Ashley Kervabon is a student at Hunter College in New York.
The biggest mistake I have ever made was not the action of dating my now ex-boyfriend but the fact that I spent so much time deciding whether to forgive or forget him. It took me three years of thinking, crying, distancing myself from any other guy that would come close to me. While I was doing that, Ex-Boy, had found skank #1,skank #2, and skank #3, just to name a few. Of course, I didn’t know this until after I decided to forgive him and let him back into my life. But until I found that out, I swore I was the happiest girl in the world with Ex-Boy. The truth is, I really wasn’t. Every time I was with him and he would answer a text message or a phone call I would get nervous. Was he talking to another girl? Was I not good enough? The answer was simply this: yes he was seeing another girl, and, the truth that I see now is, that I was too good for him.
After years of analyzing myself, and talking to many people about my situation, I came to this conclusion. All of time that I thought I was still in love with Ex-Boy, the reality was that I was just infatuated with him. What I was still feeling was not love, it was more like an obsession. I had gotten so used to being with just him that I thought that being with him was my only option. What I didn’t realize was that I was comfortable with him, but people change and after three years, Ex-Boy was not the same person. I wasn’t the same person. I was not in love with the “new” version of him. So what I’m getting at is that even if he had not been a womanizing jerk, things might have not worked out anyway.
Before I came to this conclusion I spent a lot of time saying “love hurts” and “relationships suck”. For three years I never gave anyone a chance and I’m sure I missed out on a handful of decent guys. I had this very foolish mindset that every guy was going to treat me the same. After my realization that not every guy was out to break my heart, little by little I began seeing other guys. Sure I went out on dates. Never did I ever dare call anyone my boyfriend and much less fell in love. That was until I met my current boyfriend.
Even though I was over my relationship phobia that I thought I had, I still wanted to take things pretty slow with him. Now, six months later, I can very happily say that I am in love with him. No over thinking, no hesitations, just love. How it happened I can’t really say, but what matters is that it did and I’m enjoying every minute of it. What I learned from all of this is that I was very wrong to say “love hurts”. Being lied to hurts, being betrayed hurts but love, love doesn’t hurt.
