Ask Polly's Guide to Your Next Crisis by Heather Havrilesky

Author:Heather Havrilesky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

Would He Love Me if I Were Prettier?

Dear Polly,

Around a year ago, I met an emotionally crippled thirty-two-year-old whom I fell in love with. At first he was affectionate when we were together, sending me sweet texts after we saw each other. But he quickly made it clear he was bad for me. He flat-out told me he was a mess and out of his mind and I shouldn’t like him. I’m considered a pretty passionate, crazy, intense person myself, so truth be told, maybe his craziness was part of the allure. The warning signals go on and on (starting from the first night) and yet I kept coming back to him. It sounds dumb now, but I honestly, genuinely cared deeply for him in a very pure, innocent way—I had no reason to want to be with him but he had a warm goofiness, an intelligence sprinkled with a hint of mental instability, that made him irresistibly adorable and sexy. Maybe it was because I was twenty-one (twenty-two now), but I loved him really purely, and I didn’t want anything except for him to feel the same. He drinks heavily, hates his job, is in debt, lives with roommates in Brooklyn, and is basically sleeping with the whole island of Manhattan (he’s thirty-three!), but all I wanted was for him to love me back. Of course he said he didn’t want to be anyone’s boyfriend right now and that I’m amazing, beautiful, smart, etc., and that I deserve better. But I feel like it’s all bullshit. Had I been prettier or sweeter or thinner, he would have stayed. He spent seven years in his twenties in a relationship and clearly has the capacity to care, just not about me. And I don’t understand why.

This past weekend he hurt me again and I spent the whole weekend drugged up, and could barely get up for work this morning. He treated me very poorly this year and I cringe thinking about the stuff I put up with, and yet I’m still hoping he will call and apologize. Or at the very least, I wish I could make him feel bad for what he did, because he really broke me. I swear I’m not normally this dumb (I graduated in the top 15 percent of my class, landed my dream job, and am planning to get my masters), and yet this guy who everyone keeps telling me is scum has me on the bathroom floor crying my eyes out for hours and stuck in bed on a Monday morning. My friends all recoil in disgust and don’t understand his allure, but I know I’m not alone because he sees other women and I bet they feel the same way I do. He’s very charming and honest about what a mess he is; I almost find it endearing.

What ends up happening to guys like this? I’m afraid I’m going to wake up next year and see his wedding photos with some beautiful woman posted on Facebook, and then I’ll really know that it wasn’t him, it was me.

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