accidental bad boyfriend

i was bored...lol =]

I don't like bad boys. I like boys who are nice and I generally view girls who go after bad boys as having low self esteem and/or stupid. But I'm not stupid and my self-esteem has always kind of sucked but it's not so bad that I voluntarily choose to go out with a guy who cheats on me, is physically violent or acts like a total d****e. So how did I end up with a bad boy? A really bad bad boy? I don't know.

I met Brett at a house party sophomore year of college. I heard Black Sabbath coming from the basement, and there he was, playing drums. He wasn't super handsome --long ratty hair, skinny build and a nose that looked like it belonged on a Muppet. His playing was what did it. Ridiculously fast. Unnecessarily loud. He played like he was playing to a stadium of thousands. When the band finished there were splinters from his drumsticks and little broken pieces of cymbal all over the floor. I picked one up and put it in my pocket.

 

We never officially started dating; he just started spending more and more time in my room. Eventually my foreign exchange student roommate decided she had enough of the kissyface routine and moved out. I came home to a dorm room half-empty of furniture. "I wish Brett stop visit late night," said the note. I found out through the housing department that she moved in with a girl from her home country.

I never got a replacement roommate, which of course helped accelerate the relationship. By the second month we were playing the college version of shacking up--not a good idea. I had just ended it with my high school boyfriend and taking a breather of longer than, say 72 hours, might have been healthier for my emotional development and well-being.

From the moment I met Brett I had doubts. He was socially awkward, always in trouble with his R.A. and flunking all his non-music courses. I couldn't imagine telling my parents about him, which was saying a lot. I have the world's most liberal dad and mom.

 

 

Brett's uniqueness was a big part of what cemented my initial attraction into love. Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone's unique in college. But I'm not talking about doing a term paper on the similarities between hashish and hash browns or getting a hole put through a body part.

Brett was afraid of nothing and no one and his favorite thing to do was embarrass himself. He'd tuck a long streamer of toilet paper into the waistband of his jeans and stroll through the cafeteria looking like he'd just taken a dump.

He'd smear his dessert all over his face in the middle of a fancy restaurant, just to make me giggle. Most people would wipe it off when the waiter comes but Brett would leave it on while we paid the check and walked out the door. My sense of humor is chronologically somewhere between a three or a four year old's so I felt like he had been sent to me by God, the one that likes whoopee cushions and wears a big rubber nose.

 

 

At the same time, Brett was crazy shy and insecure. He was always paranoid that our friends didn't like him and wanted to be at my side 24/7, even when I explained over and over again that I needed to study.

He would never directly say he didn't want me to go out with my friends, but afterwards he'd be pissy for hours. He teased me about my big vocabulary and implied that I was stuck up. Yes, stuck up. The girl who laughs whenever you say the word "doody." He'd usually say he was only kidding. But, like my grandma says, "There's an ounce of truth in every joke." (We should all listen to our grandmas. They're smart ladies who know about stuff.)

 

Then began a pattern of fights. Brett would do something uncool and hurtful, like be mean to my best friend or imply that I was cheating on him. I would get angry and he would apologize, often bearing flowers and stuffed monkeys (some girls like teddy bears; I like primates). I would forgive him, he would promise to change and the whole cycle would reset itself. "I'm sorry baby, now here's a present." How cliche can you possibly get? Textbook abusive pattern, ripped straight from a Lifetime TV movie, only I was too caught up in the situation to notice.

That's not to say I was perfect and never did anything wrong. While he was slamming doors and yelling, I was yelling right back. I got irritable for no reason, was jealous of other girls and wasn't Ms. Super Well Adjusted myself. But generally speaking, I knew the difference between right and wrong, healthy and unhealthy behavior. I would deal with a fight by staying up late and listening to Slayer or Tori. He would use it as an excuse to drink a fifth of Jack Daniels and call me from a payphone in the alley where he was throwing up.

 

 

Either Brett was never taught the skills essential to managing his emotions or he didn't care about using them. I don't know. Whatever it was, I knew that our constant arguing had alienated me from my friends and made us the Bobby and Whitney laughingstock of our dorm.

His drinking, which was always pretty heavy, had gotten worse. If you've never experienced them, 3:00 a.m. calls where someone yells at you for 45 minutes and then cries and tells you he'll kill himself if you ever leave are pretty wearing on the psyche. Even though I loved him, I recognized that he was deeply flawed and I was never going to be able to fix what was wrong. He came over after a gig one night and I told him it was over.

 

That's when the real bad boy stuff started. Zillions of phone calls, visits at my work, relentless knocks on my dorm room door. His grand finale was a suicide attempt, after which I made the ultimate folly of getting back together with him several months later. (Brilliant, I know.) The only excuse I can give is that I felt tremendously responsible for what he did and my self-esteem had been worn down to a bloody nub.

I kept going back to the night I saw him in the emergency room with an IV in his arm. The doctor told him he wasn't supposed to be talking, but Brett still managed to squeak out, "This is your fault." I had never felt so sick to my stomach.

 

It took several more months for me to return to sanity and dump Brett for good. I ceased all contact and heard later through friends of friends that he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic bi-polar. The police picked him up one February night, half naked and wandering around in the snow outside our dorm.

You don't tell a story like this without having some kind of moral, right? OK, here it is, and it has two parts...

 

The first part:
Even smart people who think they have it together can become involved in a bad boy/bad girl relationship. I used to not understand how someone could get herself involved with someone so obviously unhealthy, or choose to stick around once the situation goes south. But the whole business with Brett came up on me gradually. It wasn't like he was a jerk right out of the gate. When you experience certain things day in, day out, they start to seem normal, no matter how abnormal they are.

I reacted to Brett's little sideways insults with anger at first. He would always tell me I was overreacting and after a while I kinda convinced myself that I was. Same with his drinking. Two 40's on a school night might seem excessive to most people, but I knew that on weekends Brett usually drank three or four and so I was glad that he was toning it down. The person in the bad boy/bad girl relationship may not be viewing their partner through the same filter you are.

 

 

The second part:
Even though they may be thought of as a victim, and that's 90% true because for most purposes they are, the person in the bad boy/bad girl relationship is also getting something from that relationship.

Maybe it's excitement where they had none, sympathy from their friends or another person (e.g., the bad boy/bad girl) providing confirmation of the awful person they already believe they are. Sometimes it's good to feel bad and easier to be unhappy than happy. I grew up in a household where constant fights were the norm and being with Brett helped recreate what I was no longer getting now that I was living away at school. (I probably should have gone for care packages and cookies instead, huh?) Anyway, it's up to the person in the relationship to decide whether the benefit they're getting is worth it, and for most people that answer is no.

 

I can't say I haven't dated a few more bad boys since then, because I have. But the relationships have been much shorter and the outcomes much less dramatic (not hard, since most breakups don't end in a visit to the ER).

I've been more careful about recognizing the bad boy signs and either fixing the relationship or bringing it to a faster end. When choosing dates, I try to go for compatibility over intrigue, stability over drama; even if the reality is that it's a teeny bit more boring sometimes.

The good news is that the guys themselves are not. Bad boys can always be counted on for certain adjectives: insecure, critical, moody, arrogant. Those never change. Nice guys with a tiny bit of bad boy (like, 5%), expressed in healthy ways (radical politics, comedy, outsider art) are always full of happy surprises.

  ♥THE END♥

Author's Note

i was bored =] ♥

Reviews

[Wolfwind Words]

That was amazing! That's the type of guidence writing and true life tale, that every kid in highschool should have to read!
I've never read something so true to life and spot on with the observational and sociological concepts.

A much enjoyable read!

Keep up your bored moments! You're a Genius!

Aaron Maycroft

[Courtney Rose]

i dont know why im putting a review on my own story but ever since i wrote this i keep reading it over and over and thinking, "I wrote that?.....how did i become so good at this?" lol XD

[NCPanthersgurl]

Hmm. You should try and get this put in one of those like school journal/magazine things. It's really good advice for teens and kids as they grow up.

I loved this: "some girls like teddy bears; I like primates" haha

[alternative_be]

Well, maybe you were bored while writing this, but what you are writing is anything but boring! It is a very accurate description of a relationship slowly turning abusive. Yet the one in the relationship does not always reads the signs for they become used to the patterns which make their norms and values slowly change... The thing is, when you are in this kind of relationship and the patterns turn into a vicious circle, this always happens in such a sneaky way that you only acknowledge what happened in hindsight.
As a counselor I recognize all of the patterns you are describing, but the character in your story (you?) is strong enough to snap out of it all.
Yes this story could be used as reading material in schools or in sociology or social work classes.
About your use of fonts: I found this very creative and it drew my attention to certain parts of your story, more than to others and if that was your intention, you have succeeded perfectly!
Keep on writing!