I was 14 when I dated my first girlfriend. I liked her friend, but her friend didn't like me, and so pushed my first girlfriend onto me. In hindsight, I think her friend did like me, but pushed my first girlfriend on me anyways. Not sure why.
It had been such a big thing when my sister had a boyfriend at 14. She wasn't allowed one till she was 16 as per my dad's rule. She begged him to let her date this skater boy she loved. He turned out to be an ass.
When I asked someone out at 14, I knew a) my parents didn't care, and b) they'd just be happy someone would accept me. They'd never worried about me getting a girlfriend. I wasn't attractive, like my sister. I was male. I wasn't smart yet, I'd been in the special needs course only a couple years before (grade 4). I was a social outcast with eating disabilities and malnutrition issues.
So I didn't even think to ask my parents.
But I don't know why I was so attached to her after she'd said yes. I turned 15 during the 3 months we dated. I still have the shirt she gave me. Then she said she "didn't feel a spark anymore" and it was over. It was the first time my brain fractured. I started self harming. Something I'd still struggle with some 20 years later. My parents didn't notice after id been self harming for a few months, and I was getting pressured to join the rugby team, which was going to make it obvious I self harmed (change rooms? Yikes). So I told them. Swapped schools. Sat with the mentally disabled kids at my new school- the only people who COULDNT reject me. The only girl in the group thought I had a thing for her. I didn't. When other people started inviting me to join them, I dropped the disabled group entirely- to the point that the girl in the group came looking for me a couple times to see why I didn't like them any more. It wasn't that. It's that I didn't need them any more.
I got my second girlfriend when I was 16. I liked her friend. Turns out, her friend liked me.
I didn't like her (my second girlfriend) And I couldn't tell why. She was pretty. Smart. A socialite. Very conservative, traditional. Blond, blue eyes. Wanted to settle down and have five kids.
We dated for 2 years. I dumped her five times during those two years. Each time, she'd cry, avoid me at school a little, then I'd fold and say I was sorry for dumping her. We'd be back together. Rinse. Repeat. We started dating because we kissed once, and I said "oh god, are we dating? We better be dating to kiss." I was a loser. She was my first sexual partner. I was shaking so badly when we did it that she asked if I needed to stop. In hind sight, it was a panic attack. I've had a few of those in my life. At the time, I thought it was just adrenaline or something.
Her and I hooked up a few years after we broke up. I still had a panic attack when we had sex then. Like, five of them in a row, every night when I went to her place and we fucked. By then I kinda knew what they were. (Huh, wonder if my parents method of sex education traumatized me)
But when we really broke up, it was because the friend I had a thing for came to me and asked why I was still with my girlfriend, if I could have her instead. I'd always wanted her. She had tattoos. Argued with her parents. Wore black. Skinny. Snake bite piercings. Radically liberal mental state. Turns out, gay as fuck too. She cheated on me with another woman, about 2 years later. If my memory of the time is accurate (which I'm entirely aware it isn't reliable) I asked her what she wanted to do "tomorrow", refering to our two year anniversary. She responded with "we need to talk" then told me she needed space to figure out who she was. She wasn't dumping me, but she had met someone at work and wanted to see what that meant. I moved back in with my parents for two weeks. I have only snippets of memory of those two weeks. Even at the time I didn't generate memories. When she texted me I could come home, I didn't remember the two weeks prior. I was sobbing and shaking when we hugged again. Told her to leave the ring I'd given her in my room if she wanted things to be over between us. She
I told her I was gonna kill myself. Thanked her for removing the last barrier between me and the edge. She held me through that night, invited me into her bed. The bed she fucked the other woman in. I heard them going at it. Her room was right below mine. I shivered and sobbed till I slept. I was fucked. A couple months later, I got kicked out of the house. The landowner (a friend of mines mom) had sold the place to get son (my friend's brother) and they were "kicking out everyone on the main floor. All the straight people. They don't want to live with straight folks."
I moved into a place nearby. I decided to die. It was a rough year.