It's not you, it's me...

Eight years of luck, temptation, and obsession

If you’ve seen the movie Match Point, you’d know it follows Chris Wilton, a former pro tennis player, and his obsession with a woman named Nola Rice. They start hooking up and soon she gets pregnant; the only problem is that Chris is married. Since he doesn’t want to leave his wealthy wife and a fancy job for this child, he decides to murder Nola. Through a series of lucky events in the movie — attracting Nola, marrying into a rich family, securing an elite job from his fiancée’s father, and escaping conviction — Chris gets everything he wants without downsides.

Minus the baby and murder, Match Point reminds me of my journey with lust. While I’ve already spoken about how I dislike people’s demonization of it, I can understand why they do. Excessive lust has been hard for me but especially those who I’ve hurt because of it and I needed almost eight years of self-reflection and journaling to get to a better place with it.

But I’m lucky to be in that better place, which is why I related to Match Point so much.

This isn’t a sob story (you’ll soon see why) but a way to be very honest about actions towards friends that have weighed on me for years. I’m sharing it because if I’m to grow this blog, you all have to know the history of the person you’re supporting. But this is just as much an account of how far I’ve come and where I hope to be.

Ultimately, if you find this article jarring, please use it as a way to truly consider your support for me.

Now let’s get into it.

Back in 1st grade, I started getting these funny tingly feelings whenever I was around this one girl. I didn’t really know why seeing her always put me in a weird sense of wonder, or how to describe my sense of powerlessness whenever Sam spoke with her even though he had plenty of other friends, or why I asked her questions I knew the answers to just so that she could talk with me.

I was discovering what it was like to have crushes for the first time. Someone would completely captivate me for a school year. Then the next year, it was another person. I distinctly remember wondering in 3rd grade why I didn’t like anyone midway into the year before falling for my friend.

These crushes were always healthy for me up until 5th grade. By that point, they were the only thing making each day interesting. So when I entered this grade, it was exciting to have a new girl come to our school.

I thought Liz was perfect. I loved the way her right eyebrow crinkled whenever she smiled and how she always lit up whenever you mentioned dogs. So when I looked around, I couldn’t believe that I was the only one who saw all this beauty.

But so did my best friend…

As time went on, unspoken competition grew between us as we tried to impress Liz, but this was hard since neither of us knew her well. I needed to quickly find ways to get her attention before he did…

Staring at her (I know, yuck) until she awkwardly waved sometimes worked. If it did, that day’s school pizza tasted gourmet. If not, I’d retreat inward and journal my loud fantasies to drown out my teacher’s voice. I spent every English class picturing me and Liz in love. Or married. Any thought to soothe myself for not getting my daily wave.

As Liz and I became friends, my methods changed. Now, if everyone was lining up for lunch, I’d try to get near her and chat. When that didn’t work, I’d make loud jokes to try and get her attention. Despite this, Liz always found my best friend’s stories more interesting whether at our lunch table or while waiting in line. After weeks of this, I should have recognized that Liz just wanted to be friends and that was okay. But the good times — like running into her in the halls, walking to our buses together, or her laughing after a funny joke — kept me from slipping through Cloud 9.

Aside from a bigger building and more people, this didn’t change once I entered 6th grade. Lunch conversations still dictated my mood for the day and because of their importance, I started using my dreams to practice conversation topics. On good weeks, we had lively chats, but during stale weeks, I turned to making drawings as a way of holding her attention. I had gone from a simple crush to a full on obsession with Liz.

Our conversations started deteriorating when Mae became friends with her. It got to where even if I was speaking, once Mae said something, she and Liz would talk for the rest of lunch. It always burned to see them talking with ease, so I’d start planning my next drawing for Liz, only to be interrupted by her fifth laugh that lunch. Mae couldn’t have been that funny; she hadn’t even known her for a year like I did…

This bitterness consumed me as Christmas Break approached, so I decided to write Liz a letter essentially blaming her for not giving me and Mae equal time to talk with her. After I gave it to her, I got exactly what I wanted the next day: conversations involving the three of us.

I was lucky she didn’t treat me how she actually felt. I later learned from her friend Jane that these letters angered her.

Those buried feelings must have led to our separation. One day, during class, she emailed me that she no longer wanted to sit together at lunch. After I received this message, we happened to cross paths while going to our last period classes; however, she didn’t acknowledge me this time.

In retrospect, I don’t know if I deserved to break down at lunch the next day given all the pain I had put Liz through. The realization that there wouldn’t be any way of reentering her orbit crushed me. So after seeing how much happier she was with Mae in that position, I surrendered.

I hoped that this would spell the end of my obsessiveness.

But it was just the beginning…

Part 2: The Journals

After changing schools in 7th grade, I found myself in the same survival mode as those first few weeks of middle school. So I clung to what was familiar: girls I liked. It didn’t take long to find one, and she completely overshadowed Liz.

Because I had just transferred, everyone in my class had already known each other for years; this made it even harder to talk with Ellie. She was very girly, sweet, and I’m sure now that she knew I liked her. For example, I’d sacrifice some recesses to play four square with her and her friends even though it was boring! I only did it for proximity.

On our school’s big, overnight field trip to a camp site, I continued playing beside Ellie and starting conversations with her. It was also during these trips that I realized how much she dominated my thoughts. All activities — even archery and making smores — paled in comparison to attempts at talking with her. I began seeing the pattern to my obsessiveness. Every year, I’d like a different girl and put all my energy towards having them reciprocate these feelings. Up until this realization, I didn’t find it extraordinary to spend weeks chasing one conversation or a smile after a joke.

Despite some progress, I still couldn’t stop. Because when I did have the conversation or a joke did land, all my fantasies became rational.

She thinks I’m funny!

I don’t have any problems!

Ellie and I are friends!

I might not need to think of conversation starters with her!

This is going to be an amaaaaazing week!

After a few days, the high would wear off and bring back my doubts. So I started to journal more. This time, I fully focused on reducing my lustful behaviors; this meant congratulating myself for every time I stopped gazing at or thinking of Ellie. But eventually, the contents drifted into imagined encounters, abrupt compliments about her like I was a Muslim thanking Allah mid-sentence, and food for the week.

Journaling each day no longer meant I was making progress with lust. Instead, it had become a place to fantasize about Ellie because it felt as if she was there listening to me. In my mind, we “clicked” because how I imagined her matched how I thought of her: kind, pretty, perfect.

During this time, I developed a crush on another girl named Rachel. She was from a different homeroom so I didn’t expect things to go anywhere. This made me extra confident and brazen, which she seemingly liked. Soon we were waving or smiling at each other as we passed in the halls.

The day Rachel gave me her phone number, I tried pushing to FaceTime her but we ended up texting instead. That was when things started to deteriorate. Some mornings, I would visit her homeroom so we could chat. At first, nothing seemed off, but slowly my constant jokes and upfront feelings were starting to make her uncomfortable.

So one day at dismissal, I got a letter from her saying she didn’t want me to speak to her for the rest of the school year. She wrote that if I tried, the counselor would get involved.

I’m very lucky that this never escalated past the letter. From that day on, I didn’t speak with her, which is surprising when you consider my environment at the time.

During lunch, me and the guys in our homeroom would get together and discuss who we thought was the “baddest,” play out scenarios like “if time froze for all the girls but you could still move,” discuss crazy sexual scenarios, and “smash or pass.” We all swore to keep our secrets at the table but always spoke loud enough for the girls to hear us.

To pass time at dismissal, two other guys and I would continue these discussions. We’d always shamelessly ask this one girl at dismissal to rank the guys — and she’d ignore us — until our homeroom teacher told us to stop making the jokes all together.

When we kept persisting, the counselor and principal had to get involved. This was the dumbest thing! To us, they couldn’t “take a joke.” This got me so mad that I even journaled about how it wasn’t fair to rightfully shut us up when “humans always categorize people so it’s fine to make ratings.”

The final girl I liked that year was an 8th grader named Laila. Since we had mutual friends, opportunities to talk with her came easily. This led to me quickly growing obsessed with her; soon she was “as pretty as Ellie.”

For the most part, nothing bad happened.

Then one day, I was walking to my class when I saw Laila at the stairwell. As she was coming down, I decided to unpromptedly hug her. I didn’t ask for her permission… because I wanted to force my hopes and fantasies onto her instead of respecting that she may not want to hug me.

She left with an awkward smile and I’m sure discomfort; I walked off to class exhilarated that “I had finally hugged a girl!”

I didn’t realize how lucky I was to remain her friend and never have that moment discussed again. But the feelings I expressed to others about liking her (even after she graduated) finally got her to block me on all socials.

Part 3: Change

Once I entered 8th grade, the amount of crass jokes I made reduced along with the number of girls I liked. Since Laila was now in high school and I couldn’t talk with Rachel, the only person I still really liked was Ellie.

I’d been liking her for well over two years, but since I was still obsessive, I decided to try having healthier feelings for her. Part of why I reduced Ellie to how I imagined her was because I never spoke to her. So I attempted to talk with her more.

In the end, conversations were difficult unless I joined her friends in their recess games. And since I didn’t care for those activities, I wondered if I would ever have normal crushes again..

So I was very lucky to come across feminism at this time because it helped restore my hope in combating lust. After reading about social views of women, lack of respect, and boundary crossing, I realized I had done all of those things through my sense of humor and possessiveness.

The real power of feminism was its belief that combating lust and obsession wouldn’t just help me but all my future female relationships because respect and accountability are sadly rare.

This was an amazing mindset to carry as I entered high school. I knew that going from a 100 to over 1300 population school meant I was bound to like some people.

While I wasn’t as obsessive anymore, lust infesting many of my female friendships wasn’t any better; I thought it’d be exhausting after eight years, but my feelings were as thrilling as always. This left me feeling ashamed for having these desires while wanting friendship just for friendship’s sake.

So when I couldn’t take it anymore, I told someone for the first time.

That day was December 11th and it’s been seven months since. I grew the most in that time. What has and continues to help me is separating feelings from actions. I didn’t have to compliment the friends I “uncontrollably” liked. I didn’t have to start checking in on them more just because “I can’t stop thinking about them.” By not feeding the feelings, I got to keep my friends while controlling lust.

Regardless, there were crazy changes that this eight year period of idealization and objectification made to my brain. Nowadays, I’m much more skeptical of whether I’m having a “crush” or if it’s just attraction. I also worry if I only have certain friends because they look nice or because I actually like them. And I’ll avoid certain people sometimes if my feelings are heightened. But it’s all the mortgage of maturity and I don’t want to go back to a life of defaulting.

When I think of who I could be now — still making the same jokes, a “victim,” more threatening to women — it makes me think that this wasn’t about “luck” like Match Point was. I mean, isn’t it telling that just when I started reading about feminism, I turned around? Maybe “chance” is simply patriarchal codeword for male privilege. I think that’s why I, as a guy, didn’t get as punished as I should have for my jokes, behavior, and boundary crossing. I also think male privilege is why it took me speaking about what I’ve done to even be remotely held accountable. I wish I had taken more early responsibility for my actions as I wouldn’t have hurt so many people on the way to where I am now.

I’ve always been very ashamed of them and have often felt that I may never grow past this version of me. After all, a bit of his lust showed up again in the Miami article. But there’s something different about it now… I took meaningful steps to get healthier. I’ve also done that with my friendships, relationships, and obsessiveness. And did I mention that I had a nice conversation with Liz a year after our split?

This is to say that I changed, even though it took so teeth-grindingly long. But I also acknowledge that I don’t have to be respected for that, especially after how I treated Laila. Thankfully, the point was never to force a “we see you’ve changed Ethan, we forgive you” from people — that, to me, seems selfish and unnecessary. I wrote this so that I could stop feeling like the CIA holding onto these secrets. I also wrote it so I could stop feeling like I was still hurting others. And finally, I wrote this because when I do achieve success in blogging, or podcasting, or whatever, I want people to know exactly who they are supporting. Someone who has been shitty but can own up to it.

Thanks for listening.

8th grade concerns. Around the time I was trying to see how to have healthier crushes, like on Ellie