Before I became T's pen pal, he had had two other girlfriends. Both of those were long distance relationships (LDRs). The first one was J, and there is a long and complex story associated with how they got together and broke up which I will cover in the book that I'm writing. To provide context for this snippet of a tape that I'm transcribing, I'll say that T lived in California and J lived in Pennsylvania. They came together through a friend who T knew in person in California who was a pen pal of J's at that time.
After listening to J's tapes through this friend, T started to tape J on his own. Through time, he developed a lot of affection for her and wanted to meet her. They eventually met in person and took part in a LDR for about 9 months until T decided to break up with J due to various problems he experienced with the way she handled the relationship. In particular, she played games, lied, and tried to manipulate him.
In this partial transcript, I'm responding to a letter than T wrote me that J had sent him. After their break-up, they had not been friends for some length of time. J had gone off to her next LDR with a different young man ("M") who she viewed in many ways, at least initially, as a better match for her than T. After she and M crashed and burned, she wrote to T and wanted to be friends again. She took responsibility for a lot of the things that went wrong with their relationship in the letter and seemed to be a changed person. T had asked me whether I felt she was being sincere or not and this was my limited analysis:
Select transcript July 11, 1987 (2nd tape):
You read a letter from J that she wrote to you after you broke up (in which) she wanted you to get back together to be friends. You said it was dated Nov. 1, 1985. One thing you said was, "How much of that was a bunch of baloney and how much of it was from the heart?" I don't know if I'd be able to dissect it totally and say, "Well this part sounds like it was sincere and this part doesn't." One of the things I found really interesting was her timing, which was something to the effect that she wrote to you after she broke with M. Now, what that seems to me is that it was real convenient that, while she had M, she didn't need to write to you because her needs were being satisfied by somebody else. 'I'll show you! I have another boyfriend! I don't need you!' That kind of thing.
And then, when he broke up with her, her heart was broken and maybe she started to reconsider how valuable she was as a girlfriend and decided, "Well, T was good to me and maybe he'll take me back or be friends with me at least to help soothe my wounds." I think her timing was very interesting. As far as being sincere, and her admitting she was wrong... In the back of her mind, I'm sure that she was still blaming you and thinking that you were a terrible bastard for what you did.
By the same token, she never seemed to me to be very pleased with you the way you were anyhow. She didn't like the way you were physically and she would say things like you should go lift weights, and that she was intimidated by you (intellectually), or, those kinds of things. If she felt that way, you would think that in the back of her mind, at least in some small quarter of her mind, she would be relieved that you just shut it off before it became anymore awkward for her than it obviously was. She didn't like the confrontation. If she didn't like the idea of moving to California which you said that you'd move to Pennsylvania... Did you say you'd move for her? She didn't like your smoking marijuana, those kinds of things. If there was so much about you that she didn't approve of then how could it be so traumatic for her to lose you?
I still doubt that you can unconditionally love someone—which is what I call "pure love"—which is the only circumstance under which you should marry somebody—if you unconditionally love them. You love them and you have no desire whatsoever to change (him) and you want nothing more from other than the same kind of love in return. That's what I think perfect marriages are built upon. If you go into it wanting to change, you're in trouble.
To me, it just seems like she was so far away from having that... I don't know. I really don't know.
*****
After getting to know T, and falling in love with him, I felt that neither J nor his second girlfriend A were "worthy" of his attention. J's main issues were that he was too thin and not muscular enough for her on a physical level and that she didn't like his way of directly discussing problems when they had them. She was more inclined toward the silent treatment or dropping topics of contention. She also felt that he was trying to show off his intelligence when he talked about things she was not knowledgeable about or used words that she was unfamiliar with. This was not the case as T was very intelligent, but was not inclined to use his intellect to talk down to anyone. J was very insecure and what she wanted was some buff beefcake that stood by her and made other women admire her and who wasn't sufficiently smart to make her feel dumb.
It's important to note that I also did not feel worthy of T and was not necessarily thinking those girlfriends were inferior whereas I was more on his level. The main difference was how I saw us each as unworthy. I saw J as unworthy in terms of her honesty (as she had so little of it), her values (which were so shallow), and her intellect (which was average). I saw A as unworthy in terms of her appreciation of the attention she got from T during their relationship since she was constantly trying to get him to send her less communication and I saw her as unworthy in terms of her physical affection levels (as she didn't like to be touched and wasn't especially sexual). For myself, I felt inferior in terms of social and economic status as well as my body. I felt that being fat meant that I was immediately of greatly lesser value than T. This was, after all, the mantra that had been drummed into me nearly ever day of my life since about age 10.
