The Love Bug

3. Love Triangles

Finally, something I know already.


A love triangle is a relationship between three people in which feelings are split between one person and two others, sometimes concurrently, others successively. Some of the more famous love triangles of fiction and real life include:

1) Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie.
2) Ross, Rachel, and Emily, from Friends.
3) Pam, Jim, and Roy from The Office
4) JR, Sue Ellen, and Kristin from Dallas
5) Diane, Sam, and Frasier from Cheers
6) Charles, Ernestina, and Sarah, from John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman
7) Henry VIII and just about every woman in England.

Often messy, but almost certainly entertaining - when on television - love triangles have been a source of conflict for centuries. And for what seems like a century, my formative years have been plagued by failing love triangles.

When I was a freshman in High School, I started dating my first serious girlfriend. A couple months into the relationship, another woman came to me with some thinly veiled sexual advances, and the proverbial shit hit the fan. This one event is what would spark the 8 year conflict I have had with flaky emotions, giving me the reputation of a flighty lovesick puppy.
These years have seen me going from grade to grade, trying desperately to keep multiple balls in the air, despite my surprising lack of juggling skill. Ive been known to keep my options open continually, pursuing with all my heart one set of affections, while trying to hedge my bets with yet another. If the one doesn't work out, I'd think, there's always this next girl! Perhaps this is the root of my gambling addictions.
In any case, the gambits rarely, if ever, paid off. My ease in transferring emotion from one girl to another left me vulnerable to criticisms of insincerity and left me with a lack of gravitas, particularly throughout college.
The first three years of my college life was one giant mess of a love triangle. However, only one of the sides ever really returned any feelings, so I guess its more of a love triangle that has one side that got smashed in by a large rhombus or something. Nevertheless, from the beginning of college I had my eye on this one lady. When that seemed to fail miserably, there happened into my life the other side of this triangle, and things seemed to go smoothly until the end of freshman year. In a dazzling array of on-again, off-again, maybe-in-a-couple-of-months relationships, sophomore year left me dazed and confused as to what exactly had happened, sending me running with my tail between my legs back to my original fantasy, only to be met once again with apathy and remorse.

Even now, when all this seems past, I can't seem to escape the tendency to try to keep emotional tendrils out in all parts of the water. From talking to girls back at my hometown, failing end-of-college romances, and tandem encounters with familial acquaintances, I'm always ready to bolt in a new direction at the slightest hint of opportunity.