By Mac Moore
A few years ago, my roommate was really excited about Valentine’s Day. The evening had been planned for weeks. He was going to cook her pasta with alfredo sauce, homemade breadsticks, fresh salad, the works. When V-Day arrived I saw that my friend grew in anxiousness throughout the day. At heart I am a hopeless romantic, so seeing my little buddy get so worked up tickled my heart strings. I hoped the best for him.
The best did not happen. Turns out he had never made an alfredo sauce before. It gave him trouble. Then he burned it. “Scorched” might be a more accurate term. The alfredo was a no go. He went to the store to get a premade sauce that would cook quickly and get him back on track. This time I watched over it to make sure there would not be another folly to ruin his night. He set the table for her arrival. With the food prepared he was a tiny bit settled, yet the wait always brings the anxiety back.
He waited 15 minutes for her to show up. The anxiety rose. She was supposed to arrive in 5 minutes. The anxiety rose. It was finally time. The anxiety rose. He wanted to call to see how close she is but he felt that would just be annoying. The anxiety rose. She is 5 minutes late. He prepared a text but decided not to send it. He did not want to seem clingy or desperate. The anxiety rose. He called because she is 20 minutes late. No answer. The anxiety rose. This continued until she was an hour and a half late.
My depressed little friend and I ate the cold food. The anxiety died. Finally she called and said she passed out. It was late so she told him she would see him tomorrow, no point in coming over. She broke up with him two days later. That night my depressed buddy and I went out to the bar hoping to find him someone new.
No, I will not misogynistically say this happened because women are emotional terrorists. I will not say that despite quivering at the sappy fake romance depicted by that Nicholas Sparks drivel, women, in reality, are vicious vixens with black hearts. I will not let the truth to these descriptions interfere with my objectivity. We have to face it: men and women alike participate in games of the heart only to treat it like warfare. And let’s stop pretending it is because we have to find a “nice one.” We have all at one time or another been the stomper and the stompee in a relationship. This isn’t something that is dependent upon the quality of our character.
It is because of the complexity of relationships. We go after people who we are attracted to. Sometimes they happen to be nice and sometimes they don’t. The person must excite us, entertain us, all while they retain that initial attraction. It is harder than hell to actually find that person. We do not like to be alone, so we settle for what is in front of us and usually that leads to the eventual reality, the breakup. The breakup crushes at least one individual, but it must happen. Most people have been on both ends of this.
The short term rewards of having another person willing and able to provide us with intimate, emotional and sometimes even an intellectual connection blind us to the hell we go through to achieve it. This isn’t saying being single is the solution or the greatest thing on the planet but being single on the 14th of February definitely is not the worst thing in the world.
Contact Mac Moore, sports editor, at mmoore82@jccc.edu.