Rain Part Deux
I eventually got used to the Frenchkissing.
But the thing about kissing that way is, once you started doing that, eventually it has to lead to something more. Your partner looks forward to covering the rest of the bases and wants to accomplish that soon. A day before I was about to fly home for semestral break, Rain and I went to watch a movie. As we kissed in the dark, he started putting his hands around my face. Eventually, he started kissing my earlobe and neck region and when his hand started going lower, aiming for my breasts, I finally panicked and grabbed his hand to stop him.
Repeatedly. As one failed attempt just made him want to do another.
And another.
And still another.
While I continually refused to let him.
It got to a point that I didn’t want him to even kiss me anymore, because it will only give him an opportunity to try to attempt to put his hand inside my shirt again. But I never got mad at him, just kept stopping him whenever he tried to cop a feel. When we left the moviehouse, it was as if nothing out of the ordinary happened and we did not even discuss the incident except for his passing comment that he was sleepy and that next time, we should sleep together in a place somewhere in Sta. Mesa. I mumbled yes, not really thinking much about it, assuming that sleeping together meant relaxing and simply talking with each other while resting our weary backs in a bed until we actually literally fall asleep, and I was completely unaware then that Sta. Mesa was filled with a lot of cheap motels that offered plenty of short-time bargains.
As I went through my vacation, I pondered how I was going to approach my situation with Rain. I was curious, yes, but I wasn’t ready for all that touching the breasts kind of thing. He was just going too fast for me, who hasn’t had much experience in this field. I was hoping we wouldn’t get to the touching of erogenous zones until after two to three months of us dating but clearly, this wasn’t going to be the case with Rain. Plus, I didn’t really love him enough for me to actually want to do these things with him. I needed a certain level of comfort to be able to even consider doing these things with a guy and I certainly wasn’t feeling it with him. Until finally, I realized that the best way for me to get out of this situation was to break up with him.
When I got back to the big city, I started being cold and I refused to take his calls. When he finally cornered me at home one Sunday evening, I didn’t even want to prolong the agony with useless chit-chat.
“Hey, I’ve been calling you up again and again. Why didn’t you return my calls?”
“I’ve been busy, Rain.”
“So, how have you been? I missed you, you know. Are we still on for mass tonight?”
“Listen, Rain, we need to break up.”
“What?”
“I’ve realized that I never really loved you in the first place.”
I think his jaw must have done some major dropping. His eyes looked slightly red. I don’t know if it was from holding back tears or from smoking pot (my cousins suspected that he probably smoked pot considering that his eyes looked partially shot most of the time and he lived in the next street from ours, where a lot of drug addicts apparently took residence).
He finally stood up from his seat. “So this is it then?”
“Yes.”
I really didn’t know of any comforting words to say to him. Plus I didn’t want to. I just wanted to get out of the relationship and get a clean break from him. The truth is, that was one of the most difficult things I had to do – to be heartless and a complete bitch to a guy who thought I was inlove with him. I’ve always been a nice girl, peace-loving, non-confrontational. Much as I might have toyed with Rain’s feelings a bit, making him think that I was inlove with him this whole time, I could have been nicer to him during the break-up. But I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea that there could still be any chance if he actually begged me. I seriously just wanted him to get out of my life so I can finally move on.
“Okay, goodbye then.”
“Goodbye.”
I called for him as he was about to walk out of the door. “Rain, I’m really sorry.”
He shrugged. “If that’s what you want, I respect that.”
I could only heave a huge sigh of relief as I watched the distance between us grow bigger and bigger.
Until I couldn’t see him anymore at all.
The Dating Saga of The Filipina Mistress
I spent a good majority of my growing-up days dating, or at least, wanting to date.
Growing up as the eldest among four siblings and brought up by academically-driven parents, I wasn’t allowed to be exposed to a lot of the teenage drama and the experiences that was expected for teenagers to go through at that time of their life. My parents weren’t really strict. I was allowed to go on school outings and supervised overnights unlike some of my less unfortunate friends. My parents were just somewhat conservative and goal-oriented, believing that boys would totally make me lose my focus from my education. I wasn’t really allowed to date and my parents wanted me to get a boyfriend only after I graduate from college. That didn’t stop me, of course, for I had my first date with one of my highschool classmates by the age of 15.
I got curious about boys at an early age and was envious of highschool classmates who find themselves in the throes of their first boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. When I left home to study college at the big city, I finally escaped the clutches of my parents’ supervision. As I went into my 2nd year of college, I watched my fellow classmates falling inlove with boys and venturing into territory that I’ve always wondered about. I was jealous. I kept thinking, What the hell do they have that they actually find themselves a man and I don’t? I am so much more prettier than them! So, when a guy I barely knew started showing some interest, I reeled him in with my feminine wiles and in less than a week, I finally got myself my very first boyfriend at the age of 17.
I was born a Roman Catholic and lived majority of my academic life in Catholic schools. Thus, it was a given that I imbibe the same Christian values that Christianity preached: masturbation is a sin, oral contraceptives are bad, and premarital sex is a no-no. Because I lived in an era that was slowly embracing the Western culture, expanding my horizons and gradually evolving me into the inquisitive open-minded woman that I now am, my religious values did not stop me from forsaking my morals and I lost my virginity at the age of 21.
I met my Mr. Almost in the form of Rockstar at the age of 21. After a particularly long and tumultuous relationship, I got engaged at the age of 24. Few months later, I got “dis-engaged.” I have been in and out of serious and not-so-serious relationships eversince as I continually search among the Mr. Wrongs for another Mr. Almost to become the one perfect Mr. Right. Because I’ve been to places and situations that most Filipina girls my age would probably have not gone, I have learned valuable dating lessons and experiences that opened my eyes about the opposite sex, which most Filipina women probably don’t know about. As such, I have developed more open-minded views and less-idealistic opinions than most of my friends, which prompted them to start calling me “The Master” or rather, the more politically-correct “The Mistress.” They have watched me flirt my way through certain situations, noted the succession of men who have gone in and out of my life, witnessed the hook-ups and break-ups, while I still maintained the same sunny disposition regarding love, continually believing that the right one for me is still somewhere out there, I just have to wait for him.
I’m not saying I’m a flirt. In fact, I’m rather a quiet and very reserved person.
I’m not saying that I’m promiscuous. In fact, I can still count the number of people I’ve slept with on my fingers.
And no guy will ever be worthy enough for me to stop being monogamous to my partner when I am in a serious relationship.
It’s just that I’m willing to immerse myself into the dating scene and check out what’s there. It’s just that I know I should not settle for what’s right there in front of me when I know I deserve so much more. It’s just that I know I’m meant for someone better who will show me true happiness and not just delude me into some fantasy of unrequited love or half-baked promises.
So, if I have to kiss a lot of frogs to find my Prince Charming, then I would.
Besides, who says dating isn’t fun anyway?
The Man Who Broke Me
I once had that someone and his name was DevilIncarnate.
Okay, kidding.
I call him Rockstar.
Rockstar was 23 years old, a year older than I was when we first met. He wasn’t that tall but he was well-built, a very talented guitar player who was the youngest in his family. We met at a rehabilitation center where we both volunteering. He wasn’t flirty at first, probably because I still had a boyfriend, albeit long-distance, when we first met. But when I announced that I had finally broken up with that boyfriend, Rockstar usurped on the first good opportunity that he saw. I needed help purchasing a certain DVD for my friend’s bachelorette party and he offered to accompany me. So he picked me up at home and together, we flogged down our embarassment (okay, we were trying to get some porn for the party) and was able to get ourselves some Class A hard-core porn through some local travelling salesmen who sell pirated DVDs. We started texting each other after that, talking more on the phone and before the month ended, he and I were a couple.
It was really fun at first. Despite him being wise in the ways of casual dating, I was his first serious girlfriend so I trained him on the ways of a true boyfriend-girlfriend relationship – the holding hands, the proper positioning of the body when sitting together, the naughty play of words, the expected and unexpected kisses. He was a quick study and soon he was showing me romantic places to dine in, inviting me to lunch with his family, showering me with flowers just because, hanging out at his house after my class, bringing me food at every opportunity. He loved me and never tired of telling me that he was incredibly lucky to have me. He made feel so adored with such fervor that at times I felt that he was choking me with his affection. I found myself wanting to break free, unable to cope up with his expectations, disappointing him so many times for simply being who I am until I started to lose sight of who I am and became forcibly molded into who he thinks I should be.
And oh, how I rebelled.
I started telling male friends whom I just recently met that I was single. I started sneaking out to meet my friends from school without telling him. I started to learn how to drink, to smoke again, to do the things I knew I wanted to experience while was still in my youth. Almost everything he had forbidden me to do, I did. He hated my friends so I snuck out to meet with them. He was jealous of my male bestfriends from highschool and forbid me to stay in touch with them, so I continued texting with them behind his back. But at the end of the day, after a thousand angry text messages and fights over the phone, I feel overcome by guilt and remember that he loved me so much. So I ended up with my tail between my legs, confessing everything to him and vowing never to do it again.
Until the next opportunity came and I once again succumb to it.
If I might have come across as a bad girlfriend, you’re wrong. I swear that I wasn’t. I really did my best to be the person he wanted me to be, to the point that I no longer had any close friends to talk to except for him. I was pulling myself away from my bestfriends and my family and I was so miserable that I tried to drown that mysery with the next closest thing: food. I gained so much weight that I eventually lost my self-confidence, started believing that he is the only person who will ever love me now, began missing a lot of the things that were happening around me, yearning for the opportunity to be who I really am, became desperate for more attention and spiraled more into depression.
And we fought a lot.
I tried to be that woman, but I failed miserably.
He must have been miserable too because he cheated, not once, not twice, but thrice if my memory was right. Our first month together, he slept with a hooker. I forgave him, thinking, I can’t really blame him since he wasn’t getting any from me then. A few months later, he started courting some girl who worked in the same hospital that we were both volunteering in. The girl turned him down so that didn’t progress the way he would have wanted to. His frequent excuse was that I made him so mad because of the things that I did despite him forbidding me that it forces him to cheat with other women just to get back at me. He made me feel like it was my fault, so once again, I forgave him. I can’t remember the rest of the girls he cheated with, except for one, which I will talk about much later in this post.
In my heart, I knew my parents will never agree to my marrying at such an early age, especially when I wasn’t even halfway to finishing medical school. I knew them well enough to know that there is no chance in hell that they will actually say yes. In my heart, I secretly hoped that they wouldn’t agree to it. It was my way out of the engagement. I was a coward, yes, but I needed them to tell him so I didn’t have to be the one who will hurt his feelings.
My parents certainly did not disappoint.
The summer wedding was cancelled. And I was free. For the meantime.
Until he told me about the younger girl he had been seeing, a minor, whom he had been sleeping with behind my back for the past two months.
It was the last straw that finally broke me.
The thing is, if you betray me as a boyfriend, I can understand that, because I might have pushed you to do so being the not so perfect girlfriend. But if you betray me as a friend, then I can’t forgive you. The past two weeks after we broke up, he continued flirting with me, messing my mind up that I didn’t even give myself the chance to mourn for the 2 ½ years that we have been together and had now lost. He made me believe that there was still a chance that we might get back together soon. I agreed to be friends with him even if I didn’t really think it was healthy for both of us. I never asked him for anything except for the promise that we would tell each other once we started seeing other people, so that the other person can move on.
He betrayed that trust, in so many ways imaginable, and I hated him so much.
I barraged him with e-mails of hate and desperation. I even barraged the other girl’s Friendster with scornful messages. Rockstar always brought out the worst in me, and he was still doing it, even after we had broken up. He begins threatening me that he’ll sue me for the hateful e-mails. I didn’t care. I wanted them to feel as miserable as I did. I didn’t want to be the only one feeling the pain.
I wanted to bring them down with me.
It took me two weeks before I stopped crying in my bedroom and burying my sobs among the pillows. It took several months before I could say that I was finally okay. Longer still for me to want to go into another serious relationship again. Rockstar and I never crossed paths again, at least, not face to face, although there were times when I saw him around town. He has a 3-year-old child now with the same girl, but they never married and he was still jobless apparently.
When it comes to my views regarding love, I was never the same person after that. I had become jaded, a little hardened, wiser (if I say so myself) but so much stronger.
I don’t regret ever having met him. I would like to think, if not him, I was bound to meet someone like him in my life anyway. I do hope that he had forgiven me, for I have long forgiven him. For now, I simply choke it all up to experience, just a part of what made me who I am now.
What to Expect After A Break-Up
My latest obsession is blogging. I have been writing for three years now through another blog as (*bleep,* name withheld) but friends, ex-boyfriends, guys I’ve dated and doctors I’ve worked with know me through that site and sometimes, there are just things I want to rant about but can’t because:
a) I don’t want to hurt their feelings
b) I don’t want them to have a bad impression of me
c) I would like to think that I am different from most girls I knew.
As a result, I have decided to start this blog, in the hopes of getting my well-needed time to detoxify myself and simply lose myself with bloggers amongst the world wide web.
Minus the guilt. The fear. And all the crap that goes with it.
On that note, I have been happily reading through other blogs (see bloglist) and have found a lot of useful material for my own blog. Take for example, Dating Dummy who once referenced an article from Men’s Health regarding break-ups.
WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER A BREAK-UP
1 day after (the protest stage):
He is more likely to funnel negative emotions into physical aggression. She cries her eyes out.
1 week after (the obsession stage):
He broods and tries to recover by doing things with peers, not by talking it out. She justifies, settling in with friends, relying on their close social network to talk about their breakups. All of the guy’s flaws are exposed and talked about. This is how her friends will see you from now on. Expect icy glares and cold shoulders.
1 month after (worst is over stage):
Interestingly, this part says that the dumpee recovers and is generally as mentally happy as they were when they were in the relationship. He ends up trying to pursue his ex at least once. She blames herself and misses the guy. Keeping one’s distance is highly recommended.
6 months (acceptance stage):
You realize you’ve hit acceptance when you go a whole week not thinking of the other person. He returns to a state of equilibrium and becomes emotionally available again to date. She seeks closure.
I on the other hand, have a somewhat similar coping mechanism after a break-up. I give myself two weeks to cry (I usually don’t last two weeks, more like one week of bawling and one week of looking teary-eyed) and then, 1 month for all the depression drama: the constant looking at your cellphone every 5 seconds or so, the wishing it was him everytime the phone rings, the frequent checking people out in crowds hoping you’ll accidentally bump into him, etc). And then, I am ready to move on.
— For my good friend, JaneDoe.
Butterflies In Your Stomach Times One Hundred
The first time I fell truly inlove was with my 2nd boyfriend. I was 18, he was 15. I met him while I was in my 1st year of college, living with my cousins who were all male and he, a friend of theirs who frequently hanged out with them, lived next door.
I call him, YoungerGuy.
YoungerGuy was tall, lanky, neat-looking and he knew how to dress well. The courtship between YoungerGuy and me was long and tortuous. One day, he’d be showing up at our house, watch TV with me and my cousins at the den, and the next day, he was a no-show. I knew he was interested – I would frequently catch him looking at me – but my cousin’s teasings did not give him enough confidence to approach me. I, having been brought up conservatively, like in the 1960’s (LOL. Just kidding!) was thought never to initiate anything with a guy until he lays all his cards out. Since I wasn’t wise on the ways of flirting back then, I made no such move to show him that I too was interested, despite the fact that I was harboring a huge crush on him already. I would sketch him from my favorite window corner as he messed around with the kids from the neighborhood or played basketball with my cousins. I pretended not to see him when he was around, paid him no special attention, was awkward and quiet whenever we would cross paths. He occasionally invited me to church and I occasionally went with him. I was impatient back then, eager to experience having my first boyfriend, since all my friends were starting to have theirs, leaving me alone in my blessed singleness. Seeing that he wasn’t moving fast enough for me, I took a step back from the developments that were going on between the two of us and I got myself a boyfriend my cousins did not approve of, while all the while we continued playing the innocent game of innocently trying to catch each other’s eye.
After a month I realized that first boyfriend was a mistake and I broke up with him. That finally gave YoungerGuy the encouragement he needed and he finally stepped up, telling me his intentions and requesting to be the 18th rose on my debutante’s party. A week after, while riding the taxicab together at the backseat, as we shyly scribbled notes to each other to avoid being heard by my cousin who was sitting at the front seat, we decided to go steady.
And thus started the drama of my very first love.
The thing about first loves is that none of your other relationships will ever come close to the gamut of feelings that it brings out in you. It’s the butterflies in your stomach, multiplied a hundred times. It will always be the most magical kind of love that one will ever experience in his/her entire life. The first love is the kind of love when you were still innocent about the flirting rules, when no hint of jadedness from past relationships will mar the way you see that blossoming love. At that time, I was simply the naïve little girl who believed that the love we had will last forever and I blatantly held on to those ideals, thinking that nothing will ever tear us apart.
We found joy in doing the most simplest of things: cheering him on during his basketball games, writing each other poetry, watching a movie, reading each other’s journals, making out in the dark and quickly separating as soon as we hear footsteps going down the stairs. It was a heavenly time in my life and he was the reason for it.
Oh, we had our silly arguments, mostly regarding my lack of affection. He wanted me to be more touchy-feely, to show more vulnerability, and I was frequently torn between having to live up to his expectations from me and having to follow the rules of appropriateness as taught to teenage girls by academically-driven strict parents. I wasn’t ready to show him who I really am, still afraid to be that vulnerable with him and neither was he settling for less than what he believed a real boyfriend-girlfriend relationship should have. Still, somehow, we found a way to compromise and for almost two years, it was just pure bliss.
Until time caught up with us.
By the time he entered his 1st year in college, things gradually changed. He was slowly starting to realize that he was too young to be in a committed relationship and he didn’t want his first girlfriend to be his last. I sensed that, refused to acknowledge it at first, and we started fighting a lot about the most stupid things until finally, I realized, I had no right to hold him back. So we finally broke up.
I cried for a day. Vowed never to fall inlove again. Hated him for a week. Miserably waited for him to realize that he had made a mistake for a month. Mourned for the love that I lost for for months. I passed through all the stages of bereavement: denial, anger, bargaining, until finally, acceptance. I began to be at peace with the fact that we just weren’t meant to be. And a year or so later, I finally fell inlove again with someone else.
It’s been 8 years since the break-up. YoungerGuy and I have remained good friends. He’s still single, has a 4-year-old son now and is currently working at a call center. Yes, when we occasionally catch each other on-line and send messages through Friendster, I still feel some sort of attraction. The butterflies will always be there. There are times that I still find myself wondering about what could have been. But in all honesty, I am genuinely glad that we broke up. Back then, our young naive hearts fooled us into believing that we will love each other forever. I now know that our relationship was just not meant to last that long. We were still so young and we both had a lot of growing up to do. When you fall inlove at a young age and meet that person you think you want to spend the rest of your life with, you will always have those doubts that maybe, just maybe, there is still someone better out there. But you try to pretend those thoughts do not exist, only to let the nagging question haunt you.
“Is this as good as it gets?”
Breaking up gave us the opportunity to find out the answer ourselves. The only way to make that question stop haunting you is to risk everything, go out there and find out yourself. I met other guys, some better than him, a few I fell for even harder than I did before and I’m sure he probably met his share of women as well. I’m still nowhere near finding the answer, but in my quest, I have met some who came close. So, for now, my answer to this question is:
“No, not yet, but maybe someday soon.”
— Inspired by The Dating Dummy’s “My Apologies for the Rather Lengthy Radio Silence”
