Forget me ... not?

I had a thought today.

My past two relationships ended in humiliation, mostly for me.
In one, the man I genuinely loved but did not love me, decided after sleeping with me that we didn't have enough chemistry to justify the relationship. Of course, he'd seen me naked both physically and spiritually, so I was pretty embarassed that I hadn't lived up to his specifications ...
In the second, a man I liked a lot but did not love, and didn't think even LIKED me back, confessed while drunk that he wanted to sleep with me. We tried, but it failed -- being a bit inebriated, we were not able to coordinate our efforts and I ended up getting rather hurt and crying. He took this as a sign that I disliked him and found him freakish (he is very thin but, um, pretty well-endowed) ... so out of embarassment he never spoke to me again. Naturally, I was pretty embarassed too, because I had gone ahead with something against my better instincts, and besides he'd seen me naked too. :&

So I got to thinking -- if somehow, each of the two men could undergo a procedure a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (that is to say, having me specifically erased from their memories) ... I would no longer feel shame or endebtedness toward either of them.
And interestingly enough, I would go back to the man I liked but did not love ... but not to the man I loved but did not love me.

I wanted to share this to see if anyone else could apply the principle to their own experiences, or expand on it. Also, I kind of would like someone to pick my brain -- to analyze what my choice might mean about me psychologically. (of course, once other people post we can pick on them too, if they so desire. )
Basically, I think this might be a fun mental exercise. :H

 

Suncatch22 - You might try to hook up again with the well-endowed thin guy when neither of you are drunk. (That is, if things don't work out with the other guy you have been discussing in the other thread.) Alcohol is a depressant, and although a little of it can relax you and make you less inhibited, a lot of it can make an erection difficult. From what you said, it sounds like he was unable to get it up and you blamed yourself and he was embarrassed, so it was a mess. Sex is something that comes naturally, but good sex takes a lot of practice, just like being a good athlete, and trying to do it while drunk is like trying to pole vault after drinking a six-pack.

 

Sweetie, you're a great girl but you live with so much regret, so much guilt and negative emotions over what has happened in teh past. I'm not saying they weren't bad experiences, but they seem to have sucha hold over you, such sway over the way you see the world, what you expect from others and even what you want.

 

Good analogy. :H

And ... yeah. That was pretty much exactly what happened.

Well ... um ... he and I are ... uh ... let's just say that would probably never work. For a short while after it happened, we were okay with each other -- but he was always a little distant and I was usually drunk because I couldn't stand my own shame. The last time we really interacted was September, and I saw him crying silently when I got out of the car.
He has changed his entire routine -- his whole pattern of getting to and from classes -- just to avoid seeing me. There is probably ZERO chance of ever even speaking to him again, unless he has that memory procedure.

I won't lie ... it's true. Right after it happened (right after each of them happened), I was a complete disaster -- getting drunk a lot, curling up in my bed and wanting myself to die because of what I had done ...
Over the past several weeks, I've sort of moved on -- I don't torture myself constantly any more. I just think a fair amount, and use this board as catharsis.
But it is true -- no matter how much I can put it out of my mind, sort of forgive myself ... I always wonder if maybe I'm not just gonna do the same thing all over again with the next one. :&

Sorry if I come across as odd ... I pretty much am.

 

Suncatch22 - At age 19 or 20 you have one foot in adulthood, and the other still in childhood. Both you and this guy were trying to do the most adult thing you could do (have sex) but you were both not prepared for it, and used alcohol to get over your (especially his) insecurities. And it was a disaster, and now you both are so embarrassed at seeing each other around school that you try to avoid each other. You have seen each other naked, and he could not perform.

I say, forget about it. Move past it. So what that he saw you naked. It's no secret what is under those clothes each of you had on. And every guy at some point in his life cannot perform. So tell him that you have erased that evening from your memory, just like in Spotless Mind, and he should too. I have learned to confront directly the most difficult things that I meet, and I have been paid good money to do so (I am a lawyer).

Tell him you are willing to try again, if he is. He may not want to do it (performance anxiety?) but at least you have made the effort to make things better. Don't curl up in your bed in shame.

Another post (a guy) I saw recently was agonizing because he tried to have sex with a girl, and it ended badly, and the girl wrote a message in the girl's room stall about his big penis, and he now feels that the other girls in his class are shunning him. Aside from the fact that what that girl did was slutty, the guy just has to move beyond it, and turn a negative into a positive. Certainly having publicity that you are well endowed is better than the opposite. It worked for Frank Sinatra.

Teenagers are almost always mortified about bad or embarrassing things said about them. I guess one sign of becoming an adult is not being as upset about what your peers think about you as you get more secure in your self-image.

 

He's twenty-two years old. I'm almost twenty. I thought we were over that by now.

Uh, well, he won't even speak to me. I SINCERELY doubt we would ever end up in such a situation again.
It would be VERY presumptuous of me to even SUGGEST we try again, because, well, he's made it quite clear that we are not even on the same planet any more.

And I doubt he's scared I'm gonna TELL anyone. In fact, I KNOW that is not what the problem is.
Despite his age and relative maturity, he's still the kind of guy who can't face shame. He never spoke to the girl who had his baby, or to the girl who miscarried his other baby, because he was too embarassed about ruining their lives. It's no wonder he won't speak to me, because he knows I became an alcoholic and in a sense ruined my own life for a time.

But this thread isn't about my desire to get back with him, because I really don't want to. It was a theoretical observation.
NOTHING I WROTE HERE WAS LITERAL (except the explanation behind it).

 

Suncatch22 - forgive me. This guy is not worth any further attention from you. Anyone who helps create a baby, and shirks his responsibility, and then creates another one, and is protected from a second mistake only by a miscarriage, is a loser. He will go through life ruining other people's lives.

I knew a guy like that. He was a great con artist, and married a beautiful woman. He ran drugs from South America in his airplane, got caught and imprisoned there, but her family bailed him out. His gratitude? He gave his wife a serious STD. They divorced, he became a jewel thief, and died in prison when another convict put an end to his terrible, self-centered life.

 

Oi!

I love your threads, Chica. Keep em coming.

Yes, I have often thought a la Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind. Don't we all wish to forget certain memories? However if they are erased, we will never have the pain to remember.. or the humiliation. For me, it is extreme pain or hurt that forces me to remember. Sometimes if it's very bad, as it has been before, my mind automatically wipes it. I do not remember details and I can hardly think back to that time as it seems it never happened.

An ex called me weird for this because he needed closure and he finally came back 10 months later to apologize and offer me an explanation. I was already in another relationship and happy. I didn't understand why he was coming back, and the embarassing thing was, I didn't even remember what he was apologizing for. It was pretty uncomfortable.. and I was just honest, saying bygones were bygones. Let's leave it at that. We made up and he's one of my best guy friends.

So the kind of "memory-erasing" happens. It happens for me, and it's certainly not surgical. It doesn't happen all the time. But as I said, if it's very bad, I won't remember much or hardly anything. This may or may not be a good thing so I've started to keep a journal. I'm not sure if anyone has experienced this before or knows anything about this...

 

By the way I might have misunderstood your post. I just realized mine and others' posts are very different. I just took your experiences as an example for a rhetorical and philosophical (perhaps psychological) musings.

I don't think you're looking for advice for your past. Am I wrong?

 

You're not wrong, Hannah. In fact, you were the only one so far who came close to being right.
I WAS looking for abstractness (is that a word?), and yours was dead on!

I don't need advice on how to forget these guys ... I sort of have forgotten.

Well, no, I haven't -- I still think about them from time to time, of course, because they were part of my life, but I've (finally) distanced myself from the pain.
The first one called me last night, out of the blue, wanting to know how I was, and after he hung up I did spend about ten minutes crying (it was so strange to know he still cared, because he had been such an ASSHOLE to me) ... but then I got up, made some hot cocoa, and was back to normal within half an hour.

For me, it's not so much erasure of my own memories ... I've come to terms with them. I still remember everything, and it no longer makes me cringe. For me it's about erasure of their memories (aren't I a bitch? )
Knowing that they still remember the embarassment (which I know they still do), is awful to me because in a sense that keeps me from being able to look them in the eye -- which in a sense keeps me indebted to them.
It's complicated logic.

I'm still wondering if anyone else thinks along the same lines ... either like me or more like Hannah. Input please!

You fell down, of course, and you ​

got up of course, and started over ...​

Forgot my name, of course ... but you've started to remember.​

But it's still tough to think about​

the beginning of December ...​

 

Suncatch22 - It is true that as the years pass, your memories fade, and you remember only the most intense things that happened -the highs and the lows, or strangely, on occasion some random happening in a relationship. I think back to a relationship I had many years ago, and although I have forgotten much about it (I don't even remember her last name) I do remember making love to her in a cave (it may even have been in West Virginia), in total darkness, and how hard it was to find anything to get the lovemaking going. Sort of funny, that this is what I remember after all those years, even though we were together for months.

Think about this - in 20 years, you are at your college reunion. You meet this guy. He is there with his wife and kids, and comes up to you and smiles and introduces himself. (He is now bald, with a paunch). He does not recognize you until you tell him your name. What are your memories? What will you say to him?

I had a fraternity brother whom we called "Uno" in the house, because he had one testicle. At a reunion recently, I called him "Uno" jokingly in front of his wife, who looked at him and wondered where he got the name. He looked stricken that I had brought this memory of his past up. I quickly realized the bad mistake I had made, and commented that we called him "Uno" because he was the #1 swimmer at the school (which was true).

Don't feel guilty about that guy's embarrassment. That is his problem. We all do things that we are embarrassed about, but we move on.

 

Hee hee hee ... I can't imagine either of those guys surviving to our twentieth reunion ... much less having wives or children.

Also, the drunken thin man is a senior in college this year, while I am a sophomore -- two classes behind. I would have to make a special trip.

But I know what you mean. It will pass, and I KNOW it will pass. But in the meantime it's so strange ...

Anyway. Back to the abstract.

 

Well... sometimes I do wish they they WOULD forget, and forget with me. The man I described who still remembers kept bringing up the stuff from the past on occasion and it was quite jolting. I think it must have been annoying for him too maybe to feel that guilt and yet the person he was feeling it for didn't remember much anyway?

To be very honest, I started losing my "bad" memories after a terrible relationship. It was pretty abusive on several levels. I didn't attribute it to that relationship at first but my mind afterwards became quick to forget memories it did not like. I remember that they happened, I just don't remember the details or what they were about - I don't remember what they said and I often don't remember what I said; I only remember the gist of the issue and why it didn't work out. When I look back at my journal I sometimes cringe and I'm not sure myself if any of it happened. I think this is quite common too.

Yea, you're such a biatch for wanting them to forget. Especially if they're sticking around and calling you up. I'm still very tempted to call this guilt-feeling Self-pity. But I know what it's like to have a guy from the past coming out of nowhere and feeling bad all over again. If they're not harassing you or plaguing you or stalking you, then this is utterly self-inflicted, know what I mean? It may come across as self-absorbed too. There's only so much we can discuss the abstract on, and people on the forums get doubly confused because most have the misconception that all threads in the Relationships section MUST be about advice-giving. I've posted my own abstract, musing threads and they were misunderstood. It doesn't help either when you've added so much personal detail in your abstract. lol.

My theory is that people will forget if they WANT to forget. Truly, honestly. The mind is powerful that way. Unfortunately you can't warp someone else into forgetting their own memories (with or without you). Someone may argue that this is abuse like physical or emotional abuse; it's still psychological abuse. Perhaps even a type of rape and theft if a person were to take another's memories or replace it with something else.

 

Oh, yeah, I don't want to FORCE them to forget. That would be crappy.

I was talking about, if they each underwent this theoretical procedure voluntarily.

And I included the details to clarify my addition in the end -- that I would *theoretically* go back to the one I hadn't loved, were he to *theoretically* undergo this *theoretical* procedure ... but if the one I HAD loved did the same theoretical thing, I wouldn't.
I'm sure that means something twisted too

 

Suncatch22 - I just got back from an Impeach Bush meeting - we are going to get that motherfucker. Anyway, back to relationships.

Looking back,I am continually surprised how people end up - the nerd becomes CEO of a big company (Bill Gates, anyone?). The big high school jock amounts to nothing. The college drunken party boy becomes a prominent neurosurgeon. The shy girl with glasses becomes a movie star.
People do grow up and change for the better. But not all people.....

My high school class has an active internet network, with perhaps 60% linked (of 150) and last year we got into a huge pissing match (which I partly created) over politics. I was accused of being unpatriotic for opposing Bush and the Iraq War, so we created a rump group of 15 or so "liberals" to communicate among ourselves. One of our rump group made a comment I really liked - he asked "'why is it that the guys who were loudmouthed assholes in high school are still loudmouthed assholes so many years later?"

So the skinny drunken guy will be graduating in a few months, and you may never see him again. That should free you somewhat of the bad memories that are reinforced when you see him around campus. But just move on, even before he leaves. There is not reason to keep the emotional baggage with you.

 

Remember, we are COLLEGE students. NOT HIGH SCHOOL KIDS. He already has a job and a home HERE in Pittsburgh. I doubt he's gonna leave, even after graduation.
And I live not far from him. Our circles intersect quite a bit, not only scholastically but socially and geographically.

However, and I reiterate:
THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT I SHOULD STILL SLEEP WITH SOME GUY.
** I don't want to! I'm over it! This is a theoretical thread!!! **
I mean, sure. I feel bad that I (apparently) hurt his ego and/or feelings -- but that is not what this thread is about!!!!!


(Thanks. )

 

Yes, this is quite fucked up.

Your dots don't connect.

Having the procedure done on both of them has nothing to do with who you're going to end up with...."theoretically". YOU (theoretically) are imposing your own desires on this (theoretical) situation where you (theoretically) WANT the man you have NOT loved because you're (theoretically) quite masochistic. I mentioned self pity up there (theoretically). You didn't reply to my post.

Are you looking for reassurance for this (theoretical) situation? It's convoluted, and disturbing any way you put it because it is not just theft of memories anymore, it's willing them to give up their own memories just to make YOU happy. Isn't this egoistic, self-absorbed and utterly whacked? Theoretically.

Them being "willing" stands for nothing. Is this an original desire or thought of theirs? It is not. This theoretical situation lives inside YOUR* head. This is why it is disturbing or creepy (as I have stated in my previous post).

*YOUR = theoretical person

 

Suncatch22 - I Knew you were in college, but I thought it was in West Virginia. And people move around so much, this guy may not stay in Pittsburgh (I wouldn't).

I guess I find it hard to have a "theoretical discussion" without grounding it in real life experiences. I suppose you can talk about something that might happen, but hasn't, but it seems more relevant to take actual life experiences and talk about them to learn and grow from them.

I met Jane Fonda the other night at a party, and I could theoretically imagine going to bed with her, but what is the point - it won't happen.

 

You won't. It takes a two-thirds majority in both houses for impeachment.

As for the whole situation... You might not be able to help it, but don't bother feeling indebted to them. Odds are they feel like they took advantage of you.

 

Sorry I didn't reply adequately to this ... and apparently I made myself out to be some kind of monster ...

It's SO EASY to misconstrue everything I say ... wow, I suck at this

Hannah, I didn't reply to your post because my head is swirling right now ... due to everything else. And I pretty much think this has become hopeless and I oughta just give it up.