When I met this guy, I thought he was so cool—cooler than I ever thought I could be. This both frightened and excited me and I couldn’t believe it when he actually reciprocated my feelings. But you know the saying “be careful what you wish for”? Yeah, I was about to find out just how true that is.
- We were totally different. I mean, he was the North Pole and I was the South. He was a desert and I was the beach. He was an adrenaline junkie and I was a total nerd. His idea of having fun on the weekend was to go abseiling and white-water rafting. My idea was to run as far away from those suggestions as humanly possible (without having to run fast because I’ve never been sporty).
- I was afraid of losing him. I knew we weren’t a good fit for each other right from the start of our relationship so why didn’t I just cut my losses and go find a guy who actually suited me? I was so mad about this guy, I wasn’t really thinking about anything other than how much I wanted to be with him.
- To be with him, I thought I had to please him. It sucks but it’s true. I thought that since we were so different, if I wasn’t like the guy, things would fall apart really fast so I had to pretend to be what he wanted. I didn’t intend for it to happen but I found myself starting to do it without really having a plan. When I saw that it was working, that motivated me to do more of it.
- He loved our similarities. He really loved how much we had in common and I could see this was an important thing for him when it came to relationship success. So, when he suggested we go bungee jumping, I want to die but I pretended that it was the best idea for a Saturday afternoon. I’d pretended to love adventure and adrenaline sports so I couldn’t back out, otherwise, he’d know that I was a liar.
- I didn’t sleep all week. I was so afraid of bungee jumping that I lost so much sleep and I drank so much coffee to keep me going without sleep that I started to feel even more anxious about the upcoming event. I wanted to get out of it but I knew that I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to think I’d lied even though I obviously had. Karma was biting me in the butt because I was in a horrible situation with no way out.
- I tried to be positive. As the day approached, I tried to think about how amazing the experience was going to be. Sure, there’d been stories of people who’d lost control of their bowels while bungee jumping, but that didn’t mean that they regretted the experience afterward, right? Surely, the amazing feeling of being suspended in the air and doing something so thrilling would be worth it? It was a giant leap out of my comfort zone and it was going to be amazing, I kept telling myself.
- Who was I kidding? The day came and my boyfriend was excited and (I was shocked to discover) completely calm about bungee jumping. Apparently he’d done it a few times in the past and loved it. He gave me a speech about how excited he was to be able to do something he loved with me, especially since I was doing it for the first time. It was so romantic but it still didn’t make me feel good about what we were about to do.
- I started freaking out. We were about to climb onto the bridge and get ready for our bungee jumping and I started to panic. I told him that I just couldn’t do it and he was surprised because he had no idea that I was afraid of heights. He was also shocked when I told him that I hated adrenaline sports and never did them, nor was I interested in them. I admitted that I’m a geeky person who likes reading and staying at home, not risking my life doing something so crazy as jumping off a bridge tied to a measly rope!
- I wished for the rom-com ending. I really wished that he’d tell me it didn’t matter that I’d lied to him. I imagined us walking away from the bridge hand in hand with the sunset behind us. Obviously that’s not what happened. The guy was pissed off with me and I don’t really blame him.
- There were many reasons for his anger. For starters, I’d wasted his time. He’d paid for this whole experience, but as he told me, that was the least of his anger. He thought I was completely different from who I really was and I should’ve told him that from the beginning. He said—and this hurt the most—that he’d been dating a ghost that didn’t exist. Ouch.
- I felt like such an a-hole. He dumped me and I wanted to kick myself. I knew that if I’d been honest with him about who I was from the start, we probably wouldn’t have dated. But it would’ve been better. By lying, I hurt him and myself. It was really hard to have dated such an amazing guy and lose him. It would’ve been so much better to never have dated him in the first place, especially because I lost him due to my own stupidity. At least I didn’t die in a freak bungee-jumping accident, so there was that.
