If you needed love, well then ask for love. I could have given love, now I’m taking love. And it’s not my fault, cause you both deserve what’s coming now. So don’t say a word. –Wake Up Call, Maroon 5

About a million times in my life, I have heard people say things like, “The phone works both ways,” or, “I’m tired of reaching out and getting nothing back in return”. And honestly, I understand that; I really, really do. In fact, it’s a conversation that my husband and I have quite often because he tends to give up on people who mistreat him, even if it’s just once. 

I completely understand that it can be actually exhausting and sometimes even, a huge blow to one’s ego, to try and bait someone only to get put off. I understand that it is taxing and can feel like you’re being rejected when you attempt over and over to reach out and show you care about someone. I know it smarts because I’ve done it. But the difference between me and other people is I don’t care. I will keep trying because I don’t like giving up on people. It’s a big reason why I became a social worker. 

I have put my absolute genuine feelings out in the open, hung out on the line and hoped for something sweet in return. Let me tell you something, friends: that feeling is absolutely terrible. Opening up to someone and getting ignored, brushed off, or deflected is literally like a knee to the emotional nut sack. I don’t like feeling it and I don’t like making anyone else feel it. I don’t want to intentionally hurt anyone. I’m way too sensitive for it.

I just find that this “phone works both ways” mentality is a poor way to live life. It just seems selfish to me. It’s sort of like you would rather just sit and wait for someone to talk to you instead of taking literally two seconds to tell someone you’re thinking about them. I mean, I’m sorry but it is twenty goddamn fifteen. Are you really going to claim that the phone works both ways when you can just tap the menu button on your $800 IPhone and tell Siri what it is you want to say and who you want to say it to? Are we that awful of a generation? Are we really so unwilling to make such little effort? Even if it’s someone we really, really care about? Someone we allegedly cannot stop thinking about? 

Maybe it’s just me and maybe like most things, I’m just taking all of this too seriously. But the truth is, it’s lazy. I mean, how do you not care enough about someone that you can’t make the smallest amount of effort to appease them? If they are so seemingly unimportant that a text is too strenuous, why not just move on? The deflective indifference is infuriating and putting yourself out there over and over again can make even the most confident person feel pathetic. 

Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you’ve become a comfortable, trusted element in another person’s life. –Joyce Brothers

I have a couple of friends who have been made to endure this. One of them has been dating a married man for actual years. And what is crazy is that these two people, despite one of them having a live in spouse, seem to be at constant war over each other’s attention.

One minute, my friend’s married boyfriend cannot seem to get enough of her. He is irrationally jealous and possessive of her, making it his job to learn of any communications she may have with other men. He will let himself into her house and wait for her to come home, enviously demanding to know where she was and who she was with. He will profess how in love with her he is, exhibit all this fiery passion in regards to their absolutely twisted relationship, and then beg her to justify his insane jealousy. 

The next minute, he’s had this epiphany. He seems to have partaken in some half-assed moral inventory and has decided that what he really needs to do is work on his family. He will ignore her for actual days in an honest attempt to get his stupid life together. And what’s crazy is, should my friend make any attempt to communicate with him during this phase, he makes her out to be this absolute crazy person. He manipulates her, patronizes her by talking to her as if he were talking her off a ledge. He will tell her that she needs to move on, that he will never be able to love her the way she should be loved. He’ll claim that he doesn’t deserve her, that she’s too good for him; that he refuses to be a piece of shit alcoholic who walks out on his family. He will tell her, so earnestly, that this is just his cross to bear.  

And then, after some time passes, he suddenly remembers that he can’t live without her. He can’t handle her newly appointed coldness. In justifiable frustration, she once said to me, “I don’t understand him. It’s like, if you want me in your life, put me there.”

What I never understood was how he would rather lead this chaotic, double life than own it and take what he allegedly wants. But why would he ever uproot everyone and make things temporarily complicated? Why would he actually work on a relationship with a woman that he claims to be in love with? He would rather just bounce around from woman to woman, home to home, life to life. Yes, that seems FAR less complicated, she said pretty sarcastically.

I now know that things I always thought I could depend on can crash in an instant. Because of the love I have been shown, I now know what it means to be ‘beloved’. I now know that no breath is to be taken for granted. –Rebecca Wells

Quite a few years ago, I was desperately trying to date this man and failing miserably. For whatever reason, probably because he was a lying, cheating, wannabe playboy who only wanted to hang out at clubs and meet low caliber women, he would not let me into his life. Not even a little bit. It was like no matter what I asked him, he wouldn’t let me in. He would respond with things like, “I’m not ready to talk about that yet,” or, “Who cares about her? She’s nobody.”

We had hung out so many times and I still felt like I knew absolutely nothing. And over time, I just quit asking questions because I knew better. I was exhausted with being continually met with deflection. Who has the time for it? Who has the time to continually attempt to crack at the surface just to incessantly hit a wall. Certainly not me. I’ve got stories to write, whiskey to drink.

But what was even more annoying was God forbid he should wake up one day and decide he wanted to see me, well, I had better drop what I was doing and run right over there. I must shamefully admit that in the beginning, I did it. I would continually cave into him because I was young and still reeling from an incredibly abusive relationship (… not that he gave a shit, or would ever let me even mention it). The truth was that at that time, I was more than willing to drop everything for the selfish man-child because it was the only way I could get him. I wanted him in my life, so I put him there. 

So fucking pathetic. (A lesson I painfully learned and will never repeat.)  

And then should I ever need attention (because we all know how much I crave it…) or seek him out for anything, you already know he never returned the favor. He was too busy and couldn’t squeeze me in. He had an event on this end of Tampa, or a friend’s party on that end of Tampa. He was sitting at an all-night poker game at the Hard Rock and wasn’t allowed to use the restroom, much less look at his phone. Or my favorite, I was “overwhelming him and acting crazy”. Please, that boy hadn’t even SEEN crazy.

The worst thing in the world, the absolute worst thing, is being told you’re too much effort for someone.

If you’re giving love and not receiving it, you’re not in the right relationship. If you’re receiving it and not giving it than you are taking advantage of the other person. –Patti Stanger

Moral of the Crazy: Listen, I have been called a lot of things: a See You Next Tuesday, a Pathetic Bobble Head, a Guinea Brat, and my personal favorite to date, an Attention Whore, and with each vile slur, with each phrase thrown at me in some petty attempt to hurt my feelings, I have learned something. I learned something about myself, as well as those individuals who are blinded by the misconception that I owe them something. 

I have learned that I don’t like being baited. I don’t like people who insult me to get a rise out of me. I don’t like people who push me into a corner and then throw their hands in the air, claiming exhaustion, when I actually stand up for myself. I don’t like being a friend of convenience and being the only one to ever go out on a limb because everyone I seem to associate with is too goddamn selfish to EVER put someone else’s feelings or priorities before their own. I don’t like being lectured and talked down to because grown ass people like to throw hissy fits reminiscent of a two year old when they don’t get what they want, when they want it.

I come from one of those families that sweats you out when they’re angry. You’ll know someone in my family is mad at you when no matter what sort of technological advances are in existence, you don’t hear from them. My aunt put it so perfectly once when I was venting to her: If you take advantage of my niceness one too many times, YOU’RE OUT! And listen, those are some wise words from one of the greatest, most beautiful women I have ever met but that’s not me. And it is probably why I get my feelings hurt sometimes.

The truth is, that is how I was raised, but that is not me. It’s like this: When I want to talk to someone, whether I’m angry or not, whether they’re angry or not, I just fucking do it. I don’t wait around for them to text me, in hopes that I’ll cross their minds, because that’s just stupid. I don’t play those games. And that “the phone works both ways” shit is just nonsense. 

Because the way I see it, if you ever feel like someone is too much effort, then you probably never really wanted them in the first place.   

In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. –Bertrand Russell