Addicted to Love?

Let me begin this post with a startling confession: I sometimes feel like I am addicted to love.  Now, I am not continually starting new relationships in order to feel the high of falling in love, only to turn around and destroy the relationship in order to free myself so that I can start another one.  I think it would be more accurate to say that I am often craving love and feeling that I am not getting enough of it. For most of my life I have simply wanted to be loved by someone, only to feel frustration that I am not feeling loved.

I should say that this is not because there has not been anyone to give me love.  Rather, the issue seems to be with myself as I think I have a hard time receiving what love has been given.  As an example, I crave compliments, yet when they are given I find myself not believing them and in some cases even deflecting them.

When I was a child I felt that I did not belong any where, that I was an outcast at school, at church, and even at home.  An old friend once observed that is was clear that I had not received enough love as a child.  My younger brother was born exactly one year and one week after I was, and my mother more than once expressed guilt at not being able to give me the attention I needed.

Outside of the home, I experienced bullying and only a little friendship.  The kids made fun of me at school, at church and in my neighborhood.  My best friend dumped me in the fifth grade.  Later, in high school, I did make a lot of friends, but I was never really sure just how I fit in with them.  One of my biggest fears is that none of it was real.

As for the opposite sex, I had my first crush on a girl when I was in the first grade and my second crush in the fourth grade, but those were innocent and childish.  That changed in junior high when some girls played a joke on me by writing me love notes.  I was pretty sure the girl who supposedly signed the notes did not actually like me, nonetheless, I found myself fantasizing about dating her, and at least some of my fantasies were not so innocent.

Then I fell for the one girl who had been genuinely nice and friendly to me, and I wanted her to like me as much as I liked her.  I took her to the junior prom on my first ever date with a girl, but it seemed that my love would be unrequited.  Then I met another girl, a sweet angel, and started falling for her.  But this time I wanted to be more careful, and decided to try and build a good friendship with her before asking her out.  But the school year ended and that was put on hold.

There was, then, another girl, with whom I had a "summer fling" between my sophomore and junior years.  I did some things that summer that I am not very proud of.

I met Katherine, and other new friends, in a group I joined during the school year called Braves Against Drinking and Drugs.  The group went around to some other schools making a presentation meant to discourage alcohol and drug use.  We put on a skit where I played the authoritarian father who lectures his son about using drugs.

During the state basketball tournament, I would go to one of the games with Katherine and her friend.  They were surprised when I was not so shy and retiring as I cheered on the Braves -- and yelling at the referees for a bad call.  On the last day of school, when we had finished signing yearbooks, Katherine and her friend came by my house to hang out for awhile.  One of the things I remember talking about was an idea for a novel I was writing -- one of many started and never finished -- and I even showed them the first chapter.

A few weeks later I asked Katherine out on a proper date and took her to see a movie.  After the movie we went for ice cream sundaes; she seemed to be having a good time.  But then I did something I am not proud of; I drove up into the hills and found a place to park.  I asked her if she wanted to make out, something I would never have thought to do with any other girl.  Thankfully, she said that she did not love me enough to do that.

She must have liked me, though, because she said yes when I asked her out a second time.  I took her swimming at the old indoor pool.  At one point we were playing basketball in the pool and I got a bit frisky.  In playing defense I got a little physical with her.  If any of my antics upset her, Katherine never said, and she said yes when I asked her out for a third and final date.  We played some board games at my house and watched a video.

Katherine was very smart, and a bit of a feminist.  I was taught to be a gentlemen, but she would object each time I would open a door for her.  "I can do it myself," she would say.

I think by the third date we saw that we didn't have that much in common.  Still, Katherine was the first girl I would date multiple times, and even after that summer she never seemed to mind spending time with me.  Maybe there was more there than I realized.  Could she have loved me more if we had continued dating?

But summer was ending, and I had just recently had an encounter with the girl I took to the prom, which gave me some encouragement that she might still like me.  With the school year about to start, there was another girl I wanted to build a friendship with.

Katherine and I remained friends, having a class or two in common over the next two years.  But in the spring of our senior year we had a few arguments.  We often ate lunch together and the differences between us, from music to marriage, led to some disagreements.  As I look back on it now, I feel that those debates could have been avoided if I had just minded my own business.  Instead, on a few things I really pushed my point of view, and in the end our friendship faded away.

Soon enough I would realize that it is a mistake to push your beliefs and ideas onto another person.  There needs to be a certain amount of live and let live.  It is one thing to share with those who are interested, but another to be zealous with those who are not.  And, frankly, not everything is our business.

I have not talked to Katherine since the summer after high school.  I should like to someday so that I could apologize to her for pushing my point of view as hard as I did.  There are some other things I should like to apologize for, things that I have not mentioned here.  At least some of the things I should like to apologize for I think I did because of how much I was craving love and affection.