With all the craziness that happens with dating, I have tried to stay as positive as possible. It’s not always possible, but it’s something that I make an effort to do. And I’m usually pretty good about letting people go once things end. I’m even getting better at doing that when I’m ghosted. I’m not perfect, but things haven’t been affecting me as much because I’ve realized that if they are the type of person to do that to me, they clearly weren’t the right person. And once something with a guy is over, I don’t usually think too much about them again.
There have been a few people from my past that have come back for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s because they want to see if I want to see them again and sometimes it’s because I find out more information about them that makes me think differently about our time together. I should know by now that these rarely turn into something good. And I have another example of that happening to me recently.
Without going into a crazy amount of details or specifics, I recently found out that someone that I was seeing a few years ago for a few months had another part of his life that I had no clue about. And this other part of his life was happening at the same time we were dating. He wasn’t a horrible person to me, but he was to others and I have read things about him that really shocked me. There’s no reason for me to not believe what I’m hearing now, but it surprised me to learn about this. If I really think hard about everything, I can see how things happened, and I’m grateful that I didn’t have the same experience with this guy.
My memories of him from years ago weren’t negative. Things ended, but they didn’t end for a dramatic or bad reason. But now, knowing what I know about what he was like while we were dating, I can’t help but feel like my memories from before are a bit of a lie. I’ve been thinking about everything he said and did and considering it from a different angle. I don’t need to analyze everything because the end result will still be that we ended and that’s that. But it’s just messing with my brain a bit realizing that my memories aren’t really real.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. There was someone I was dating a while ago who lied to me about a lot. I found out after he and I ended that he was single when we met but got married and his wife had a baby during the time we were seeing each other on and off. I never knew he was married and if I did I never would have continued to see him. I hate that what I thought was one type of relationship was really something else. I never agreed to be someone’s affair partner, but that’s what I was turned into. That felt like a bit of a betrayal, but I also knew that it was something I would have to work out on my own since I wasn’t going to talk to him about what I found out. It took a little bit of time, but I am past it. I won’t forget what he did or the lies he told, but I don’t feel like I need to figure out anything else at this point. It is what it is and fortunately, I rarely think of him anymore.
I’m working through this new information on my own again. I’ve done it before and I just have to do it again. I have no intention of reaching out to this guy from my past, mainly because I don’t really care what he says or what his excuses are. There’s nothing that he could say that would make me feel better about the situation, he could only make me feel worse. And I don’t know a lot of details at this point and I don’t want to find out any more.
I never want to assume any guy that I go out with will be a bad person or that I will find out later that they are not who I thought they were. If I thought like that, I doubt I would have the motivation to keep dating. And I’m lucky that this isn’t a situation I’ve encountered that often. Most of the time, my dating experiences are positive or neutral. Or if they are bad, I can find the positive in them or find something to laugh about. I don’t know if I’ll be able to reflect back on this guy in my past in a positive or neutral way going forward, but I will get over what I learned and how what I believed wasn’t really true.
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