We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato

Here’s something interesting: I have a lot of good friends. And I don’t mean friends who are good to me and love me despite my ever present neurotic tendencies. (Although, let’s face it: I do have a lot of them and my girls inexplicably love me anyway. I would venture to say that I probably don’t even get on their nervous but that’s neither here nor there.) 

I’m talking about high caliber, soft spoken, painfully beautiful women with very strong intellectual capabilities. I’m talking about gorgeous women who have their heads on straight, a Betty Draper-esque martini clenched in their drinking hand, and their fragile little hearts worn on their Portofino sleeves. They are transparent and inviting, thoughtful and sensitive, seeking only to wear great shoes and do right by their allegedly gentlemanly counterparts. 

But sometimes, those proverbial “gentlemen” are relatively undeserving of these ladies’ affections. I have seen it so many times and more typically, it’s the same problem rearing its ugly head over and over again. They are problems that honestly, under any other circumstances, my classy friends most certainly would not put up with. But call it animal attraction or just plain old true love because like Bonnie and Clyde, these women tolerate nonsense because they have never felt such an electric connection with another person. Like one of my dearest friends once said to me when discussing exactly this, “The heart wants what it wants”. Since the love she claimed they experienced was so exciting and addicting, they were more than willing to go down together.

 

Like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde. Or Karen and Henry Hill. Tony and Carmella Soprano. Come rain or come shine. 

Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than most painful truths. –Cross Jami

I have this friend. She is petite and gorgeous, brilliant and very well read (even by my standards, which should say something). She has a full time job, big aspirations, and a great smile. Dimples, green eyes, and awesome clothes. (Not to mention, and not that it really matters, but we also happen to hate all the same people. Needless to say, I think she’s great…) 

She has a loosely planned future, as in, she isn’t exactly planning it to the minute, but it’s there, festering in her pretty, little, Keratin treated head. She is in love with her man, who she has been on and off with for a few years, and wants a future with him. Diamonds, a little white church, bassinettes, the whole nine. And quite frankly, I think she would be really good at it. (And she would make a really classy, beautiful bride.) 

But this aforementioned man, with whom she is currently in love, is kind of hit or miss. To be honest, it sort of depends on the day. Sometimes, he is great. He does everything she could ever ask for, anything she could ever want. Buys her relatively expensive jewelry, takes her on romantic dates, and sweeps her off her feet for the weekend. He smoothers her with affection, schmoozes her friends (except me. I’m not a fan but I’m not the one dating him…), and showers her in exciting gifts. One these rotations, he treats her with respect, has a seemingly effortless six pack, blah, blah, blah.

And when he’s not being great, he’s being… less great. He becomes insensitive, inattentive to her few needs, and unable to act like a responsible boyfriend (or adult). He also, quite goddamn annoyingly, seems completely incapacitated when it comes to telling the truth. He is indecisive, untrustworthy, and an unfaithful womanizer. He cannot decide what he wants. He can’t seem to make a decision and stick with it. She gets sick of his garbage and eventually dumps him. He lets her storm out and is fine.

For a few weeks.

Until it hits him and he realizes that she’s really gone. Like, for good, and she isn’t coming back. And spoiler alert, the men are literally, LITERALLY knocking down her door. (I’m not even joking about that last one.) He comes to his senses, stalks the shit out of her, and begs her to hear him out. And then, with a fairly large amount of bargaining, she gradually lets him back in. Because the heart wants what it wants.

The deception of others is almost always rooted in the deception of ourselves. –Bill W. (Alcoholics Anonymous)

And don’t misunderstand: this entry is not meant to discredit her in the slightest because quite honestly, she’s the strong one. She’s the one who has moved on (and relatively successfully, I might add) and made a life without him. She’s perfectly capable of surviving without him. I mean, I’m no developmental psychologist or relationship therapist. (At least, not yet.) I can’t say whether or not she’s happy without him but she’s tough. She can more than do it on her own. She won’t be taken advantage of. She won’t put up with him when he acts like an overgrown child and she will not tolerate being lied to. 

But then again, she is very forgiving and remarkably unassuming. She gives him chance after undeserving chance because hey, she loves that big idiot and she wants it to work out. And who is ANYONE to say what feels right to her? To any of us?

The truth is that I have knowledge of many couples like this. The aforementioned situation isn’t one that stands alone. It’s not the only one of its kind. I mean, I was involved in this warped brand of relationship myself, and for more years than I am probably willing to admit. 

I knew he was cheating but I thought I had the upper hand. I knew he was a pathological liar but I thought I could see through it. I knew he was habitually abusive but I thought I could handle it. I knew he didn’t love me (how could he have?) but he knew how much he didn’t deserve me and I thought that gave me power. I knew he intentionally threw that fork at my head but I had ducked and instead of hitting me, it hit the window. I knew these things. I had full knowledge of them but I was the one in control, wasn’t I?

Moral of the Crazy: I will never understand why it is so easy to love the wrong person. Sometimes I think the lost ones can be so attractive, that some small amount of darkness can be incredibly seductive. They are so broken, misled, and stuck in their own heads. Their lives are tragic and their behavior is even worse. The fact that they are so emotionally debilitated is incredibly alluring because like a leaky faucet, you want to fix them. You want to be the one who can make them right again. You want to be their saving grace, their calming center, their True North. 

So you keep going right back to the one thing you should walk away from.

And maybe it is possible to do that, to fix them. Maybe it’s possible to truly heal someone with nothing but the power of love and shit loads of whiskey. Hey, it worked for Will and Alicia. And it sort of worked for Tommy and Sheila. (… Sort of.) 

But then again, maybe it’s not. Maybe all the hype isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Maybe individuals are troubled not because it’s attractive (if you’re Don Draper or Tommy Gavin), but because they are genuinely awful people. Maybe they are troubled because after years of lying and cheating, the guilt has finally caught up to them. Maybe they are so broken because they have bit off more than they can chew, and seducing and betraying multiple people is far more difficult than it looks. And maybe, just maybe, they can’t ever find the “right person” because they are too busy deceiving everyone to give any relationship a fair shot. Those odds are never good, friends.

This is just a guess. I obviously don’t know why people do the things they do. It is just so disheartening to me that the ones who are supposed to love you the most would so easily betray you. And what is worse is that somehow, the one doing the forgiving becomes the one that looks bad. And listen, to me, that just doesn’t seem fair. 

You’re SUPPOSED to forgive people. You’re SUPPOSED to trust them. You’re SUPPOSED to give them a Mulligan. You’re SUPPOSED to love them despite how big of an idiot they are.

And yet, you’re condemned.

Tammy Wynette sang, “Stand by your man,” and sometimes, I think those are some words to live by. People make mistakes all the time, and like my aunt always tells me when I get grumpy, “Hey, little girl, shit happens.” But how many chances do you get? I mean, if you’ve got to start drinking wine to forget the mistakes you’ve made, I mean, forgive me, but you’ve probably made too many. 

I just feel like we deserve more. We deserve better. My girlfriend, the one with the great fashion sense and propensity to be graceful and forgiving, she deserves better.

I guess you can’t say don’t ever make mistakes because let’s face it, we’re human. Things happen. Maybe it’s safer to say choose your mistakes wisely because they will still be there when you wake up in the morning. 

… but the love of your life may not be. 

Bullshit makes the flowers grow and that is beautiful. –Gregory Hill