you….that is when we think pure uncensored thoughts.  The  Oh My God moment.  It is all uncontrolled and your brain shoots out thoughts before you have a chance to really think what you would like yourself to think. 

I had one of those moments today.  Today my secretary came around my cubicle, with a few other women trailing behind and gushing, and handed me a big bouquet of flowers.  All wrapped in tissue and then handed over the card.  That first thought was they were from Bill. My stomach jumped a bit and my mind and my heart in sync thought here we go.  But then I caught up with the rest of me and said no, no. Perhaps they are from Dustin, maybe this is the beginning of something else….then my whole being caught up with me and thought who the fuck are these from?

Everyone stood around me like they were my new BFF’s and waited for me to open the card.  I couldn’t open it on the slight chance it was from Bill and I would have to keep myself together.  But then I flipped the envelope over and saw it wasn’t from the florist by our office, the one he would use.  Seeing how the ladies were ready to piddle themselves all asking me if it was my anniversary? Birthday? Make-up flowers? Special occasion?  I had to open it in front of them. Thanks for ruining this for me ladies. 

They were from Jay.  With a card that droned on about how much he loves me and blah blah.  The guy is NOT getting the hint.  I’ve been straight with him, I’ve tried everything but he says he is still holding out.  Well, you are wasting your time sweetheart and need to get a grip.  It has been YEARS.  I even went so far as not talking to him for several months in a row thinking that would cool him off, but to no avail.  So now I have gorgeous flowers on my desk that just remind me of all the flowers Bill gave me.  What a combination, I know.  I gave Jay a polite call after work to say thanks and he apparently thought I owed him phone sex.  Yes, I just said that.  Really?, because that has also been YEARS and I don’t have class tonight and would like to go to the gym now.  Thanks again for the flowers.  

The good news is, my underwear was on straight today.

I was recently VERY pissed off about something. I had been talking to an ex-boyfriend (that I dated 13-14 years ago), yes just TALKING, and his wife found out, well she had told him to stop all contact with me, which I was ok with, we had some good conversations but they eventually turned sexual and yes, we were good together while we were together but I AM happily married to my husband and didn’t want to jeapordize my relationship by doing something stupid, like sleeping with my ex. This was probably 4-5 months ago, and I did recieve an email from him saying that we are to have no more contact with each other, I didn’t repond. Well last month he sent me an email on facebook saying he missed me and wanted to talk to me, that he wanted me to text him during the day while he was at work. I still didn’t respond. Well about a week later, he called my cell phone while I was at home, I didn’t answer the phone 1) because I was at home with my husband, and 2) I didn’t want to talk to him, after all I had just recieved the email to not have contact with him. Well I sent him a msg on facebook telling him not to call me on my cell because I was at home. His wife apparently went snooping and found this correspondance and flipped out.. She proceeded to send me an email as well as my husband, telling him that I need to realize what the true meaning of a marriage is and I need to respect the fact that he is married and so much BS. Well I kind of freaked out, I did tell my husband that we were talking and I told him that nothing physical had happened between us, which it hadn’t and won’t, he was ok with that. My wonderful hubby told me that that’s why I need to be careful who I talk to because you never know what’s going on with the person on  the other side of that conversation and as long as I’m honest and am telling him the truth about nothing happening then it was ok, he trusted me. And NO, nothing did happen between us other than conversations!

Well, my ex’s wife proceeded to write a blog about me (no, I’m not putting the link becasue I don’t want to stir up anything) She started saying that I was a whore and a slut and that I’m not worth the time her husband wasted talking to me, EXCUSE ME!!! I stopped talking to him, HE was the one that kept on trying to get in contact with me, she even had the nerve to put my full name in her blog, she had posted some of the things that were said between him and I through email, the thing is, all the things she posted that were said were things that her husband said to me… but not once, NOT even one time does she say that ANY of this is her husbands fault,she doesn’t list HIS name in there,  she blames ALL of this on me. I call BULLSHIT! I think she’s embarrassed that her husband is talking to another woman about things that he can’t talk about with her.

People always say if you can’t satisfy them at home, they will find pleasure elsewhere. Well, although we didn’t have any physical contact with each other, I think he was taking pleasure in talking to someone that he was in love and loved him back in return.

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21 days into the new year, and so far it’s been a wet one. One storm system after another here in California, and apparently it will end by this weekend. Good stuff. Then I can get back to bballing and enjoying the outdoors. Watching TV and lying around can only appeal so much, even to a lazy college student like me.

So how has the start to 2010 been for me? I had one last sleepover with my friends that started with one friend bringing a random person not in our group, which resulted into a huge drama of misunderstandings and frustration, with a touch of acting actually mixed in. It wasn’t the most ideal way to start the new year, but the rest of us who stuck together managed to recover. Then a couple of them left a few days later to start school. Then 2 weeks later, everyone else left. It’s a bit depressing and boring nowadays, but I’m getting by. I still talk with (almost) all of them, too. I’ve yet to go back to my high school to ask about instructing for the marching band, but I plan to do that soon, meaning I’ll procrastinate, but to a reasonable extent. I know my window of time from now until the start of the marching season, and when it’s appropriate to ask for a job. I’ve stayed in touch with a few high schoolers, and thankfully, none of them have forgotten about me.

The only huge qualms – and they’re actually not that big, despite being pretty much featured in this post – I have in 2010 are with a couple of people who used to be so important in my life. With one person, I feel it’s almost impossible to feel comfortable talking to them in person, but for one reason or another extremely comfortable online (i.e. via AIM.) With the other, I’ve stopped talking to them altogether.

Let’s start with the first person who, for the purpose of anonymity and convenience, we’ll call “Sammy”(Sammy is a girl, just to let you all know.)  In relation to the posts I’ve written before, I went out with Sammy for a little while. Like most young and naive couples caught in an irreconcilable  situation, we broke up, but after a while, we managed to make things up and now we’re friends.
Sort of.
It was New Year’s Eve when I saw Sammy for the first time in 4 months. Everyone in our group of friends who was available met first at Valley Fair, then reconvened at a karaoke place. That was when Sammy arrived. I was happy to see her, but only in the sense of missing a friend who has been gone for a long while. It definitely did feel like ages since I last met her, and it wasn’t in the most favorable of conditions back then. Everyone else started to talk with her, which I didn’t mind at all; everyone else was her friend as well, so it would be unfair to be even remotely unsettled by that, anyway. However, we never actually talked with each other until much later when we all went back to Valley Fair to find a place to eat for dinner. The conversation was about a mutual friend and her experience with helping out for a college application. Not the deepest of conversations, but I suppose people can only get so deep in a group social environment, and most of the topics about how she’s been have already been covered by other people. We finally found a place to eat, and I gave her a ride home, since the rest of us had a plan for the aforementioned New Year’s sleepover and she couldn’t make it. The conversations in the car scratched the surface a bit more; I asked her about NYU, and she asked me about my old car(which I was actually very surprised that she remembered.) In the meanwhile, I had some music play in the background from my iPod, just to fill the silences between conversations. One song in particular came up, which happened to be her favorite way back in the summer. I assumed that this would jog some good memories from her, since the song was, according to her, about us when we were going out. At first, she said nothing about it, so I decided to do gentle probing, just to test her memory.

“So, do you recognize this song?”

“Oh, yeah. Is it by that band…Fray?”

“Yeah, ‘You Found Me.’”

“Oh. Right.”

I decided not to try and probe further for memories.
That surprised me quite a bit. Perhaps she was trying to be casual about it, and not make it seem as if she missed those times when we were in a relationship. A part of me is convinced of that. The other part believes that something(or nothing at all)happened and she tried to forget about those memories, or that she has completely moved on to the point where the memories are completely irrelevant to her life. Had she forgotten about those times back then? Did she really try to play it cool? I wasn’t so sure, and I’m still not quite. Either way, her response threw me a curve ball that I didn’t quite get a good swing at, but also reminded me of how I should behave about those times.
For a while, I have had frequent flashbacks of when we had a relationship. I recalled every single memory – even the ones I’d rather forget, and especially the ones I want to cherish forever, even if we weren’t going out anymore. In conversations with my other friends, I would make references to my relationship, although I would try and restrain myself from doing so, just to avoid the misunderstanding that I haven’t moved on from the break-up. It was only recently when I connected everything together and confronted myself. A couple of nights ago, with rain pattering hard on the roof of my home, I thought to myself: Why shouldn’t I be able to be casual about all the memories like that? I don’t recall who mentioned this, but a person who spoke about past relationships explained how even though there may have been good memories back then, they won’t help me with the immediate situation, or with future relationships. The lessons I learn will be very useful, risen above the ashes, but that’s as much as it can go as old flames are concerned. The memories themselves will not make me any better, nor make me completely move on. I believe Sammy had done that already, and if she had the strength to move on, why can’t I?
So that’s that. I’m about to move on from everything that happened, being friends with an ex whom I can’t seem to have casual, comfortable conversations with in person. For now, I’m ok with that, since she’ll be on the opposite side of the country for 80% of the year anyway. Online will be the only means of communication, and we’ve seem to have that down pat.

I’m exhausted. I’ll mention the other person in the next post, whenever I write that. Hopefully soon, which (also hopefully)won’t mean procrastinating like a lazy college student.

Submitted by: Raywmjr

Maneaten.

Maneaten loves to talk about men.  Her whole life revolves around men.  She has wonderful qualities but is too stubborn to see them.  Instead, she constantly whines about guys being jerks.

In the spirit of Maneaten, I will relate my latest male encounter.

Jaquez.  (No, it isn’t his real name.)  Jaquez pestered and pestered me for a date.  Friends and acquaintances texted me saying that he was VERY interested in me.  In classic girl style, I pull away from this guy who is super interested in me (In my defense, I had another male distraction at the time).  But then break came.  I finally started responding to him and realized that he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.  Actually, I felt a chemistry between us.  We started hanging out and things quickly turned romantic.

But as always…there was a problem.

His girlfriend of YEARS had broken up with him less than 2 months ago.  Can we say rebound?  He never even mentioned her. I figured that I, being “smart” and “caring”, would give this man the benefit of the doubt.  I mean, he could get over a serious relationship in 2 months right?  And he really seemed to like me.

Wrong choice.

We’re at a party.  I go to comfort my friend who (coincidentally) just broke up with her boyfriend (what is in the water here?).  Jaques gives me a kiss goodbye.  I hurry back, planning to sneak up on him cutely, and there he is — TALKING TO HIS EX.  Instead of a cute “hi”, I’m forced to play the “avoid him and his ex for forty minutes” game.

Psssshhh. Please.  Needless to say, it spiraled out of control with Jaquez very quickly, and I put an end to that.

BUT THANK THE GOOD LORD, he told me that we could still just randomly hook-up.  Thanks Jaquez. I was worried I couldn’t get any action without you. Later that night, I also found out that throughout our little fling, he was texting his ex saying, “I still miss you.”

And that’s when the mask known as Maneaten slapped me in the face.

This is also why I ate a double cheeseburger and fries AFTER dinner last night.  Ronald is the only reliable man in my life.

Some of my favorite blogs are written by single people about dating. Because I can sympathize and remember all of the weird shit I put up with as a single gal out on the town and the sometimes strange shit that happens to me when I go out sans Boyfriend now (remember the guy trying to hollah at me after he threw up in his Jack and Coke? Shit like that.)

For some reason today I was thinking about some jerkoff I used to date, and how when we broke up he did the disappearing acts of all disappearing acts, moving out of the state, dropping off the internet, etc. But I remember this one email he sent me right after  he moved because I had sent  him a link to download the show we used to watch together on Sunday nights (Entourage in case you’re curious.) And for some reason he decided to psycho analyze me in this email. At some point he actually said, “You’re so money and you don’t even know it.”

Really? You’re going to psycho analyze your sort of ex-girlfriend being “sad,” that  your relationship is over and you’re going to quote Swingers to her? You’re really going to do that? Like that’s supposed to make a gal all swoony? Quoting Vince Vaughn lines at a girl?

Then again he was a wanna be hipster douche bag who wore sport coats a lot so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised…

Another really absurd thing recently said to me by a guy happened a couple of weeks ago watching football. After chatting sports with this guy at the bar for a few minutes, I invited him to sit with us and watch the rest of the game since we were rooting for the same team and I had a better television near my table. He accepted and at some point wanted my number and all the usual crap that happens. We had discussed where abouts we lived in the area and he says to me “Maybe we can take a walk on the beach sometime.”

Oh bitch you did not just say that. It was about then that I mentioned having a boyfriend because the conversation had obviously gotten off the game and into the realm of “Let me take off your pants.”

But really? Lets go walk on the beach? Did you pick up a “Bad Pick Up Lines for Dummies,” on the way to the bar today? Really?

I think every time I leave my house, I hate people just a little more.

I had a first date last night.  It actually had been rescheduled from the night before.  He was sick and so we decided that we shouldn’t see each other.  No one wants to be sneezed on while on a first date.  I went out with Bob D, who, as you recall, I’ve dated before.  We spent the evening talking and laughing and it did have a few kisses in there, but nothing too serious.  At 2am, I asked him to take me home.  He looked at me and said, “You could stay here, ya know.”  Granted, it would not be the first time I have stayed at his place, but as this is a starting over situation, I’m not just going to jump into bed with him again.  Especially when we aren’t exclusive and there are 2 or 3 others that I am still interested in.

After I got home, I started thinking about all the times a guy has asked me to stay.  It’s always been said in sort of joking ha-ha manner and usually on the first or second date, which is completely inappropriate.  I wonder if it’s always a joke or if in their own way a guy is asking to sleep with me.  And why, when every guy is different, do they always ask in the same way?  What is their hope in asking this?  What if, one day, a girl says yes.  Do you think they are actually prepared for the wide variety of things that could happen?  I could have said, “Yes, I’ll sleep on your couch.”  Or, “Yes, you can sleep on the couch.”  Or how about, “Yes, but we won’t be having sex.”  I wanted to say yes, just to see what would happen, but I didn’t want anything to happen, so I said no.  I’ve said no all the other times as well. 

Overall it was a nice evening with one exception.  The relationship we had last year, I liked.  I thought it was an actual relationship, but last night he said something about us falling into bed together.  It upset me more than I would like to admit.  I’ve known him for 8 years and for him to say that makes me feel like last year, I didn’t matter to him or that he didn’t feel like the relationship was important, when I was sure that it was.  It made me feel tawdry and slutty, even though I had never felt that way about it before.  He’s right in his assessment, it’s a fact that we didn’t date, per se and we were intimate, but I thought it meant more than that.  I thought I meant more than that.

The last time I saw Kate was the week before Valentines in ‘08. I drove four hours in a blizzard in my horrible old Toyota. The tires could barely handle the rain, let alone snow & sleet. For the tenth time that week we had a drag out screaming match, and I was deathly determined to get her things out of the place we shared. At this point she would barely take my calls, but I made her promise to pick up in a few hours…when, unbeknownst to her,  I would be at her place. Only, when I got there she wasn’t home. I called furiously and we met up in the parking lot of the middle school two blocks away. And then we sat there. And we cried. And we screamed at one another And we sat in silence while Ryan Adams played softly on my stereo.  There was no defining moment, no deep conversation, just the unsaid understanding. We both knew that that was it for us, despite her empty promise of coming down to see me in a few weeks. But we sat there for two hours barely saying much of anything.  And I had to sit there and watch her drive off.

Two years later she was in town visiting old friends from school, and I somehow managed to have her agree to lunch. Awkward wasn’t quite the word for it. We talked about ourselves in vague, general terms. The vacations we went on and the jobs we’ve been doing. She asked if I was seeing anybody, and I couldn’t help but laugh. No matter how much time, distance, and women you put between you and your former love, they always want to know about the people you are with. Yeah, she planted a flag before the current ones, and made a larger impact than most, but I told her I wasn’t hers anymore.

I talked about Nicole, and mention that I’ve been playing the field a little bit, and she talked her guy. I pretended to listen, and pretended I cared. Apathy is a hell of a lot better than a pained soul over your ex being bent over backwards by another guy.  We talked about how she hasn’t done much in terms of achieving her goals, and I was at a bit of a standstill with my own. After about forty five minutes we had just about politeness and we got the check, and I got an awkward hug and the distinct pleasure of having her watch me walk away this time.