Lessons learned
They say every mistake can be a lesson learned. So here are a few lessons I learned in love, the hard way.
Dylan (names are all changed) was my first semi serious boyfriend. I met him at school, we were both 15 at the time. We dated on and off for about a year, most of the time I wanted off and he on. I hate every memory of him. First of all, the man looked like a blobfish. But besides the an ugly exterior he was horrid on the inside. He would belittle me and tell me my jokes and interests were stupid. He would gaslight and call me names during our fights (it was around 2014 so no one really knew or talked about what gaslighting is, I just thought “wow he really is twisting everything up cleverly, I must be an idiot”)
Whenever I tried to leave him he would threaten me with suicide, so I always stayed. I can’t remember how I finally got out of the relationship, but it was fucking relieving. For a year I had been stepping on eggshells around him, and it had turned me into this meek shell of myself with no agency.
Dylan taught me:
Never stay in a relationship where the other threatens suicide. It is a way to control you in one of the cruelest ways possible. It’s a way to use your good side against you. He knew what he was doing, he knew saying that would make me stay. No one knows whether he would have gone ahead with the threat, but what we know for certain is how it affected me. It made me his caregiver instead of his girlfriend, it imprisoned me to him. You are more valuable than that, your life matters too. This isn’t to say do not help those around you battling with suicidal thoughts, but to never let them use that as leverage.
Never stay with a person who belittles you or your interests. It is blatant disrespect. If someone can’t be bothered to care about your interests they sure as hell will not care about your feelings. If you only do stuff your partner is interested in (Hello WoW and COD) it creates an imbalance in the relationship where the needs of only one person are met. It will also alienate you from your interests and will lead to unhappiness.
Then came Amos. I had the fattest fucking crush on this guy. He was a guitarist, he was part of a boyband, he performed on the main stage of my scout camp… you get the gist, total package for a 16 year old. He lived a couple hours away from me, and coincidentally my best friend had a crush on one of his bandmates, so we’d spend evenings daydreaming about our future tour life with them.
One day, the boys invited us to a birthday party they were hosting. Me and my bestie spent a couple weeks planning and buying the perfect outfits, and as a gift we bought them 20 lollipops (because these guys had talked about these lollipops a couple times) ( these lollipops for some reason became our identity, we would literally carry a few in our pockets everywhere we went). We arrive at the party, and first of all the boys seem really surprised we actually came. That should have been red flag number one. I proceed to get hammered, because I am so nervous. I am certain that the reason we have been invited is because Amos wants to confess his love to me. Then I can’t seem to find him anywhere anymore. I try to go look for him in his bedroom, but get interrupted by one of his friends who kindly informs me that Amos is getting his dick sucked behind the locked door. What was supposed to be my fairytale night actually ended in the sweaty embrace of this bearded guy who kind of looked like the Hagrid, on the floor, underneath a fucking livingroom rug as a blanket.
To this day this story makes me fucking laugh. I was so hurt after, I posted a rant where I let it all out and accused him of leading me on for amusement. To say the least, the rant is bitter. Maybe he did lead me on, but also damn was I delusional. The highlight of the story is the weeks of preparation and anticipation all for nothing. Or maybe not nothing, the Hagrid-experience is a funny party story.
Amos taught me:
You can not expect someone to love you back just because you have a mad crush on them. Nobody owes you love.
If you want something (or in this case someone) you have to say it out loud. You can't just expect things to work out the way you want them to, or people to notice you, if you never have the courage to speak up.
Never post anything a day after a big tumultuous emotional rollercoaster. It will not be your best work.
Next in line is Tom, who was a sweetheart. The setting was perfect: our parents knew and respected each other so they let me stay over at his whenever, he was deeply in love with me, and he did everything in his power to make me happy. Only problem was I did not love him back. He would be one of the first of many guys I really tried to make myself like in order to avoid being alone. I would envision how well it could work, if only I would be able to force myself to love them (make that make sense). We dated through the summer, but eventually I had to call it quits. I couldn’t keep pretending I saw us continuing through the fall. It broke my heart to break his heart, and I carried that guilt around for a while.
Tom taught me:
You simply can not force yourself to love someone, no matter how sweet and perfect they are. There is nothing you can do when it comes to matters of the heart, the heart can not be whipped or forced to feel a certain way (same goes for heartbreak, it can not be hurried up).
Being alone is better than pretending to be something someone needs. If you have such a massive need to fall in love with someone, it is time to look in the mirror and ask yourself why you are not happy alone.
It is cruel to lead someone on, even if it comes from ‘innocent’ motives. Meanwhile you are having fun being adored, the other person is falling deeper in love with you by the day. The more time you take, the more you will hurt the other one. I believe you are responsible for putting an end to things, if you notice the other person is expecting something from the relationship you will not be able to give.
Then came Kaarle. This was a tough one. I met him right after getting out of a relationship with a man I loved more than I had ever loved anyone (who is not in this list because the lessons he taught could fill a book). I was broken as hell and Kaarle picked up the pieces. Right after we met he was deployed to another country and I moved to Amsterdam from Tampere, so all our communication happened through text messages and facetime. Hence, our relationship turned very deep very quickly. I immediately told him I could not get into another romantic relationship straight after my ex, and warned him about my emotional state. He didn’t seem to care and fell in love with me. Eventually I also told him I loved him, which I did, just not like I had loved my ex. This idea kept bugging me, I kept comparing the feelings I had had for my ex to the ones I had now, and I felt guilty that they weren’t on the same level.
When he came back to Finland and I moved back for a while due to Covid, we were acting like we were in a relationship. Except that we weren’t and I was clear we also would not be getting into one. I did not share with him that I was still heartbroken over my ex, partly because I wanted our thing to continue with Kaarle and partly because I was so confused how I could still be in love with my ex and in love with this guy. Nevertheless, we continued to play house. I met his parents and he met mine. He taught my family how to snowboard. I lived at his flat whenever I got frustrated at home. All this time, I knew I was stringing him along and lying to him. My mind was a damn mess with all these love interests.
Towards the end I turned distant and cold. I think it was because I resented him for loving me so much when I could not love him back the same way (a twisted way to say I hated my own ‘inability’ and lies, but blamed him). I felt like I owed him my love, even though I had been clear I could never make us official, and it made me feel guilty as hell. Eventually, after weeks of fighting and crying, he left. He announced that he had a new girlfriend and that they were living together (at this point I already lived on and off back in Amsterdam, and our toxic thing was going on through the phone, once again. What we had had been deteriorating for a while so I guess that left him some time to arrange all that.) It hurt like hell at the time, because I felt like he was abandoning me. Which he was, and thank God he did, he deserved to be loved in the way he wanted to. I never told him I’d been in love with my ex the whole time and that that was the reason I was such a nut. After the pain dissolved the guilt stayed with me for months. I had been a real A-class asshole stringing him along and not being open about my emotions.
What Kaarle taught me:
Love has many levels. It is possible to love someone, to want to spend time hugging and kissing them, but still hold feelings for someone else (it’s called polyamory…). I recognize that instead of trying to push down the love you have for multiple people, it is better to stop and examine it. Maybe if I had just said “ok, so you love your ex but you are also falling for this new guy” things could have actually evolved and solved themselves, instead of me fighting and denying my feelings.
Always be honest about where you stand with your heart. It is not fair to get into a ‘relationship’ with someone when you are still stuck in the previous one. There is nothing wrong with having a broken heart, just be honest about it.
Deal with your emotions instead of using someone as a plaster. The whole “get under someone to get over someone” narrative is very harmful not only to you, but to the innocent people you end up using.
Once again, love can not be forced, not even when you have the sweetest, most kind man who promises you the world. The months I spent trying to deny the love I had for my ex and convincing myself to love Kaarle were all for nothing, it will never work out like that.
There’s one last lesson I’d like to share. Firstly, I’d like to say the whole “red flags are a turn on” discourse is like saying “I have no love for myself”. Sure, if your red flag is that he buys only ready-made meals I get you, go ahead, but I’m talking of the more serious and real red flags. If you idolize people who you know will treat you wrong, to me it sounds like you do not believe you are worthy of love. Or maybe you are stuck in a pattern where you think that it’s your type. But trust, abusive or manipulative or whatnot people are nobody's type, and no one should accept behavior like that. Because if you keep accepting that energy they will soon convince you that you deserve that energy, and building your self-worth up from there is a tough task.
I learned this from Anthony. We were nothing serious, just casual hooking-up. He was alway smiling and throwing jokes, and everyone I knew loved him. On the outside he seemed like a caring guy. But then one night while drunk he’s at my place and we start having a fight about something so insignificant I can’t even remember. I’d like to state here that I’m a pretty strong-willed and confident woman. I will not easily start crying or begging or bending my principles. But that night, I did all three. First we both are shouting at the top of our lungs. But then, in the end, this man has gaslighted and manipulated me so fucking well that i am literally on my knees on the floor begging him to forgive me, like some damn disciple. I am begging he forgives me for yelling, for getting angry, for everything I said and did. I have never before or after gone through something like that. He had convinced me completely that I was the monster for daring to argue against him, and I had in turn turned into this wimpy little child begging for acceptance. We made up, of course, because I had completely abandoned my principles and opinions and just believed that I had single-handedly started a fight out of thin air. The next morning I thought what a fucking weird thing. I realized how he had twisted my words around and recognized that he had manipulated me. But I blamed it all on the alcohol. Because how could a guy everyone likes actually turn out to be bad?
We kept seeing each other a few times after that. I noticed I wasn’t completely myself around him, like I was afraid he would manipulate me again, but I kept ignoring the red flags. Until the last time he came over to my house, when I woke up to what I figured was him cuming on my back.
Anthony taught me:
People can be deceiving, and the moment there is a red flag you should just evacuate. No reason to explore that alternative, it will cost you. You do not owe to yourself or anyone else the opportunity to prove you wrong.
A fight should always be equal: both people get to speak their part, and feel comfortable in doing so. If you two can’t fight with respect, you can’t build a balanced relationship (be it friendship or more). I’ve also experienced this later on in a relationship where I was the more assertive and articulate one, and the other person couldn’t manage to speak up for themselves. Did not work out.
