Choosing to be with someone who isn’t worthy of your time has a tendency to reflect poorly on you. I don’t mean to sound overly conceited or self absorbed but it tends to lead people to question your judgement. It is difficult to take much stock in the word of someone who has a difficult time managing certain aspects of his/her life.
I have been learning this the hard way. First, it came up in a conversation with a friend’s boyfriend. I introduced “Guy with the Smile” to him one night at a party and they really hit it off. They actually stayed in touch even after GwtS and I split up last November. One day about a month after we split and I had been on a date or two with the European, my girlfriend’s boyfriend called me out about having dated GwtS. He said he didn’t understand how I thought we were ever going to work. I didn’t answer because quite frankly I didn’t have an answer, all I knew was that I had wanted it to.
GwtS is younger than I am. We both had pretty marred childhoods. We both dealt with it very differently. I came out of mine seeming, at least at the surface, pretty unphased by my childhood. He wasn’t so lucky. In his teenage years he made some poor life choices, choices that he will have to deal with for the rest of his life. He made some mistakes but he had learned from them and moved on. In many ways we were very alike.
We were also fundamentally different. I am cautious by nature and he was borderline wreckless, with his words and actions. I knew none of it made sense but then I thought maybe it could. I was wrong.
This weekend I was talking to another friend about GwtS’s past and as I listed off the qualities that made him such an odd choice for me his expression went from confused to “WTF” very quickly. He just looked at me like I was insane. I think that was the first time I heard myself talk to someone about him frankly. I was mad. I should have been looking at myself that way. I finally was.
Iguess one of the perks and ultimately one of the faults in my optimism and acceptance is that I had opened myself up too much. I was so open that I wasn’t making any attempt to protect myself. I think the biggest lesson I have left to learn from this GwtS thing is that I still have to protect me. I can give within reason but only to people who deserve it and only when I am not hurting myself in the process.
