A few months back I decided to date my next door neighbor...yeah, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that it was a bad idea. And if you've read any of my prior posts, you already know that when it comes to common dating sense, I have very little.
But all relationships, good and bad, short or long term come into our lives for a reason. I really believe that because I have learned so much about myself from all of my relationships. My relationship with the boy next door, though short-lived, taught me some very valuable lessons - aside from the obvious "don't date your next door neighbor" lesson - it taught me a few,even more important lessons. I will start with the first lesson I learned from this relationship and work my way through.
1. Keep the gifts
You may take this advice for yourself as I believe it to be great advice and I will illustrate my reasoning with my personal story.
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| Brooke cozies up with "The Blanket" |
The gift received during this relationship is a beautiful hand-crocheted blanket made by Boy-next-door's Grandmother. Now, before you gasp in horror at my insensitivity, let me explain something; The rainbow-colored afghan my kids and I now affectionately refer to as, "The Blanket" was one of many blankets carefully crafted and given to Boy-next-door by his sweet Grandma only to be carelessly thrown in the back seat of his car where they all remained, untouched and unappreciated for years. Whats worse is that when I commented on how beautiful this particular blanket was he said something to the effect of, "Meh, she makes those things all the time and gives them out to all of us kids. If you want it you can have it."
I felt that if he was willing to toss this treasure to a girl he's gone out with twice, he must not treasure It at all. It wasn't long before I saw his lack of sentiment for the blanket as part of a pervasive pattern in his unfeeling nature, you might say his care for the blanket is a symbol of the amount of care he has for others. Aside from his video games, Boy-next-door treasured nearly nothing and no one else in his life at all. Case and point: his previous break up.
When the boy next door knocked on my door to tell me that he wanted to dump his girl friend so that he could date me I will admit, I was flattered. Who wouldn't be? But as I thought about it later I realized that it didn't seem right to throw away a five month relationship just because of a couple light-hearted conversations with the neighbor girl.
And he broke up with her over text!
And everyone aside from Joe Jonas knows that is not cool!
But I agreed to go out with him anyway. Why? Because I felt guilty about being the reason he broke up with his girlfriend! Why would I feel that way? It's not like I was trying to break them up, I didn't even know he had a girlfriend, I was just being me, so I shouldn't have felt guilty about it but I did and it taught me this valuable lesson:
2.Never put someone else's feelings above your own.
To put someone else's feelings above your own goes against the cardinal rule of self conservation and something I wish I had figured out long ago.
The weeks that followed were weird. The boy next door showed up at my apartment almost every day, rummaging through my fridge for juice or some other tasty drink.
"One thing you will learn about me is that I like to have a lot of tasty drinks on hand", he once said, then he listed drinks he liked and those he didn't care for.
I took this as a hint for my future grocery shopping lists. He invited himself to dinner on more than one occasion and once commented that he liked his vegetables to be a little more tender than how I cook them.
I was getting very annoyed.
He obviously didn't value me as a person and to be honest his subtle complaints about everything from my cooking to the way I raise my kids were wearing on my self image a little. He showed up at my house whenever he pleased, but got annoyed when I knocked on his door. He snapped at me for reasons that baffled me like sitting too close to him or not close enough, depending on his mood that day (I guess he expected me to be a mind reader) and he insisted on winning at the Wii games he played against my kids! And that is just the short list. I will omit the amount of red flags that flared up in my mind when I overheard him speaking to his mother on the phone. But he lived next door, telling him off would be creating a very awkward situation for the both of us. I knew I had to do it eventually, I was just putting it off, waiting for the right opportunity to present itself and It wasn't long before it did!
Boy- next- door asked me out for a Friday evening. He had no particular time set so I didn't rush myself getting ready. When I walked over to his apartment at about 7:00 he was in a fit of rage. I had taken too long getting ready and now we missed the movie he had wanted to see. I still don't know what movie he had planned for us to see because it didn't matter whether I wanted to see it or not, it only mattered that he wanted to see it and that I ruined it for him.
There it was, my moment! I explained to him that I didn't want to be his door mat or his punching bag and good luck on finding someone who does....Okay, so there may have been a few more words in between and most of them were expletives, but none of them attacked his mother or his height, so I was playing fair. (height was 5'6" by the way. Little man syndrome is a real condition and a serious problem for some shorter men).
The next day Boy-next-door came over to apologize but when he could see that it was a useless effort he asked for his blanket back. I told him that I would keep the blanket because It deserves to be with someone who knows how to appreciate beautiful things...and so do I.
So the blanket and I have bonded. I appreciate its beauty and all the work that was put into making it. The kids and I love to cozy up with it on home movie nights. Best of all, the blanket has become something of a symbol that reminds me of the most important lesson this relationship taught me:
3. Never let someone to treat you as anything less than precious.
Update: Since our breakup, Boy-next-door's roommates and I became good friends and as it turns out, they had been miserably tolerating his temper tantrums for the last six years. The two roommates and I formed an alliance. When the Boy-next-door would leave for the night to go do whatever it was that he did his roommates would knock on the wall to let me know that the coast was clear to come over and hang out. One night, as the boy's roommates and I were hanging out together, watching a movie and telling dirty jokes, the Boy-next-door walked in on us.
It was as if someone's mother had walked in and crashed her kids party! Hell hath no fury like a roommate scorned. Boy-next-door turned red and screamed at his roommates for having no loyalty to him.
That was the last straw for the roommates. They told him that they could be friends with whomever they pleased, they could bring into the apartment whomever they pleased, they were tired of his behavior and that he needed to find a new place to live.
Things are nice and quiet here now that Boy-next-door is not next door anymore, and I couldn't be more grateful for the two roommates he left behind.
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