I was on the phone with a dear friend of mine last night and we were talking about the memoir I’m writing, which chronicles my dad’s suicide and my subsequent cross-country bicycle ride in 2010. I hadn’t planned for my on-again, off-again boyfriend at the time (let’s call him Jake) to be such an antagonist in the story. However, recounting the whole experience with him helped me see just how deeply manipulative and callous he was. I’ve spent hours combing through old emails between Jake and I, recalling specific situations and conversations with him, doing my best to get the relevant stuff on paper. The process of writing this manuscript has been deeply cathartic, not for the emotions related to my dad’s death, but those related to being in a relationship with a sociopath. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself, now at age 35, looking back on the conversations I had with Jake over a decade ago, and feeling sadness for that younger version of myself. I watched myself from the distance of time as I struggled with the emotional abuse and manipulation, as I was reduced to a shell, as my sense of self-worth was stripped from me.
There were instances – many of them – when I had enough of Jake’s abuse. Times when I would temporarily find my voice and come back at him, swinging. But I always went back (until the final straw, which took five long years to happen). As I recalled the fights, the break-ups, and the make-ups, I found myself wondering how it was that I kept going back to him. During last night’s conversation with my friend, who has read the early chapters of my manuscript, he asked if I ever thought about Jake anymore… if I ever had any regrets or worries that maybe he and I were supposed to be together.
My answer was “absolutely not.” Not now. But for many years, that was something I thought about. Was Jake the one I was supposed to spend my life with? After all, we had a lot of fun together when things were good. He was really good on paper. Remember that time when we went on vacation to…
Those moments of recall, however, do not provide recollection of the whole truth, but cropped snapshots of select, rosy memories. Even as I was writing about Jake’s response to my dad’s death (he didn’t even come to the funeral), there was still a part of me that naturally wanted to stroll down memory lane and think about all the good times he and I had together.
This, my friend, is what wearing rose-colored lenses is.
Maybe it’s because I am inherently optimistic (or a total fool), but I tend to look back on my relationships through rose-colored lenses. I want to remember the good stuff, to think back and smile. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that as long as such rosy hindsight doesn’t drag you back into broken relationships (as it did over and over again with Jake). A few years ago, the rose-colored lenses brought me back into a relationship with my boyfriend during college. One night, about six years after our breakup (and shortly after the final straw with Jake), I was laying in bed, wide awake at 3am when my old flame (let’s call him Adam) drunk texted me. A late-night text conversation was followed by a phone call the next morning and meeting for dinner the next night. He and I laughed and recalled all the beautiful times we had together, drawing from a strong base of previous connection and love. And boom, just like that, we were back together. It was fate. I moved in with him a couple of weeks later, as we’d lived together previously, so it seemed natural. What both of us failed to recognize, as we gazed at each other with googly eyes through our rose-colored lenses during those few weeks, was that the relationship had ended for a reason. Adam and I had fundamental differences that ended up driving us apart the first time around, and those fundamental differences were still very much intact when we went for round two. Inevitably, the same issues that drove us apart the first time reemerged during our second rendezvous, and caused the relationship to come to a quick end. Both of us experienced unnecessary heartache because we allowed ourselves to forget that we were just not meant for one another.
I recently had another case of the rose-colored lenses after an email exchange with a man I briefly dated about a year ago. There were many reasons he and I didn’t work out, but the email exchange led to a series of texts and calls that caused me to sort of fantasize about who I wished he was, rather than who he really was. I recalled all his romantic words, the deep passion, the fierce loyalty he displayed, while choosing to forget the jealousy, the early signs of control, and the dark side of him that made me leery. I met him for dinner a week after this virtual re-connection and immediately, immediately regretted it. Right away, I remembered why we broke up. Once again, the rose-colored lenses struck.
But back to Jake… about three years ago, he contacted me to let me know he was about to propose to his current girlfriend. What was I supposed to say to that? And why would I care? At that time, Jake and I had been broken up for about three years. He’d since moved to another state and we had not maintained contact. Even though I absolutely knew he was not right for me, I’d be a liar if I said there wasn’t a part of me that immediately started to drift down memory lane, donning my favorite pink shades. I started thinking back on our travel together, the adventures we had, the fun times. But I also forced myself to remember the painful parts. If I didn’t make myself recall the whole relationship — the good and the bad — it would have been easy for me to slip into some sort of funk based on a myopic view of the past… to start wondering what if… and there is no point to that.
Exes are exes for a reason.
