Why didn't you tell me!!!

When I say I care about someone I really mean "I care that they care about me."

This is an horrific discovery that was made by me earlier this afternoon. When I look at happy couples I see a man smiling at a woman's successes and a woman smiling back at his own. I just now realized that I have not felt joy in a boy's victories, or protective of a boy's feelings for a very long time. In fact. I recall experiencing this on only two occasions.

The first was after I had broken up with my first boyfriend. We dated for a week, I freaked out, and broke it off for a week before we started dating again. He invited me to his flag football game. I went as his friend, when the game was half way over. I saw him run across the field(he didn't even have to do anything cool) and I was overcome with immense pride in him. It was smeared across my face. I was smiling-- big. And, he was a little distracted and smiled back.

Funny, I can not remember the second occasion.

I called an old friend last night. Wait-- he called me. I told him I had just realized a pattern in every relationship I have had since freshman year. It goes like this. 1)Jordan meets boy 2)Jordan befriends boy 3)Jordan wrongly perceives boy is "leading her on" 4)Boy has no interest in Jordan 5)Jordan is angry she has been led on...once again.

"What should I do to break the pattern?" I ask him. He proposed that step number 5 was problematic. I agreed. Then, 24 hours later, it hit me. "When I say I care about someone, I really mean 'I care that they care about me'.

Man. I am so screwed up.

At least I recognized the root of the problem. I am angry because I am not cared about as I perceived I had been. This is the same reason I was so hurt by my first boyfriend after our break up. I didn't realize we had broken up. However, he did, and treated me like I was no longer important to him. This was very painful, to be treated like a regular person rather than an important person-- especially when I could not identify the reason for this shift. I only cared, because he did not care about me.

Yes. I'm screwed up, but this is progress. I just have to learn how to get outside of myself and care, just once, about someone other than me. Does everyone know this stuff already? Why didn't you tell me!!!