NikkiC said 9 years, 1 month ago:

BTW. This is going to be VERY long. I already know. I put it in Word.. it’s 3 and a half pages. I tried trimming it. I am so sorry haha. Feel free to skim.

So I heard about this site a while ago. Just joined. And- whoa! There’s a forum literally just for venting? That’s seriously amazing, actually. So this will be my first post on here.. let’s give this a shot.

So here’s the thing that dominates my mind no matter what else is going on. Long story – I met my first boyfriend as a sophomore. He was a senior. He was my first everything. We were SO close. We were best friends and lovers and all of the above. In my junior year, he was arrested. I told him I’d wait for him no matter what his sentence. While out on bail, he lived with my family as it was the best way for him to stay in-state and in a positive environment while awaiting sentencing. We all know him as a very intelligent, caring person with great potential, so we’ve supported him throughout all of this. He lived with my family for 5 months. His sentence ended up being 7 months of jail and 2 years of rehab. My parents and I were with him all day in court, holding hands, crying, till they took him into custody. While he was in jail, I was in my last years of high school. We wrote and called ( I kept my phone at me, always ready to leave class cause he could call at any time, but only once a day for about 15 minutes on average). I visited every weekend. We sat across a table from each other, but weren’t allowed to touch.. sigh. It was a very sad situation.

He’s now in the rehab part. It’s pretty much no-contact. So about a year into that, in my time alone, I decided our relationship wasn’t very healthy. In retrospect we fought a lot (only verbally), and had very different temperaments. I was angry and sad a lot while we were together. (But he also had sobriety issues and I was a hormonal teenager) I started straying from the idea of waiting for him and getting back together. Of course, I can’t contact him.

Last summer I start hanging out with one of his friends, thinking it to be harmless. In fact, I was so excited. He asked me if I wanted to hang out via Facebook. I’d been hoping one of his old friends would contact me, because I saw them all the time when we dated, and if I made friendships with them, I could feel close to him, even when we couldn’t talk. I stated multiple times to this person that we needed to only be friends (Cause you never know people’s intentions, right?). He said “of course, I’d never do anything to hurt ____”

He introduced me to 2 other guys, let’s say “N” and “R”, and the 4 of us became super tight. We hung out every single day. I ended up hooking up with the one who originally asked to start hanging out. We were sharing a bed sleeping over there. We didn’t discuss it. It was all body language I guess. I was kinda freaking out internally the whole time, but I was also overwhelmed by physical intimacy, because I’d been waiting on someone I couldn’t even talk to for so long. The next day, I went home and skyped a friend and basically cried about how screwed up the situation was, and how screwed up I was. I would say this guy made the initial advancements, but I completely take equal blame. Even if the first time felt very.. unsure, I continued seeing him and his friends every day. Because -

1. I really liked all of these guys. I was super happy being around them every day. They were so fun. We hung out in the house, the beach, went on random adventures, ate together (or forgot to eat all day), slept in that apartment together, woke each other up and did it all again. I had my own towel and toothbrush there. I was gonna get my own drawer. So, I didn’t want to make it awkward by accepting this guy’s advances and then saying the next day “jk, I don’t want to be like that with you but let’s continue to hang out every day cause I like that part.” I wanted to keep seeing them every day. I had found new best friends in these 3 guys.
2. Like I said, I was very overwhelmed by the physical intimacy. I’d been craving it for a long time. I had already been questioning my former relationship. I’d never been all the way with another person, and I’d always felt like I should’ve experimented more before committing to someone “forever”. Also, this guy was cute, funny and laid-back. We were both going through hard times with relationships (he had been living with his ex, hence why he was at these guys’ house all the time).

So after a month of blissful hangouts, adventures, and experiences while simultaneously being in a guilt-ridden but endearing “friends with benefits” relationship, I had my 18th birthday party. My friends who were about to leave for college + my new guy friends together. It was awesome introducing all of my favorite people under my roof! My friend-with-benefits left early.. something seemed kinda off. “N” drunkenly told me that this guy had feelings for me. He wanted me to be his girlfriend. I felt SO bad. I never had romantic feelings for him. I thought we were both just kinda messing around because we were in bad relationship situations. I didn’t think feelings were involved.. at all. I started (drunkenly) crying to N, who comforted me (holy hell, no guy has ever done that) I didn’t know what to do. How did I end up in a friends-with-benefits relationship with my boyfriend’s friend?

The next day (after an amazing party/sleepover with all of my friends), I went home with N and R. After some thought and advice, I texted my friend-with-benefits that I had a “feeling” things were getting kinda serious, that I didn’t mean for us to be any more than friends, and that we should have some space. I think he understood what I was saying. He was agreeable that things got too messy.

Okay, well, to make things messier, N and I became really close. I was still spending time with N and R every day.

N and I were very similar in temperament, viewpoints, we were both total nerds, very empathetic and calm… we just connected a lot. You can guess where that’s going… We developed very strong mutual feelings for each other in a very short time. We were spending more time together individually, and we fell for each other so fast. I decided about two weeks into seeing him that I wanted to give up my efforts in reuniting with my first boyfriend, because I had found “the one”. (Also, it seemed I kinda ruined our chances at this point anyway) It seemed like N and I were perfect for each other. To this day I’ve never felt so at ease. I was happier with him than I’ve ever been in my life. During this time, I set up R with my female best friend, and they wound up together. We had this whole dream double date thing going on. Two girl best friends and two guy best friends dating. In which I was also best friends with the guys (and in love with one of them). THAT was one of the most amazing times of my life. The most intimate group I’ve ever known.

This only lasted.. well, a number of months. N warned me in the beginning that he became easily emotionally disassociated in relationships. He said he had recently cut off communication with a girlfriend because he lost feelings for her, after she wanted him to text her more, or be there for her more, or something. But he said he “didn’t think that would happen with me, because this felt different”. Well, the moment things became a bit unbalanced and it seemed like I wanted to talk more than he did, he distanced himself. He randomly disappeared for days at a time. This was in my first few weeks of my first quarter of college. He came over, told me he fell out of love with me, and he didn’t know how or why. But he couldn’t get it to come back. We spent two hours embraced in the front seat of his car and crying. He slept over two days later, we had one last night of hanging out and falling asleep together, and said goodbye as lovers in the morning.

Since then, I’ve run into N and R once. I’ve spent some time with R, but he and my best friend also broke up. So I’m both his best friend’s ex, and his ex’s best friend. That made maintaining our friendship awkward and sad. I recently tried to meet up with him again, but it’s just too hard with all the memories, and it didn’t happen. While he and my friend were still dating, she told me that N was talking to his ex again. The one he broke up with for the same reason we did. They’re back together now. When I heard that, a week after the break-up, I hastily texted my ex-friend-with-benefits. Because he’s so laid back, he pretended nothing ever happened and said “hey, let’s hang out”. We spent the night drunkenly bonding and recalling all of our sucky relationship issues. I told him about what happened between N and I (he didn’t even know we got together, since they had stopped talking when it happened). We then began a more casual fwb-type relationship for the next two months. I would go over once a week or so and sleep over, we wouldn’t even hook up that often. We mostly just cuddled and watched movies. We were obviously being careful of a repeat situation, although we never discussed it (as we never did, with anything between us. Ever.) We were both just lonely and wanted a little bit of.. something. Everything. Even if it was fake. A few weeks ago, he moved away. So that’s the end of that. All of those boys are virtually out of my life. 8 months later, all the memories are just memories. I think about all of them every day and wish we could’ve all just been friends. But then I would’ve never known my love with N.

Through all of this time I’ve been getting love letters every few months from my first boyfriend. He sneaks them to me in the mail, and I obviously can’t respond because the rehab intercepts all communication. It’s driven me crazy this whole time, not being able to respond when I was feeling lost, or when he was… He’s told me in the letters he realizes I committed to a long time of waiting for the age of 16, and that he wouldn’t blame me if I found someone else. But really, I know him well. The way he said it, combined with what he’s said in other letters was more like “I accept this as a possible reality in theory since we haven’t talked in over a year, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t do that. Please tell me that hasn’t happened”. In the last letter he sent me, he even wrote “Please don’t break my heart”. Obviously, since he can only tell me about his life and I can’t respond, he’s been very back-and-forth on his anticipated reactions to various things that could be happening in my life. In one letter it’ll be “I totally understand if you’re over this” and in another it’ll be “Please don’t be”. He was able to secretly call me through a payphone… On Valentine’s Day. We got to talk for 7 minutes. He said he might be able to visit in May. That’s in two months.

Through all of this, as twisted as it sounds, I wish that we could just try to work things out regardless of everything. I really would like to try again with him. But isn’t that wrong to wish while I’m alone, since 8 months ago I decided to give up that possibility? Now I’m left waiting. 2 months until we get our reunion we’ve been craving since May 2013. Except I’m going to have to tell him about all of this (and that’s not in question at all – I could not mention it and continue this relationship where we left off two years ago, but I’m 100% intent on being honest about it. Lying would be downright horrible and also impossible)

So yay, two months until I see him. I’ve literally been dreaming about him every week, and about this reunion, since well, May 2013. (though the dreams are always slightly different and sometimes include.. new characters, depending on where I was in all of this) And I’ve thought about him every day. But now it’s going to be the day we finally see each other again, and the day I break his heart. And I know there’s a chance that he’ll still want to start over. There’s also a chance he won’t. It’s sad. With N I felt the most comfortable. But I realized, that wasn’t when I felt the most loved…

When my first boyfriend left, I was 16 and he was 19. Now I’m 18 and he’s 21. When he’s out of rehab this November, I’ll be 19 and he’ll be 22. All of that time we’ve wanted to catch up on. All the things we’ve learned. The new people we’ve become. It’s selfish to be thinking I want that catching up to happen after all of this, right?

So basically, I’m constantly repeating this story in my head every day.. just waiting to tell it. Constantly wondering what degree of a terrible person I am for not waiting the two and a half years like I said I would in high school, and yet still hoping we’ll get our second chance.