The Butterfly Effect

Have you ever dated a loser? Someone who looked a bit like this? Sorry, that’s unkind. Let me re-phrase the question. Have you ever dated someone who is…..not quite living their life to its full potential? A bong-head, say? Someone who is immature and irresponsible? Lost and directionless?

Wilfully negligent about their health or personal hygiene? Someone in desperate need of therapy? Someone living with their parents past 25? Someone with a mullet?

Perhaps you need some thinking music while you cast your mind back through your romantic archives. While it’s playing, I’ll go first and admit to having dated one or * cough * three such individuals in past lives.

Here’s the thing: you know how all the self-help books and the relationship gurus preach that ‘people never change and what you see is what you get and trying to change someone you love is futile etc etc’ ?

Well, they lied. There IS one guaranteed way to make someone change. To force somebody to morph into the best possible version of themself. And it’s this: Break up with them. Not just briefly or as a warning. Forever. Dump them and move on with your life and they will transform in your wake. They will become fabulous and successful and you will gnash your teeth and become bitter. It’s called the Butterfly Effect according to an article I read in The Observer and if you’ve ever dated a caterpillar, you may have experienced it.

What is the opposite of schadefreude, that feeling of satisfaction that can be derived from someone else’s misfortune? Is it freudenschade? Is that how you describe the resentment you can feel about someone else’s success? Oh wait, I think that’s called Being A Bitter Cow.

I once dated a guy who was a human bucket of problems. Drank too much, collected bongs, almost unemployed, lived with his Dad. A total catch. In my defence, he was very good looking and I was going through a brief and shallow bad-boy phase. When I finally woke up and realised I’d had a gut full of bong stains on my coffee table and holes in my wallet, I walked away, relieved. Of course, this was his cue to turn his life around, move overseas, discover his true calling as an art director, land a prestigious and well-paying job and hook up with a 22-year-old swimsuit model.

That would be the Butterfly Affect and years later, I was not remotely bitter when I read about their glossy Malibu life in a magazine. I felt not at all resentful about the time, money and emotional energy I wasted on him when he was a caterpillar. Oh no, not me. I wish him and his swimsuit wife all the very best.

I have many friends who feel my pain, having wasted months and years on caterpillars of their own. Like Jody (fake name, true story) who lived with a bookkeeping student in her mid twenties, a period she refers to as “The Forgotten Years” because they were so boring. “He was a sweet guy but just so dull,” she remembers, frowning. “I couldn’t interest him in travelling anywhere or meeting new people or even trying different food. He was totally dependant on his mother who still did all his washing and rang every morning to wake him up. He’d always answer the phone, even if we were having sex.”

Naturally, after Jody fell in love with someone else and ended the relationship, he got his act together. “He made a career change to movie producing, something he’d always dreamed of doing but never had the guts to pursue even though I encouraged him endlessly. Now he works with some of the world’s most famous actors and directors and lives this incredible life. He’s happy and successful and lovely and I hate him.”

I know another woman who divorced her husband a few years ago only to watch him become the man she always wanted him to be, inside and out, and marry someone else. “Why couldn’t he have been like that with me?” she often wonders. “How come she gets to benefit from all the years I begged him to go to therapy to sort out his issues? How come she gets the bloody butterfly and I got the guy who wore a farting Mambo dog t-shirt with Reefer sandals and used alcohol to block his emotions?”

Then there are the relationships where one person waits patiently for the other to be ready to do something big. Move in together. Get married. Have a baby. Buy a dog. Be monogamous.

Endless angst and arguments fail to resolve the impasse and the relationship ends. Then the one who wasn’t ready meets somebody new and suddenly? They’re ready. That happened to my friend Nathan. “For the five years we were married, Sandy said she didn’t want kids. In the end, it’s what broke us up because I really wanted to start a family. Before we’d even finalised the divorce settlement, she was pregnant to a guy she’d met at work. I was gutted.” Sometimes, butterflies are a bitch.

Have you dated a caterpiller? Perhaps you WERE a caterpillar? (no, I didn’t think so)

Did you do all the hard work only to watch someone else reap the benefits? Are you bitter? Because I’M NOT BITTER.

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