Two very serious things.

[mrissa]

1. My face did freeze that way.

2. You know that meme that's going around, with all the checkboxes? Nobody on my friendslist has admitted to having been the psycho ex in a past relationship. I wonder if it would be different if it was, "I have been the heartless jerk who broke his/her heart." Or maybe you're all model exes; who knows.

Is this useful? Not at all, but I'm in a very odd mood for getting things done. Where by "very odd," I mean "silly and not very useful." I should probably go away from the computer so that I still have decent shoulder-time left when I'm feeling less silly. On the other hand, if I don't corral the brain now, it may run screaming off and not return for weeks and then with beads and feathers it got heaven knows where. I will write longhand tonight. Yes. I will write the end of "In the Velvet Swamp" longhand, since the rest of the story is longhand anyway, and it's probably good for me not to get too hooked into one mode in case I need to be in another for some reason. But before then I will make two little things in MSS go more sensibly. Really. Truly.

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

I did! I was the psycho ex. Just after I was the psycho stalker girlfriend. It just took me a long time to realize it. I think now about how he sounds when I tell stories about that time, and how I probably tell when he tells stories about that time, and think that both of us were out of our minds.

[roane.livejournal.com]

I was a psycho ex too, I just haven't done the checkbox version of the meme, cause I did the older, hand-coded version. :)

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I was, as I said in the meme, psycho and an ex, but I wasn't the psycho ex. That is to say, my insanity wasn't focused around the relationship.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I have never had nor been a psycho ex. I have been the person who broke his heart, but I wasn't a heartless jerk; I have had my heart broken, but he wasn't a heartless jerk.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I haven't done the meme, but I will assume that I have been seen as the psycho ex in at least one or two relationships (one because all his exes were psycho, and I didn't catch on to the one thing all those relationships had in common; the other because after he'd humilated me in public, betrayed agreements, and demanded things of me that he knew he could not get, I refused to forgive him and make nice). It happens.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

I was, sadly, the psycho-ex. Not stewed bunny psycho, but embarrassingly clingy and weepy.

I did!

[markdeniz.livejournal.com]

Nobody on my friendslist has admitted to having been the psycho ex in a past relationship

Which means you didn't read it...

*sniffs*

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I haven't done the meme (and if I was going to, would probably have done the hand-coded one, not that it matters) but I did spend a moment contemplating this. My first inlcination was to answer in the affirmative, then I went through all the relationships, and can't really think of one that fits. I was entirely psycho after my first real relationship, but the situation was (I /think/) one in which even right after the break-up both she and I knew she'd been in the wrong, so I don't think she characterized me that way. I do think I've been the heartless jerk who broke someone's heart. I felt really bad about it, but apparently that doesn't help. Or, at least, I felt really bad that he felt so bad about it. That doesn't seem to be enough to make one non-heartless, though. Possibly it makes things worse.

I have also had the distinction of being The Psycho/Evil Bitch Who Did THAT To My Daughter at least twice, where 'THAT' was, on one occasion, 'broke up with, not that we'll admit that this was a romantic relationship or that my daughter could ever be queer, but still' and, on another 'made her lesbian and turned her against us.'

I dislike being hated, even in a good cause.

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

I've been both the psycho ex (in the sense of wanting to process, process, process and understand everything in exacting detail) and the heartless jerk. I've been the model ex, too, and I've been the ex who wants to be model but just winds up a doormat. And I've been the reasonable, non-psycho ex whose good name gets dragged through the mud by the vengeful ex. I've never been the vengeful ex, but sometimes I've wished I had been.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I was never the psycho ex, but I was other flavors of unpleasant ex.

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

2. I believe one of them did. I teased him about it. Carefully, of course, being psycho 'n all...

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

one because all his exes were psycho, and I didn't catch on to the one thing all those relationships had in common

Hah. I dated someone like that too. The rest of your description does not apply because he was awful differently than that...but I do recall, at the beginning when everything was still rosy, thinking, "how wacky that all of his former girlfriends were so 'possessive!' I will never be like that to him..."

Uh-huh.

Interestingly enough, I've met most of his exes. Every one of his exes were lovely, pleasant women, who didn't seem like they could possibly have ever been psycho. Something about breaking up with this person magically restores a gal's sanity, somehow...

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I've only had one ex, but I was *definately* the heartless bitch in that relationship. I don't think my name could be mentioned around him for at least two years.

Re: I did!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, you aren't on my friendslist. I do read people whose friendslist I'm on but not vice versa, but not every day. One of the reasons I stopped friending most people back is that I was running into a time barrier for reading entries.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Understandable. But on the other hand, I think it's harder to be reasonable about someone hurting someone you love, especially if you're not privy to all the details of how the person you love may have done some hurting back.

The funny thing about two of my friends who broke off their relationship was that they were kind of the opposite: falling all over themselves to tell me how I shouldn't blame the other person because they [the one speaking] were at least as much to blame, certainly weren't perfect, had done X or Y or Z that they wouldn't have appreciated. I get protective of my friends, but it was kind of cute to watch them both trying to make sure I didn't get protective in a way that would destroy my friendship with their ex.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Strawberry ex! Mmmmm, strawberries.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, okay. At least one, then.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Two years is a long time, and "can't mention her name" is an extreme reaction. How many kittens did you stomp in the course of this breakup? Were you pulling the wings off butterflies in his presence?

(Please note: you do not have to go into detail about what you actually did or did not do. This is rhetoric.)

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Strawberry ex wouldn't be unpleasant.

Except maybe that now they're you're ex and you can't put your tongue on them anymore.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

well, he was 17 (I was 15), so that should make the reaction more understandable. :)

I do try and write about it now and then, because I know it really messed up my approach to dating and is at least responsible for my being dateless until through college (since then is other things, I think), so I like to look at it and talk it into less importance, if that makes sense. I hurt him a great deal, and it really really bothered me that I hurt him that much, and I avoided relationships not because I was afraid I'd get hurt (because that can happen anyways) but because I didn't want to hurt someone else.

When I first wrote something about this (since deleted), I wrote "He broke up with me" which I think was interesting because yes, he did, sort of. He definately started the process, and I think he may have been the one to say something like, "do you want to be in a relationship with me" or "maybe we shouldn't be together then". Except that the reason why we broke up was not him, it was because I didn't want to be in the relationship. I broke up with him. I may or may not have said the actual words, but I broke up with him.

I think he'd been a lot more in love with me than I was in like with him, and he hadn't realised it at the time, and we broke up via a fight on the street (he was on the street, I was in the doorway of my dad's house) in which I made him cry, and I refused to talk to him afterwards. I knew it wasn't the right way to act, but I didn't dare let him convince me to try the relationship again. And I couldn't explain that to him because I was 15, and he was best friends with my best friend's manipulative boyfriend, and I didn't want to be trapped in a relationship the way she was, and it was too similar, and I couldn't tell him because I didn't know him, we weren't friends, we were just dating.

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

I actually checked the clickybox for having been the psycho ex in a relationship, though at the time I took the test, nobody *else* on my friends list had marked that they had been the psycho ex. That's okay, though. I was psycho enough for all of them. The guy deserved it. I TRIED to be psycho toward this particular guy, just to make him as miserable as he had (purposely) made me the last few months of the relationship, which I admit was both immature and ridiculous of me, and yet gave me a great deal of joy until I decided I was bored with the game and -- in psycho ex fashion, I guess -- just abruptly STOPPED one day. Hopefully he will think twice before tormenting another person the way he tormented me, after seeing what it earned him. He wanted to make me crazy, so I gave him crazy all right.
:shrug:

Re: I did!

[markdeniz.livejournal.com]

Oh I feel all rejected now!

*winks*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As long as you're talking it into less importance rather than more.

It's a fine line, because on the one hand, I do believe that teenager's feelings are important, that belittling those feelings because of the age of the person who has them is a bad, bad idea. But on the other hand, teenagers are inexperienced in handling relationships, and if they aren't as careful/considerate as they would like to be later in life, I think they deserve a little slack from their future selves.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. People should be careful what they try, or how they label others. It can backfire on them!

[sksperry.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I must not be on your friends list then. *g*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Once Kelly pointed it out, I did remember.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I try and make it assume less importance when I talk about it, which I think it largely does--when I start to understand why I behave in a certain way, I can start avoiding the bad stuff and just doing the good stuff.

I don't doubt that a teenager's feelings are important to them, and at that time. I suspect that now, 13 years later he's probably more embarassed by the depth of the response he had, but I don't think that makes it any less real, particularly while he was living it.

It's like PMS--just because my emotions are all over the place doesn't make them any less valid as emotions. It may mean they're extreme, but that's just a factor, not a reason to dismiss them. (the one thing my mom does that I HATE is ask me if I'm premenstrual when I get upset about things. Way to marginalize my opinions.)

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I've been the psycho ex more than once. So now with relationships I feel like I'm the Pentagon--I won't go in unless there's an exit strategy. (With a very broad definition of "exit").

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Um. I think that makes you better than the Pentagon.

Psycho ex

[(Anonymous)]

My first marriage ended with my finally realizing that the woman in question really was a "psycho ex." A serious unrequited love I had shortly thereafter ended up with the woman being another "psycho ex." The woman in question here wound up spending about a year (adding them all together) in locked wards from her schizoaffective disorder. After those two, I was definitely the psycho ex in my third relationship, but the woman in that one and I have since gone back to being quite good friends. I have not, however, been all that good dealing with women who have been unrequitedly in love with me (which, unfortunately, has happened several times). I don't destroy relationships that are, or that could be, the same way every time (and one of the good things about my being happily married these days is that it dramatically reduces the chances that I'll wind up in a situation where I'm going to destroy things at all, as those "situations" aren't going to start in the first place).

Nate

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

I've been the psycho ex too. Gee, and I wondered why he stopped answering the phone when I called...