Are you chasing Amy?

Chasing Lauren here.

So stupid. I'd seen the movie many times and although I felt I got it and loved it I never saw myself in that situation. Even with my eyes wide open, enough to think of the movie and try to watch it with my GF to try and explain myself to her (we fell asleep without finishing it) I walked into that trap and screwed things beyond repair.

It's not one to one with the movie but it's close enough that I want to slap myself. When we got together she was really shy and seemed so inexperienced she was so damned cute even when we slept together and didn't have sex I didn't mind. When we finally progressed to sex she was hung up so much and took so much effort it felt like she was virginal. At the same time she told me about sleeping with her former teacher. That was the start of the head trip. Her friends called her a slut (jokingly) and she was so closed mouthed about her past, mostly because of a judgemental controlling ex. Basically she let bits slip and I built up an image of what she was like but the dissonance between what she was like with me and what I was hearing about her was making me so insecure and paranoid. She was a girl of so many contradictions. If she'd been a straight up slut or done whatever i think I could have dealt with it if I understood. The secrecy combined with me trying not to be "that guy" just ate me up.

I tried to explain where I was coming from (hence the movie) but didn't do a good job in part because I wasn't entirely honest about it. She couldn't understand why what had happened in her past mattered and that it was who she was with me that counted. I was worried that what she was hiding was so bad, that if she was hiding this from me what else she was hiding. It seems all so silly and unimportant now. She loved me, wanted to be with me and made me happy, that should have been enough!

I pushed it. Kept needling and asking things trying to get explanations and basically being a complete dick. I can remember the point I broke it. One night on the phone I asked her straight out how many guys she'd slept with and she just went all quiet. I think now it was mostly I'd come over too much like her ex. I stayed with her the day after and could tell she didn't want me. I felt like *beep* and was so scared of losing her. The amount of alcohol drunk didn't help and when we went to her Auntie's 50th the next day and she was still cold I felt it was over. She said she wasn't well (she was on her period at the time) but when she met her friend and cheered up it just confirmed it was me. I got more wasted to cope and then started an argument with her over her friend (who had a bf) flirting heavily with a guy. Basically said if she thought that was acceptable i couldn't be with her. Then, later, I tried to reconcile and she pushed me away I shouted that I was "DONE" really loudly. It would have been better if it hadn't been infront of her friends and family, especially when I was staying with her and had no way to get home...

Biggest mistake of my life. 4 months on and she still hates me. Basically ignores me and treats me like *beep* I love her. I know I didn't appreciate what I had and it kills me. I've been with so many women since and not one even begins to hold a candle and I can't help but feel i've destroyed my chance at happiness. I'm a broken person, wiser and more mature but everything feels empty. While I feel that now i'm the person I needed to be for her or to be in a proper long-term relationship it's a waste because what was the point in being like this when the one person I want and it would be worthwhile for is lost to me.

Hey, it's clearly been over half a year, but I'd like to hear if anything worked out for you. Reading this thread is depressing as hell, knowing they all messed up years ago and it will never be okay.

I sort of chased Amy in 3 different ways, with 3 different girls, none of it was too painful though. Keep in mind I'm not even 19 yet so none of this happened too long ago, nor was I too mature at the time.

One was when I found out my first girlfriend (I was young at the time), who was also my first kiss, had her first kiss while drunk at some party years earlier, with a stranger whose name she never got to know. Bothered me for a little while, but it's just a kiss so I moved passed it once I grew some common sense. As of this day, we're still together.

Another is my high school crush. She was pretty much the perfect girl to me and it regularly tore me up just thinking of her, fortunately bothering me less and less as time went on. Back then she always seemed to me as some kind of inconceivable miracle, as if I couldn't even dream of being with her. I was madly in love with her for about 2 years, especially the first since we were in the same class and went to a lot of the same parties. It ate me up so much that I felt I had to actually confess my love to her, keeping a cheesy a$$ holywood speech in the back of my mind. While I'm now glad that I never went that delusionally cringe worthy path, I do feel a lot more romantically/sexually confident now that I have some experience, and I regret never having taken any iniative due to some misplaced inferiority complex. But I'm happy with my current gf so it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

The third is probably the least ordinary (I'm not much of a storyteller) and most related to the movie. There was this Santa Claus party every Christmas at our neighbours home, and their whole family as well as a few of their neighbours (including me) were invited. One of their relatives was some niece of them, who I saw once a year and I had kind of a crush on (this was a really young age so I still mostly thought girls were "lame"). I saw her once a year, every year and I didn't think too much of it. Then our neighbours stopped giving the annual party and I didn't see her for years. Fast forward to about 5 years later, when I was invited to our neighbours 20 year anniversary party and I saw her again. Goddamn, she became hot over those years I hadn't seen her. I was basically getting wasted on alcohol from an open bar (I was only 16) and flirting with her. I wasn't even part of the family so it was kind of inappropriate. After about 2 hours of that I was considering making a move (which was a pretty big deal to me since I'd never kissed anyone before that moment) when I found out I was a lesbian. No wonder her parents had been giving me funny looks throughout the night.

So yeah that's my rather tame life story. If anyone in this thread still lives, feel free to give an update, I'm curious.

Because it's about what you don't know, and what could be missing, damaged, or what you might consider tainted or impure.

Think of it like this: you go to a bakery and you find the perfect cake -- you see it in the display. It's perfect. Articulated white frosting, smooth to the touch -- but you dare not touch it. Sky blue plumbs propped along the edges with small pink clouds decorated around the innermost center of the cake, with a perfectly placed cherry sitting erect on top of a perfectly-sculpted mound of undulating vanilla.

The cake is perfect.

You pay for it, have it boxed, and take it home.

You take it out of the box and set it on the table to admire it from the same angle you saw it in the bakery.

It's perfect...

...Just until you see all sides of it and realize that there's a chunk of it missing in the back. It's something you didn't notice at first when you saw it in the store. You were too infatuated with the outer appearance; how it sold you on its perfection. Your love of its perfection and how it made you feel. You never noticed the chunk missing in the back.

It looks as if someone took their hand and grabbed a load of it; it's uneven and jagged. The frosting dripping off from the botched edges, while the cake itself seems to have some hardened edges where the sponge has been exposed to too much air.

Now you have questions: How long has it been like this? What happened that caused the damage? Are other parts damaged? Is the whole cake spoiled? Can you still admire it for the good parts, or do the bad parts taint the whole thing? Can it be fixed or repaired in time? Is it worth the repairs? Will you ever love the cake like you once did before you found out about the missing chunk?

This simile works with real life relationships. We have an idea of what we expect from someone and when we find out their past is tainted in a way, we reevaluate if they still match our expectations we have of a mate, and whether their past will affect the present