The Open Forum: Head of Insecurity

A common pastime among boyfriends, so I've heard, is comparing track records. You know what I mean. How many people you've scored with, how good looking they were, what messed the relationship up. Unknowingly, in the beginning of my relationship with my boyfriend, I think I went a little overboard when I talked about a beautiful ex of mine.

Recently my boyfriend fired back. He was in rare form one day and decided to share a few stories with me. Naturally I was curious, as anyone would be. The stories came with pictures. I was no longer curious. There were few before me, but where I beat him in quantity, he whooped me in quality.

Curiosity killed the cat when I asked to see one of his ex's MySpace profile. His display name included the word "panic," as if he had any reason to. He was beautiful, and had a chiseled body to boot. Of course I couldn't stop there. I asked to see another ex's profile, and to my absolute horror, this one had such a body, he had posed for magazines. Suddenly my track record, and self-esteem, looked like shit.

After that day, I'm not sure what happened to me. All I could think about was my beautiful baby boy making love to these hot strangers. I felt like Sex and the City's Stanford after he discovered Marcus had worked for an escort service; while I had been open and vulnerable with my history, a deep dark secret from my lover's past suddenly appeared and destroyed the idea I had of him. I was drowning in an ocean of insecurity.

It became clear that to deal with this new reality, I had three options: I could, A, go out, find a muscular god to go play with, and theoretically bring myself to his level, B, maliciously brag about the hotties from my past in attempts to make him feel as low as I did, or C, climb into my bathtub and slit my wrists. Since I love my man too much to hurt him, the latter seemed like the best choice, but tragically, my lease was almost up, and I wanted my security deposit back.

The next few days were hell. I fell so far into my own hole, I went to a club looking for attention. What I needed more than anything was a compliment from anyone. Anything to bring my self-esteem out of the sewer that I had dropped it in. Disappointingly, the club was empty that night, and the only attention I got was from a rather psychotic-looking individual who, despite my clear lack of interest, proceeded to stare, speak, and even sing at me. The universe was clearly not going to grant me the validation I so desperately needed. I was humiliated. What was I doing?

Insecurity is a bitch. When it gets this bad, there is no logical thought that can bring you back to reality. My boyfriend loves me. He'll never go back to his exes. They treated him terribly. Plus, even though I refused to believe it then, I reeled in some hotties in my time, too. Once upon a time, there was a man from Hartford. This man had the body of a god, and equipment to match. My back hurt for the next six days. How's that for a fractured fairytale?

Fortunately, I found that I wasn't alone when it came to insecurity. After whining to two of my friends about my sad situation, they both told me they had been in the same spot. Both of them dated people with exes disturbingly hotter than them. They both got over it. How, remained a mystery.

In addition, after the bomb had been dropped on me, I happened to see an episode of American Dad in which Stan becomes dangerously insecure after learning about Francine's wild sexual past. They both come up with a solution that would allow Stan to have meaningless sex with a stranger to feel valid standing up to Francine's conceptual notched bedpost.

The plan ends in disaster when Stan falls in love with the stranger with whom he was only supposed to sleep with, leaving Francine alone and heartbroken. If Seth MacFarlane's blatant message and indiscriminate social commentary didn't bring me to my senses, nothing would.

My three good friends were right. My lover has been so good to me in our relationship. He would never do anything to hurt me and has already sacrificed so much to be with me. It was clear that if my behavior continued on its path, I would sabotage everything.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had been incredibly selfish. All that time I talked about my beautiful ex early in our relationship, I was making my baby feel the same way: wretched and unworthy. I had pushed my boyfriend so far into the hellhole of insecurity, that he even told me, many times, that he was terrified I would run back to my ex and sleep with him when his back was turned. Even though it would never happen, his insecurity blinded him to that, just as mine did to me.

In my moment of clarity, it became obvious that insecurity was everywhere, in everyone. A friend, a married woman, has believed for the past year that a mutual friend of ours was after her man. This "mistress" as it were, has never made a move, and plans to marry her own man next month. As a result of the choices my married friend has made on how to handle this, she's damaged her relationships with most of her friends. This is not how I would like resolve any issue with the man I love.