In The End, You Win!

TL;DR: No really, this is too long so don't read it. But if you do read it, you'll realize that your whole life you've been told the same thing over and over - but you just don't understand why it hasn't come true yet. In the end, you're supposed to get the girl. But when the fuck is the end?

You were in the first grade the first time you asked a girl to marry you. You even had your friend steal his mother's wedding ring for your proposal. Ah, you hopeless romantic you!

Turned down, you gave the ring back to your friend (who got in serious trouble) and asked your mother why that girl didn't like you back. Mother reassured you that you were a sweet boy and that girls are stupid when they're young - but one day you'll meet the girl who loves you for who you are.

You laid in bed that night, 7 years old, and wondered what your future wife looked like.

Elementary school continued with the same pattern. You meekly told a girl you liked her, she didn't return the affection and you felt sad for a while before attaching all of your affection to another girl who didn't want to return it.

Meanwhile, your friend Chad who you sat next to, had every single girl you liked telling him that they liked HIM. And he couldn't even explain to you why.

Again you asked your mother. She told you that you were so sensitive and sweet, and that some lucky girl was one day going to fall in love with you - just like those Disney movies you watched. You never bothered to ask Dad, cause Dad's aren't good at love (that's why he and Mom fought all the time).

You sighed as you went to sleep. "I can't wait to meet my princess.." you thought.

Middle school came around, and suddenly the girls started to mean a lot more to you. You already knew you liked them, but now it was everything to you. All that mattered was who your friends were and your popularity. And by god, you little romantic, you just started falling in love again.

By this point, you were so used to the rejection you felt that was the normal. You befriended a girl, did things for her and told her you liked her - all the while playing out the fantasies of the fun dates you would take her on and how happy you would be to hold a girl's hand in the hallway. Chad had already had 3 girlfriends this year. He kept asking why you didn't have one yet. In fact, everyone was asking.

And every girl you professed your affection to universally denied you.

Eventually, a girl you barely knew agreed to be your girlfriend. You showed up the next day with flowers for her. You gave her the flowers in the hallway in front of everyone. What a sweetheart. God you were a hopeless romantic! She sent Nicole, her friend, to tell you that you were breaking up a day later.

So that's what having a girlfriend is like. You asked your mother why Caitlyn dumped you after a day. I mean, you bought her flowers, and none of the other guys were bringing their girlfriends flowers. You wanted her to feel special, and then she dumped you. Your mother comforted you. She told you that you were perfect the way you were, and that Caitlyn was never going to find a boy as nice and sweet as you.

You finished middle school with a lot of friends. You weren't the loser, but you weren't at the popular table either. A comfortable spot - nobody challenged you and you rarely got into confrontations.

Your first day of high school was like entering the big leagues. By this point you'd figured out how to masturbate, and entering high school was like opening a catalog of models to whom you would jerk off to. And you'd continue attaching all of your emotions to them.

You would write poems about them. You would watch them from the distance as they flirted with the older and popular boys. What the fuck did they see in those guys? Those guys weren't sensitive or sweet. They weren't even smart, like you were.

You would find out their instant messenger name from a mutual friend, and send them messages. They would take forever to reply, but you waited patiently and replied with vigor and excitement. You saw them in school but never talked to them. A few times you would make eye contact and immediately break - yikes, that was scary.

After a couple of weeks chatting, you felt your heart pound in your throat as you told the girl you had been courting that you liked her. You sent it over chat, cause you couldn't call her - that would be too scary.

She told you that she liked someone else, but thought you were a good friend. "That's okay I guess," you thought "We'll become best friends who fall in love, like in that movie."

But that never happened. Each year of high school became defined by a handful of girls who you fell in love with and never got with. Chad would occasionally regale you with stories of the girls he had sex with. You would agree that sex was awesome and tell him about the girl who gave you a blowjob in your car. You lied to your best friend.

Your final year of high school ended the same way elementary school did. You had grown used to the rejection and remained incredibly nervous around girls. You divulged to your mother that you were frustrated about girls not liking you. Your friends had already had several girlfriends, and you were taller, more athletic and better looking. What was worse is that those guys didn't even CARE about the girls. "God, girls are stupid," you told your mother.

"Yes they are, but in the end you will win." she told you. "How so?" you asked. "Well, girls date guys like Chad when they're young, because they're stupid. But eventually they get smart. They figure out that Chad isn't the kind of guy to get married to. Once they smarten up, they'll ALL be knocking on YOUR door, wanting to date YOU."

That was reassuring. "I guess I just have to bid my time." you told yourself. "I win in the end anyway, let the girls be stupid now. One day I'LL be Chad!"

The years pass, and you occasionally have sex with a girl you're slightly embarrassed to admit you slept with. Once in awhile you fuck a hot girl after a night of drinking. She doesn't respond to your facebook messages telling her you'd like to see her and take her on a real date.

At this point in your life, you're growing really tired of your friends and family asking about why you don't have a girlfriend. Every time you go out, your friends point out a girl and physically push you toward her. She notices this, and you look like an idiot. Fucking asshole friends. They make it worse; they make you more anxious than you already are.

By the time you finish college, you've fucked 10 girls and feel like you do okay with girls. But still no girlfriend. Still have all the emotional energy pent up and ready to be unleashed on some lucky girl. But all the girls you fall for continue to insist that "You're such a good friend, I don't want to complicate that. But I know you're going to meet a girl one day - she's going to be so lucky to have you."

You reach critical mass when the girl you've been courting for two weeks tells you she doesn't want to be in a relationship, and a week later she's in a relationship with fucking Tommy. Fucking Tommy?! That douchenozzle? For fuck's sake.

"What the fuck is wrong with me?" you ask yourself. Maybe it's that extra pudge you carry on your body. It sure seems like the hot girls are going after the guys who are jacked and slim. "But.. all my friends tell me I'm cute and perfect the way I am.. I mean, this is just who I am."

You accept that you'll never be Chad, your destiny is to be you. And you are the same sweet, sensitive and hopeless romantic you were as a boy.

The girls enter your life, and leave the moment you suggest dating. Some of them drag it out for weeks, and the moment you push for sex you're made out to be a creep. You even hear people refer to you as "rapey".

How fucking embarrassing. Rapey? You haven't ever so much as touched a girl in a violent manner, how the fuck are you rapey?

Fuck this. You decide you're done with this shit. You stop going out. You just go to work and go home to games or TV. You occasionally see your friends, and their girlfriends keep trying to set you up with ugly or fat chicks. What the actual fuck?

Then, one day, you meet a girl and decide "Fuck it, I'm going all in," and make an aggressive move. And she responds. She's receptive. She's hot AND she fucks you. Now you open the floodgates. Every fantasy you played out in your head, with every girlfriend you imagined yourself with, you project into this relationship.

It's great, for awhile. But she starts to go cold on you. You catch her in a lie about what she was doing the other night. You snoop her phone and find messages that read "I love you so much baby.." and they weren't sent to you. You're filled with nausea and your heart is practically in your mouth as you confront her about this.

She breaks down and admits; she's been cheating on you for months. Everyone else seems to have known as well - your friends aren't surprised, and someone even tells you that everyone had been suspecting it.

Everyone but you apparently..

As the fantasy disappears yet again, you call your mother. You ask her "Why the hell does this keep happening to me?" She tells you "Son, you're such a loving, sweet, sensitive and great man. You have so much to offer. But girls your age just aren't smart enough yet. You have to let them get all of their wild side out of the way. You have to let them go through Chad's, and Tommy's and Franky's and Christian's. It sucks, but in the end, you win."

You end the conversation with your mother. You go to bed that night, like so many nights before, and you wonder what your future wife looks like. You wonder what she's doing right now. Is she with Chad? You wonder how much more time she needs before she's ready to get smart and come to you.

You tell yourself, "In the end, I win." as you fall asleep.

Boy, it sure is great to be a winner.

Lessons Learned

• Don't ask your mother for relationship advice. She won't tell you the truth, because she loves you and the truth will cause you pain.

• In fact, don't ask anyone for relationship advice. Your mother is your mother, which makes her advice useless. Your dad married your mother which makes his advice useless. Everyone you know who is in a relationship apparently sucks at keeping it healthy so fuck their advice too.

• You were never perfect the way you were. You never will be perfect. That doesn't excuse you for not trying to be.