Back in college, I once had a friend who was so desperate to make a guy she was interested in jealous (because in her mind, once he was jealous, he'd demand to begin an exclusive relationship with her on the spot), she mailed herself a romantic greeting card (complete with a handwritten declaration of love and a spray of her favorite men's fragrance), plus she had a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy delivered to her house. The plan was to leave these items out in the open where the guy she wanted - who was in a long term relationship with another girl and only saw my friend as a booty call - would see them when he stopped by on Sweetest Day, driving him into that fit of jealousy on which she hung her hopes, and thus into her loving (and delusional) arms.
It didn't work. He called to say he wouldn't be seeing her that night - he went out with his girlfriend instead.
She called me in tears, asking the usual questions she asked whenever one of her doomed to fail schemes to win over the guy she wanted inevitably failed. She also got angry at me when I gave her three replies:
1) If he'd seen it, he never would've bought the bit. Guys do not send scented greeting cards, and had he read the card, he would've recognized her handwriting.
2) Besides, he wasn't going to see it. Whenever he came by to take her out, he never came in the house. He sat outside in his car and blew the horn. "What were you going to do?" I asked. "Drag the card, candy, and flowers out to the car with you?" I followed that up with my inevitable and normal reply after these escapades of hers predictably blew up in her face.
3) He would never get jealous when it came to her. She was his piece on the side, and he'd told her time and time again he was happy with the way things were. It was futile for her to try and win over a guy who didn't want her the way she wanted him - not to mention a guy who was so blatantly cheating on the girl he swore he loved. "What makes you think he'd treat you different?"
I got her inevitable and frustrating reply: I was engaged (at the time), so I "didn't understand" what it was like to be "without a man."
Because, you know, I'd been happily engaged since birth.
Anyway, our friendship inevitably ended, but not before witnessing more desperate attempts to win over her dream guy, along with some doomed to fail attempts at meeting other men. (Remind me to tell you the story of how she hoped to win the heart of a seminarian by stalking him during church services one of these days.)
It's been years since we've been in touch, and I don't know if she ever found happiness - with a man or independently - much less sanity. But I thought of her when, after clicking on "Dear Wendy," one of my favorite websites, I came across a posting she wrote about FakeGirlfriend, a site that gives a guy a way to have the girlfriend he longs for, and fufills the wish all guys have of "get(ting) interrupted by a loving phone-call during man-time."
All the guy has to do is plug a phone number provided by FakeGirlfriend into his cell phone (saved under whichever name you choose for your "girlfriend"), send a "fake text" to that number, then sit back and wait. In a few seconds, the guy will get a "girlfriend-esque" text reply, followed by a pre-recorded phone call from the dream girl. The site directs him to "tell everyone about how great your girlfriend is" after hanging up.
All the girlfriend perks (well, almost all of them) without any of the pesky work that comes with a human connection. It's that simple!
Whenever I asked my friend why she settled on being the fall back girl (someone he called when there was nothing or no one else for him to do), she'd tell me it was "complicated" and that I could "never understand." She was right. I never understood why she was willing to bend over backwards and trade out her self respect for a guy who would never exist for her, even though it seemed like he was right at her fingertips.
I imagine the guy who'd seriously consider using FakeGirlfriend - not the ones who will use the site to pull a prank on their friends or try it out as a joke - would be perfect for my old friend, because they'd both have the same sad frame of mind.
More later, after quoting Sir Paul: "All the lonely people...where do they all come from?"
"Truth may sometimes hurt, but delusion harms." - Vanna Bonta
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