The Virgin Review

Most of my life I’ve been unlucky in love.  I know that this is a common feeling, even among those who haven’t actually been unlucky, but in the few ‘relationships’ I’ve been in, I can’t remember one that was not a disaster.

It started in high school.  Ah yes, high school love.  Most people think high school love doesn’t count, but I believe high school love is the most important.  This is where we learn to love, we learn to communicate in love; this is where love can be the most intense and confusing and ultimately, these are the relationships that we will forever compare the rest of our loves to.  My first high school love was an intense and complicated one.  Calling it ‘rocky’ would be an understatement.  It ended my senior year in tragedy…literally.

My second love came much later, in the end of my college years.  It started at a point in both of ours lives that were more than bad timing.  It started bad…it ended worse.

Later that year, on a rebound relationship that was merely three months strong, my good friend slept with my boyfriend.  That was the last straw I think, the straw that broke the camels back? 

After that, I became a serial dater; what some would call a serial slut, though I’d be less inclined to go that far.  I lived for the chase, for the game, I had this strange persona molded into my head where I was certain the only way to protect my fragile heart was to play as hard as those who’d hurt me.

My most recent disaster is still holding strong.  The one where when people ask about it, you fumble around and mumble through explanations that not even you can understand.  I don’t even know what to call it, how to understand it, how can I be expected to explain it to a third party?

I’ve been doused with cheaters.  I’ve faltered at every dating blunder.  I’ve lost them to death, to friends, to my own stupidity.  I am not blameless; but the more I suffer, the worse I get.  It is to the point now, where I’m seriously questioning my ability to believe in love.  This is the person I have always feared, because I do believe in love.

I just recently discovered a new possibility.  From my past; a person I never expected.  But, my head tells me that this is my heart trying to fill the void of loneliness with the fat of something familiar, while my heart just tells me to feel good.  I’m not sure if I’m just damaged or if I really am just a lost cause.  And that is the worst feeling of all.

Last night I read On Friendship, it’s part of a series of books that Penguin Group publishes called Penguin Great Ideas.  On Friendship is a condensed anthology of essays from the 14^th century philosopher, Michel de Montaigne.  It was ironic, to say the least, or as some might argue, simply a coincidence (the difference between these two will be argued in a later post) that I pulled this particular book off my shelf instead of one of the 11 others in the series, but On Friendship was the winner and so I read. 

Montaigne argues, rather convincingly, that you cannot have more than one real friend, because if you give yourself fully to one person, you have nothing else to give to another.  But let me interject, I want to talk at friendship, and not because I disagree.  I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect to have a solid group of wonderful friends, but I would agree that it isn’t possible to have more than one ‘best friend’.  Now, best friend is a controversial description.  Most of my good friends say there is no such thing as a best friend.  I do.  I have a best friend; since we were six we have never faltered, never lost touch, never stopped-being-friends-and-reunited later in life.  For the past 17 years it has been me and her and no one else.

My mom always tells me that I expect too much from people, from relationships, from my friendships.  The truth is, I probably do.  I found my soul mate when I was six, so it is reasonable to expect that kind of love from all of my friends.  I expect the best from the people I choose to surround myself with.  But, I have recently come to the conclusion that people are not capable of loving in friendship, fully, more than one person. 

Friendship happens when you give your unbounded trust to another person, when you allow yourself to slip into the most vulnerable place in your life and let someone else see you there, when you can say with all honesty that another being knows you better than you know yourself.