Dear Me Ten Years Ago….
Dear Me in 2012,
STOP!
You’re about to make the BIGGEST MISTAKE OF YOUR LIFE!!
Don’t answer that OK Cupid ad before reading this.
Trust me, you want to read this before you do anything else on that stupid dating site.
It’s still a website back then, right? It’s an app now with swiping.
Don’t ask what swiping is, it’s awful, take it from me.
Anyway, why am I reaching out to stop you?
You’re about to reach out to HER on OK Cupid.
She sounds good, right? She seems appealing, right?
She isn’t.
DO NOT WRITE TO HER.
In fact, delete your OK Cupid profile now!
I get that she lives in Nassau County and by then you did not want to meet anyone that you had to cross a bridge or go through a tunnel to get to, but believe me, stay away.
Block her dating profile.
RUN, don’t walk away from that.
You’ll save yourself nine years of the worst mistake of your life.
Here’s what will happen:
She will respond.
You will hit it off.
The first date will be awkward but cute.
She won’t speak much about her past, but what she does reveal is not pretty. You will feel the overwhelming need to make her happy, much to your own detriment and finances.
You will ask her out again.
She will bring her son on the second date. You’ll be disappointed but deal with it. He won’t speak. He was 16 at the time, so cut him some slack. He turned out to be a good kid, mostly thanks to you.
Very quickly you will settle into a full-time relationship with her.
She will “press all the right buttons” to reel you right in.
The honeymoon period will be intense, but brief.
She will spend so much time with you it will get very awkward with her son, but that won’t last forever.
She will stick by you through one of the lowest points in your life by the following fall, but she will never let you forget it and will never act the same towards you again.
By the second year her true self, as a convert narcissist, will start to appear.
After you read this, google covert narcissist.
She will become a cold, heartless, unfeeling robot that you will not be able to get through to.
Yes, the intimacy was always a bit one-sided (wasn’t that often the case with people you met in your dating days?) but this trend will accelerate as the years go by.
She will stop touching you, little by little, reaching a point where by year 5 she will stop touching you completely.
She will make NO effort to work on your growing issues, and TRUST ME, the issues will expand exponentially.
No, you’re not perfect, but you will try for far too long to get through to her.
She will ignore it.
You will fall into a pattern of monthly attempts to get her to want to do ANYTHING beyond staring at Tik Tok.
What’s Tik Tok? OH, don’t ask. It’s the end of humanity as we know it.
For the last 3 years she will sleep on the couch.
Oh, I didn’t mention that they moved in?
Yeah, they move in late in year 4.
Another huge mistake.
You will stop having sex completely in 2017.
She will show no interest in fixing this issue, and despite many people telling you to head for the hills, you will stick with it.
She will seem fine with treating you like a roommate and you will lose years of sleep trying to figure out why.
You will learn to hate it when she says “I’m sorry.”
You will stick by her despite all of this.
Until she cheats.
Oh yeah, that’s how it ends.
I thought of not telling you this, and you really will have a hard time thinking she would, but she does.
It will take you the last year to figure it out, but figure it out you do.
She’s also forgetful, and grows careless, and that will be her undoing.
You’ll see texts.
You will finally walk away and kick her out and be strong.
Just in time to stop you from hanging yourself.
Get what I’m saying here?
I know you want to meet someone, you’re 38 years old and the clock is ticking.
I GET IT.
Just listen: don’t make my mistakes.
Don’t waste NINE LONG YEARS with her.
You make mistakes too.
Big ones.
None bigger than sticking with that disaster.
None bigger than being cheated on after nine years of dealing with THAT.
So PLEASE take my advice.
Just DO NOT answer her ad.
Move on.
Write to that other ad, the one that lives in the city but is funny.
You passed up some good opportunities to SETLLE for her.
You’ll save yourself from nine years of mistakes.
Nine years of the worst relationship of your life.
Nine years of one bad decision after another.
Nine years of feeling bad about yourself.
Nine years of loneliness with a stranger sleeping on your couch.
Please Stay away.
Stay FAR AWAY.
Read this again and again.
You’ll thank me later.
Dan
September 17, 2022.
