The Alternate

    There’s a guy I met about a year ago i’ll call V. V and I met on one of those corny dating sites back when I actually had the desire to put my effort into that kind of thing. We dated for a while (not exclusively) and I was really feeling him at one point in time. That was until my most current ex, i’ll call her D, stepped onto the scene. Needless to say, V and I sowly stopped dating as D and I became more serious. Eventually, V was pushed into the friend zone since he had never made any effort to be put elsewhere and I had found someone who I felt was worth the risk of starting another relationship after having a long relationship-free period.

     V could have been bitter and removed himself from my life completely, especially since I had not only dropped him like a hot potato, i had done the biggest ego-brusing no-no a girl could do to any man: I had dropped him for another woman. But he was a good sport about it. And we reamined friends throughout my relationship with D. In fact, we became best friends.

    D never liked him because she knew our history and had gone through my phone and read a few texts between V and I about how much we missed one another (as friends, of course, but that wasn’t easy to explain).  She figured he was spending every waking moment of his time trying to get me back, and even though he often made a little sideways comments about how we “could have been a great thing”, I assured her it was nothing like that. And conciously it wasn’t. Conciously, i respected every aspect of me and D’s relationship and would not stand for anyone trying to get between that. But now that the relationship is over and I find myself leaning on V a little bit more than I should, im starting to wonder if I had subconciously made him my alternate.

    Almost every girl has an alternate, and that’s fine. In life, there should always be a plan B. But the element that makes having an alternate okay in the relationship is the distance you keep between you and your alternate while you’re with the main star (i.e. your boyfriend or girlfriend). Alternates are the kind of people you keep just close enough to monitor the moves their making in life (an email every month or so will do) but you dont talk to an alternate every day. I talked to V almost every day, sometimes for hours.

    Last night I was lying in bed trying to doze off when my Iphone buzzed in the bed next to me. It was V. He was drunk, which isn’t at all rare since he likes to drink with his guy friends  on weekends. I was prepared to disreagrd any curse words and listen to any slurred conversations he tried to have with me for the next 20 minutes until he either forgot he was on the phone or found something better to do with his drunk self than talk to me!

    My mother always told me that through a drunk mind speaks a sober heart. So when V began to ask me if we could  have sex, I became highly uncomfortable.  It became apparent to me that somewhere along the lines I had made it seemingly okay for him to ask me such a thing. Somehow I had given off the impression that there was more between him and I than phone convos and laughs. Which meant that D had had every right to worry even though I told her not to and I had kept my Alternate disrespectfully close to me. I quickly told him I had to go and I would call him the next day. we hung up. I did not call him the next day.

     This situation made me wonder: was I so afraid of D and I failing that I never fully gave us a chance by holding on to V more than I should have? Was I so convinced that my main star would get sick the night of the play that I had only taught all the lines to the alternate so there was absolutely no other choice but to let the alternate perform on opening night?

    Had I sabotaged D and I?