Dating : B is for Betrayal and P is for all the Pain

It was an awkward, if not cringe-worthy video of exes confronting each other about the demise of their relationship.

It would be more accurate to classify it as a woman facing her own insecurity and stupidity. However, it was like watching a train wreck. I wanted to look away. I knew it was going to be terrible but my eyes suddenly lost the ability to be averted. My brain was screaming “Abort mission! Abort mission!” Yet there I was, eyes glued. There they were, sitting in a white box studio on my smart-ish phone telling all of their business to — me — the world.

This young woman hired another woman to seduce her boyfriend. Let’s label that betrayal #1. The girl reported to the girlfriend that they’d slept together — betrayal #2. It’s revealed then that the girlfriend broke up with the boyfriend based on this reliable evidence despite his insistence that no such incident occurred. We will revisit this incident and possibly label it later.

So then, they are sitting there, in the blank slate of a studio in metal chairs facing each other. They begin to argue about what transpired. A random staff person wheels in a large monitor, almost like when you had a substitute teacher in highschool and your class was about to be shown a movie instead of doing work.

The girlfriend was absolutely beaming as she was about to expose her ex for the lying bastard she always knew he’d turn out to be. He says “nothing happened” and she says “well, let’s just ask her!”

And they do, they do ask “her.” The “her” being the paid informant. She tells the story that she told the girlfriend with a straight face, matter-of-factly even.

The unmoved boyfriend says “why would you lie like that?”

And the informant says “well, she doesn’t deserve you. So I told her what she wanted to hear. I figured, I might have a shot with you.”

The girlfriend’s smug look is replaced with a scowl as she accuses her paid informant of being a home wrecker. She labels this an act or betrayal. Let’s label that one, #4. I’m not exactly sure it qualifies if you ask someone to insert themselves into your relationship and they do. However, she seemed to think so. If you’re counting that’s five or six betrayals if you count the discarding of the boyfriend’s word and the breakup.

Six betrayals in a five and a half minute video. I wondered if this was the new normal.

“How can anyone have marble jar lovers in the type of world that enables such dysfunction?” I thought to myself.