Commitment.
It's the one word that can strike fear in the hearts of men and romance in the hearts of women. I've watched countless couples battle through the "where are we goin?" phase of their relationships, and not one instance has propogated the same results. The most interesting relationships I have watched are those that do not have an end. The couple who breaks up but continues to talk, let alone mess around. Commitment and relationship lines get blurred and hearts get taken along for the ride.
I have a friend, we'll call him K Fed. No, this is not Britney's K Fed, nor is it in tribute to him. The name sums up his situation so perfectly, there is simply no other that applies. K Fed has quite the history. He has spent most of his life struggling with drug addictions to everything from pain pills to heroin and back again. After two stints in rehab centers, one that he was actually forced to stay in twice as long as the facility generally allowed, he found that his addiction was not cured. Each time he was released, he would spend the next week hustling money and drugs, getting high for days at a time. He has said to me that rehab is only as successful as you make it. Look at Lindsay Lohan: as many times as she has been admitted, days after exiting the center she is right back where she started. One can only be affected by treatment if one accepts it as their truth. It's a perfect example of mind over matter, you can only stop doing drugs (or smoking ciggarettes for that matter) if you truly want to.
That part of the story is merely the background necessary to understand everything else. K Fed was in a relationship with a girl he grew up with for six years before he went into rehab. She was the one who pushed him to go. She was the one that he would come home to, wasted beyond belief, and she would take care of him. He cheated on her more times that he can even remember, and she still loved him, still took him in. After he checked into the facility, however, she stopped talking to him. Six years of their lives spent together, and she didn't talk to him for six months. He told me that after he was released from the three month program, he moved to another city and got a job working construction. At work one day, driving the Bob Cat, he looks down at his ringing phone and it's her calling.
By this time, K Fed, ever the womanizer, had "moved on." He met a beautiful Russian on a student visa and they had been dating for a few weeks. He neglects to tell his ex-girlfriend this and continues to talk to her all the while. He and the Russian get married after a year of being together. On the night they are to fly to Russia to meet her family, K Fed arranges to meet with his ex, telling her he loves her and wants to be with her. They have sex and he finally tells her about his wife and that he's leaving for Russia in an hour.
K Fed comes back to the states and gets into more drug trouble, is checked into a rehab program so strict that he has to repeat it before being officially released. He tells me that they only graduated him because he was causing more trouble than he was worth. The same thing happens when K Fed is released, only this time his mother catches on to what he is doing. He is still married, only his wife is over in Russia now. Her student visa expired and she is finishing school there. So, his mother talks to his father, whom she has been devorced from for several years, and they decide that it would be best for K Fed to live with his father in Kansas for some time. K Fed gets shipped to Wichita, happens to get a job where I work, and voila! I meet the most interesting individual to have crossed my path.
We become close friends at work because of similar personalities and senses of humor. That is, until he starts messing around with a seventeen year old who works with us as well. K Fed is twenty four, by the way. This girl knows that he is married, yet she "agrees" (if that's how you say it) to have an affair with him. Months go by and she's asked him to be her boyfriend, to stop talking to me, to move into an apartment with her, and to get her pregnant. I always ask him if he has forgotten that he's married to a woman halfway across the world. His response? "I love my wife, but I love my girlfriend too."
One day he's all about her, the next he's all about his ex (who is still talks to everyday, not to mention tells her he loves her), and the next day he's all about his wife. In his defense, he has told his wife that he has cheated on her and that he wants a divorce. Her response? "No, baby, I love you and I still want to be with you." Oh, and his ex says the same thing. All I've told K Fed is that he has no idea what he wants and that he needs to figure it out soon before he has a wife, an ex, AND a baby's momma.
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His story makes me wonder how many others are in the same, or similar, situations. To have that much drama going on at all times would drive me crazy. He tells me that it has been a constant in his life for so many years that he can't imagine life without it. Having written it all down, it appears even more ridiculous than I thought...
My ultimate goal of this post is to learn. I am fascinated by why people make the decisions they do. If you are living this life, have been here, know someone who has, or know how they resolved their issues, say something. I only wish to understand.
relationships are, i have never been in one, sometimes i want to be in one, sometimes i thank god that i am not in one. but i have liked someone for an extremely long time well lets say i was once 8 and now i am twenty and that person and i are still just friends and it sort of sucks to see him and feel like i should just tell him and share and mayube either end my misery or have a beautiful new beginning
besides that, relationships can get very tense and emotional and they aren't something an outsider cna understand unless you are a party involved
thanks for sharing, i'll comment back when i have more to say
"Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right."
I am extremely introverted; very very much so. I have few friends, and I speak only a hundred or so words a day. I spend most of my time listening and writing--it's just my personality. I write differently than I speak.
I had just graduated high school. I was going college, commuting of course because I am too poor and my credit is too bad to do otherwise. I was extremely lonely and unhappy.
I got on a social site. I found a friend who I thought was hilarious. He and I would text each other constantly for months. It was a blast. Then we spoke on the phone. He was a scream. I couldn't get enough of his jokes.
Then...We started talking more seriously. I was attracted to what I saw in his messages he sent me, picture and text. I thought--how could it hurt. I went on a road-trip (told my parents I was going to visit my sister who lives far away).
I drove from Indiana to North Carolina to meet this guy. We spent the weekend together on the beach. We swam nude in the ocean-- and we (I as you will find out) fell in love.
After my first semester; I moved in with him in North Carolina. I was 18 at the time. The first month was ok. I began to notice things...that were different. I would spend entire days and nights alone. I would sit in the dark...crying. I was more lonely than I been before. He was always with his phone. He was always online. He began to like me less and less. I lost weight. I lost 40 pounds, I was emaciated. It was all I could do to climb stairs. I began to buy sedatives and weed from my co-workers to have something to help my nights alone. He wouldn't let me be friends with anyone; he would call them and tell them I didn't like them. He wouldn't listen to me. While he was taking a shower, I looked at his phone. I was terrified of him. He was my only friend, and he was so stern with me. Naked pictures of other girls. He told me I was the only one. Texts of the plans he had made on my birthday with a gorgeous girl, the my 19th birthday I spent alone in the dark, needle in my arm.
I then waited for a chance to see his laptop. I used his password (i knew his social # and everything). I saw everything burst wide open. The sheer amount of girls he had come visit him, from as far as california. I saw his plans to get me to leave "as soon as he can" so some other girl can move in.
I lost my virginity to this man. It was painful and sad, and I never enjoyed it. I'm still afriad to get myself tested. I fear the results.
There were so many girls. I confronted him; and he collapsed onto the floor crying. He was less than human. His parents came to pick him up. I gathered all the things I could find, and moved home.
I was only gone for 6 months. Since then, I've been in solitude as usual. I've gained some weight back. I left a lot of stuff there. I did something to myself there, and I shake constantly.
So much for my first boyfriend.