Step #12867 of the evolution of a man.

I was a bad ex-boyfriend when I was younger. Lousy. Borderline psychotic. Really unpleasant. You know that scene in High Fidelity where our hero is standing in the rain calling his ex and trying to talk to her while she's having dinner with her new boyfriend? It was that sort of thing. I couldn't figure out why someone wouldn't want me, but my actions would do nothing else but insure that someone really really wouldn't want me. I was tortured by rejection and thought it seemed only fair that my rejecter deserved to feel at least a portion of the pain I was feeling. I wasn't a stalker or anything -- nothing that insane -- but I did definitely spiral down the hole of the dramatically over-traumatized artist. In retrospect I just hadn't developed the coping mechanisms in order to deal with a break-up but that still doesn't excuse the trauma endured by all parties involved.

The irony was that many of my exes were incredibly tolerant of my behavior and I think it was partially because of this that my breakups were so traumatic. On the one hand kudos to them for still feeling enough affection for me that they wanted to maintain some sort of relationship even if it wasn't a romantic one. On the other hand boo to them for putting up with my idiocy for as long as they did. The end result was usually -- and I think this was probably best for all parties involved -- that my exes loathed me for a time.

The ultimate irony is that after a certain period of time I became a really great ex-boyfriend. As time passed I would understand that a break-up wasn't grounded in any kind of malevolence but was instead actually a starting point for a different kind of growth. The end of a certain kind of relationship didn't have to mean the end all interaction with someone, it just meant a redefinition of the terms defining your interaction. I’m now friends with almost all my exes (and not in a High Fidelity "crisis of existence, what are they doing now" sort of way but instead in a warm and fuzzy "didn't we share something special at one point" sort of way) and I'm glad for that. There's only one ex that still won't speak to me but she moved far away after we broke up so I never really had a chance to make amends. Remember, I was a lousy ex.

Oddly enough I think the switch occurred when I moved away from Normal, Illinois and back to Chicago. Maybe that was the point that I was allowed to begin emotionally maturing after spending five years in a virtual vacuum where the only thing that grew was my intelligence and my ego. Over the last decade or so I've had a number of girlfriends and most of those break-ups were downright civil with no drama on either party's end. Photogal and I broke up twice in that time and the main problems we encountered were essentially based in the doubt that we should have broken up in the first place. That was certainly emotionally draining but it was nothing like the blind lashing out that characterized the ordeals suffered by my exes in my youth.

Come to think of it, time-wise, I've now spent more time being a good ex than a bad ex. I was only a real pain in the ass for a handful of years and I'm sure part of it had to do with the folly of youth and that sort of thing. I probably would have been a much better ex if I had been dumber and less capable of being as manipulative than i was but I guess we'll never know.

I'm not exactly sure what the point of this whole piece is though. It's early in the AM and for some reason this was the first thing that popped into my head so I'm going to guess it has something to do with the need to publicly confess to previous bad behavior and show some self-awareness and a bit of remorse. If I could go back with the knowledge I have now of course I would spare everyone involved the headaches that ensued but I can't help but wonder if the absence of those headaches would have prevented us all from becoming the cool cool cats that we are today.

Who knows? The only thing that's certain is that I'm no longer -- and never again shall be -- a bad ex-boyfriend. So you can all relax now.