Boyfriend Chronicles, Part III

After the Honorable Mentions, I went through the rest of high school with the company of my close knit girl friend group. We had so much fun, but the time came where we graduated and went on to bigger and better things. I went away to school, but not too far away, and made some new friends that went on to be another close knit group through most of college.  Anyway, the summer after my freshman year, I came home.  A couple of the girls in my group were part of a swing dancing club and invited the rest of us to join.  A few of us did and that's where I met B3.  The first time we all saw him, he was wearing a sweatband around his forehead looking incredibly geeky.  He was a very nice guy and a great dance partner, but we all giggled about the sweatband when we'd be sitting on the sides like wallflowers until someone asked us to dance.  It was a great summer filled with lots of dancing and new friends.

Somewhere in the middle was when I really started talking with B3 and got to know him better.  He was in his mid-20s when I was 19, which was so weird to me at the time because we were in two totally different stages of life at the time.  He was working on his Masters after achieving a double Bachelors degree in Music and Computer Science and I was only one year into my Bachelors degree.  Oh yeah, this guy was in Mensa, which my nerdy side thought was cool.  I found that out because one of my girl friends had found his website which had his resume, interests, etc.  I studied this thing and would occasionally drop bits and pieces of it into conversation, which seemed to dazzle this guy.  I mean, I mentioned LaTex code for crying out loud.  That's a nerd's dream to hear a girl talk about it!  Then one night at a swing dance function, he gave me his number because I mentioned I was throwing a party and he should come.  After the party, we went on a date and the rest was history.

We had a lot of fun going places and swing dancing.  It was so nice to always have a dance party at the functions and it was also nice to be able to trust your partner not to throw you around the floor.  Going over to his place was always strange because he shared a small apartment with his mom, whom he was extremely close to.  B3 and I were together for around 3 months.  We tried to do the long distance thing and he even made the 3 hour drive to come see me one night because I mentioned I was going to have dinner by myself and was lonely.  We stayed up all night wandering around campus because I couldn't bring a guy back to my dorm.  

After a month or so of trying to make a long distance relationship work, I realized something about us that I hadn't noticed while I was at home: he was kind of needy.  Also, remember that whole being in two totally different stages of life thing?  Yeah, it wasn't working out because he was ready to move forward with his life while I was experiencing my college years at 19.  I was definitely not wanting to settle down then.  So one day he called me saying that he felt like something was wrong.  I laid it out for him and said I thought we should break up.  He was pretty emotional about it and said, "Well, I need to go clean up before I go present at this meeting."  I felt like a jerk because he was about to present some research findings to his Masters committee and was all red from crying and upset that his girlfriend has just dumped him from 200 miles away.  There's never a right time to do these things, but man did I have impeccable timing...

We saw each other a few times afterward and I tried to salvage a friendship and I thought it was going to be okay, but I think he didn't want to see me anymore.  He got a girlfriend a while later that he's still with now and seems to be incredibly happy.  I said hey to him a couple of times when I'd see them and he would act cold and distant, so I just decided to quit altogether.  He's got the right to not want to be friendly.  I still feel bad about the whole situation because he was a really nice guy and a great boyfriend, but he just wasn't for me.  I knew he'd find the perfect girl for him one day and make her extraordinarily happy.

Lessons learned:

1. Be wary of guys who cut their ex-girlfriends out of pictures when you want to see old pictures of them.  It might show they have some emotional issues with getting over things.
   
2. An older guy still living with his mother is not always a bad thing.  Just double check.  (See: Norman Bates)
   
3. Don't lie about your interests.  While I never exactly said that I enjoyed some of the things he did, I didn't say I didn't.  I just alluded to knowledge I didn't have.