Ex # 1

I apologize for taking so long posting this. I've had stressful things going on in my home life lately.

My first boyfriend's name was Joe. (Not the Joe that sometimes comments on my blog from over at batteryboost, although he is one groovy guy.) By this time, I was a sophomore and he was a junior. We were both in our high school marching band. He was the Drum Major.

Looking back now, I think the biggest reason I went out with him was that he asked me. That sounds bad now, but at the time I didn't realize that. At the time I figured, he's a nice guy and he likes me and he was not my best friend so how can I ruin it. So we went out. The I don't remember many specific dates we went on. I remember in the beginning he didn't have a driver's license, but he had a learners permit so his dad would nap on the back seat while he drove.

Now, this year we had a brand new band director who wanted to take the band to another level, marching in competitions and such. The band was split in two, the juniors and seniors wanted the band to stay a party band and not to have to work so hard. They didn't like the new directors manner. Then you had the freshmen and sophomores who weren't as into the party band thing, we liked the idea of competition.

Joe was kind of weak minded in that he didn't know what to think, until a little bird we shall call Dora because that was her name, only she wasn't a bird, told him that the band director wasn't good and that he should hate him and he should hate me because I liked the new way. Our first fight was around the Cathedral open house that fall. The director, let's just call him Mr. H, ordered a new trombone to play so he'd have a better instrument. Joe said he just did it to suck up to him. Mr. H just wanted him to be happy and have a good instrument. Anyway somehow we got through that mess.

Another problem we had while dating was that he was incredibly jealous. My best friend was a guy in my class named Tom, the guy from my first date. I also had a lot of female friends I would talk to in the hallway between classes. Joe would only notice/mention when he saw me talking to guys, especially Tom. No matter how many times I told him that I was with him and with him only and all my male friends were just that, friends, he would always come back to that every time he saw me with them.
The frustrating thing is he had a lot of female friends that he sometimes seemed to let dictate what he did. Like one time, we were supposed to go out on a date, after he got his driver's license and his friend Dora didn't want us too, she wanted to get herself and a couple other friends together to hang out, just friends, no couples. This was just one of her many ploys to split us up because she just didn't like me. I don't know why, I think I posed a threat because I told him to think for himself.

As far as sex, we never did that, we kissed, he was an awful kisser. I didn't know that right then, I'd never kissed anyone but him, I was highly disappointed in kissing.

I lost count of how many times we broke up. Every time we broke up my friends would just say, yeah, but for how long this time? Every time I broke up with him, because I always broke up with him., it was because it was bad, he accused me of cheating or something like that. All I know is when we first got together, we smiled all the time, when it was over, it was hard and we never smiled. Every time we got back together, we smiled for a period, happy for a time. He said he would not be jealous and he always was.

One of the times after we broke up and we were on friendly terms. He came up to me while I was talking to Tom in the hall. Tom was telling me that the entire Star wars trilogy was playing back to back at General Cinema at Clearwater Crossing Friday night and did I want to go. Joe then got himself invited. My parents said I could go, but Joe's said no. After we got back together Joe accused me of going on a date with Tom while we were dating. I said, one, this was not a date, and two we were broken up just like in friends when Ross told Rachel: "WE WERE ON A BREAK!!!" Only totally different because who knew if we were getting back together.

The final straw, the last time I broke up with him was when prom came around. I didn't want to go, I just naturally assumed that he would take me. He told me that his dad said I was too young to go to prom. So he decided to take his other friend. Without consulting me. I heard about the alternate date and the dad comment at the same time. So that was it. I later heard that his parents thought I was a bad influence. When I told another friend this, he just laughed and said he wondered what a good influence was then. I don't think his parents ever really liked me much. They were strange people, Joe would come to school and tell me how his dad said something about me and he got into a fight with him. Not an argument a fist fight. So at least he fought for me one time. Not with his friends, and not with me, just with his father who placed extremely high expectations on him.

He really was a good guy, we were just young. He let people tell him what to do and what to think. That's not who I wanted to be with and that was the whole problem.