Short Answer: I fall in love too easily, and I'm virtually incapable of making a logical decision about someone I love (e.g. the decision to break up, call off the wedding, and go our separate ways).
Long Answer: I have a tendency to want to rescue women, and I wind up falling in love in the process. Unfortunately, this has so far only happened with people with whom I happen to be incompatible.
The first time, one of my best friends dumped a girl (with whom I had developed a friendship) when he found out that she was not a virgin. I was rather irritated with his pretentious attempt at religious holier-than-thou-ness, so I sacrificed the relationship with one of my best friends in order to protect another friendship. I felt that Eddie was wrong to do that, so I took Kendra's side, and it really meant a lot to her.
In the long run, of course, things didn't work out. We wound up competing with each other, and she couldn't accept that I was better at higher level math than she was. No matter how hard I tried to explain to her that she was doing her homework wrong, she insisted she was right and that I was in fact wrong. Keep in mind that I was much more of an arrogant SOB back then than I am now, so this didn't go over particularly well. This competitive nature is why I wound up no longer writing poetry (because she insisted her poetry was better than mine), why I stopped drawing (because she insisted I wasn't any good), why I stopped writing music or playing the piano (because she insisted I was too loud), why I stopped hanging out with my friends (because she insisted they were a bad influence on me), and why I stopped interacting with my family (because she hated them all and got mad whenever I would talk with my mother). In addition, I never fit in with her friends. They would always put me down because they didn't think I was particularly funny.
Eventually, I got fed up and left. I left everything, not even knowing where I would sleep that night. I wound up staying for the next few months in a spare bedroom that one of my coworkers' ex-boyfriends had. I think the best way I can put this is that I was a computer science major, and I went nearly three months without a computer.
As with everything, there is more to the story than I'm letting on. It was worse. I can leave out the details here of *why* everyone believed she was a lesbian, and *why* I believe them in hindsight.
This relationship was a disaster before we even got married. I was too young and stupid to see the signs AND stick to my position about breaking up. I tried once, but she wouldn't let me. Weird, eh?
I learned the hard way that I need to be extra picky about the girls I date. By this time, I had done a lot of research into Jungian personality types--the MBTI in specific. Everything I had read made a lot of sense, and it all seemed to be backed up by a lot of evidence. This has helped me learn a lot about myself. It's helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses as well as where I'm flexible and where I'm not. I understand what I need out of a relationship as well as what I have to give--and what I am incapable of giving.
The second time around, I met a totally amazing girl that seemed to be almost everything that my first wife was not. Unfortunately, she had much bigger family issues than Kendra. We both did our best to help the other work through our own life issues. I also enabled her to believe that she was no less of a human being just because she was female--completely against what she had learned from her father. In time, this gradually freed her to be herself. As it turns out, she and Kendra aren't really all that different after all. The key difference is that she wasn't controlling like Kendra, but they wound up with nearly the same interests and many very similar personality traits. Many of the traits that made my first marriage a disaster wound up also applying to second marriage. I knew the issues were there, and I knew there was no fix, but I accepted things the way they were, as I was okay with it, and I could accept the differences.
Unfortunately, she wound up talking with an old ex of hers online, and he was having serious issues with his girlfriend. She realized that this guy could give her everything that I could not. After several months of talking with this guy, she decides that it's over between the two of us (April of this year). I was rather dumbfounded, as this seemed to be the very first time she had ever hinted that the stuff about me that annoyed her could even possibly be a deal-breaker. I tried to change her mind, but failed miserably. In June of this year, she moved out.
As a result, I've grown very cynical of the whole idea of love. I've painfully come to accept that I'm probably going to be single for a very long time to come, as I'm just so bitter at this point that I wind up assuming that any given girl is not my type before I even give her a chance. I find myself nitpicking the tiniest details in order to scratch girls off my list as easily as possible. It's easier to make a snap judgment than it is to invest time in a relationship only to figure out a few months down the road that something really is a deal-breaker, but by then you're way too emotionally invested to get out easily (which causes you to attempt to convince yourself that something really isn't a deal-breaker).
Now, we get to my current situation. I've met a woman (at a quarter of a century, we aren't boys and girls any more). As explained by the previous paragraph, I've already determined she's not my type. Since there is the slim possibility that she might at some point stumble across this, I'm going to refrain from saying why. .. So far, she seems really interesting, so I'm trying to be a friend, as I rarely get any kind of deep, intelligent conversation anymore; I'm trying my freaking hardest to make new friends that won't just nod in agreement every time I mention something "hard," like relativity, QED, or Fourier Series (a discussion of Mensa may come in a later blog entry).
Unfortunately, she has her own issues. She pretty clearly suffers from serious depression and very low self-esteem. There are also several seemingly large parts of her life that appear to me to be a coping method--a way of putting on a mask in an attempt to devalue how she really feels. My heart is just screaming out in agony watching this: "my god, woman, I want to help you!" I fear the worst--that she has been crying out for help, and the fact that she's not receiving help is pushing her in a downward spiral. She's a very difficult woman to reach on any kind of personal level, and I wonder if there is even any remote possibility that there's anything that I can do to help.
So here I am, thinking about the damsel in distress. Apparently, this is my type. Don't do it again Hank... she's not your type... you can be friends, but nothing more. Don't get your hopes up, because one way or another, you are bound to be let down, forever and always.
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