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Esther

Esther was the third woman I loved. She delusionally (not sure if that’s a word) believes she was the first and only. I never believed in love at first sight until I saw her. I knew she was going to be the woman I married. We got to know each other over the course of five or six months and I was very persistent about dating. She knew I liked her, but I had no clue whether or not she liked me. She had a great poker face.

Finally, one night we were at her house and I said, in my persistent, nonchalant way, “Hey! We should start dating.” And, out of nowhere, she said, “I guess we can give it a shot.” And I leaped for joy, literally. She was everything I wanted in a partner: funny, smart, beautiful, a personality that was real, and, most importantly, I could be myself around her. I could say something stupid and know that it wouldn’t be greeted with ridicule or disgust, but rather a playful tease.

The next couple of years were some of my favorite. Like any couple, we had our ups and downs, but we were willing to work through them and became stronger because of them.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I was so dedicated to her that we got a house together. She had the money saved up for a downpayment on a decent house, and I signed my name to it with her so that she could afford it. Without me, she wouldn’t have been able to get the house. But, again, that’s how committed I was to being with her. I looked at us as a dynamic duo. Together, we were unstoppable.

Like with dating, I talked about marriage with her constantly. Her response was, “Once we get moved into the house and get settled in, we can start talking about getting married.” We settled in, but marriage was never talked about.

Towards the end of the relationship, we started fighting and got annoyed with each other. Esther started being more aggressive with her words and, while I always tried to look past it, of course it hurt me when the woman I loved verbally assaulted me with insults.

In January 2017, Esther went with some friends to Bend to have a girls weekend. When she came back, she talked about some guys that she met, which made me skeptical. She said she had a great time, but got a little too drunk, so these guys took her back to their place and took care of her. Red flag, right? Or is that just me? Regardless, I trusted Esther more than I didn’t trust the situation she put herself in. So we talked about it and moved on.

Mid-January, I was at work at got a text from Esther saying, “I don’t think we should be a couple anymore.” At this point in the relationship, it didn’t feel like either of us was happy. We were both just trying to get through the day. I had given up on talking about marriage because it was obvious that Esther wasn’t interested in it. Esther seemed to not care how I felt about the way she treated me anyway, so why would she want to marry me? So when she sent that message, I looked at it as the end. Game over. There was nothing I could say or do to change her mind and, honestly, I didn’t want to. The idea of moving on seemed refreshing and necessary. So I got home that night and we talked about it in-depth.

Esther wasn’t happy in the relationship, but only because she wanted time to herself to be able to discover who she was as a person on her own. So, really, it was more of a break than a break-up. I thought it was a good idea. Some time apart would be good and then we could hit the reset button and start over. Clean sleight. Perfect.

Esther, seemed to not think the same thing about the idea she came up with. She started spending a lot of time with a co-worker of mine, Heath. I won’t get into all the details, but I had strong suspicions that they were seeing each other. Esther was using Heath as a rebound to get over me, or, at the very least, to distract herself from having to deal with her unresolved emotions about the break we were on. I, on the other hand, used alcohol to cope with not being in a relationship and Heath and Esther spending so much time together.

To cap off all of this, I received a text from Esther one evening in July telling me that she was officially seeing someone else. Not Heath, but someone entirely different. And who was this mysterious guy, you may be asking? One of the guys she met in Bend on the girls trip.

How could she be over everything we’d been through in just six months? I gave everything to her and to our relationship. I’m not saying I was the perfect boyfriend, but I definitely loved and cared for her more than anyone else could. And here she was, just six months later, already investing her time and emotions into someone else. What kind of person does that? It took me a year to move past Esther and to process everything she and I had gone through.

I’d tried dating a couple of different girls within that period of time, which I’ll write about, but it still took so long. I was borderline suicidal because of the lack of closure Esther refused to give me. I haven’t seen her in nearly two years. No answers. No idea why she chose to move on the way she did and why she showed such a lack of care for my well-being.

It’s not like I was trying to guilt her into getting back together with me or anything, but I reached out telling her how much I’m struggling, and she had no remorse or sympathy for me. Which, looking back, was a good thing. I feel like if she’d had any sort of sympathy for me, it’d take me longer to move past her. But still, confusion remained and she had no desire to help me understand.

To this day, I wonder why she chose to handle things so poorly. Was it intentional? Could she have really been so thoughtless towards what I was going through? It all remains a mystery. And something I’ve had to learn is that, unfortunately, some mysteries go unsolved.

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Andrea

Andrea, the girl I lost my virginity to. We started dating in June of 2009 and things got pretty physical fairly quickly. About nine months into our relationship, we had sex for the first time in the high school performing arts center. Once we got a taste of what it was like, there wasn’t a moment we didn’t have sex if we were able to. Of course, I had emotions invested in the relationship as well. I truly did see myself spending the rest of my life with her. I cared for her when she was sick and made her laugh as much as possible and everything in between. We were a great couple that loved to have fun and wanted to be with each other as much as possible. She was amazing to be with.

About a year into our relationship, Andrea went down to Long Beach to spend time with her aunt. She went down there the summer before, so I was prepared for it. However, what I wasn’t prepared for was what she told me in August.

“I think I’m going to stay down here and go to school.”

I was shocked at first, but after she told me that she was going to get professional help for her eating disorder, I fully supported her decision and decided that I was going to move down there to be with her. She meant the world to me. I was faithful and ready to move my entire life down to California just to be with her. And, in retrospect, that should’ve been my first clue to not go through with it. I was only nineteen years old. I had close to no job experience, no car, and no clue how to start the process to move a thousand miles away from home.

While I was looking for jobs and trying to figure out how to be close to Andrea, I began to get discouraged. Her aunt wouldn’t allow me to live with her and a place to live in Long Beach cost a fortune compared to what I was making at the time ($0.00 a year, plus benefits.) I called her in December and told her that I didn’t think it’d work out between us. She started crying and begging me to give her time. She’d be back in Portland in January and we could talk about it then. Reluctantly, I agreed and stayed with her. A week later, we were Skyping each other and she broke up with me WITH SOMEONE ELSE IN THE ROOM WITH HER. She kept looking to her left and giggling while telling me she didn’t want to be with me anymore. I was livid. After she begged and pleaded with me to stay together, she had the nerve, a week later, to break up with me while someone was with her? As if it was as nonchalant as telling someone you have to cancel getting coffee with them. So, we broke up and I was left wondering why. She never explained anything to me.

That was almost ten years ago. I don’t know why things like this bother me. If someone is rude to me at work, I can shake it off within a couple hours. But when someone I love just abandons me with no explanation or reason, it consumes me. And the thing that bothers me the most is that Andrea is happily married with two kids and probably hasn’t thought about me in several years. I’m sure if my name was mentioned, she’d say, “Alex who?” And yet if someone were to say to me, “I saw Andrea the other day.” I’d immediately know who they were talking about.

I can’t be the only person that gets hurt so deeply by not knowing the cause of someone’s actions. I feel like it’s an odd thing, especially in today’s world, to let your emotions control your life. And I wouldn’t say my emotions control my life, per se, but I’m human. My emotions are a large part of why I do things the way I do. But, again, I can’t be the only person that gets worked up so much by being left without reason.

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Women.

Throughout my life, women have hurt me. Whether they intended to or not, I don’t know. But what I do know is that it feels like the roles between men and women are changing. It seems like men used to be the ones that would not care about how women felt and would leave them brokenhearted and move on to the next woman they wanted to be with. But lately, thanks to social media and women empowerment, women are becoming the ones leaving men brokenhearted and move from one guy to the next. Now this isn’t to say empowering women is a terrible thing. Women deserve the same opportunities and rights as men. I’m just saying that they’re also learning to do the same things that men have done for centuries, which, in the case of relationships, can be a terrible thing. No one, man or woman, deserves to be hurt emotionally or physically. The way men have treated women is awful and I am glad to see women finally obtaining the power they’ve lacked throughout all of time. What I am upset about, however, is the lack of care women seem to show when dealing with a man’s emotions. Please don’t hesitate to send me a message for any clarity that I may not give throughout this essay.

What I intend to do with this letter is explain my personal experience with women and, in the most unbiased way, explain the dynamic of our relationship in full and how I managed to feel hurt at the end of it. The names of the women I will mention have been changed, understandably, to protect them as well as myself (although I don’t think I can face any legal trouble for mentioning my personal experiences...but I could be wrong.)

I don’t intend to accomplish anything by writing all of this, but simply want to get my pent up anger and frustration for these women down on writing and, hopefully, finally be done with it. I’ll be writing chronologically from the first woman to negatively hurt me to the most recent. And with all this being written, let’s begin.