THAT Kind of Girl

My friend H, who was the most adamant about not getting into a relationship quickly after her divorce, was the first one to find a relationship. Go figure. I guess that's where that old "it happens when you aren't looking for it" adage comes into play.

However, for all the complaints and fears I have over being single, she has an equal amount over being in a relationship. Her ex-husband cheated on her, multiple times. Not just random, at-the-bar kissing, but actual relationships. Not just once. Three different women.

Needless to say, she has some obvious trust issues. Facebook and texting played huge roles in her ex-husband's affairs, and she is very aware of the risks presented by these new communication sources. Hell, she's even used them herself a time or two.

Last week, she had a disagreement with her boyfriend over his acceptance of a Facebook friend request. She didn't tell him to accept, she didn't tell him not to accept. She did, however, point out her concerns over his acceptance of this friend request, based on witnessing this person's behavior and her lack of boundaries--because she was that kind of girl, so to speak. When her boyfriend chose to accept the friend request--under the premise of being nice--H was unhappy, to say the least.

A disagreement ensued between H and her boyfriend, and in response, he deleted 22 of his Facebook friends--the vast majority of the single women. Including me. Which got me to thinking...does he think I am that kind of girl?

That kind of girl is Rielle Hunter, who lured that nasty John Edwards into a lurid affair, knowing that everyone in the world knew that his long-suffering wife of many years had cancer. That kind of girl are Tiger Woods' many mistresses, who knew damn well that they didn't go under the moniker Elin Nordegren. That kind of girl is the forever-infamous Long Island Lolita, Amy Fisher, who as a teenager was seduced into an affair with a married man, and then allegedly assisted in his plot to kill the wife. I am not that kind of girl.

In my defense...there is no way I'd be that kind of girl with him. Ever. Even if he and H broke up, it wouldn't matter, because there's always that unspoken bond of friendship between her and I. In the time that he and H have been together, we've socialized on numerous occasions, and I never realized that I was giving out signals that I am that kind of girl. But maybe I was, if he felt it necessary to delete me.

In my un-defense...I have been guilty of being that kind of girl. Looking at some of my aforementioned posts would spell this out quite clearly. I had a knack. For sexting. Married Men. On Facebook.

H's belief is that your best defense against becoming that kind of girl with someone else's man is to befriend the wife. And I have no doubt that she's right. That's why I never wanted details from my Married Man's personal life. If I had to put a face attached to his wife's name, it would make it too personal. That kind of girl has to keep personal out of it, if only to selfishly spare her own feelings.

But it still brings me back to my concern: am I that kind of girl? I'd like to think not. I'd like to think I am nice and relationship-worthy. But sometimes I wonder. A friend once told me that she saw a news article on teens and sexting, and she automatically thought of me. I was like, what?!? You see something on sexting and automatically think, "J"?!? And it seems that the only men I ever find on online dating sites are the ones interested in sexting. Not dating. Sexting.

I just don't get it...maybe I am that kind of girl, and I just don't know it.

Ouchie! I Need a Band-Aid, Please!

When AC was very young, she loved the "Itsy Bitsy Spider". It was virtually the only song I knew with hand gestures that didn't include the middle finger or Satan's horns, so we sang Itsy a lot. She became so well-versed in Itsy that she could do the hand motions by seven months old. Perhaps the cutest pic I have of her is sitting in a laundry basket, hands stretched above her head, imitating the climbing up the waterspout portion of the song.

At the height of AC's Itsy phase, I found an adorable board book based on the rhyme of Itsy, with a new rhyme on each page. My favorite was the rhyme where Itsy fell down and shrieked, "Ouchie! I need a Band-Aid, please!". Of course, based on the fact that Itsy has eight legs, she requested eight Band-Aids, but her mother only had six.

I, too, am having an eight Band-Aid sorta day. The day started out smashingly, with me packing up a bunch of my ex-husband's stuff, a task I refer to as "taking out the trash". However, after I picked up my daughter, my sadness started setting in. Holidays are never good for the newly-single girl. Your usual support system is gone, caught up in their own families and new boys.

As the icing on my heartbreak cake, I said goodbye to an online flirtation, who is deploying to Iraq in a couple of days. Sure, deep down, I knew that it was unlikely that anything would come of it, apart from the occassional sexting exchange. But what a fool believes is that what seems to be is always better than nothing, and he was always reliable for some occassional drunk texting.

The other victim of my weekly drunk texts is a married guy I like to refer to as my "one night stand that got away". Coulda, shoulda, woulda...but even 10 years after the fact, he still likes to play my game. I consider his receipt of my infrequent drunk texts to be a true honor on his part; I doubt his wife would agree, because I have typically found that while I don't care, most wives don't wanna share.

In thinking of this--why would someone as intelligent and beautiful as me continually throw myself at Someone Else's Husband?--the answer dawned on me: I can't trust the guy. If I know I can't trust him from the start, there is no reason for me to ever build trust in him. No trust equals no heartbreak for me, because I already fully expect him to break my heart. To expect it means that essentially, your heart cannot be broken. I have equated my broken trust issues to Santa Claus: I feel like I carry it in a huge sack tossed across my shoulder. The good thing, is that just like Santa delivering his gifts, I toss out a little bit of that mistrust each and every day.

But yet, the truth always remains...after saying farewell to my brief--but steamy--online military boy, my automatic defense mechanism was to text Someone Else's Husband, even though I know he is really no different from Itsy, though far more dangerous: a poisonous spider just waiting in the corner, fulling willing to silently and slyly break his wife's heart while playing with mine.

Ouchie...I need a Band-Aid--or six, or eight--for my scraped and scuffed heart.