The One Before "The One"

This whole social network "spying" will be the end of me. It's led to the discovery of my being "the one before The One" for three of my exes now. Maybe three is the charm, and I will eventually end up marrying my current boyfriend (who is a real sweetheart). That might be awfully romantic. And I really like having romantic notions that don't end in heartbreak.

"The one before The One" is not a term I coined. I think I stole it from someone else. I didn't steal it from this book you can get in the UK, although I'm pretty sure she didn't come up with the term either. The term applies to the girl (or boy, I want to be equal opportunity here) who your ex dates and then subsequently marries immediately after the relationship with your awesome self dissolves.

Perhaps not immediately after, but the point is that in their linked list of relationships, it was you and then "The One".

This most recent discovery, he was a real doozy. He was my first real serious relationship after college, even though now I don't think he ever took me seriously and the relationship didn't last 6 months. He convinced me to let him move in with me while he looked for a place closer to his work, and didn't even tell me that he had found a place less than three weeks later. I found out when we were hosting a friend and his new landlady called him to tell him when he could move in. I was too shocked and he was too drunk for any yelling or throwing stuff out to do any good.

Shortly after that he broke it off, over the phone. Didn't give me any reason. My neighbor wisely said to me: "He didn't give you any reason because his reason is that he never really loved you."

Really? He manipulated and lied to me so that he could move closer to work?

That's pretty much it. I found out later that I was his third "girlfriend" since his divorce from less than a year earlier. And 18 months after dumping me unceremoniously he is marrying the woman he met after me. On the day before my birthday. I'm lucky that my birthday falls on a Monday this year.

This discovery made me want to vomit.

I haven't even shared all the shit that happened after the dumping, like when he took a girl to The Huntington Library on their first date; something I had begged him to do with me and we never did. He told me about it the morning after an post-breakup fuck (which was not exactly my best idea ever).

It took me a year before I felt comfortable to start dating again. I thought I was "over" him, that I had spent enough time to mourn and sort my shit out and move on. That I had sacrificed enough Friday and Saturday nights crying over what I thought I had and never did.

I ought to feel happy for them. After all, at least I'm not the one spending the forseeable future with him. I'm not dishing out the cash for a wedding in Malibu right when the economy is taking a swan dive.

Yet I feel lacking. I hope someday I can be "The One" for someone special. That we will have a close and loving relationship, and my romantic notions will not be for naught. I know that relationships are not easy, and that people (least of all myself) are not perfect and self-actualized (like on Star Trek). But I think I make a great girlfriend (my current sweetheart tells me so) and I still believe an equal relationship without lies is possible.