by Maggie Voysest

In The Beginning

Now the previous chapters that you have, hopefully, laughed at and enjoyed, have been the stories of Gigi’s online dating experiences. Gigi was able to flit from one date to another, and all that hurt was her face and sides from laughing so hard. But life is not always funny. It comes with pain and sorrow, and sometimes it also comes with heart break. Most of the men Gigi met along the Online Way were, by their own actions, not worthy of her love, and so we don’t have to feel too bad about laughing at them. The men in this chapter are not so laughable or comical, and some deserve our pity, not our mockery. Gigi is not perfect and she has secrets, things she did that she came to regret. People she hurt who did not deserve it. Fortunately, not too many people. As fate would have it, Gigi is normally the one hurt in a relationship. She tends to give her heart and emotions away too quickly and too easily. So bear with me, as I tell you a little more about Gigi’s past.

What had brought her to this strange world of online dating? How had she gone from being quiet and rather shy (yes, darn it! Shy! Why will no one ever believe that Gigi was once quiet and shy?) to a vivacious, and outgoing risk taker in the world of dating? Gigi was extremely shy and studious in high school and only had three boy friends. They were all younger than her, and didn’t last long. Two of these high school boyfriends found her online years later, and touched Gigi’s heart again, this time as adults. The other one has become a good friend on Facebook. Good God! The effects the internet has had on Gigi‘s life… At one point or another, it touched almost every aspect of her life. Both during and after her marriage. Let this be a warning to spouses out there. The internet is very dangerous, and can woo away your spouse if you are ignoring his or her needs. Do not always believe that your spouse is only “friends” with that ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. Nostalgia and boredom and loneliness can quickly lead to more… not to mention we tend to romanticize past loves and forget there is a reason why they are past!

Gigi left Europe when she was 18 to attend college in Michigan, which had been her lifelong dream. Of course now, she’d love to be able to go back to Europe. Go figure! Grass is always greener and all that… Now, while she was in college, she again only had three boyfriends. The first was Ben, a marine whom she met her first Christmas home, Sweet Ben from Missouri. Once Gigi cast her eyes on him, he had no chance. She had gone home to Europe with her roommate Tania, and they were walking around town, which was suddenly invaded by beautiful, uniformed American sailors and marines. Be still our young, impressionable hearts… Men in uniforms were simply yummy. Ok, they still are!

“Watch this,” Gigi told Tania. “This is how we pick up American servicemen in Spain.”

Gigi walked right past a group of good looking marines, speaking in English very loudly, wondering aloud what time it was. The men whipped their heads around ever so quickly, and exclaimed, “Are you girls American?”

“Why yes, we are,” said Gigi, looking deceptively innocent. “Are you?”

And that was that. Gigi and Tania were able to pick which ones they wanted, and they arranged to meet later that night.

It was almost like an old war movie, without the war, of course. But it still had that innocence of first love – and then the cruel separation, as the marine went off to sea, leaving his local girl behind. Gigi and Ben were inseparable for ten days. They wrote each other a letter a day for the next four months. Beautiful love letters that she treasured for years, until her husband made her throw them away. That should have been a huge clue to Gigi to never marry this man jealous of her past and the jailor of her present and future. Ben and Gigi talked on the phone once a week, as he called her from all over the Mediterranean. He even sent her an engagement ring: her first ever.

He also gave her her first Dear John letter. His ship was involved in one of the Gulf wars and he broke up with Gigi, and was one of the first to cause a crack in her trusting heart. He actually came back a few years later. What is it with these men and their on again and off again relationships with Gigi? She would soon grow tired of hearing that they realized how much they’d missed her and what they’d lost, and how they wanted another chance. Ben didn’t work out the second time either. It was Gigi’s first lesson that second chances rarely work out. When he left her again, she turned to her future husband for comfort. Which explains a lot. As said before, Gigi turned to safe people to recover from a broken heart. She just happened to marry this one.

Her second boy friend was Mike, the 18 year old virgin mentioned in a previous chapter, but he only lasted one month, and lost out to the enchantments of Paris. Now she barely remembers poor Mike, and since she had stopped writing in her diary while in college, she has no way to bring back those lost memories. She remembers one movie, and one dinner, and oh yes, relieving him of his virginity. Funny how some things fade quickly, whereas others remain forever engraved in your heart. Poor Mike. All he is, is one photo in Gigi’s album, and a distant memory.

It was then that she met Tim, her college sweetheart, whom she ended up marrying. They were together for 10 years, married for 8 of those 10 years, had two kids together and then were divorced.. Tim was a very nice guy, and they had first been friends. He’d asked her out while she was engaged to Ben, but Gigi only dated one guy at a time. When Ben dumped her for the second time, she asked Tim out to a dance. They dated for the rest of her college years, and lived together while he finished college. Once he graduated, they went to Spain to visit her parents, and ended up staying there and teaching at a local American high school. They even got married there. Gigi will never forget her Daddy asking her if she was sure she wanted to marry Tim. Unfortunately, he waited to ask this question, while he was walking her down the aisle! Thanks a lot! You couldn’t have had this conversation with her BEFORE the actual day of the wedding?

They lived in Spain for four years, had their first son there, and then returned to Michigan. A few years later… divorce. Well, at least she has only had one as compared to the four her father had. That is an improvement, right?

Her divorce? It must be admitted that maybe, just maybe the internet had something to do with that, but that is another sad story that Gigi only shares with a very select few. And she does not know you all well enough yet. It might be a future chapter in Gigi’s memoirs if she finds the courage. Let’s just say that high school reunions are just as dangerous to marriages as finding old flames on the internet.

When Gigi discovered the internet and it was just becoming popular, she was still married. However, she was not happy in her marriage. Tim had begun to try and change her from the minute they started dating, and somehow, she had let him. She had lost herself in his picture of what he wanted her to be, so that soon she was no longer Gigi from Europe, but a little American haus frau who had to ask permission on how much to spend and what to buy, whom she could talk to, and where she could go. Tim was not a bad person. He was an excellent father and a good friend. However, he was very jealous and possessive. He didn’t seem to mind when Gigi gained weight and stayed home all the time. The less men looked at her, the happier he was. Gigi even lost all her flirtatiousness, which was such an intrinsic part of her.

A flirt? Oh yes, Gigi was a natural born flirt. Ok, maybe now I see why no one believes she was shy… but Gigi had flirted since she was a baby. As a child, she had all the waiters at the usual restaurants she went to with her parents, in her dainty little pockets. They’d bring her extra small portions of dinner and extra large portions of dessert…REAL dessert, you naughty readers. She was just a child still! And she stayed a “child” until she was 18. Oh Paco… yet another story to be shared someday. How many pages in a book? At this rate, Gigi will have a whole series of books. Her Daddy would tell her she needed to flirt with the restaurant owners, NOT the waiters. But Gigi was never materialistic, and never seemed to go for the rich ones!

Oh the Internet! It first made her realize that she was unhappily married, then it brought about her divorce, and then it brought her the man she almost married. And maybe just maybe, when her story becomes well-known and read by all, it might just repay all her pain and suffering with lots and lots of money, through books, sitcoms, and movies based on her crazy life! And you will all be able to say that you knew Gigi at the very beginning.

But this story is not about her relationships that lasted for years, but rather about the relationships that crashed and burned after only weeks or months. Who wants to read about happy relationships, when the crazy and sad ones seem to be more entertaining? Yet I want to give you some background into Gigi. Her past is what made her the way she is today, a hopeless romantic deep, deep inside, surrounded by thick cynical layers. A woman with little faith in men, still desperately hoping there was one man out there meant just for her.

So there she was, unhappily married, overweight, always home with not just her two kids, but the whole neighborhood of children, and suddenly, she had a computer and the internet, and a window into her past, a link to her childhood in Spain. So when she received an email from Robbie, one of her high school boyfriends, it was like someone had thrown her a life jacket and saved her from drowning. Robbie was a stay at home Dad with two stepchildren. They spent the days talking online together on the computer, both feeling unappreciated and taken for granted by their significant others. Robbie wasn’t married yet, but soon would be, and Gigi even helped plan his honeymoon in Spain.

Gigi and Robbie never met in person, at least not then, and not for many, many years, but they fell in love. They helped each other feel better about their lives. Robbie married the woman who made his life miserable at times, but whom he still loved, and he is still with her today. Gigi began to start a new life that would eventually free her from her oppressive marriage. People take different directions. Some are too afraid to leave. Some too afraid to stay. Gigi will never regret leaving her husband, although she will always regret having hurt him. After finding Robbie again, Gigi realized she needed to make some changes in her life. She went back to school to become a teacher. Oh the freedom of leaving the home, and being able to talk to other adults. She also began to plan a high school reunion in Spain, and looked for old friends from those days. She joined an aerobics class, with a marine-like drill sergeant, whom Gigi hated vividly at first, dreaming of all the cruel ways she could make that teeny, tiny skinny you-know-what suffer. Then suddenly, when she began to get in shape, and lost so much weight that she needed to buy new clothes every few months, she began to love that drill sergeant after all. Amazingly enough (or perhaps not) Tim hated the fact that he suddenly had a beautiful and skinny wife.

Robbie, however, was not the one she strayed with. James is the story that might never be told here. Few people know about him, and Gigi has never truly dealt with the holes and cracks that he left behind in his destructive wake. Oh James’ story is immensely sadder than David’s. Let’s just say that the divorce came soon after the hurricane-tornado-monsoon-tidal wave called James swept through her life. All I will say is that the internet brought James, an old childhood friend back into her life, the high school reunion created the opportunity to meet, and James’ wife did not go meekly into the night, but created her own disaster-filled storm into Gigi’s life, so that divorce was the only possible result, and soon Gigi was 33, alone, heart broken, and divorced.

Let me point out that she didn’t turn to online dating right away. That didn’t happen until her second long term and very serious 7 year relationship with Daniel ended. She almost married him, until tragedy struck his life, and he began to turn away from everyone near him, with Gigi being his last victim. Daniel was Canadian, and the other one of those younger boy friends from high school, the first boy she had ever kissed, when she was 14 and he was 13. She still had the love letter he wrote her, the one in which he told her that he would find her one day in the future. And he did, many years later, God yes, because of that gosh darned internet! He found her just weeks after her divorce was final, and then the internet (and Gigi) had something to do with his divorce. Not one of her proudest moments, but… c’est l’amour, all’s fair in love and war, etc etc etc.

When Daniel left her for an Inuit 24 year old psychotic, illiterate lush, who looked like a dog, Gigi had her first fling in years. This was merely a reaction to being dumped. Oh and the description of the Inuit hound was not Gigi’s jealous rantings and ravings, but those of his best male friends, who were appalled that Daniel would leave Gigi for the dog, as she will forever be known. She might have been 24, but she looked 40. She was insanely jealous of Gigi, and destroyed all her belongings left behind. She even emailed Gigi, pretending that it was from Daniel. The email was barely legible and filled with so many grammar and spelling mistakes that Gigi immediately felt better (that and seeing the photo of her truly helped. It is much worse to be dumped for a skinny, beautiful young thing, than for an ugly dog-like creature).. Gigi corrected all the mistakes in red, and sent it back to her, thanking her for letting her know just what an illiterate fool had replaced her.

Gigi soon had her just revenge, by finding herself a gorgeous Mexican 23 year old, and making darn sure that Daniel found out about it. Since all his friends remained her friends, he soon did. He ended up having to throw the dog back to the rock on the Arctic island she crawled out from underneath. Ok, I think Gigi is entitled to making fun of Daniel and the dog, since cowardly Daniel broke up with Gigi on the PHONE! After 6 and a half years… and then quickly moved the new girl into the home they had shared, forcing her onto his children, who had been Gigi’s children for so long, and then allowing her to actually destroy all of Gigi’s possessions left behind. Oh well. Live and learn. Long distance relationships hardly ever work out. Daniel had lived thousands of miles away, and he and Gigi only saw each other once a month.

Next time Gigi resolved to find a local man!

To read Helen’s Part V, see Helen’s Horrors of Dating – Part V