It takes a lot for me to truly trust a person. Other than my husband, I can’t think of anyone that I trust 100% with everything, which is something I’m perfectly okay with. As far as my friends and family go, I’m satisfied if I can trust them with 75% of myself. Even if I’m dealing with someone who only gets a small piece of me, I take that trust seriously and I’ll admit I’m probably too sensitive if that trust is broken somehow. Mainly, I don’t appreciate being lied to about things that are so stupid and so insignificant that there is no point whatsoever in lying about them at all.
It was brought to my attention recently that an acquaintance (I’m going to call her Helga, as that is an ugly name and she’s become an ugly person) has been telling these wild stories about all these guys she’s been sleeping with. Thinking about Helga’s sex life is not something I have done or plan to do, so don’t focus too much on the subject of her tales. What irked me is that the stories are about people she’s confided in me about and who are supposedly people who are either just friends or people she finds attractive but wouldn’t dare mess with due to the fact that they are MARRIED. Half of Helga’s “conquests” are married men. The other half probably wouldn’t touch her with someone else’s body. And her next targets…. I don’t even know what to say.
I don’t care what (or who) Helga does or doesn’t do, as that’s her business. What I don’t appreciate is being told a fairy tale about her life because that’s what she thinks I want to hear or because that’s the image she wants to present to me specifically. We’re both adults and I have a hard time comprehending this high school mentality of “people will think I’m desirable and popular if I say I slept with X, Y, and Z.” It makes me think that nothing that comes out of Helga’s mouth is true, which is unfortunate because I’m not in a position where I can avoid her 100% and make the problem go away.
I’m not sure what people like Helga want out of life. I don’t know how they keep their stories straight. I don’t know who they are. I cannot wrap my head around why a grown person who can obviously function in the real world would act like an insecure teenager when it comes to love, sex, relationships, or any other areas of life that are primarily ruled by emotions. I’m one of the most emotionally crazy people I know and I’ve never thought to resort to telling real or imagined stories about my sexual conquests in order to impress others. Hell, the last time I felt pressured to have sex was when I was 13, sitting around with my girl friends, trying to decide which one of us would lose our virginity first. (Spoiler alert; it was not me)
Sex is an amazing thing. Whether you’re happy with one partner or you’re playing around with many, sex is fantastic and I don’t judge a person based on their sexual activity. Most of us have a phase where we bone irresponsibly, and some people never grow out of that phase. I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me. Unless you’re trying to get into my husband’s pants or my own, my life is not altered by who you show your naughty bits to. Except for the homophobic crowd and the prudes in the world, I imagine that most people think like me and simply aren’t bothered by your sexual behaviors. There is no reason to create a fictional sex story to share with the world because, I promise you, the world doesn’t care all that much.
The thing that Helga likely isn’t taking into consideration is how her nonsense could potentially affect the people she’s flapping her jaw about. One of the guys she’s bragging about (I’ll call him Frank, as I don’t know anyone by that name and also because I had hot dogs last night) is married with children. If Frank’s wife gets wind of this sexual escapade with Helga, what happens? True or not, that is pretty devastating news for a wife to hear. Even if the story is ridiculous and unbelievable, it’s never fun for someone to hear that their partner cheated on them. It triggers the imagination, even if only for a split second, and has the potential to deeply hurt.
Unfortunately for me, since I can’t get rid of Helga, I’m going to have to do my best to pretend she doesn’t exist and hope I can do so in a way that doesn’t make it obvious that I now find her revolting. Unfortunately for her next targets, I don’t have a good way of warning them that doesn’t make me sound like a teenage idiot, so I just have to hope they wise up and create some distance before they become the next tall tale floating around here. I feel somewhat naive for assuming that people like this don’t exist anymore in the late 20s, early 30s world I’m living in, but now that it’s been made painfully obvious that they’re indeed everywhere, I suppose I have to again become a little jaded and keep more people at arm’s length. Live and learn though, right?
