I was reading the reply Auriela McCarthy posted on her blog to a comment I had made to her post about Irene’s dating dilemmas
and it suddenly triggered a string of memories.
Suddenly, I was back in Newport Beach, in my mid 20’s, talking with a friend of a friend I had met up with at a Newport Beach nightclub. We were talking about the jealous feelings we had for our respective boyfriends at the time. Consuming jealous feelings. Jealousy so intense, it was euphoric.
We compared the constant attention paid to the details of ‘his’ life, looking for clues of infidelity. Laughed about never being able to drive anywhere without a constant eye out for ‘the’ car, and then, dodging like mad through traffic because we thought we saw it, only it wasn’t.
Or, if we did see the car, driving like a loon, trying to see who was in the passenger’s seat. Feeling a huge let down if the seat was empty, knowing in our hearts it was probably still warm, the passenger only recently departed and we had missed our chance to find out the truth! Again!
Which was what had started the conversation, I had cut her off in traffic, never even seeing her, speeding diagonally through the intersection and disappearing into traffic as I wove around the slower moving cars. She said she recognized the grim look on my face.
I confessed that I was pretty sure my boyfriend cheated on me, she was too. I said her boyfriend wore a suit and didn’t look like a cheater. Mine did, and hers was so, that kind of petered out.
My boyfriend had slept with all of the barmaids in Newport Beach and hers had bedded a large percentage of the female population of corporate Irvine.
We both laughed at how crazy we were and had another drink, looking around the club, one eye out. Somewhere about now she said, and I can still hear her low, level voice, that she thought she ‘was addicted to being jealous’. That was the only reason she could come up with for continuing on under such painful and unhappy circumstances.
When she was in a jealous rage, make that alone and in a jealous rage - a direct confrontation would have ended the affair - she felt a surge of emotion, a rush of excitement, powerful feelings that she found herself going to any length to achieve.
I don’t remember how the evening ended, but I do remember the vague discomfort of what she was saying. She was describing what I had been indulging in for some time.
There was no epiphany that evening. Both of us felt powerless to change our boyfriend’s rotten behaviors. Both of us felt we had no other choice but to continue chasing cars through traffic, trying to finally find the ‘truth’ that would prove us right and somehow set us free.
My addiction was the same as Irene’s. I would say more exciting, but I haven’t talked to her about the charge she gets from being unhappy so I don’t really know. I still have the occasional relapse, but today I recognize it for what it is, and I slow down, turn my vision back to myself, and enjoy the drive.
My heart goes out to Irene, who still thinks she has no choice, and that only when she finds out the ‘truth’, will others change and set her free.
I really want to thank Auriela for bringing this topic up, it has been awhile since I thought of my handsome English boyfriend and how rude all the barmaids in Newport Beach used to be to me. ;D
