Guy #57 (Part 1) – Love.

I was 18 the first time I fell in love.

She was the perfect daughter-in-law: Smart, funny, independent and pretty.

I imagined us becoming part of each other’s family, going on fun family weekends. I had literally dreamed about us making tender love on one of our camping trips. In my heart I was ready to start naming our future children.

She ended up dating one of my best friends. I was devastated.

I can still relive the exact moment I found out about it. From that moment on every time I saw her my stomach turned. Every time she was close I stopped thinking, instead being consumed by sadness and disbelief.

It took me a whole year before I could act normal in her presence. I kept hoping she would call me one day and tell me she had made a terrible mistake, that I had always been her one true love and that she wanted to start talking about names for our babies.

Had I known I would go on to have sex with at least 168 Guys in my life, it might not have devastated me quite as much.

Love never hurt me as much as it did that time with her. It’s not because it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but the first thing.

The more often you fall in love, the easier it is to see the pattern:

Fall in love
Get high
Then you hurt
And wonder why

Ten years after the love of my life rejected me I had my first date with Guy #57. It was on a Friday night. It ended Sunday evening. It was January 2010 when I had the best date of the decade with Guy #57.

Sex had never been as awesome as that weekend. We spent most of the weekend in bed, just being together. This one time he gave me the most sensual massage that lasted two full Enigma albums. I haven’t felt that relaxed since then. It was, as that old lady from Titanic would say, the most erotic moment of my life.

We started our relationship in that phase where every issue can be resolved with a kiss that turns into foreplay.
Also, I acted under the assumption that we would not be committing ourselves to each other. I figured our sex was the thing that held us together. So we openly spoke about our sex lives, even bragging about it perhaps.

Guy #57 told me he was afraid of getting hurt. On our second date he was afraid of getting hurt specifically by me. On our third date he looked me straight in the eye and whispered: “Who are you!?”

In the meantime I kept on telling him about other Guys I was talking to online.

The two of us went on a total of three dates. For me it was the start of something wonderful, but I had no idea I was in love with Guy #57.

My feelings became apparent through Facebook, where it suddenly said he was in a relationship. I have disliked Mark Zuckerberg ever since.
I remember reading through the comment section, which consisted of friends congratulating Guy #57 on his love life, and Guy #57 taking those compliments like the total bottom that he was.
Naturally I checked out the profile of Guy #57’s newfound boyfriend. I needed to know. To my frustration it didn’t have any pictures. There was nothing to compare myself with.

You can never quite prepare for when love hits you in the face, but it gets easier every time it does.

Still, knowing something is temporary doesn’t make it go by any sooner.

For a few months I kept on wondering about what had gone wrong, what I had done wrong. The strange thing is that Guy #57 kept in contact. He would often hit me up on MSN. Only when I drove the conversation toward the subject of him having a boyfriend he would stop responding. And then he would pop up again a few days later as if nothing happened.

Over the years he would sometimes hit me up on Facebook to tell me he still misses me sometimes.

We even saw each other again a few years into the decade. He suggested the whole in a relationship-thing had been a lie to protect him from getting hurt by me. I’m not sure I believe that. There was a lot Guy #57 refused to tell me, but I realized he was never going to.

The thing with getting hurt is that it never makes sense. You feel like you’re going to spend an eternity not knowing what’s wrong with you. Of course there always comes a time when it doesn’t matter anymore. The more you see why something didn’t work out, the happier you are that it didn’t.

I’m very glad I didn’t end up naming babies with my first love. And I doubt Guy #57 and I would have made the perfect couple.

I’m very thankful for Guy #57. He’s the first Guy that ever hurt me, the first Guy I ever fell in love with.

It’s always the lesson that sticks with you when you’re over someone. For my first love it was Stop decorating your closet! For Guy #57 it was Don’t brag about all the Guys you’re going to have sex with if someone you already have the most amazing sex with shows a sensitive side.

I definitely took that with me to Guys #58 through #168.

 

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Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 5-6 years
FORMAT: 3 awesome dates, 3 months of avoidance issues that somehow clashed, plus a few years of on and off friendship
SEX SCORE (0 = Garlic air freshener <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 9.9