Minus 1 Knucklehead

I found out some interesting things last night about one of my knuckleheads.  I happen to run into a mutual friend of ours at Wal-Mart.  We were catching up on the latest gossip, and my knucklehead happened to come up in the conversation.  

This is the knucklehead who told me last week ‘This time I’m not going to lie to you’.  This time.  Great.  Well, I found out what ‘This time’ meant.  Earlier this summer, he started hanging out with another salesman at the dealership. B brought his girlfriend over to Knucklehead D’s house, and the three of them proceeded to get plastered, plowed, shit-faced, you name it, drunk.  When B and GF decided to head home, D suggested he follow them home to make sure they made it safely (sound innocent enough, especially if you’re drunk), then he suggested that GF ride with him instead of B.  She thought it was great, B didn’t see the ‘greatness’ in this plan and was understandably miffed.  Once they get to B’s house, GF has decided she’s not staying with B since he’s pissed off, and ‘she’s done nothing wrong’, so she asks D to take her home.  D obviously thought she meant his home, not hers, and proceeds to take her back to his place, where they spent the night together. (Why she didn’t protest, call a cab, call B, when D took her back to his place, is anybody’s guess.  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon here.  I can not lay all the blame at D’s feet for this.  She stayed of her own drunken volition.)

When D relayed this story to me later, the GF slept in the guest room.  Ok, buddy, I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I knew the truth, but since we weren’t talking at the time this happened, I didn’t say anything, but filed it away in the ‘Good information to know and remember’ file in my mind.

Last night, while talking with A at Wal-Mart, I found out that not only had D slept with B’s GF that night, but on several other occasions too.  Fine. (Because in D’s telling of the story to me it ended with B telling everyone at the dealership ‘D slept with my girlfriend last night’.  And D telling him ‘Nothing happened. I haven’t slept with your girlfriend, but you can bet I will now.’) Then she proceeds to tell me that he had tried several times, and was still calling and trying to hook up with her.  Even when she told him to ‘Back off, I’m not interested. I’ve known you too long, it would be just too weird, and besides I don’t know where things stand with you and Becky.’  His response to that?  ‘It doesn’t matter, she’ll never know anyway. Besides, we’re just friends.’

Well, there you have it folks.  He’s right, I would have never known had A not told me.  He’s also right in that we were not exclusive; we had no relationship boundaries or definitions.  But to hit on a friend of mine, a mutual friend of ours? Kind of tacky.

I’m not pissed off, I’m not mad, I’m not hurt, I’m not angry, I’m not anything. I don’t really care.  It didn’t surprise me, it didn’t shock me.  It was just another confirmation of things I already suspected. I was calm about it all, and didn’t feel anything when she told me.  It was almost insignificant.  I didn’t care, it didn’t matter.  

It did bring to light, for me anyway, just how desperate I was to cling to him and hold on to the ‘healthiest relationship I’d ever had’.  I thought, and my therapist thought this relationship was pretty normal and healthy, compared to the ones I’d had in the past.  What did we know?   He’s a great actor.  He was wonderful and loving and sweet, and caring and attentive to me when we were together, but apparently he was that way to a lot of girls at a time.  He was lying and cheating and I never knew.  

So if the relationship could look and feel so healthy and normal, and turn out to be just like all the rest, is there any hope of finding the real thing, a REAL normal and healthy relationship?  Do they really exist?  I’m sure they do, but do they exist for me?  

Am I so starved for attention, and positive reinforcement, from years of lack of both, that I rush into something and make it more than it really is?  Do I rush from first date to full blown coupledom in my mind, long before the guy is ready to make that kind of commitment.  Why is it so hard for me to just ‘date’ a guy instead of jumping ahead and expecting too much too soon?  Then that leads to the question, am I truly the only one to blame here, or does the guy have some degree of responsibility here?  I don’t think so; it’s my expectations that are the issue here, not theirs.

So, this morning, I am minus 1 knucklehead.  Not that he’s been in the count for a while now.  He’s been pretty much absent from my life for a while now. I don’t even miss him.  Even when he comes up in the topic of conversation, I have to remember ‘You’re supposed to miss him’, then I tell myself he’s not worth it.  Obviously.

Lesson learned.  Still have to find answers to my questions, but those will come with time and experience.