The F-ugly Truth

I want to think that every woman at least once in her life has liked/cared for a man so much that she just refused to see the f-ugly truth. It’s just like watching a movie of which you already know the ending (just because you’ve watched many similar movies before and you’ve gained experience with the plot, the characters and the behind the scenes to the point where you should actually be promoted to the title of director), however you’re still hoping that somehow a more positive finale will sweep you off your feet and catapult you onto this magical world of fantasy and glory where everyone is joyful and beautiful , and there is always a happy ending. RIIIIIIIIING!!!! Wake up girl; you’re in the real world now.

That’s what recently happened to me. Not once, but twice. First with a man who for four years mentally abused me and neglected me to the point that I had to literally move to another state to get rid of his unwelcome presence; and most recently with another man who introduced himself as Mr. Right and acted as such for about a month and then, suddenly, after a minor and excusable argument turned himself into Mr. Hyde. To give you a little background on this guy let me tell you that this was the type of guy who washed my car when it was dirty, took care of my college homework for me, opened the car door for me, treated me like a princess everywhere we went, introduced me to all his friends and coworkers right away, admittedly declared himself in a relationship with me right off the bat, and would have bent backwards at the risk of fracturing a couple of ribs if I only asked him to. That was Mr. Right, with whom I fell madly in love. Then one day shit hit the fan and the whole hell set grounds at my residence, right here where I live, to me out of the f ** blue; to him quite righteously. Things suddenly ended in a very abrupt way as I wasn’t expecting an argument to define the end of such a passionate and just plain beautiful love story (and yes I am using the word love because despite the short lived essence of our relationship, I do believe to have loved this man from the very moment I met him).

We didn’t see each other for about a month and a half. Not a day went by that I didn’t regret the way events flowed in our brisk romance; I was devastated, just couldn’t understand ultimately where I had gone wrong. Until a few days ago, I sent him a brief message and initiated my agony (which I was right about to get rid of) all over again. We saw each other over coffee; it really felt like time hadn’t passed us by at all. I felt for him as strongly as I ever did, and I got the feeling that he felt the exact same way for me. *I* got the feeling, where *I* stands for that woman who’s watching the same movie she’s watched a 1000 times before, knows the plot, the characters AND the ending, should be promoted to director, and YET she’s waiting for her happy ending to sweep her off her feet. Mr. Right told me he wanted to still see me BUT “casually”, in his words, “I want to date you, talk to you maybe a couple of times a week, see you now and then as time goes by, and see where it goes”. In the spur of the moment that offer didn’t sound bad at all, considering I still didn’t even know what was happening, how I found myself in his arms again after I hadn’t seen him in almost two months, and what I truly wanted from him this time. I spent a couple of wonderful nights with Mr. Right. Then by Monday night the doubt started eating me alive. What does this mean? How does a man go from wanting to be with you day and night, being at your feet, and bending backwards for you to wanting to see you sporadically upon request, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week, maybe…never again? What had happened in the time we had been apart? Was he being sincere, or was he totally bull**ing me in the effort to get some quality ass after a couple of months of abstinence? And, above all, was I up for being Ms. Part-time-when-I-feel- like-it bitch?

Ultimately women are thinking machines that work 24/7 including holidays and weekends, and who construct doubts and bring them upon a judicial system by asking themselves questions back and forth, and determining the level of the suspect’s innocence above reasonable doubt. This *one* doubt was slowly lacerating my branial lobes for about 24 hours straight to the point I decided to talk about it with my girlfriends. The verdict was crude: I was not happy, regardless of my capability to deal with the new rules that had been set for me by Mr. Right (or back to Hyde at this stage of the story) and that I should diligently follow; I obviously wasn’t happy. I talked about my troubled state of mind with him directly by Tuesday night, and shit hit the fan again. We just couldn’t make this thing happen, no matter what good intentions there were behind it. I was asking him for 100% all over again; he was ready to surrender only 50% of himself. That couldn’t be right; I couldn’t be that woman waiting for that man to decide that she might indeed be the one, one day, or she may actually not be, according to the direction the wind decided to blow. We said our final goodbyes (I think I did, he just stopped answering my texts). I decided to interrogate my male best friends about this kind of behavior. This is what came out of my brief male poll:

1. If a man tells you he wants to keep it casual, he either doesn’t have his mind set on you, or he is getting ass on the side.

2. If a man doesn’t want to date you during the week, he surely has something (one) else going on.

3. If a man truly likes you and wants to be with you, he’ll find any excuse to apologize to you after an argument EVEN when he thinks it’s not his fault. He’ll just take the blame for the sake of your presence in his life.

4. Ultimately, if a man is not ready to step up to the plate, it just means HE’S NOT THAT INTO YOU, regardless of how he wants to sugarcoat it and make it look.

So, basically I learned that men that truly like a girl are just like chicks with a penis: they have emotions just like chicks; despite the fact their penis will always rule their world and proclaim the difference between the two genders. He cares for you= he’ll go out of his way to please you and be with you no matter what. He doesn’t care for you= he’ll set up all sorts of obstacles and walls for you to climb to make it impossible to make things work and then he’ll blame you for them too. But the true question here is, did I really just learn these pearls of wisdom, or had I known them all along and kept on avoiding them to deny the f-ugly truth?