The Best Way to Not Be Loved Back

“Yet but three come one more.

Two of both kinds make up four.

Ere she comes curst and sad.

Cupid is a knavish lad.

Thus to make poor females mad.”

--A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare

* * *

Marissa was a girl who loved a boy who didn’t love her back. At twenty-four she had already found five different ways to not be loved back. Of course, there was one way she liked the best. That was the way she loved Brian Murphy. These were Marissa’s methods, in the order she stumbled on them, and in the order she used them on Brian.  And they were good methods:

1.    Tell the other person your feelings, right from the get-go. Don’t hold back. Be totally honest.

2.    Give the other person what they want ahead of time. Don’t hold back. Anticipate their needs. Mimic their moods. Be what they want, when they want it; when they want something different, change. Be a complete mirror, a thespian; never break character or reveal what you really want.

3.    Set up rules for the other person. Don’t tell them the rules. Get angry when they violate the rules. Hold them accountable. Tell them where they went wrong. Insist that they conform to your will. Be merciless about their faults. Insist on an apology. Fold your cards immediately when they call your bluff.

4.    Become friends with the other person’s friends. Neglect your own friends. Get into whatever it is they are into at the time. Become a part of the group. Don’t try too hard to make your intentions known; the friends will be sure to ruin everything and do that for you soon enough.

5.    Be there for the other person. Don’t set any rules. Don’t be pushy or muddle with their drama with their friends—take their side when they are dead wrong. Don’t say much about what you are feeling, and act like you are doing the same for them as you would for anyone.  Don’t act. Keep your word. Act steady and put together and above the petty seductions and ruses that everyone else is up to – point them out with disdain. This “put together thing” is an act, of course. Really you are going to pieces inside and pretty much raving mad the whole time in between the times you see the other person.

In contrast to Marissa, Rene Paterson was a girl dating a boy she didn’t love back. At twenty-four she was still working off the same playbook of three methods she’d discovered when she was sixteen. That was the way she didn’t love Sam DeLuca. Her methods were flawless, and her execution was enviable:

1.    Spend time with the young man’s best friend. Be as seductive as possible with the best friend, even maybe necking with him occasionally, but keep him at a distance. When the time is right, and your young man not only notices, but begins to show signs of jealousy, connect with him. Now intensify the relationship with the best friend artificially. Let the target fight it out with the best friend and win you, if he can. If he can’t, let him anyway. He’ll never know the difference.

2.    Put the young man to a series of challenges. Make sure he knows what a classy girl you are, that you don’t “mess around” and that you only are interested in serious relationships. Invent a series of flawed suitors that failed to win your heart. Propose challenges for the young man that involve excelling in ways your invented suitors failed. Give modest praise each time the young man agrees to and succeeds at one of your challenges, but let him know you still aren’t sure about him and something doesn’t feel quite right. Jump in with another challenge right away. Pull him closer and then push him away and then pull him in again. Be unpredictable and difficult, but focused. You can be relatively assured that once he has what he thinks he wants, he will have worked too hard, and will have convinced himself through and through that he had made up his mind that you were the one for him from the beginning.

3.    Start a quasi-sexual relationship with the young man right away, then stop it immediately. Let him know that it is “too soon” and you still haven’t gotten over the last young man. This was the most brutal tool Rene had at her disposal. It nearly always worked. It drove them nearly mad with desire and jealousy and she had seen otherwise well-adjusted young men try the grandest gestures, and occasionally unravel altogether, under the pressure.

Brian Murphy was a boy who was dating a girl he didn’t love back. At thirty-three, he was getting a little too old for this ‘casual dating’ ruse, but the truth is he really didn’t know what he wanted in life. His favorite way to not love a girl back involved saying, “I am looking for something serious, and I just want to make sure I am with the right person.” And this was the way he didn’t love Marissa. These were Brian’s methods, and they were predictable:

1.    Tell her that everything is perfect just the way it is, and why would she want to go changing things?

2.    Tell her that she is imagining things, and the real problem is that she’s so anxious and emotional, and if she could just get her head screwed on straight, everything would be alright. There was nothing to worry about.

3.    Tell her that he just needs some more time to find himself. He is going through a lot. It isn’t her, or their relationship, that is the problem. The timing is just off. If she just sticks with it, when the time is right, he will be everything she dreams he could be for her, and they will live happily ever after. Only ‘someday’ is always just around the corner, and ‘today’ is never that day.

Sal DeLuca was a boy who was dating a girl that didn’t love him back. At twenty-six, he was still using the same methods that had gotten him nowhere since he was sixteen. Of course, he thought he was just being ‘true to his feelings,’ and it had never occurred to him that you can feel a thing and choose to do something else anyway, because you are a man, and you can make standards for your own life and set the rules you live by, and then actually live by them. That is, more or less, what being a man is. This was the way Sam loved Renee—like a puppy on a leash. These were Sam’s methods, and they needed work:

1.    Confess your undying love. Leave no mystery. Lower your value by consistently demonstrating your willingness to put up with any bad behavior thrown at you without complaint.

2.    Make compromises for your lover that are totally inconsistent with your character and never stand up for yourself, showing yourself to be the world’s biggest pushover, and therefore of low and diminished value as compared with the prize you covet.

3.    Put your lover on a pedestal, rewarding her bad behavior, and fail to call her on her shit—impressing upon her that she can get away with murder—and encouraging her to keep it up.

4.    Respond to cold brush offs, unreturned affection, and a pulling away by coming on ten times as strong and creepishly and simpishly following your lover around like a lost puppy. Be sure to respond to unfaithfulness with jealousy and unearned gifts and undeserved promises—all of which are going to make your lover question why they started up with someone so weak-kneed to begin with—act out the tired script from a manual on courtly love and chivalry for dummies—as if the great romantic gestures in Rom Coms work in real life.

5.    Never bring up your own needs or set the rules and boundaries for the relationship; never communicate your actual feelings, but instead frame the entire relationship as a continuous adventure of trying to win over your unwin-overable paramour.

Rene and Brian were not supposed to be seeing each other. Brian was Sal’s best friend, and Sal was with Rene. Rene was Marissa’s best friend. And Brian was with Marissa. Given this dynamic, it was bordering on inevitable that Rene and Brian were going to hook up at some point. They both knew it. But Sal and Marissa were blind as bats. Rene and Brian had a heated ongoing debate about whether to come clean or keep their affair a secret. These were their points of debate, and they were right on target:

1.    If they came clean, Marissa and Sal would be heartbroken. They might even break things off. The kind thing to do was to carry on in secret and never speak a word about their affair; to do otherwise would be cruel.

2.    If they continued lying, Marissa and Sal would eventually realize neither of them was trustworthy. But Marissa and Sal were too smitten to actually call a spade a spade. So, it was even Steven whether they’d be outed for their lies, even if Marissa and Sal were on to them.

3.    Rene was going to break up with Sal eventually anyway, it was only a matter of time. Brian thought he was going to marry Marissa, but he was lying to himself, and he was destined to end up alone or be divorced with a child support payment before long, so he really didn’t have much to lose.

4.    Rene and Brian really hated themselves and were bored to death with life itself. They both confided in one another that they were deeply selfish. And one must be true to one’s true nature—so being unfaithful was the only way they could maintain some semblance of happiness—and the guilt they felt was confirmation they were both rascals that deserved to be miserable. And misery loves company.

Sal and Marissa were not supposed to be confiding in one another. Sal was Brian’s best friend, and Marissa was Rene’s best friend. Given this dynamic, it was bordering on the inevitable that Sal and Marissa were going to be right for each other, but never know it. Neither one of them knew it. Sal and Marissa were gluttons for punishment. Sal and Marissa had a heated ongoing debate about whether love could win out in the end. These were their points of debate, and they missed the forest for the trees:

1.    If you really love someone, you have to love them warts and all. After all, true love conquers all.

2.    If someone isn’t giving you what you deserve, you must have done something wrong, so it is your fault. You just have to stay the course and your lover will eventually realize what they have and will reciprocate your affections.

3.    Marissa wanted to believe Brian really wanted to settle down. But Sal had known him since they were kids and felt that Sal was Sal, and he’d stay in Never-Never Land until the day he died.

4.    Sal wanted to believe that Rene would eventually be ready for something more serious. But Marissa had known Rene since they were kids and felt that Rene was Rene, and she’d only ever torture any man in her life until someone finally called her on her shit—which looked like it wasn’t going to happen this side of forever.

Brian and Marissa and Rene and Sal all thought that love was a game to be won. A game of how to not be loved back. But the best way to not be loved back is not to love yourself. And the only way to be loved back is to love yourself first. 

These four star-crossed lovers hadn’t figured that out yet. And so they continued on like the movie Groundhog Day, grooving along in the same groove they’d been grooving along in for as long as they could remember, playing out the same old tired song and dance, one day after the next.

Marissa was upset with herself, but she forgave herself for being a fool for love. Brian was upset with himself, but he forgave himself for being afraid of commitment. Rene was upset with herself, but she forgave herself for being a narcissist. Sal was upset with himself, but he forgave himself for being a hopeless romantic. 

But Cupid hadn’t reconciled with himself just yet—he still had work to do to wake these slumbering devils from their sleep and strain the course of love to unexpected ends—and so Cupid hatched a plan which would bring these loose ends together on a Midsummer Night.