How ‘Young Love’ Becomes a Trap
Picture it: Small Town, U.S.A., 1994. R&B songs about the kind of deep heartbreak that 11-year-old me couldn’t possibly understand play on repeat on the Walkman. A redheaded, freckle-faced girl with too much hairspray in her bangs stares out a rain-streaked window. I’m torturing myself over a boy who’s rejected me. This would happen over and over. I had a different crush every few months, always thinking love would play out like a music video and completely forgetting that I was just a child.
As I got older, the boys actually started becoming interested in the girls…but they were never into me. I was beyond awkward in middle school and was told in no uncertain terms just how unattractive I was. At best, I was told I had a “great personality.”
Enter high school. With a bigger student body population, I suddenly had better odds, and I started figuring out better ways to wear my hair- well, after dying it black and accidentally cutting micro bangs. I made friends; I was having good, clean, fun; and my confidence skyrocketed. I’d made so much progress when I met Jake (not his real name) in eleventh grade.
He was a charity case gone bad. I remember the day I officially met him, he had cuts on his wrists and I asked if he was OK. They were from a bike accident, but he milked the opportunity for all it was worth. I got sucked into a two-year relationship (the longest two years of my life to date) in which I somehow lost all of my newfound power and he, like a parasite, stole it from me. He grew into this charismatic, larger-than-life personality, while I shrunk and cowered.
I thought we had a lot in common, but I would learn that intent is everything. While I was a creative spirit that wanted to use my body as a canvas for self expression, Jake wanted attention at all costs. I felt self-conscious when I wore something wild, but did it anyway to stand my ground, to remind myself that I had just as much right to wear whatever I wanted as the Old Navy-wearing preppies had to choose their vanilla outfits. Jake, on the other hand, had a delusional and grandiose sense of importance. Look at me! Instead of being proud or happy for me, he grew jealous and would try to take over any interest I had be it writing, acting, or fine arts. Instead of being encouraging and sharing in my joy, he would show up and steal it.
While I was researching colleges, trying to get scholarships, and attempting to be involved in our community, Jake was proudly failing classes. He contributed nothing to our community, to society, or to our relationship. While people probably couldn’t understand why I stayed with him, I couldn’t understand why anyone would continue to be his friend, especially when they saw the way he treated me. It was easy for me to be angry at others for feeding his ego, but I couldn’t see that me being such a devoted girlfriend was the biggest ego boost of all. At the time, I felt demonized. How did I somehow become the killjoy and worse, the villain? In truth, Jake was a wrecking ball and it wasn’t so much that people liked him as they liked watching what he would do. This was the period of MTV’s Jackass, The Tom Green Show, and rock bands that only rose to fame due to pure shock value. And Jake lived for that shit.
I brought out the best in him and he brought out the worst in me. I was insecure and afraid for my future. I would nag him and plead with him when he went off the rails. I would beg him to behave. I was embarrassed by him and ashamed of myself, but I had this inexplicable loyalty to him. I take that back; I can explain it: aside from Catholic guilt and a cheap promise ring on my finger, I had Jake constantly reminding me of my worthlessness. Romantic, eh? He did it in subtle ways of course, regularly telling me things to shake me. He’d say I had bad breath or threaten to cheat on me with the ugliest girls he could find, thus implying I had absolutely no cards left to play to try to “keep” him. At one point, he left me for a much older single mom who delivered pizzas for a living strictly to use her as a weapon against me, and I’m sorry to say that it worked. This, of course, was while he accused me of talking to other guys and punished me for going somewhere without him or hanging up the phone while I was working. He’d pout, wander off, and experiment with every drug under the sun specifically to upset me. He’d throw violent fits and something told me it was only a matter of time before he hit me. The more horrendous of a person he became, the more terrified I was of him leaving me. If only that damn prefrontal cortex would have developed a little sooner! (Further evidence for why people shouldn’t commit to serious relationships before 25.)
My life became a game of trying not to upset Jake. I knew there would be consequences every time I did something he didn’t want me to do, which led to turning down invitations and making my world very small…all at a time when the world was opening up to me as a young adult.
I often wonder why my best friends and my family members didn’t tell me that I deserved better. In one ear, I had my mom getting angrier and angrier at me for tolerating his behavior (unable to see that she had modeled this for me many times). She later told me she would never tell me to leave him because she didn’t want to create a Romeo and Juliet situation, but I knew she disapproved and her lack of clear communication only made me feel like more of a failure. And in the other ear, I had my girlfriends either enmeshed in their own toxic relationships or sheltering Jake because they had become friends with him. No world existed where I was seen as a victim. And while I didn’t think that I deserved this treatment, I did feel like I had imprisoned myself. Instead of trying to figure a way out, I felt like I was trapped for good.
How did I finally see the light? First, I just got lucky. Many people end up marrying their dysfunctional partners or finding an identical substitute. While I wish I would have gotten out sooner, it was better late than never. Second, it took a change of scenery. No, running away from your problems won’t solve them, but introducing new options, new ways of seeing life, new people, and frankly just staying busy with something that does not involve the problem is truly eye-opening. In my case, that was my local community college. I didn’t have to go away to college when simply spending my days on a different campus, surrounded by people with goals, was enough. There, when I would act in a play or go to a creative writing club meeting, he wasn’t allowed to be there. Period. I had space to think of just myself again. Third, a person of substance took interest in me. I hate to say I jumped from one guy to another, or that it took any guy at all to “rescue” me, but he built up my confidence so that I could once again see my worth. An important part of my story is that the student body president (Yes, of a rinky-dink community college, I get it, but he was certainly an upgrade from Jake.) fell for me. He was respectful, kind, intelligent, creative, handsome, was employed, and thought I was talented and beautiful and all of the things Jake would never admit to. Instead of fighting at rock concerts or babysitting Jake as he vomited from eating too many mushrooms, I had this guy holding my hand and enjoying the music with me.
Realizing what was possible in life provided me with so much clarity. Why would I settle for that when I could have this? In order to ask that question, we have to see not only that these options exist for other people, but that they could be a reality for us, too. It seems obvious that there are limitless options in life, but we put parameters on what’s available to us based on our own experiences. And I went from dreaming about these complete fantasy relationships to living a total nightmare in an abusive one, which made me think that’s all I was ever capable of having.
If you know someone in a similar situation, the best approach is to affirm their worth and to expose them to new ideas, experiences, and possibilities often. I’m not talking about possibilities for romantic relationships, rather for their life as a whole. And it wouldn’t hurt to make sure they have this number, too: National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE.
