24/02/2025
So I if I am dating two people what do I do?
You love yourself.
Once upon a time I knew a girl with two boyfriends. She was the type of girl a boy would look at and think, “What the f**k is her problem? Why is she so arrogant?” And then proceed to do headstands just to earn an interested glance from her. She would tell me stories of how she managed to juggle and date two boys simultaneously.
I knew who she liked more. I knew the one who liked her more. I also knew why she did it. I never talked to her about it. At 15 you say f**k you to life lessons.
7 years later, at 23, she is engaged to a man who is cheating on her. Among the many reasons she gave me for staying with him:
“He says I’ll be the most important person in his life, no matter what.”
“His family loves me. That’s what really matters.”
“He’s honest about it.”
She looked like a drowning man reaching for straws, surfacing for breath every minute, only being engulfed by a wave again. She looked so hopeless and lost.
“You’ve gone against your parents for this, haven’t you?”
She said nothing. She was a Shia Muslim and he was a Sunni Muslim. Her family would break ties with her completely after marrying her off.
“I wish we’d met up earlier. I would have yelled some sense into you, ya idgit.” Despite the fact that being as****es was our MO, we never could be angry at each other.
Nothing.
“Why am I not good enough?” she asked me softly, her eyes shining with unshed tears. I remembered the 15 year old. Sassy, smart and beautiful. She never did think she was enough, even then. The boy who loved her but was not “handsome” enough gave her an ego boost. The boy who she thought “handsome” but did not care much for her in return stroked her vanity when he occasionally did.. She didn’t love either of them. She loved the attention- the validation. She didn’t love herself either.
And this man was a mix of both. She saw in him the balance because of the sacrifice she was making for loving him (even when he did not deserve it) and the variable reinforcement he offered when he did bother to care.
Loving two people can be like loving one person, because both of them are incomplete. And loving one person can be like loving two completely different people.
There are as many variations of love how we view it as there are people. That said, love can be a dangerous thing. It teaches you harsh truths about yourself you’d rather not face.
It forces you to assess your morals, your self-image and courage.
Learn to love and respect yourself first.
