Ok, so the jig is up. I am 40(ish) and I know when I enter a relationship with a man, he will likely have had a romantic past. Unfortunately, until they start cloning Clooneys, who pop out of the pod 40 and fabulous (Note to Self: Write Scientific American and ask how that’s coming along?), I will have to put up with the “old girlfriend” stories; The crazy one, the young one, the bitch, the one that got away… yeah, yeah, yeah… who cares?
I firmly believe until a man has had his heart crushed like a Dixie Cup in a paper shredder by a woman, they are just toxic, but can’t we all just move on? Men learn by experience. Yeah, I get it. They need the bad experience of having their heart ripped out to make them better men in the future. Watch YouTube: It’s always men riding a jet-propelled skateboard , jumping off a ramp into the side of a barn -- men cannot know what they haven’t experienced. I get it.
The problem is, when we are in a relationship with a man, being the vocal half, we tend to talk and talk about everything they are doing wrong. And at the end, we write big long emails spelling out the very reason we just had to cut them loose and move on. Problem is; men keep these emails. For years. And years. And they think, “Did I really screw this thing up? Was it really me, not her?” And a certain kind of nostalgia takes over -- the bad kind. The kind that makes you think Gilligan’s Island was a good show -- until you see a rerun and realize, it really sucked. Well, that’s if you’re a woman. Men on the other hand, can’t get enough of reruns. This is bad nostalgia. Instead of watching the show from an adult perspective, and realizing how bad it was, they relive it like they are still 10 years old.
So, here we are, three years into a relationship, and somewhere in the back of his mind, this nostalgia grows. Until one day, some idiot invents a cable channel that plays Gilligan’s Island 24-7 -- and off we go. Now with ex-girlfriends, this takes the form of obviously wine-soaked emails, talking about “missing him” and how, she “has a guilty conscience about how things ended” and her wondering, “Would you even want to see me again?” and boom… It’s re-run central. All the crappiness floats away, leaving only the “best of” marathon in his head, and girlfriend present is left wonder where exactly he went a week ago? Oh, he’s there in body, but his mind (and sex drive) is elsewhere. He’s right back to seven years ago, smack dab in the middle of the “good old days”. Terrific.
Giiiiiillllllll-I-gaaaaaaan!!
Sigh. So what to do? Sure we all like old beaus to tell us we still look good, and that they never forgot us, sure… it’s like a victory. But why, with men, does this turn into the idea of making, “Gilligan’s Island: The Movie?” You know girls, that we know, that all the old problems that made the whole relationship go sideways before, are still there. And we know that dingbat is likely just suffering the, “I just got dumped for the 40th time, and am thinking maybe it’s not just his problem” blues… We’ve all been there. But why don’t men know these things?
For the same reason, the dazed and confused guy on YouTube comes back to consciousness on the ground, at the base of the wall he just hit, skate board in 1,000 pieces, looks into the camera and says, “I should have gone faster…” and drops into a coma… Men never really learn; Some things will never work. Like Gilligan’s hair brained scheme to get off the island, in every episode, men think, maybe this time? Sometimes this is what we love about them… and sometimes we just want to hit them on the head with a coconut.
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