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Ever been in love at the wrong time??

16:51 / 06.01.04

It's about time for me to vent my nasty, discoloured spleen all over barbelith, and this is ground zero.
I guess it starts about five years ago, when i first fell in love. I was in love with one girl, called Lauren, for about three years, and the whole time, she despised me. I wasn't popular enough for her, and she was a bitch, but that really didn't bother me. I loved her, and nothing would change that. It took three whole years of her snide comments and verbal abuse before i stopped loving her. Since then, i've had a few girlfriends, but i met a girl last summer, when i was teaching at an international music school in sweden. She was over from wales, and we started flirting. We fell in love over there, and when we both moved back to britain, we kept on seeing each other, even though that meant travelling 600 miles. I loved her, and i thought she felt the same. I found out in september '03 that i didn't mean that much to her. She was still in love with her first boyfriend, and i was only a means to an end until she could get back together with him. I was a shag. She didn't bother telling me this until she was about to get back together with him. Now, if this was any other girl, i'd be pissed off about it, but i'm not. It's worse than that. I'm still in love with her. It's tearing me apart, cos i love her, even though she was using me. Every day i wake up, and try to figure out a way to get her back. I know that it's never going to happen, but i don't care.
I guess what i'm asking from the collective mind of barbelith is advice on how to deal with this. Please don't just tell me to "get over it". Easier said than done. Should i go out and find another girl?? Should i go into hiding for a few months?? Should i go and shag some hookers until my manhood drops off?? I'm nineteen, and i don't know as much as some of you. If you've been through something like this, and come out the other side still breathing, then please help me. Also, if any of you are going through something like this now, or have been, post your stories here, i'd like to know that i'm not alone. Sorry for the long post, but i think i'm finished now. Cheers peeps.

Matthew Fluxington

17:07 / 06.01.04

Seriously, the best idea is to just get over it. These things aren't always easy to get over, but it'll get of your system sooner than you think if you don't ruminate about it day and night. Just focus your attention on other things, and before too long it'll seem like a bad memory, and you'll have a better perspective on things. It's never easy to have a clear perspective on your emotions as a teenager. It's okay, though. You're still very young, and you don't have to be focused on having relationships all of the time.

Going off and having cheap sex or a rebound relationship may not be the best idea for you - it probably won't help you much, it may make you feel worse, and you may end up doing the same thing to some other person that has happened to you. You know, if you hate something, don't you do it too.

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

17:13 / 06.01.04

That is a tough one. Keeping yourself busy with other things to keep from dwelling on it is solid advice. I have never been so busy as when one of my relationships failed. It seemed to work for me.

Should you decide to find a "band-aid" (it hurts, you put something on it) tell her that is what she is. I have had a couple of little rebound relationships and the only one that did not end badly was the one where we both understood it for what it was.

Good luck, sorry to hear about it.

20:08 / 06.01.04

Lauren McColl? Really? Grrr, I'll go get her.

Well you probably know, jupiter, that I've been in love with a (very) wrong person. Very unhelpful advice, but whats helped me has been chocolate when Im sad, cutting my hair when Im mad, and.. well, five years or so. And Im guessing you dont want to cut your hair.

Hmmm... maybe get out of wherever you are for a bit (you're home, arent you?), if its at all viable. Move to edinburgh for a bit, drive to skye, come round europe, bum around, feel sorry for yourself, come over and get some pancakes. But look after yourself, love. x

22:05 / 06.01.04

The conditions you describe, particularly the first one, aren't what I'd call being in love, JC. They sound more like fixation, in all honesty.

I know it feels like it's not, but you'll just have to trust me. And there are loads of brilliant girls out there, etc. You're better trying to speak to them and see if anything develops thereby than moping about your current scenario.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:28 / 06.01.04

Sort of half and half. The air fares alone make me sympathise with you enormously. And, at the risk of sounding patronising, you're young. Relationships with wildly unsuitable people are a great way to practise strong emotion without queering the pitch with people you might like in the future. It doesn't sound like you were in love at the wrong time, just with the wrong person, but, dude, it was for what - two months?

In my experience, the best thing to do is probably have some tea. Chill. Listen to Leonard Cohen songs and get sniffly. Read a lot. Talk to peple about it, but notice when their eyes glaze over. Don't expect every girl you meet from now on to redeem the sins of the last one, and if you do get involved with somebody else, try to sort out how much you are feeling about them and how much you're feeling about the last girl. Try to be fair to everyone.

Tales of abject failure to follow this rubric may follow when less sleepy and cold.

02:37 / 07.01.04

When I was in love with a girl I couldn't have, I decided to try to improve every aspect of myself. I had the extra energy from being in love, and I supposed that, if she ever broke up with her boyfriend (which I naively thought people DID when they were unhappy with them), I would have a better chance, and even if not, it couldn't hurt anything else in my life.

My only point to this is that, if you do find that you need something to keep you distracted, try to make it something that it would be good for you to do anyway. Excercise or read or practise being funnier (timing) and the like.

This is not the advice I needed when I was in the doldrums after it, though. Especially the worst of it, when the world came at me in a haze and I felt hollow and such. Then, I don't think any advice would have done me any good. But I have a natural fear of self-destructive behavior, so when, almost overnight about three years into this depression, I suddenly felt better, I had no illigitimate children, no drug addictions, and no estrangements. I could pick up where I had left off.

Tryphena Absent

02:43 / 07.01.04

This is the perfect opportunity to lock yourself in your bedroom and feel angsty and self indulgent. Grab it while it lasts, you may never be in love like this again and remember lust driven anxiety is the food for thought, harbour all creative talent this pain affords you and try to find a friend who delights in tales of the heart (my friend Vicki has spent hours in the past listening to me whine on about a man referred to only as Prince Galadriel- see I was driven by such unrequited lust that I managed to build up an entire code around this person so that I could talk about him when he was standing right behind me. Many conversations beginning with the sentence "I was sitting behind Galadriel in assembly today and he has the flattest back in the world. I want to bite it" took place. By the time I actually bothered to get involved with my crushes love had become a more tangible thing and something less sought after. Meanwhile Vicki was involved and in love with a man far older than her who has caused her nothing but true angst ever since and so my advice to the world remains this: don't screw the people you feel deep lust for unless they treat you like a very good friend and remember that if you can't talk to them about your favourite things for a space exceeding 3 hours than they're worthless anyway).

Keith, like a scientist

03:57 / 07.01.04

to answer the topic title question: yes

http://www.barbelith.com/underground/topic.php?id=15542

Scrubb is on a downward spiral

08:50 / 07.01.04

What they said. Drink tea, mope, listen to Leonard (or even better, read some of Leonards poems), create stuff, vocalise...

And then. And then. When you can't talk or cry or write dodgy poetry no more, put on your finest rags, gather your mates and go to a club where they'll be playing your favourite music all night. And dance. Don't bother with thinking about whether you'll pull or whether you need to get more drinks, just stay on the dancefloor for as long as you can. Go home. Repeat as necessary. The combination of physical exercise, having your mates with you and some good tunes in your head should go some way to getting this girl out of your head.

Ex

09:25 / 07.01.04

General:
Does anyone else get that thing where you think you want to shag someone but actually you really want to be them?

(and the tumbleweeds roll across the Barbeagony column...)

So if you find yourself thinking "Oh, I adore them, they are soignee and they play the clarinet and always have good hair", it might be to do with perceived self-lack. Try doing the stuff you admire in them yourself. That way, if you were just admiring and identifying with them, it'll wear off, and if you really did want to shag them, you'll have a better chance because you will have common interests and admirable elf-like poise.

This is NOT a reccomendation to reenact Single White Female! Don't overdo it, unrequited barbe-amateurs.

Specific:
JC - Overall, try to get back to a state of equilibrium, rather than find a replacement or a pick-up - anyone else will bring their own range of complications, and even if it's lovely you'll be trying to drag a mountain over to fill in a pit.
Do what everyone else said, it sounded good.
Contact not as much of an issue for you, but for anyone else - I found cold turkey remarkably effective. No contact, no expectation of contact, no lingering crumbs of hope, and eventually perspective and a trip to Selfawaria. Brief guided tour to self-pity. Detour through mild self-mockery, eventually parking campervan in self-respect.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:40 / 07.01.04

Does anyone else get that thing where you think you want to shag someone but actually you really want to be them?

Oh, all the time.

18:30 / 07.01.04

pretty much anytime i have bisexual leanings (i'm a v. straight girl), it's cos i want to be the girl, at least in some way. what a weird thing!

18:39 / 07.01.04

Ex:

every time I fall for a girl.
every other time I fall for a boy.

Sometimes it's true. Sometimes I stop and think about what exactly it is that I love so much about them and decide that it's great in other people, but not what I want to be. And still I worry. That's probably the only way I wind up falling for the wrong person, the falling for someone because I want to be them, rather than wanting them for who they are. But I'm a royal fuckup at falling for the right person at the worst possible time. I've got that one covered. Oh yeah.

Condolences; the suggestions I've seen here so far for how to handle it are wonderful, though.

Matthew Fluxington

19:02 / 07.01.04

Thanks a lot, Fly and Mantis. Now I've got The Cure's "Why Can't I Be You" stuck in my head.

19:44 / 07.01.04

Thanks Flux; I hadnt even thought of that, but now you've said it... However it is fabulous. So lock yourself in your room, and play lots of Cure.

19:49 / 07.01.04

but whats helped me has been chocolate when Im sad, cutting my hair when Im mad, and.. well, five years or so.

...and I think *I* have just fallen in love with gingerbop.

Not sure about the timing, though.

Tryphena Absent

20:32 / 07.01.04

I always cut my hair too

The Return Of Rothkoid

04:25 / 08.01.04

Thanks a lot, Fly and Mantis. Now I've got The Cure's "Why Can't I Be You" stuck in my head.
Could be worse: you could have the filmclip stuck on your inner screen. Lol Tolhurst... shudder.

Um. No real advice, other than the wrong time feeling always sucks. As for going out and getting someone new off the bat, the cheesiest advice you'll ever hear is probably right: it will happen when you're not looking and not expecting it, precisely because it's at those moments you're just being yourself and not trying to pull. Trying to do so would probably be a bad thing.

At least, that's the case in my case.

Spyder Todd 2008

12:15 / 08.01.04

I myself suggest that you do something to distract yourself for awhile. Go on a spy mission, steal the crown jewels, kidnap the pope, something to get your mind on something else. About two years ago I was in a similar situation, and my entire personality system crashed. And that's no good. It took me 18 months to rebuild from that. Now a days, I'm much happier than I ever was while I was chasing after the impossible. So, my advice is that you take it easy for a while and go on holiday.

(And if you need plans for kidnapping the pope, I still have my old ones from the last time I tried that one...)

17:56 / 09.01.04

Tryphena, you cut your hair?? I'm a guy who used to have hair way down past his shoulders. I cut it before I'd read any of the responses to this thread. I'm acting the way you say you all said to act, but before you'd told me. Perhaps this is human nature. This might be why so many straight 'alpha-males' are so pent-up. it's because they can't cut their hair. poor bastards.

As for yourself Rothkoid, I know what you mean about pulling when i'm not expecting it. I always seem to get the girls when the other guys in my group are trying REEEEEEEEAAAAAAAALLLLLLLYYYYYYYY hard, and the girls just fall into my lap. If i go out on the pull, i always come back disappointed, but if i go out for a dance, i always end up with at least one girl.

And our 38th Century Kid, in terms of occupying myself, I've actually started writing a book. It isn't exactly a literary masterpiece, but it certainly takes my mind of everything else for a few hours at a time. Some of my friends have told me that they want me to finish it, so they can see how it turns out. I think this might be a good sign.

Anyway. I think I've said enough, especially considering I've had nine pints of Blackthorn in the last five hours, and god knows how much else in the fours hours before that. I honestly can't remember what i started on. Please, if any of you take any advice from this thread, take this one single line: "Don't drink this much. It's pointless, expensive, and stupid."

Tryphena Absent

22:46 / 09.01.04

I think when we feel a severe emotional change we look for a way to express it on the outside and that's why so many people cut their hair when everything collapses for them.

03:08 / 10.01.04

Does anyone else get that thing where you think you want to shag someone but actually you really want to be them?

all the godamn time.
made me wonder if i was gay or maybe just a transgendered some sorta summmink trapped in a large man's body; too large for fake tits and a wiggle.
i think i just really, really want to be a girl, but from birth. y'know, so i can do it convincingly and maybe get a better shake of the gene bag.

i do still try my hardest to be the best damn lesbian i can, just in case i find a genie.

14:53 / 10.01.04

Yesterday, just before my break I was wondering what I should do- bored of random wanderings.

So I walked into a mens barbers (pretty intimidating, even though there were only 2 guys in it), and said to the girl, "I've got half an hour- can you cut all my hair off for me?" She looked like she was about to run away, I think her hands were a little shaky doing it. So I have a number 8 on top (an inch), and 4 on the sides. And I feel fabulous for it; not shaking my head and getting a messy ginger mop in my eyes. Didnt think I owned as much hair as fell on the barbers floor. Like an evaporated cat or something.