Relationships – Half-Blood Kuwaiti

How To Pick The Perfect Toxic Boyfriend For You

I wanted to make the title gender neutral, but it wasn’t as catchy. I guess complaining about men just has a certain ring to it that’s hard to replicate.

That’s actually not my intention here at all, though. Everyone can be toxic; I’m just writing from my perspective because it’s easier for me. And this post is not about how horrible your boyfriend is. He may very well be pretty bad, but that’s an essay (or book) for you to write. My point is this: Someone else’s toxic behavior is not your fault, but emotionally healthy people don’t accept chronic mistreatment in a romantic relationship.

Are you emotionally healthy? Probably not. Do you want to fix that? Eh, maybe in theory. But on an unconscious level, that’s probably your worst nightmare! This fascinating video first opened my eyes to the idea that we purposely seek out toxic relationships so that we can blame something external for the pain we feel inside of us. The pain was always there, but now we don’t have to take responsibility for it. I don’t know about you, but that seems like the perfect arrangement to never face any of my own issues again.

On the other hand, going through one of the relationships detailed below is a great way to make literally everything else less frightening in comparison. Therapy, loneliness, and acknowledging your mother may have been right about you are usually terrifying prospects. But like most unpleasant things, they’re still much better than dating a psycho.

So, whether you want to remain in denial or seek out pain for the purposes of growth, keep reading. I will help you find the man who perfectly complements your own issues.

The Sadist (And Not In A Good Way)

This man has a diminished capacity for empathy. He would never describe himself as cruel, but when someone lets their feelings take precedence over everything else, cruelty is often the result. He probably prides himself on being brutally honest and having high standards. You will never live up to them. Eventually you will realize that he doesn’t live up to them either. He thinks it’s sweet when you give up things that make you happy because this means you really love him. His love language is blood and tears. But only yours.

He’s perfect for you if you have a victim complex. His behavior will fuel hours of complaints like, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and, “I’m so nice to him but he doesn’t appreciate me!” Eventually you and your friends will conclude that you just care too much. You’re just too nice. No one will suggest that this is actually a deep-seated issue and that you fear you have nothing to offer in a healthy relationship where both people are nice, or, God forbid, the other person is actually nicer than you. Cue Identity Crisis.

In general, deciding your problem is that you care too much is not adequate self-reflection. It’s like saying you’re a perfectionist when they ask you about your weaknesses in a job interview. It’s more likely your problem is that you really need to believe you care too much.

The Overgrown Baby

This delight needs far more attention than the average adult. He doesn’t just expect you to be his mother, but maybe his father too. You’ll shop for him, make sure he eats properly, and smother him to the point where any normal person would run. He is the college boyfriend who always gets you to do his homework. Some babies even expect you to take care of them financially. If that’s the case, congratulations. You have found a grade-A baby.

He’s perfect for you if you have a void in your life and would rather fill it with a person than meaningful goals. He’s basically a part or full-time job, so you will never feel aimless again. He’s also great if you completely lack self-esteem and believe all you have to offer others is favors. This man needs you, which is perfect because you don’t trust someone to simply want you. Your love language is acts of service. But only your own.

Some of the same points above apply here as well. You don’t care too much, you just care too little about yourself.

The Unavailable Man

He may not be someone you actually date. You might just stalk him a lot from a distance and feel like that constitutes a kind of relationship. He could also be the commitment-phobe you never tie down or have a significant other that he cheats on with you. Bonus points if he’s married. It’s difficult to describe this man in detail because his defining trait is that you don’t really know what he’s like in a committed relationship. He’s unwilling to give that to you. He might happily give that to someone else. Just not you.

He’s perfect if you have a deep-seated fear of vulnerability. By never being available, he allows you to convince yourself that if he were, you would have no commitment issues of your own. You’re just waiting for the love of your life to come around, and then everything will be perfect. In reality, if you genuinely wanted a relationship, you wouldn’t waste your energy on someone out of reach. But you don’t. You want a fantasy because it’s safer. Your love language is lying to yourself.

The Loser

This man may not really be a bad guy, but in the eyes of whatever society you’re in, he’s not a success. He disappoints your parents, gets sucked into pyramid schemes, and makes unfortunate hairstyle choices. His mother thinks he has a lot of potential and hopes you will be the girl who inspires him to live up to it.

He’s perfect if you’re desperate. You just want a man, any man, even one with questionable personal hygiene. Anything is better than being alone. If this is your case, I suggest you go for someone unfairly considered a loser. Give chances to the ugly, the mentally impaired, or the homeless. But even if there is nothing really wrong with the man, he is defined by the fact that deep down, you feel like he is beneath you. And you prefer it that way because he is less likely to leave you.

In an ironic twist of events, dating you may raise his self-esteem and inspire him to upgrade. Your love language is fruitless attempts to control.

This is not an exhaustive guide to toxic men. That is impossible because new ones are being born every minute. If you don’t find your issues here, please feel free to explain them in the comments. I hope you feel after reading this that there really is someone for everyone. Happy hunting.

3 Ways We Refuse To Take Responsibility For Our Lives

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Razvan Chisu on Unsplash

It is interesting to me how much power and agency the average middle-class person has and how often they refuse to use it. Power is a strange thing. Most people do not feel powerful. But I believe we choose not to recognize our own agency and abilities because then we would be responsible for using them, and that responsibility is a very frightening thing.

It is more comfortable to blame others for our unhappiness than to acknowledge that we are where we are largely through our own actions. I read something once along the lines of, “We all have what we want most.” That might seem contrary to your experience, but it’s not wrong. Many people would rather be safe than happy. They might say they want to be rich, but what they want is to continue spending money. They might say they want to meet someone and fall in love, but they would rather not risk rejection.

I have three favorite ways of avoiding responsibility in my own life, but I am sure there are many others. I’m sure I do many more that I haven’t realized yet. But I think if I can work on these, I will be a lot closer to where I want to be.

1. Caring more about being right than reaching goals.

This is a big one in every aspect of our lives. Instead of telling people how we want to be treated, we test them and judge them if they get it wrong. If we really want other people to make us happy, we should give them all the information they need to do that. And we should understand that to increase the chances of successfully getting what we want from them, we should not approach the subject as though we are a victim and they have wronged us. It might be true, but that doesn’t mean it will work.

In other areas, this could manifest as refusing to compromise your artistic vision to be successful (which is fine, but expect to be less successful), refusing to ask for opportunities or promotions because other people should realize you deserve them, or insisting on any course of action after it has been shown to not produce the results you want. On some level, people know what to do to get what they want. They just don’t believe they should have to do it.

2. Believing choices that would cause conflict are not options.

How often do we say, “I can’t do x, y, or x,” but we really mean that it would be uncomfortable or cause a conflict with someone else? This sounds like, “I can’t marry the person I want because my family wouldn’t approve,” or, “My husband won’t let me have male friends.” It’s nice that you don’t want to upset people, but you are making a choice. People do not have nearly as much control over you as they would like you to think.

It is not wrong to upset other people or say no. It’s unpleasant, but if you can learn to live with that feeling, you will finally be free.

You might say that you can’t stand up for yourself. But this probably doesn’t mean you can’t, it means that perhaps it makes you very anxious or you start crying. But you can still speak your mind even if you are crying. You do not have to do something perfectly for it to be effective.

Part of the reason why we are reluctant to risk conflict is we don’t have good conflict resolution skills. I personally have spent more of my life focusing on conflict avoidance skills. These boil down to trying to be polite, apologizing quickly, and giving in. To many people, it is a terrifying thing to honor your own wishes knowing that it will upset someone you love. Beneath that is the unspoken belief that they will no longer love you if you have caused them anger. We believe we do not have enough to offer to still be worth it after we have upset them. Which is strange, because the people who usually feel this way are upset by others all the time and still care about them.

The ironic thing is that we would not struggle so much with conflict if we weren’t expecting someone else to fulfill the needs we refuse to meet ourselves. The confrontation becomes weighted and intense because so much relies on the other person responding how we desire. On the flip side, every person who takes responsibility for their own happiness makes it easier for everyone around them to do the same. If I meet my own needs, I will not be upset by what you need to do to meet yours. If I know my boundaries, I will not be torn when you ask me to violate them. I will simply say no, calmly and politely, because what really affects us is feeling powerless. I will be upset by attempts to manipulate me if I fear that they might work. I will be upset by insults if I secretly agree with them. If I know who I am and that I deserve to be happy, I will have no desire to control someone else. (Or at least a significantly decreased desire. No one’s perfect.)

3. Externalizing insecurities and hoping others will fix them.

I have not thought about this one as much as the others, but I think it is still valid. I have noticed that people tend to gravitate towards those who see them the way they see themselves. That’s not inherently negative because hopefully the way you see yourself is not inherently negative. But let’s be realistic. It frequently is.

Instead of facing our self-doubt, we look for someone who doubts us as well and try to win their approval. If we can convince them, maybe this is proof that we should believe it ourselves. And this process only works with people who see the flaws we are self-conscious about.

I see this happen a lot in romantic relationships. People chase those who don’t like them because they don’t like themselves. It’s not very reassuring to prove yourself to someone who already likes you. This person just seems to have low standards to us. No, we want someone perhaps even harsher than ourselves. And this is why we stay with people who are critical and put us down. We think, “If I can get this person who hates x, y, or z about me to think I’m great, imagine how wonderful I must seem to all the people who already thought I was fine.” Perfectionism, the root of a lot of self-esteem issues, wants us to reach a state where we are immune to criticism or disapproval. So no wonder we would be more interested in the people who don’t value us. We really think they can’t exist for us to be okay.

If you value yourself, the whole conflict disappears. When you really, really value yourself, you realize how powerful and capable you are. And you force yourself to act on it even if it might be difficult at first. Growth is not supposed to be comfortable. Think of how much babies cry when they get teeth. But it’s all worth it in the end, because they finally get to eat real food.

What Do I Do After I Figure Out What’s Wrong With Me?

gray monkey in bokeh photography

Juan Rumimpuna on Unsplash

I have been thinking about this question for several months now. I’m at a point where I may still be crazy, but I understand it better than ever. I’ve even figured out how it originated too, except for a few bits that can only be attributed to the generosity of God. But I don’t know what to do with this information.

I’ve always been good at sitting and analyzing my problems. Throughout childhood and adolescence, I made numerous lists of traits I wanted to correct about myself. My sister called this feeling sorry for myself, so I made sure to add that to the list. But these lists did not produce long-lasting results. They did, however, produce more lists.

The internet likes to suggest therapy as a catch-all solution for personal issues, and while I am not disagreeing with that, I’ve often wished that people would go further and explain a bit of the magic that is supposed to happen behind the closed doors of a therapist’s office. It’s like telling someone to go to the gym but no one wanting to explain what you’ll do when you get there. Then, when you finally go, you realize you could have done a lot of it in your own home and no one is blaming your parents nearly as much as you were hoping they would.

Anyway. My point is, a lot of self-improvement/healing is either about forcing yourself to be more productive or simply realizing why you have the issues you do. I have a few problems with this. First of all, I have realized many things in my life and failed to act on these realizations in any meaningful way. Second, if forcing yourself worked, people would keep their New Year’s resolutions.

Here is an example I have been thinking about recently. I procrastinate a lot and although it’s not a huge issue, I’d like to fix it. I have read that procrastination is often motivated by perfectionism, which is great, because I always thought it was because I was lazy. PSA to my high school chemistry teacher, former boss, and entire family: I’m not lazy. I’m seeking perfection. Apparently it’s a very thin line.

Anyway, the in-depth explanation for this did resonate with me. But it didn’t make a difference. I just understand why I procrastinate as I continue to do it. So I discussed this with someone recently, hoping for advice, but she did not offer any solution. She just said, “It’s not about fixing every little thing you don’t like about yourself.”

Strangely, I had never thought of it like that before. I didn’t realize that the purpose of gaining insight might just be to have more sympathy for myself and make slightly better decisions, and that that is enough. Insight is not a stepping stone to overhauling my personality.

Maybe healing and improving are not about fighting your nature to become a well-oiled machine. Maybe emotional health doesn’t manifest as effortlessly getting up at 5 AM each day, liking the taste of green smoothies, and becoming a CEO in your free time. Maybe it’s recognizing you hate that and shouldn’t try to bully yourself into becoming a different person.

It’s terrifying to accept that you will always more or less be the way you have always been, that no big change is coming. But I’ve tried to stay in this mindset the past few days, and I’ve found when you free yourself from constant self-shaming, it’s easier to do more of the small things each day that make your life better. Maybe a transformation is more likely to happen when you stop feeling like one is necessary for you to be worthy of self-acceptance.

I will never be the type-A overachiever I see as the embodiment of success (despite never actually liking these people in real life). I may be a bit of a perfectionist but I’m also lazy, and I can’t keep denying that when I check “Contactless Delivery” while ordering food, not because I fear corona but because I don’t want to change out of my pajamas to answer the door. I’m really bad at anything that pays well or involves sports, I’m scared to call people on the phone, and it’s remarkable how long I can stay in one place without moving. But that doesn’t mean someone else with different flaws would have a better life. (On a positive note, I can out-knit your grandma, and I’m really easygoing as long as you don’t get to know me well.)

Somehow, I’ve been thinking all this time that I could not be okay yet if I still have this many faults.

We cling to the idea of some people having perfect lives even though it’s illogical. We know we’re comparing our behind the scenes to their highlight reel, but we do it because we want to believe it can be a reality, and one day maybe our reality. Deep down, the voice inside of us is saying,

Perhaps, if I just do something differently, I will not have to be myself anymore.

I didn’t just write lists of my flaws as a child. I also wrote letters to my future self, as well as dramatic diary entries about various book characters and famous people I wished I were more like. Ironically, I actually did become many of the things I hoped for in these letters (except for popular and married at 17). And I was far more like the people I admired than I knew at the time. But even if I had seen these similarities back then, I wouldn’t have believed in them. And I think that takes us back to the original question. What do I do after I figure out what’s wrong with me?

I think the answer is, put down the scalpel, take a leap of faith, and believe in everything that’s right.

Reality, My Mortal Enemy

person standing in front of body of water

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

I’ve never been a particularly regretful person.

Not because I make good decisions. That is not the reason at all. No, it is due either to a sort of natural optimism I have or a diminished ability to understand consequences. 2020, I hope, will be an exciting year of figuring out which one it is.

But recently, I’ve realized a few things were a poor use of mental energy. It’s not that I regret what I did or, as they always say, what I didn’t do, but the way I thought.

The first regret hit me while I was performing a Marie Kondo on my closet a few weeks ago. It seems minor, but it made me think. As I sadly got rid of clothes I liked but never wore, I realized how often I had bought a size small, just because I could fit myself into it, when a medium or large would have been more comfortable. I wonder why I pursued not even being the smallest size possible but qualifying as the smallest size possible. Changing the label on your jacket does not make any difference to your body. It is not an effective diet. It just means that you won’t be able to move your arms freely for the entirety of winter.

I also regret the amount of time I spent wondering who was right and who was wrong in a variety of conflicts. I realized in 2019 that when two people hate each other, they are probably both right. They always are to some extent—just as they are also wrong. The quest for some kind of objective truth that justifies all your own feelings and actions is a jump down a rabbit hole at best. And it’s the wrong question to ask. Figuring out why you should have gotten something is much less helpful than figuring out why you didn’t and how you can change that.

At work I dealt with a minor complaint recently, and while my first impulse was to be offended, it’s not useful. It doesn’t really matter if the complaint was deserved. What matters is that it happened, and if I don’t want it to be made again, I should address it in the most effective way possible, regardless of my opinion of the complainer. Understanding their motives will help me figure out the best approach, but deciding they don’t deserve for me to listen to them overlooks the fact that I don’t want to be complained about.

On a related note, I regret all the energy I spent on moral outrage, fuming about how “they should know not to behave like that” when I could have just said, “Please don’t do that,” and it wouldn’t have been done. At the back of my mind I knew I could get the results I wanted if I handled the other person intelligently and maturely, but I would only do so if I felt they had behaved in a manner that made them worthy of such cooperation. And usually, for me to feel that they deserved this enlightened treatment, they could never have done anything wrong for me to discuss with them in the first place. Surprisingly, this approach does not have a high success rate.

I regret trying to change feelings I’ve had but didn’t like instead of using them as objective information about my self and my values. I used to really dislike the idea that “all feelings are valid” because many people react emotionally in ways that do not seem fair to me. But feelings themselves are very logical. People just don’t know where they really come from. If you are upset by something, you have a good reason for it. It may not be that someone wronged you. But there is something bothering you that makes sense, whether it’s an emotional issue of your own or a behavior of someone else’s that you can’t tolerate. It always has meaning. To ignore that is to give up the only reliable source of information you have on how to find your own happiness.

A common theme in all of these regrets of mine is a refusal to accept reality. But this is the heart of it:

It doesn’t matter what size I think I should be.

It doesn’t matter how I should feel.

It doesn’t matter what I should be happy with.

It doesn’t matter how other people should behave.

What matters is what actually happens.

It’s as if I’ve been going through life with green hair, and because I don’t like green hair, I go around hoping people will tell me it’s actually aquamarine or turquoise instead. Nothing people say or I tell myself changes the color of my hair in reality. And instead of this odd game of trying to change something without actually changing anything, I could just dye my hair. But first I have to admit there is a problem, but I guess we don’t want to do that because we’re scared we can’t fix it, and all we’ll have done by acknowledging it is ruin our ability to live in a deluded little bubble.

I hope that 2020 is a year of looking in the mirror, and, if I genuinely want to, dyeing my hair.

Lessons in Toxic Love, Learned From My Cat

close up photo of tabby cat — Pacto Visual on Unsplash

I like cats, in theory. They are independent enough to not bother you, but affectionate enough to make you feel loved. They’re aloof, which gives you unconsciously pleasant validation of your low self-image, but they aren’t human enough to vocalize their disdain in a manner reminiscent of your childhood caregivers. It’s the perfect balance.

But in reality, cats are narcissists, and like their human counterparts, they are manipulative, capable of smelling fear, and inexplicably attractive to me.

A few nights ago, I lay in bed asleep with my cat curled up on my chest. Not the most comfortable situation, but I thought it was sweet, until she reached out and clawed my face. Then I realized my favorite animal is far too much like my favorite type of human. They both present love as something that slowly cuts off your oxygen supply. I thought about this for a while, and the result of that profound introspection is the following: a list of signs that you may be in a toxic relationship, inspired by my experience with cats:

You travel for a month and return to find they didn’t miss you, barely remember you, and have started sleeping with your brother.

To be fair, I have never met a human who did this. But I credit my brother for that more than anything else.

They give you crap, and you clean it up, spritz the room with air freshener, and say, “This is great.”

We don’t own cats; we don’t have real authority over anything that successfully commands us to flush their toilet for them. But sometimes we give someone love, and they respond with a metaphorical litter box. Love is cleaning this up, we say. Maybe, but it’s delusional to think there won’t be poop in it again the next day.

You aren’t appreciated for the nice things you do, only punished if you stop doing them.

Spoiling someone is much easier than un-spoiling them. Have you ever put a cat on a diet? I was once responsible for my sister’s cat when she traveled, and he had been on a diet ever since she decided to bring him to Kuwait and discovered he exceeded the weight limit for hand luggage. I was supposed to enforce it.

She warned me that he could be very persuasive in his attempts to get food. Multiple times, if my hair was in a ponytail, he would bite it and attempt to drag me towards his food bowl. There was never a reward for feeding him. Slowly, he trained me to see the few moments of relief before his next attack as an expression of love.

He has a lot to answer for.

You unconsciously start congratulating yourself on how tolerant you are.

I know there are many reasons why people put up with mistreatment, and it’s not always because it feeds their self-image of being a nice, accepting person. But sometimes it’s a factor. I was very proud of the everything I endured while babysitting. At one point, the cat sunk his teeth into my arm, and I decided to record a video. I wanted evidence of what I was putting up with. How long would he keep biting me if I didn’t stop him? It turned out to be around 30 seconds. Now everyone will see what’s wrong with this animal, I thought.

No one said that. They said, “What’s wrong with you for letting him bite you like that?”

They jump into your lap within a few moments of meeting you.

How sweet, I thought. You must really love me. I should take you home immediately.

And I did. I adopted my cat a few days later for exactly that reason. And all she wanted was a warm place to sleep, which is only flattering for a limited amount of time, until you realize exactly what it means.

I have not slept in peace since. There is no part of my body she has not turned into a pillow. If I sleep on my side, she balances precariously on my hip bone, somehow convinced that if she just wills it strongly enough, I will not move a millimeter. Although that may be preferable to what a human would expect in the same situation, it’s not exactly easy.

They hurt you constantly even if they don’t mean to.

It’s not a cat’s fault they have claws. They don’t mean to scratch you when they walk across your arm or knead your leg. But it still happens. There’s no point in saying it doesn’t. You wouldn’t refuse to bandage a cut just because it was an accident, so why do we pretend an emotional wound isn’t there just because no one intended to give it to us? It’s not always that one person or the other is toxic; it’s the combination. Wish them peace, then give it to yourself.

Sometimes you just need to get a dog.

Let’s Be a Little Less Honest

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A few days ago, for some reason or another, my friend and I decided to make a list of negative qualities our future husbands would have to put up with from us. I don’t know whose idea this was. I’m pretty sure it was mine; my friend thinks it was hers, and I’ve decided to let her believe that. Because it was a terrible idea.

I’m a big fan of lists usually. Shopping lists, goal lists, lists of ways to improve my life, lists of my faults, lists of my physical defects—I’ve made them all, usually several times. My favorite is making to-do lists and then accomplishing nothing on them.

But this was different. It lacked the usual joy I find in mutilating my self-esteem. It kept my friend awake at night. The list just grew and grew, starting with very obvious faults I have to things that could be good or bad, depending on your perspective. For example, I’ve been told I don’t care enough about how I look, and yet I know to some people I’m silly and vain and I care too much. So which is it? Let’s put down both!

I’ve been thinking about why this felt so bad, and in the end I’m glad I did it, because it made me realize a few things. First of all, people are not lists—people are not even qualities. Someone kind and nice may be nothing like another kind, nice person. And no one is always nice. A better way of figuring what someone is would be to ask, “When is this person unkind? And why?”

Do you know how complicated people are? I wonder if they can even be reduced to words. The best people cannot, so I wonder why we would strive to be that simplistic, to diminish ourselves. Self-improvement should mean becoming more, not erasing parts of yourself to be more easily described, to be simpler and less messy. My favorite people are the messy ones. How can anyone with depth bond with someone who refuses to ever be complicated? This is what people want. We want to be fascinated by someone, and for that to happen, we have to wonder about them. There has to be something beneath the surface to discover.

The other thing I realized is that you shouldn’t advertise whatever’s wrong with you. Yes, be self-aware, blah blah blah, but that quality is valuable when you need to admit you’re wrong. So tell people if that’s the case. But don’t pass out a list of all the ways you’ve been wrong all your life. Because they will believe you.

Actions only speak louder than words to people who take the time to look at them. Most don’t bother. If you believe you’re hard-working, smart, likable, beautiful, whatever, other people are more likely to believe it too. If you tell them you’re an awkward spaz, you’ll find shortly afterwards they’re teasing you for being an awkward spaz. And somehow that feels way less funny than it did when you were saying it.

Self-deprecating jokes backfire. If you tell people you’re an idiot, you’re going to start convincing them. After all, wouldn’t you know better than anyone else? It also works in reverse. Maybe I take people at face value more than others do, but I have at times been in the presence of women who either believe or desperately need to believe they are wildly attractive and sought after by most men. And they usually are pretty, just not extraordinary. And I leave thinking, if all these people treat you this way, there must be a good reason. Why doesn’t this happen to me? Are you that much better?

People lie, sometimes overtly, sometimes in little ways without even realizing it. They tell you they are who they wish they were, and we listen. Then there are other people, usually more honest people who aren’t so insecure that they can’t admit their flaws, who tell you what they are trying not to be. And then it becomes their epitaph, or at least their punchline.

Me being the moron that I am, I’m probably not going to stop saying negative things about myself. It’s a hard habit to break; there really is something addictive about it. But the next time someone doesn’t take me seriously, I will know that I might be the reason why.

Let’s Be Honest

Image result for honest

In the past few years, I’ve noticed that many people have a problem being honest with themselves. And I understand why that can be hard. The truth isn’t usually nice.

And that’s why you need to be honest with yourself before it’s too late. Otherwise you’ll just have too much baggage to unpack, and very few people are willing to flog themselves over decades of poor judgment or bad behavior. They prefer to take it out on everyone else (I am one of their personal favorites).

This is not to be confused with being honest about other people. These two types of honesty have very little to do with each other, although they might be inversely related. To paraphrase a line of Agatha Christie’s, people who are brutally honest with others are usually delusional about themselves. They have to be. To criticize others harshly, you have to consider yourself qualified to judge them.

The great (haha) thing about being alone is that it teaches you about yourself. It’s unpleasant, but in the spirit being honest, I will share a few of my findings.

First of all, I need to stop stalking people. They’re beginning to notice.

Not really, that was a joke, but only because I have a few good friends who have forbidden me from my creeper ways. (I have some other good friends who recommend TV shows to me like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and remark on its resemblance to my life. These friends are what you call enablers.) The problem is less that stalking creeps people out, but that it doesn’t creep some people out, and you should avoid these people. Which is really the opposite of stalking them.

Stalking has never gotten me anywhere worth going, especially when it comes to people my own age. When I was younger and I stalked people inappropriately older, it was a fun diversion that never lead to anything but moping over unrequited feelings. Alas, none of my teachers ever loved me back. They did, however, stop answering my emails. Even the college professor I once tried to woo, who was single and only a measly 8 years older than me, purposely did not say hello to me outside of class. I gave a long presentation in class to impress him, around twice the length it was supposed to be, and as a result he made signs saying “Five minutes left” and “Stop” that he used in subsequent lessons. As you may have surmised, we are not currently married.

If you stalk, pursue, chase or whatever someone and you get them, you’re always going to be in the position you started out in. And it’s not nice to continually reach for someone. It doesn’t pay off, and it should never be necessary in the first place. There are people in the world who will like you even if you don’t memorize their schedule and write it down in code on your binder. And you don’t want the sort of person who finds that kind of thing endearing anyway (although in my experience, no one does).

So I’m giving it up. No more stalking. At least not very much. It’s a little hard to stop completely when you have a related character flaw: joy in obsession. I like to obsess about people. I like to daydream about them, then listen to sad music and weep into a tissue. On a productive day, I may even write a poem. I used to think it meant something. This was my second epiphany: we (if you’re like me) look for people to play out the fantasies in our head with. The person is less important than the fantasy. Which is fine as long as you know it doesn’t mean anything.

It’s very easy to forget that, and when I inevitably do, I will remind myself of the product of this soul-searching: not to act on anything I think or feel. I don’t think this is going to go well. If you’re here because I accidentally liked one of your photos from 5 years ago, I’m sorry.