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Dating Diary:
Bizarre love triangle...
Dear Diary,
WHERE WERE WE?
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Lately, I’ve found that I’ve become fascinated by MTV’s landmark scripted-yet-unscripted-teen-reality-show, “Laguna Beach.” And by “lately,” I mean, “for the past six months,” and by “fascinated,” I mean, “obsessed.” But this column isn’t about why I watch vapid television shows geared towards an audience far younger than my age group, or what I could possibly have in common with overprivileged California teenagers ten years my junior. What this column is about is dating, and on “Laguna Beach,” everyone “hooks up.”While catching up on both seasons one and two on You Tube (before the inevitable copyright axe fell on the generous souls who uploaded episodes for those of us who have crappy basic Canadian cable – not that I'm bitter or anything), I became enthralled by the romantic entanglements of these blonde, tanned teenagers. The allure of these previous seasons had little to do with social commentary or compelling character studies; in fact, most of the young adults on the show seem to have difficulty constructing coherent sentences or forming meaningful romantic relationships. Instead, the fun of watching “Laguna Beach” boils down to my need to live vicariously through a group of pretty people who have no trouble finding someone to flirt and “hook up” with – often with dire, dramatic results played up for the cameras. I know teenage hearts can be fickle, and “Laguna Beach” is a prime example of adolescent love gone wrong. And for MTV, the soap operadic love triangles involved in every season, whether manufactured or not, were the key to ratings.
During my wild and crazy days of high school – which, unlike “Laguna Beach,” did not involve trips to Cabo or dates at swanky sushi restaurants, but rather lame school dances and the occasional underage drinking at the park across the street – there was very little competition for boys. Not to say something about the boys at my high school (although I am totally saying something about the boys at my high school), but most were less “dreamy” as they were kind of obnoxious and exasperating. But when the competition was there, it was a bloodbath. Perhaps with a little help from MTV, these love triangles would have been portrayed in soft lighting, with a swelling soundtrack to romanticize the whole ordeal. But because this was reality, most ended with someone “hooking up” in the boys’ second floor bathroom (not me, because in high school, boys never asked me to “hook up” anywhere), and a hair-pulling fight after school. This went both ways, of course. If the boys became enamored by the same bewitching girl in the tight T-shirt, they would usually settle this with fisticuffs, or – my personal favourite – the Guys’ Code of Honour, which meant that if one boy managed to win the girl over, and then the other boy tried still tried to have a little fun, no one would ever talk about it and the girl would automatically be deemed a “slut.”
The closest I ever came to a high school love triangle happened in eleventh grade (or junior year, for our non-Canadian readers). After reeling from a rejection from a guy who I thought was my soul mate, I decided to set my sights on Daniel, someone who I thought was cute, and safe. It was liking for the sake of liking; I had to find a way – any way – to move on and mend my broken teenaged heart. I told one of my closest girlfriends at the time, and she seemed happy for me. My seduction of Daniel was fruitless and pathetic, and after two weeks, all I had established was that Daniel was willing to acknowledge my existence. Then my girlfriend called me one night, and admitted that Daniel was into her, and she had known all along. I never liked Daniel all that much, but a part of me was still sad. I couldn’t fault my friend for her part in this affair either. After all, the guy who I was convinced was my soul mate was her biggest crush in ninth and tenth grades, and she had to endure my constant obsessive deconstructions of our conversations while being supportive. After I realized how small our high school circle had become, and the incestuous implications that came along with it, the allure of having a high school boyfriend from my own high school fizzled.
I brought my senior high school relationship with an older, non-high school guy, B., into my first year of university. But it soon ended, and I was back to being single. I began to crush on Jonathan, a boy who worked with me at a grocery store chain (which shall not be named because it was a really sucky job), but knew very little about him besides the fact that he had brown hair, was about 5’8”, and worked in the deli. I dispatched another close girlfriend at the time to find out more about him, since she also shared the same shifts in the deli. She would report conversations that she had with him, occasionally peppered with my name dropping, but these became less frequent around the same time that she started to have secret trysts with Jonathan outside of work. To her, these were innocent dinners and shopping stints, but when people I had never spoken to at work started to question her motives and my intentions towards him, I became livid. Although I felt that she crossed a boundary which involved a whole slew of trust and integrity issues, it was only after the hoopla had died down and I had my self-righteous moment with her that I realized that we had just had a fight over a boy we hardly knew.
Unfortunately, I had little time to learn my lessons about inter-group dating before the Devil’s Spawn and I decided to try a relationship. It was also unfortunate that B. and the Devil’s Spawn had been close friends at one point, and B. felt betrayed by the whole ordeal. It’s one thing to lose a relationship; it’s quite another to lose it and have it found by one of your friends. This set an unfortunate chain reaction throughout the whole group that we were close with at the time. The relationship was like a messy domino effect that began with people taking sides and ended with unresolved romantic feelings – not to mention the icky feeling one gets when thinking about how many people are linked through intimate relations. If this were an episode of “Laguna Beach,” everyone would be walking around exclaiming, “Drama!” We were a tight-knight group that was borderline incestuous, so much so that the Devil’s Spawn became increasingly paranoid (i.e. insanely jealous) that we were going to swap again at some point.
But we weren’t the only couple at the time with a complicated history. Another friend, Monica, had already gone through one of B.’s friends and another friend’s cousin before moving on to a friend in the group. Their relationship was tumulus at best, and part of it had to do with inter-group jealousy. His uncertainties were not for naught and his worst suspicions were confirmed when Monica ended up breaking up with him and starting a relationship with the “shoulder-to-cry-on” friend. Needless to say, this fragmented friendships even more.
After a disastrous break up with the Devil’s Spawn, I knew that it was time to stop dating close friends. Countless times, I saw people within our group breaking up, hooking up, and transforming feelings of familiarity and companionship into romantic whims. Pride, honour, and loyalty were pitted against happiness, blossoming relationships, and the intermittent drunken night. Arguments were made for the cardinal rule of friends never dating each other’s exes. But by enforcing this rule, we were essentially treating the women involved as mere objects to be owned and branded, never once asking for their say in who they wished to date. For some reason, this line of thinking became the norm as opposed to a hideously outdated and mystifyingly asinine Neanderthal mantra.
In the long run, not one of these relationships flourished, which begs the questions: were the anguish and turmoil really worth it? Does inter-group dating really work?
The abridged answer is: no. Dating a friend in the group, or a friend’s ex who still resides within the group, works in theory, so long as everyone can somehow have his or her feelings and mind erased. Inevitably, jealousy rears its ugly head, things become complicated, and only the strongest of friendships can survive. There are plenty of other eligible candidates in the sea, and no real reason why a person can’t expand his or her social circle by looking elsewhere for romantic companionship, whether it be an acquaintance of a friend, a stranger at a co-worker’s party, or the cute guy that works on the seventh floor. If there’s anything “Beverly Hills, 90210” (one of the most incestuous soaps to come out of prime time) has shown us, it’s that engaging in complicated love triangles will only bring about broken engagements, random fist fights, alcoholism, and possible cult recruitments. Also, dating someone in the same social circle almost always guarantees awkward post-break up run-ins, which are never fun.
Even though love triangles are often portrayed in the mass media as romantic and juicy entanglements with little repercussion, in the real and now, that’s not often the case. (See “The Jerry Springer Show” as a glowing and extreme example of love gone wrong.) In the worst case scenarios, real damage can occur. This is not to say that inter-group dating never works, but more often than not, it rarely ends on a happy note.
They say that the path to true love is never easy, but it doesn’t have to end in a trail of broken friendships. ¤ C.Ho.
Next Month: Christine appears on a very special episode of "The Jerry Springer Show."