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Robert Stivers

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A man walks through a mustard field during a rainy day on the outskirts of Srinagar on March 17, 2016. (Mukhtar Khan/AP)

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A list of the guys I have loved in my life.

-Victor

Blonde, blue almond-shaped eyes. I met him at boarding school in France and I think of him as the first guy I ever fell in love with. I lost my virginity to him one night in March when we were both drunk and I was 17. I used to watch him play guitar every evening when he rehearsed with his band. I was head over heels for him and when the school year ended and he went off to college and I went back home, it felt like the hardest thing I ever did. I haven’t spoken to him since.

-Matías

Matías is an Argentinian beauty. Dark, long hair and bright blue eyes. I remember the first time I ever saw him: it was my first summer in Costa Rica, I had gone out partying with some Italian friends from my hostel and he was working as a bar tender serving drinks in a bar called Lazy Mon. I remember looking at him and thinking he was so gorgeous, I fell for him right away. For the next two weeks I would come into the bar, alone during the day, or drunk with friends every night and I would try to strike up a conversation with him but I always got too nervous. Until one day the bar closed at 3 am and I ended up with him and a bunch of other people at an after party in another bar. On our way back it started pouring rain and I had no way to get back to my hostel until the rain stopped; so he offered me to go upstairs to the hostel where we he used to be the manager and wait there until I could go back. That night he told me about how he had been traveling from Argentina throughout all South and Central America until he ran out of money in Costa Rica and had been living there for the past 6 months, working at the hostel and bar, until he saved up enough money to continue his travels and he could get to Mexico, his final destination. We talked the whole night and when the rain stopped, the next morning, I went back to my hostel. The next week I saw him at another bar and we hit it off right away; we talked and danced and at the end of the night we went back to his hostel where he had a private room and we slept together. For the rest of the summer we kept seeing each other and sleeping together, we talked about traveling and getting to know new places and new people. We talked about how it was more important to live and experience life and enjoy it while we were still young instead of focusing on having a steady job and a secure future. The last day I saw him I almost lost my plane back home because we overslept; he tried to convince me to stay and lose my plane, but I had to get back home and go back to college. Saying goodbye to him was so hard, I knew I probably would never see him again. The whole trip back home I spent it crying and remembering everything I lived in Costa Rica that summer. A couple of weeks later, I saw he finally saved enough money to go to Mexico where he spent 6 months working at another hostel and 6 months traveling around the country in a school bus adequated to live on the road. We talked after that, when he was going back home to Argentina. Now he’s traveling around California with an Australian girl he met while in Mexico and he looks real happy.

-Chase

This one is the hardest to write about. I met Chase during my second summer in Costa Rica. He’s from Oklahoma but he lives in Colorado. He studied political science and then went on to study biology and animal behavior to become a primatologist. He was volunteering at the same wildlife rescue center as me in CR. I met him the second day I got there and it was love at first sight.That night I met him we spent the entire evening talking about animals and books and traveling, until the next morning. Not long after we were sleeping together every night, we biked together to work every morning and we came back home and spent the entire day cuddling in bed, reading, talking and making love. This went on for about 2 months until he went back home to Colorado and I stayed for another 2 weeks in CR and then came back home. We used to talk every single day, but as the days and weeks and months went by, we started talking less and less, until we barely talked at all. We never made plans to visit each other or anything like that so I started questioning where we really stood. One day we finally talked things over and decided to end it; I told him: no matter where we are, what we do or who we end up with, you will always be my person in this world, and if we ever meet again I hope things will work out between us. I really thought Chase was my soulmate, my other half. Each of us went our separate ways, dating other people, doing different things, but we still talked every once in a while to know about each other. I knew he was going back to CR the next summer and all of a sudden I had a change of plans so I decided to go as well and didn’t tell him anything because I wanted to surprise him. That was this past summer. When I got back to CR he had already been there for 3 weeks. I was so excited to see him again and then I found out he was with another girl he had just met there. It broke my heart but not the way I expected it would; it was sad but more than sadness I felt so much anger towards him. So I stopped talking to him and ignored him the entire summer. It was so hard because I saw him every single day, but all I wanted was to erase him from my life, I was so mad. So the entire summer went by, and I never spoke to him again, even when all our friends talked to him and told him he had to talk things over with me. But he never did, so I never spoke to him again and when I came back home I deleted him from Facebook and Skype and any possible thing that still connected me to him. We live in different places so I never have to see him again and now I know I won’t ever speak to him again.

-Germán

Germán was introduced to me by my father this past Christmas. His dad and mine are really good friends and have been for a huge time. They go horse-back riding together nearly every weekend and Germán and his dad have a ranch with about 80 horses. I asked my dad to teach me how to ride horses properly since I’m in vet school and love equine medicine; so he introduced me to Germán, who is also my age, with the excuse that he was going to teach me how to ride. Germán is this handsome, well dressed, rich guy, with dark hair and dark eyes. Nothing to do with any of the guys I’ve ever dated. The first day we met he picked me up, took me out for lunch, then took me horse-back riding and then showed me around in this really cool Jeep he has; then he took me out for dinner and that was our first date. Of course I never took another horse-back riding lesson with him again, but I dated him for 3 months. On our second date we went on a weekend trip just the two of us on a camp in the mountains; he picked me up on this other really cool Jeep he has. My father, of course, was over the moon with the idea of the two of us dating; since he is rich, he comes from a really good family, and our parents are really good friends. That weekend we slept on the same room; the same bed, but it was only our second date so of course I didn’t want to have sex with him, but he didn’t take it well and he started yelling at me and throwing a fit. So we got mad at each other and ended up sleeping in different beds.The next morning he was so pissed at me, he said all he wanted was to get out of there and for the weekend to end. But after we argued and talked more about it, it was like all of a sudden he was fine and he started acting all sweet and nice towards me, he even invited me to have lunch with his family after our trip was over. Our whole relationship was always like that; we were so different, in so many ways; all he wanted was to finish college and work to live a luxurious life and have a lot of money; he couldn’t understand how I wanted to dedicate my life to working with wild animals and living in the jungle or the forest among animals and traveling the world; I changed so much for him, tried to be more lady like, less volatile, suppressing my opinions when something bothered me because I knew he wouldn’t agree with me and we would end up fighting; so anyway we were fighting all the time and then making up; we would always sleep together but always end up arguing and fighting because I could never be intimate with him; I felt like he didn’t understand me on an emotional level so I always had trouble with him when we were intimate and it always pissed him off, because all he wanted was to sleep with me, he was never patient. Except for a couple of times when I was really drunk and horny and would be all over him but it never came to more than that. So we finally ended our relationship because it was so toxic for both of us, but it was him who ended it and it was the first time in my life a guy ever broke up with me so it was a really hard break up for me. I could never get over him, and I still can’t. I will take snapchats all the time just for him to see them, and then I will run into him at a party or a friend’s house and he will bring up the subject so I know it’s working and I keep on doing it. And whenever I’m drunk I hook up with him and then tell him I want to get back together with him and he will tell me: no, no we can’t be together, you know that; we’re so bad for each other.

-Juan Carlos

This is the last guy I had something with. I think of him with so much nostalgia and sadness, but love too. After I ended my relationship with Germán, I was so hurt and so depressed and then I met Juan Carlos and it was kind of weird at first because when we started talking I never felt like there was something there romantically, I thought we would be just friends. But then we started talking every single day and he asked me out and I thought well, why the hell not. So we started dating but it also felt kind of weird because I didn’t know if we were actually dating or not, because, compared to all the other guys I’ve dated, and especially Germán, he never made a move on me, ever. We only talked and watched movies and listened to music and understood each other on such a great level that I started panicking that we would end up being best friends just when I actually started liking him. So it went on like this for a month and then one time we went on a weekend trip to a music festival and we were in the middle of a concert and all of a sudden he hugged me and I hugged him back and he held my hand and we stayed like that for a really long time. And then, at night, he asked me if he could hold me for a while until I fell asleep. And he did, and then after some time, he stood up and went to sleep in a different bed. The next day we went back home and sat together on the bus holding hands and listening to Devendra Banhart until we fell asleep. When we got back home I went to my house to take a shower and eat lunch and then at night I went over to his house and we watched a movie and afterwards we lay in bed and a song from The Arctic Monkeys was playing and he was holding me and he started getting closer and closer to my face and he put his lips on my forehead and then on my cheek until this moment I had been waiting for so long finally came, when we he put his lips on mine and kissed me. And I swear it was the most magical moment I ever had with someone and I realized how all these other guys would always try to kiss me on the second or third date or even the same night we met, and with him it was never like that, never like that; he got to know me for a month and got to understand me so well until he finally kissed me. And I realized how the best kisses are the ones that are shared a million times between the eyes before they finally reach the lips. So we started dating officially and we got along so great, we shared so many things, we would spend every single day together, it was so, so good. But he would always ask me to come over to his place and I was always too shy to ask him to come to my house or meet my parents, whereas I was always having dinner with his parents. And I compared him a lot to Germán because even though they don’t have the same resources, I felt like he wasn’t doing enough for me, or investing in me as much as I was investing in him. One night when I was drunk I ran into Germán and hooked up with him and didn’t think about Juan Carlos, not even for one second; but I never told him of course. Months after that, he started acting weird, somewhat detached, so one day we talked about it and he told me, with tears in his eyes, he had gotten really drunk the past weekend and he woke up with another girl in his bed, he was almost sure nothing had happened with her, but evidently something had had to happen given she woke up in his bed, he was so ashamed. I was pissed and hurt but I wasn’t really because I had done just the same thing with another guy, but I never had the guts to tell him. After that everything was kind of strange, and then I told him I was about to leave to Costa Rica for the summer (secretly expecting to see Chase again) so I felt bad because I was still hooking up with Germán and expecting to see Chase in CR, so I knew even though I cared for Juan Carlos, deep down I didn’t love him as I thought I did and he didn’t deserve what I was doing to him. But just before I left, we talked and he decided to break things up with me; everything was weird, he said, and he felt like he couldn’t committ to me like I deserved. So we broke it off and it hurt like hell. It hurt me so much. So that when I went to CR and found out about Chase seeing this other girl it didn’t really hurt because what was really hurting me was this thing that happened with Juan Carlos. And after I got back I saw him again and he asked me to still be friends and continue seeing each other and going out because we had such a great connection and I tried to do it, until I realized I couldn’t because even if I did terrible things, he also did terrible things to me. He never put as much effort into the relationship as I did, back when we were dating I asked him to come home to meet my parents and he said he would and ended up making an excuse for it, stuff like that. So I thought: God I spent such a great time with you and you’ve been the nicest, most honest, most respectful guy I’ve ever dated, and I tried to love you properly, I knew you were hurt and I tried to love you right but I know I failed and I think we both hurt each other but we also made each other better for someone else. And now I haven’t talked to him for two weeks and the last time I saw him at school I felt awkward because he had written to me and I never answered, so I wanted to say hi but I also didn’t want to, and I ended up walking past him and going straight to my classroom and that is that and I think it’s all over now. And it’s probably for the best.

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How do you move on? You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back.

J.R.R. Tolkien (via wordsnquotes)

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Everything feels weird lately. 

I went through this strange phase of my life some months ago where I dated one guy after the other. Not because I’m like that, it just happened that just when I ended a relationship this next person came into my life and I established some sort of relationship with them. Although I never quite ended my past relationships with other people. I was still hung up on some other guy while I was getting to know someone new. Anyway, this summer was when all of my 3 relationships with these people ended all of a sudden. It hurt at the moment but I think when you end something with someone it never quite hits you until much, much later. Months, or even years later, like it happens when you stop seeing a friend and then a couple of years afterward you look back on everything you lived together and you realize how much you miss them.

I don’t know, I don’t meet a lot of people who I feel really connected and close to. Except for these two people in my life who have just stopped being part of it. I cut them out of my life all of a sudden because I realized just how much they both hurt me, in different ways. These were people who I expected to be close to for the rest of my life, even if our relationship couldn’t last, I always thought we had this amazing connection that we could still be really good friends afterwards. And even when both of these relationships failed and I tried to still be friends with them, I realized how much they had hurt me and I just chose to overlook it because I cared for them and I loved them so much. They were so important to me that even if they were hurting me I couldn’t stand to not have them in my life. Until I realized how I couldn’t keep going on like this because I felt like I was dragging baggage from my past into any possible new relationship I could have with anyone else, and how I would never give myself completely and trust anyone else if I still held onto these people. And I realized how, even if I cared for them so much and shared with them so many memories and experiences, they were hurting me from the start and I knew it but I was choosing not to see it. So it took a lot of courage, and a lot of self love, to cut them out of my life one day. And it was ok at the start but now is when it all starts hitting me. And I realize how much I miss them. And how it is so sad that these people who I used to talk to every single day (each of them in a different moment in my life) have all of a sudden disappeared from my life and how I will never talk to them again, probably never.

I know I miss them even if I don’t want to admit it, because it took for me a lot of nerve and courage to cut them out from my life when I care so deeply about them. But I want to learn to love myself properly, and for me it starts with cutting people out from my life when they don’t love me and care for me as I deserve. And when they don’t give in as much to the relationship as I do. I deserve to be loved and respected properly and to be with someone who invests in me as much as I invest in them. And it took me a long time to realize it because I am so afraid to be alone that I was willing to sacrifice myself just to be with someone else. And even though they loved me alright, and cared for me, it wasn’t enough; it wasn’t what I deserved. 

And it took a lot of courage to realize I need to love myself like I’m not waiting for someone else to do it.

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I like to think people who really love you act accordingly

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Got my heart broken yesterday but today I'm feeling fine 😌

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I think about this tweet every day I can’t wait to get there someday, if I ever do, but I can hope and maybe that’s enough fuel!