by Anonymous
For us, it was always about pressure. Never about being happy, or having fun. Just pressure. Him pushing me, me pushing myself for him. Pushing the boundaries and almost making a game out of how much it would take for me to break.
The boy in question, Ben, was truly one of the most popular boys in our school. He was the boy that played soccer and ran track, that sang in the choir and was a youth group leader at church. The boy that everybody knew and respected.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly the textbook definition of the kind of girl Ben would seek out. I’m the girl that wears organic t-shirts and drinks black coffee. Not at the top of the social ladder as Ben was, but popular enough to get by.
But for some reason, he chose to fall for me. I’ll never understand why — maybe some things are better left unknown.
We were in our school’s spring musical together when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. I knew of him, of course, but had never talked to him. When a friend told me that he liked me, I was convinced she was joking. Seriously, Ben? Mr. Golden Boy? Likes me??
Of course I said yes when he asked me to be his girlfriend. Opportunities to date people from such lofty realms only come around once in a blue moon. So we started spending lots of time together that summer. We walked around our small town and played Guitar Hero. The first couple of months we spent together passed in simple, on-the-surface sorts of dates.
The next fall things started shifting. We were still seeing each other every day at school and most evenings he swung by for a couple of hours, but something seemed different.
I guess you could say that the shift began when he first said “I love you.” We were at a surprise party for a friend, and towards the end of it, Ben said that he had something to tell me. Finally he whispered in my ear those three words. I, barely 15 at the time, had never heard that phrase from a boy before and I wasn’t quite sure how to react. I just replied with the same words and he left, leaving me wondering why I had just told this strange boy that I loved him when I was unsure what that really meant.
After that, it seemed, we became a “real couple.” We talked idealistically about serious subjects and about our possible future together. As the conversation went deeper, so did the pressure. He began to pressure me to join his church, vehemently bashing Catholicism whenever I would spring up to defend myself and the religion I’d cherished all my life.
Soon the constant disagreements wore me out, so I gave up fighting and just let him talk to me that way, as if my opinion didn’t matter. Once he knew that we were too deep into our relationship to back out, he realized that he had the upper hand.
That fact showed itself in our relationship. Obviously he always had the last word in arguments, and I was always the one running back to apologize after a fight even when I wasn’t in the wrong. But his dominance began showing itself in new and scary ways in the early winter.
After all of the religion talk began, we started to progress physically. We spent a good portion of nearly every date just making out, even though I didn’t always want to. Soon Ben was dissatisfied with only kissing, and he started asking for more. He told me things like “If you really loved me, you’d want to do this,” or “It would make me really happy. You want to see me happy, right?”
I heard those phrases on a weekly basis and I wasn’t equipped properly to handle them. Nobody had ever told me that people who seemed so perfect on the surface were capable of inflicting such strange and personal forms of harm.
I was simply too scared to say no. Scared of making him angry, scared of losing him, scared of causing him to cheat on me. I never let it escalate to sex, but I knew that it was what he wanted.
After a few more long and arduous months, Ben broke up with me, saying lies like “I don’t have the time it takes to commit to you anymore.” It wasn’t about time at all; it was about the fact that we were mismatched in the first place and about how he believed I was never giving enough. He overlooked the fact that I had sacrificed all of my free time and mental energy to him. I gave up my famously strong will, my personal convictions, and my right to say no all at his demand. I had spent eight months giving in to the temptation that was Ben.
But, of course, things had to get worse before they could get better.
About a month after our split, Ben contacted me again. He said that he missed me but wasn’t ready to have a relationship with strings attached again. So he proposed that we become “friends with benefits.”
I said yes unthinkingly, once again giving in to the temptation of being with Ben. In hindsight I realize that it was a stupid mistake, and knowing what I know now, I would never have said yes.
But at that time, I was lonely, hurt, and dazed after the ending of my first real relationship. Those feelings swirled around my head every day, clouding my judgment.
So we started seeing each other again, sneaking off during breaks in rehearsals for the school play to make out. I wasn’t happy doing it; I felt horribly guilty about not telling my parents and friends about what was going on. Regardless, I still let him boss me around.
One day Ben asked if he could come over while both of my parents were at work. I knew what that meant. He wanted to have sex. I thought long and hard about what to do. If I said yes, it would mean that we would still be able to have a future together. If I said no, everything would be over for good. We’d never be able to be together again.
I agonized over the decision; I was desperately afraid to be alone but at the same time it was starting to dawn on me that I had evolved into nothing but an object to him.
Finally I had to say no. Finally, deep within I found the courage that had evaded me through the long winter and I stood up to him, rejecting the fruit tempting me and opting to start all over. He had pressured me consistently about religion, about books and emotions and sex and what to do on our next date and when to say “I love you.” (I still have misgivings about that phrase.) I was done saying yes blindly and though it nearly killed me to do so, I broke it off entirely with Ben.
Maybe it would have been easier to just give in and let him come over to my empty house. Giving in to temptation is often the easiest thing to do, and when we’re forced to make a quick decision, we often go with what is simple or familiar. But the easiest way is rarely the best way. I learned this lesson the hard way during the time we spent together as an “official” couple.
It wasn’t until after our relationship was over that I was able to put into practice what I was missing all along: the willpower, self-control and self-respect it takes not to give in.