Why Don't We Just Talk About the Weather

I try to keep myself on a need to know basis about your past relationships. Because in all honesty, I really don't want to know about them, any of them. And I'm not just being polite, you know, the whole, "you share when you're ready to share" bullshit.

I don't want to know that it was love at first sight with her, and that she's the only one it ever happened with. I don't want to know you had sex with her in the ocean, or in your car. I don't want to know that she was tall, or petite, or beautiful, or sexy, or brilliant, or charming, or stylish or a even a bitch. Every time you say something about one of them, every time I hear about a vacation, or a party, or a memory, it makes a little crack in my heart. If you inflict too many cracks in my heart, eventually it will fall apart, breaking into tiny pieces.

All that happens by sharing such things is that you take a woman, who on the outside appears supremely confident and well put together and you expose her for the puddle of quivering self-doubt and insecurity she really is. I'm scared, I'm very very scared of coming up short. Of not quite measuring up to the last girl, the one that (in my head) you really loved, but couldn't be with. I don't want to know. I don't want to know because my insecure little brain will turn me into the consolation prize.

In the past, I wasn't cautious. I would pry and needle and poke and prod until all of my questions were answered. Even the most personal questions. I had to know, I needed to know. It would help me understand him as a person, I would lie, when all I wanted was to satisfy a sick need to compare, and maybe try to feel like I could even compete. Even though the only competition was the one I invented in my head. The problem was, I always came up short and lost. And over the years, I've learned that I don't want to play that game anymore.

Yes, it has something to do with my ex-husband as well. He picked up on this terrible insecurity, the feeling of being unlovable and unworthy. He knew I felt it. And he used it every chance he had. "Oh her, she was amazing in bed." "I'm really sorry you found pictures of me having sex with her, but you shouldn't have been on my computer." "Yes, I kind of miss having sex with other women." "My friends and family used to call her the Jackpot, they knew I would never get better than her."

So now I prefer radio silence. And god help you if I see any pictures. And no, I'm not a fan of the "we used to date, but we're just friends" bit. As far as I'm concerned, that's just recycling waiting to happen.

Maybe therapy will help, but I don't think a therapist is going to be able to convince me that I deserve to be loved. I'm not sure you can either to be quite honest, but at least, if you stop telling me about girls of relationships past, I can convince myself they don't compare to me, which is why you don't even bother mentioning them, and then maybe I'll have a chance to win the emotional edition of the special olympics I've created in my head.