My History with Men

I have joked for a long time that all the good guys are either married already or they are gay. I’d say dating at almost 60 was hard but really I have never had much luck.

My first crush was the older brother of a friend who was so cute and somewhat attentive. He looked a bit like Shaun Cassidy. I was a shy 12 year old still in elementary school and he was 13 or 14 in junior high. I was very naive. He seemed so charming. Then I went up to junior high. He wouldn’t even acknowledge me except as his little sister’s friend. I was so humiliated.

Then I met my first boyfriend. The first meeting happened during a girls sleepover party where we snuck out to play knocky knocky nine door, which sounded like fun and kind of bad. I was 13. So this gaggle if giggling girls running around late at night, (It was probably about 9pm), and we see 2 boys walking around. I would have run away home but my friends started talking to them. I don’t remember the specifics but one of them eventually became my boyfriend. We were together for several years. I loved him as well as a young innocent church going girl was able. I thought he was the bad boy but really he was the nicest guy. He did come from troubled circumstances. He had an evil best friend who ended up with my best friend. Their relationship became sexual very quickly which freaked me out. I was not ready for that. I was still reading Judy Blume and watching big cartoons on Saturday mornings. I don’t remember why we broke up. I think it had to do with him quitting school to go work up north.

I had a few crushes and short term “boyfriends” through my school years. No serious ones though. I dated one guy for a year or more. He was insecure and played so many games trying to make me jealous to prove I loved him. It just made me mad and a little sad for him. I broke up with him.

To this day I have no room for jealousy in my life. I won’t play that game. You’re with me or you’re not.

In my early 20s I met a young man who I quickly fell for. He was cute in an 80s David Bowie sort of way. We learned a lot together about each other and about ourselves. Numerous of my poems were inspired by our time together; check out The Hairdresser in the poetry tab. We broke up and got back together multiple times. For a while he worked the night shift at Robin’s Doughnuts and he would often bring home a box of doughnuts so I would wake up to a fresh cup of coffee and a doughnut. Such a thoughtful guy, until he wasn’t. He met someone else while we were together. We broke up and he married her.

If I were keeping count, that would be 1 who was too cool for me, 1 who left me to work, 1 who had jealousy and insecurity problems, and a few in between who drank too much, or were too scary, and 1 who left for another woman. It was actually 2 who met and married other women but I didn’t mention the first guy since we weren’t in a serious committed relationship, at least according to him, and we remained friends. He passed away a few months ago after a long battle with booze.

For a while I was involved with a young adult group at a church near where I lived, and that is a whole other story I will tell some other time. But during my time there, I met a guy who was funny and just as goofy as me. We dated. He had very strong values. He was also controlling, preferring when I felt I was less important. His temper tantrums looked very toddleresque to me; For example, we had a big fight one evening. When he went home, he gathered up everything I had given him and threw it all out into the dumpster in his building. So no getting it back. A few weeks later when we were back together, he told me tearfully what he had done. I don’t know if I said it to his face but I thought that was pretty dumb. Eventually, after breaking up, and me having to get kind of firm with him since he kept calling and showing up, he met someone else. He married her a few months later. I went to the wedding, despite my better judgment, and the whole ceremony he looked right at me with a “save me” kind of look. She walked up the aisle to a beautiful acoustic version of “More Than Words.”

I could not listen to that song without feeling all sorts of feels for years after that.

Oddly, 20 years later this guy reappeared in my life and we dated again for a while. He was still the contrary child emotionally, using gas-lighting and love bombing to try to control me. And I was still too strung and independent for him. I enjoyed that he chose me. I liked having a person who wanted to know how my day was. Until it got to be too much.

While I lived in Alberta, I dated a few times. I went out with one guy who worked at the same store as I did. He was a dork and not in the funny cute way. He still lived with his parents and still had a curfew. I was not allowed to phone him at home. He was 30-ish. This was in the early 2000s before everyone had a cell phone. We were doing a pizza and a movie at my house date night and he showed up with the pizza, didn’t ask what I wanted or where we should order from. He rented the movie. And then all he was interested in was making out like teenagers at a party. That was the last date with him. He kept coming into the bakery to talk to me after that. It was uncomfortable.

So now the count stands at 3 who met and married other women, along with a bunch who had other things on their minds.

Last summer, I met a man while at work who was funny, seemingly intelligent, nicely dressed, kind of metro. He hung out at the counter chatting for a long time. I was enjoying our conversation. Eventually he gave me his phone number and asked me to call him later when I was off work. Then he headed on his way. He was vacationing at Miracle Beach and had driven to town as a day trip. Half an hour after he left, another customer discovered a wallet on the counter tucked way over in front of the tills where we couldn’t see it from behind the counter. I knew immediately who it belonged to. And I went to call him. His number was not local though so I used my cell to call because I didn’t think I could call long-distance on the store phone. He was thrilled that I called him so quickly, excitement dimmed only slightly when I said I was calling to let him know he left his wallet behind. When he came back to get said wallet, he asked me if I would meet him later for coffee or a drink. I agreed, totally captivated by him.

We agreed later to meet at a local waterfront park that was always busy, so I knew other people would be nearby. I also let people know where I was going, etc. He asked if I wanted something from Starbucks since he was there right then. I said sure, and asked for my favourite summer drink, an iced passion tea lemonade. He arrives and pulls in right next to me which I thought was weird since how did he know what I drove? He gives me the drink, and we wander down to a bench and spend the next while just chatting amicably. We have been talking about vitamins and various supplements and he wants to show me his trunk. He has a huge bag of health food store bottles. That’s weird but whatever. He gives me a couple bottles of “Doubles” and one pill he calls Chaga or something. I put the bottles into my truck and the pill into my purse. I have been up since 4:30 am and I’m pretty tired. Its heading towards 10 pm. But he wants to walk a bit so we walk on the boardwalk towards the marina. I see a lady I know and she stops to chat. She asks me if I’m okay. I say I’m good. And we head off.

By now he is holding my hand and pulling me close. We sit on the grass on a blanket he conveniently has with him. We hang out a while until I am too uncomfortable to stay there. I had fallen down some stairs a few days earlier and was still bruised and sore. I occasionally have bouts of vertigo, particularly around moving water. We get up off the grass and head towards our vehicles and I am feeling a little unsteady but not enough so I noticed. When we get to our vehicles, he hugs me super tight and long, like full body contact. I just laughed. He hinted a few times that he had a long drive back to Miracle Beach unless I let him crash on my couch. I just laughed. Then I got in my truck and headed home. I was not paying much attention to him after that; in other words, it didn’t occur to me that he could follow me home.

The next day, I realized how off I felt by the time I got home, and my sister had already commented about taking a drink he brought. I hadn’t thought about it before that. I checked the 2 bottles of supplements and found they had both been opened and resealed. I threw them out, along with the single pill. When I saw the lady I had talked to that night, she said she had been concerned because I hadn’t seemed like myself. She thought something was off. The guy ended up messaging me trying to get me to come rescue him after he got his car stuck out on a gravel road somewhere hours from my home. I said something like hopefully the tow truck won’t cost too much. He messaged me like 4 or 5 times in the night and he tried calling me when I didn’t respond to his texts. I had ringer shut off so I hadn’t heard anything until I checked my phone in the morning. I texted something like this isn’t going to work for me, and then I blocked him.

As much as I long for someone to choose me, I don’t want that guy.

And I wonder why I have commitment issues….