Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [46]
Mistake #3
I came around.
On a last-minute, half-baked romantic whim, I flew from Los Angeles to her parents’ home in Iowa, where she was visiting. This was a surprise move, confusing everybody, especially the parents, since they knew she was doing some other dude. I didn’t know that. Yet.
Why did I fly to Iowa? What was it that kept me coming back when Reason and Practicality were screaming, “Let it go, dickwad!” (You should know that Reason and Practicality are mean.) Well, though the heady days of falling and falling and falling in love were shrinking in a rearview mirror, there was still hope. That niggling itch that if you keep at it, persevere, it will come back. Maybe not permanently, but in waves big enough and frequent enough to make everything else worth it. I wasn’t ready to give up. And what came of it?
For a few days we enjoyed something resembling romantic bliss. But, as I soon learned, it would be the roller-coaster style. The kind that makes you puke. I helped her move—not to L.A., where I lived, but to Chicago. On the drive, we went into further detail about each other’s sexual exploits during our time away from each other. My part was easy. Zero sexual exploits. “And you? What’s that? More baths?” What is it with her and bathing with dudes? Now I got really angry. And sad. I was probably more angry than sad, but I found sadness seemed to affect her more. So I went with that. In a dramatic flourish bordering on the baroque, I demanded to be dropped off—not in Chicago, but twenty miles outside the city at O’Hare Airport, where I told her I would pay any amount of money to escape this nightmare. (This was not true. In my mind I had decided I would spend no more than six hundred dollars for a ticket.)
Mistake #4
I stayed.
Finished the drive. We arrived at her new place and I went right down the street to a bar on the corner. Drank two shots of Jameson, which seemed like the appropriate thing to do. I was in uncharted territory here. Maybe it should have been Jack Daniel’s. You know what, I just realized it should have been Jack Daniel’s. I walked back, and—at this point I am really taking my cue more from popular music and seventy-five years of American cinema than anything resembling actual human behavior—I told her I’m not going to run away. I was going to stay and fight. We enjoyed romantic bliss, again. Cue the nausea. Vomit from the Jameson.
Mistake #5
We made a new plan.
This plan called for complete sacrifice—from her. She would bide her time in Chicago as a lame-duck resident. I would go back to Los Angeles and pick up my life as if nothing had changed, save for the fact I would be talking on the phone more late at night. As late as it was for me, it was two hours later for her—and she had the job that started at nine. I made my own hours and frequently didn’t put on pants until one p.m.
Three months later, I flew back to Chicago to pick her up and drive cross-country together. We stopped in Sedona, Arizona, and got so high we slept through New Year’s. That was fun. And not technically a mistake, though I believe we did have dinner reservations and that is a very uncool thing to do on New Year’s Eve.
We arrived in L.A., but not to live together. (This is a mistake within the larger mistake, but not necessarily one that warrants its own number.) I helped her find an apartment a few blocks away with a friend of mine, convincing her this gave us something to look forward to—a step to take together. I will admit, at this point I was starting to believe my own bullshit and, worse still, had lost the ability to determine what was bullshit and what was truth. Now, this is an easy call. Bullshit. The truth: I was afraid to live with her for fear of it not working out and feeling guilty that I dragged her all the way to L.A., only to have it end badly and now we live together and