the end.

I know I’ve slacked off a bit this week, partly because I’ve been hideously busy with work and extracurricular activities, but also because I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this blog post. You see, something big happened to me recently, something that is a major breakthrough in my personal life, and I needed some time to process it before I started writing about it. Truth be told, I’m still not exactly sure how to deal with this, but dammit, I’m going to try (and no, I did not find a significant other or enter into a new relationship, so you can chill out with that business.)

In fact, sort of the opposite thing happened. I was finally able to close the book on a past relationship, and I don’t know if I’ve ever known such a sense of relief, hope and assurance. You see, this was not just any relationship that was finally laid to rest; this the the relationship. The one that I thought was The One. This was the guy I was ready to say “I do” to, whose dismissal crushed me harder and more completely than any other rejection in my life, and whose memory haunted me for years, always accompanied by that most tortuous of questions – What if?

I got my answer to that question last weekend, when I came face to face with him, and what I’ve been realizing little by little in the four years since our spectacular demise was undoubtedly crystallized  – it would never have worked. It will never work. There is nothing left between us but memories, some good, some bad, but definitely in the past.

It doesn’t mean I think ill of him, or wish ill on him; I still care about him a great deal, and am sure I always will. But I don’t love him, and more importantly, I don’t want him to love me. That which I thought was imperative to my happiness in life isn’t. I see that now. I see  that we’re two very different people, and while that doesn’t necessarily need to be the death knell for a relationship, in our case it would mean there would always be more conflict than harmony in our relationship, and that is something I know I do not want. I’m older and wiser now than I was when he and I were dating, and I know now not to mistake constant turmoil and fighting for passion and excitement, and mind games for intellectual stimulation. There are plenty of other ways to have those elements in a relationship. The person who will make me happy and who I will love will know that.

There was a time – and I’m not ashamed to admit this, because I think everyone pretty much knew it anyway – but there was a time when he could have showed up on my doorstep, asking for another chance, and I would have agreed in a heartbeat. That time has passed; I suspected it for a long time, and it was confirmed when I saw him. I wouldn’t say that I felt nothing; I felt a lot of emotions, but love and desire were not among them, and that is the most important thing. I was able to walk away, without looking back, looking only ahead.

what the backstreet boys taught me about dating

I make no secret, on this blog or elsewhere in my life, of my deep and abiding love for the Backstreet Boys. This weekend, as I celebrated that love by seeing the Boys in concert yet again, I was reminded of the huge influence they have had on my life. Their music has provided me with comfort and solace during several dark periods of my life, they continue to amuse me with their general ridiculousness, and they taught me several important lessons about men, love and dating.

You see, when I first became a Backstreet Boys fan at the tender age of 13, I knew nothing of the world of romance. I was an innocent. (And how. I had never seen AJ McLean hump a stage, an event which I to this day blame for my eventual descent into debauchery.) However, over the next twelve years, like five golden-voiced Yodas, the Backstreet Boys and their music taught me much about the ways of the world. I now present you with “What the Backstreet Boys Taught Me About Dating”:

1. Boys have one-track minds. (“Boys Will Be Boys,” Backstreet Boys, 1996)
Hey! Guess what? Boys like sex! A lot! And not just guys who are 20-years-old (the average age of the Backstreet Boys when this song was recorded. Yes, I figured it out.) but like, 99.9% of guys ages 10 to death. And they will use whatever means necessary to get you to have sex with them. In this track from their 1996 debut European album, the Boys use lines like “My body’s callin’ for you/So please don’t hesitate” to try to coerce their way into a girl’s pants, blaming their rampant horniness on the adage that “boys will be boys” (and the fact that their average age was 20.6 at the time this song was recorded). But the song fails to mention what happens once the girl does give up the goods – not only does the boy’s body stop calling for you, he stops calling you altogether. The moral of the story? Make him work for it, girl, no matter how many times he tries to sweet talk you with lines like “You’ve got something/So incredible in my eyes.”

2. Bad boys do it better. (“If You Want It to Be Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy),” Backstreet Boys, 1997)
Nice guys always wonder why girls are drawn to the “bad boy.” Blame it on songs like this. Being told that a bad boy is the one to go to “If you really like it hot/Someone who hits the spot,” suddenly makes all those googly-eyed nice guys seem so…unsatisfying. Sure, a sweet, considerate guy will gently make love to you while looking deep into your eyes, but only someone who’s a little rough around the edges will do things to you that are illegal in 26 states and render you incapable of speech for a good 20 minutes. The lesson? If you want someone to change your tires, find a nice guy. If you want someone to make your toes curl and your eyeballs roll back in your head, get yourself a bad boy.

3. If you’re really in love with someone, your pasts don’t matter. (“As Long as You Love Me,” Backstreet Boys, 1997)
Everybody has some skeletons in his or her closet. An emotionally scarring upbringing. A really crazy Spring Break week in Cancun. Paris Hilton. But what the Boys are saying here is that if you love someone in the here and now, none of that matters. Maybe not the best defense when trying to explain why there are pictures of you naked with a donkey on Facebook, “As Long As You Love Me’s” message is one of forgiveness for sins committed long before you and your lover were glimmers in each other’s eyes. So forget about the past, look to the future, and keep on suppressing those herpes outbreaks, and everyone will be A-OK.

4. Boys tend to be very confusing and ambiguous about what they want. (“I Want It That Way,” Millennium, 1999)
The Backstreet Boys’ first worldwide #1 hit, “I Want It That Way” has become the band’s signature song – and yet, eleven years later, no one really has any clue what the fuck they’re talking about. While we know for sure it involves heartaches and mistakes, fires and desires, the Boys never clearly define what “it” is or what “way” they specifically want it. Rhodes scholars have debated it for years, but women know better – it’s because men generally really have no idea what they want, and, on the off chance they do, they are completely incapable of expressing it. The Backstreet Boys actually did generations of women a favor by releasing this song, and giving women a chance to practice decoding a guy’s mixed messages, since we’d be doing it for the rest of our lives anyway.

5. If your significant other calls to tell you not to wait up for him, and his phone battery “dies,” he’s probably cheating on you. (“The Call,” Black & Blue. 2000)
Not to encourage paranoia in an already fear-mongering age, but the moral of this story is simple – if your significant other’s acting shady, chances are he or she is being fucking shady. Sure, everyone’s experienced the utter sense of despair and dismay upon hearing their phone’s surprisingly perky “low battery” beep, and it shouldn’t be an immediate cause for concern for your better half. However, a confluence of bullshit such as this song describes (“I’m out with my boys, but I’m not telling you where we’re going, but don’t wait up for me, and for good measure, my phone’s dying, so don’t call me while I’m mid-coitus with a stripper whose real name I don’t know.”) is a good indicator that some dirt is being covered up. Of course, the other lesson here is that if you lie, you will get caught. Overall, what we should take away from “The Call” is that it’s better to stay on the up-and-up, and make sure your phone battery’s always charged.

6. Boys love to rescue a hot mess in distress… (“The One,” Millennium, 1999; “Poster Girl,” Never Gone, 2005; “One in a Million,” Unbreakable, 2007)
At some point in my life, I got this notion in my head that men found confident, intelligent, self-sufficient, independent women attractive and alluring. The funny thing is, the older I get, the more I realized the exact opposite is true. Oh sure, guys will say they don’t like girls who bring drama, are clingy, and need constant attention, but boys like (more about that later). The fact is, no matter what they say, guys clearly get off by swooping in on a white horse to be the “helping hand to make it right” whether it’s because your car won’t start and you hate your job at Starbucks, or you’re a fatalistic hipster with an exhibitionist streak. The lesson? Unleashing your inner crazy is the key to romantic success, ladies!

7. …but they will only put up with your shit for so long. (“Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),” Backstreet Boys, 1997; “Don’t Want You Back,” Millennium, 1999;  “Treat Me Right,” Unbreakable, 2007; “Bye Bye Love,” This Is Us, 2009)
Of course, while guys make like a girl crazy enough to do it in an elevator, they have their limits for how much ape-shittiness they will tolerate (the line of demarcation seems to fall somewhere around boning another dude, or at least being very indecisive about which dude you’d like to bone). You see, apparently boys have feelings too, and they don’t like being lied to, cheated on, or jerked around. Wow, whoever thought that those things would totally suck?

8. At some point in the life of every man, he will act like a complete tool, and subsequently try to make it up to you. (“Shape of My Heart,” Black & Blue, 2000; “Crawling Back to You,” Never Gone, 2005; “Bigger,” This Is Us, 2009)
Basically, the message the Boys are trying to send to their hordes of impressionable young female fans with these songs is, “Look, sometimes guys will act like complete shits. We’re human too; we’re fallible. And every once in a blue moon, we might realize and acknowledge that we acted like shits, and try to make it up to you by writing you a pretty song about how we’re sorry we were shits.” I mean, not like a guy has ever admitted to me that he screwed up, but at least I had advanced warning that he would.

9. Boys lie. A lot. (“I’ll Never Break Your Heart,” Backstreet Boys, 1997)
Perhaps the hardest lesson of all to learn. In 1998, when the Backstreet Boys first said “I’ll never break your heart/I’ll never make you cry/I’d rather die than live without you,” who were we to question? Surely this was how all boys felt – they were good and true, and they’d go to any lengths to avoid hurting girls like us. Imagine then, what a surprise it was when boys did in fact break our hearts, make us cry, and go on living without us in perfect health and happiness. Those hearts, which we were promised would never be broken, slowly hardened into bitter, margarita-soaked stones as we came to the painful, dispiriting revelation that boys will say a lot of things, and not all of them will be true.

10. Love will drive you fucking nuts. (“Climbing the Walls,” Never Gone, 2005; “Love Will Keep You Up All Night,” Unbreakable, 2007)
You want more proof? Read this blog.

scar tissue

Hey, what do you know – I’m alive! I know I’ve been a slacker the past few days, but what with digging my car out of the snow, working extra hours because of auditions, and the ritual bloodletting over Valentine’s Day, I just couldn’t seem to find a spare moment to write, but I promise, I will do better.

I’ve been thinking a lot the last few days about our attitudes and perceptions of what love is and what love should be, and how those feelings change over time, and what causes those changes.  I’ve been thinking about this mainly because of the Backstreet Boys.  (Somehow everything in my life comes back to the Backstreet Boys.  This probably goes a long way in explaining why I’m single.)  It all started Friday night when fellow BSB devotee Julie and I decided the time was ripe for  some nostalgia, so we dusted off my collection of VHS tapes, popped a few bottles of wine, and took a slightly tipsy trip down memory lane (as evidenced by the wildly inappropriate comments I made on Twitter during all this.)

At any rate, watching this footage – some of it twelve, thirteen years old – brought me screeching back to the days when I was an awkward, naive teenager, bespectacled and braced, who was just starting to imagine what love was like.  I didn’t have any firsthand experience, save for a few ill-fated crushes on scrawny adolescent boys who’d just as soon call me names as date me, but the words and images in the Backstreet Boys’ slick, Swedish-produced pop songs were all I needed – I’ll never break your heart, I’d go anywhere for you, my love is all I have to give.  These songs plugged into my feverish, hormone-fueled, wildly overactive imagination and created a sort of intoxicating love cocktail – love was about devotion, redemption, all-consuming passion.  It was hard and messy and inconvenient and completely out of touch with reality, but it didn’t matter because NOTHING was more important and wonderful than love, and someday I would meet a boy who felt the same way, and we would live happily ever after.

And then, well, life happened.

I grew up.  I met and dated boys who broke my heart, took a hell of a lot more than they gave, and not only wouldn’t go anywhere for me, but couldn’t even make it to my goddamn front door to pick me up for a date.  I learned that love is hard and messy and inconvenient, and sometimes, impossible.  I learned that to many boys, there were many things more important than love.  And with each heartbreak, each disappointment, that cocktail dissipated, and I went from being love-drunk to straight-up hungover, and here I sit, the cynical, bitter blogger you know and love.

What’s comforting or depressing, depending on how you look at it, is that this process is not unique to me.  Though the players may change, the experience of going from an innocent, naive, idealistic adolescent to a pessimistic, world-weary, “been there, done that” adult is pretty common.  And I don’t know about you, but I don’t begrudge those experiences – my life is my life and things have happened the way they did for a reason.  Nor would I ever want to go back and relive all those years again; once was enough.  But, on Friday night, while  watching those videos and laughing at myriad hair and clothing styles that did not stand the test of time, part of me returned to my teenage self – the 14-year-old girl staring breathlessly at the TV, drinking in every word, every sound, every movement, her impassioned mind praying for the day when all the dreams being offered would come true for her.  And I wondered – does that belief in pure, passionate, all-consuming love still exist?  If I were to peel back all the layers of scar tissue that years of anger, disappointment, heartbreak, rejection and bitterness have created, would I find it?  And if that belief does still exist, what do I – what do any of us – do with it?  There’s no benefit that can come of forgetting all you’ve learned from experience, but that doesn’t mean you should think you know everything, either.  But how do you reconcile the two?

I wonder if, at some point in our lives, everything comes full circle.  After years of pessimism and cynicism, do you finally reach the other side, back to the land of optimism and hope?  Can this be something that occurs naturally, or does there need to be a catalyst?  Or is it better to stay the course of pragmatism, and acknowledge that dreams aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be?

A lot of questions and not many answers, I know, but maybe some food for thought to keep you warm on these cold winter nights…