My breakup with Confident Guy, my first love, was your typical first love breakup. First loves tend to feel like your only love. Like your last. I had said those three sacred words to other men before but needed to say them to him to understand what they really meant. The breakup made its home in my chest, not like a metaphor, but like a heart condition I thought I was developing at twenty-one. The look on my mother’s face when I alerted her to my apparent illness was more amusement than concern. I hadn’t known you could feel that kind of pain.

Our reasons for parting were solid. Not-so-confident Guy couldn’t handle me looking at another man, no matter how platonic it was, and had issues with how much leg I chose to show on any given day. The first month post breakup, I forced myself to go out, meet people, be flirted at. It was still cheating to flirt. He had asked me to tell him when I kissed someone else for the first time. It felt like I should, like I owed him that though I didn’t understand why he’d want to know. Now I wonder if it was the permission he needed........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)