Rob wrote a girl a fugue for Valentine’s Day. This is a girl who is a good friend of his, a girl who is dating someone else right now. I was uncertain how much I should Explain Things, and how much I should let teenaged life take its course. I went with completely the latter. I remember grown-ups explaining dating/romance/social stuff when I was a teenager, and how silly they sounded—and, frankly, how silly they STILL sound to me now that I’M a grown-up.
Anyway, I caught myself thinking, “He wrote her a FUGUE? How can she resist that?” Then I realized I was absolutely feeding into that mentality I HATE AND FEAR about how someone can be awesome enough to deserve someone else’s love (or friendship, if that’s what’s being sought). Like, if someone is REALLY NICE and REALLY GREAT and does REALLY NICE THINGS for you, you OWE them your romantic love (or, again, friendship, but I’m going to drop that part of the theme here and concentrate only on the romance one). I totally see how that point of view gets started (“But the guy she’s dating isn’t as great as Rob! Look how great he is!”) AND simultaneously totally see it as ridiculous and potentially very dangerous.
When I was in high school, a boy drew a portrait of me (using my yearbook photo as the model), and gave it to me all wrapped up. He’d worked on it for AGES. It was a very romantic and special thing to do. But I didn’t have any romantic feelings for him, so his offering, his gift, his effort—they didn’t elicit the reaction in me that they would have elicited if I’d had a crush on him. Looking back on it now that I’m the mother in that set-up, I can see how someone from the outside (the boy’s parents, or the boy’s friends, or someone who had a crush on the boy) would think “He drew her PORTRAIT? How can she resist that? The guy she’s dating isn’t as great as this guy! Look how great this guy is!”—and potentially going from there to “She must be cold, she must be heartless, she must be awful, she must be…” etc. But that doesn’t WORK. That’s not how ROMANCE works. That portrait could have turned my heart if the potential feelings were already there, but it couldn’t MANUFACTURE those feelings.
That same boy once argued with me at length on the phone, because I was interested in his best friend but not in him. He considered himself and his friend to be enough alike that if I wanted to go on a date with one of them (I’d said yes to his friend), I should want to go on a date with the other of them (I’d said no to him). He thought this only made logical sense. (This argument would now set off HUGE red lights for me. At age 16ish I found it only exasperating and also somewhat flattering.) I think this is one of those situations where VAST BENEFITS can be achieved by flipping the situation around to make sure it still works: if he thought it only made sense that I should like his friend AND him, he should have thought to himself, “And does that work for me? Do I have a crush on HER similar-to-her friend? And would it work for someone to argue with me that I OUGHT to have a crush on someone I DON’T have a crush on? Do I think she is going to say, ‘Oh! You’re right! I guess I DO have feelings for you, then’?”
So. I have shifted from thinking things like “I would have LOVED a boy to write me a song in high school!” to thinking things like “I would have LOVED a boy I LIKE-liked to write me a song in high school!” Because actually I would not have loved it from a boy I DIDN’T feel romantic about. I want to make sure that that’s the mindset I’m passing on to Rob, too, in case his gift is not received as he may hope.
I feel like a dummy but what is a fugue?
A fugue is a piece of music in which tunes are repeated in complex patterns.
I will add a link to the post! And also here! Wikipedia: Fugue. I have known what a fugue was for THREE WHOLE MONTHS, because Rob explained it to me and made me listen to a bunch of them. To me, a fugue is “classical music.” Apparently what makes it different from other classical music is that it takes one short little segment of melody and repeats it overlappingly with different instruments. Sometimes a fugue gets fancy and repeats that little segment backwards or even, I am not kidding, UPSIDE DOWN. Like, if you turned the sheet music upside down and then played it that way.
Boy, I hope I have that right. I am…not as into classical music as Rob.
Thanks! I googled it but I kept finding the psychiatric kind.
God, do you know how helpful this is? Helps me keep my mind right especially since I had zero teenage dating experience due to religious restrictions.
He seems like such a talented and thoughtful kid! A fugue. I love it.
Oh wow – I can completely see both sides of this, and I think you are absolutely right to be both charmed and cautious. I also got amazing, over-the-top (and insistent) gifts from a boy I thought was perfectly nice but who I did not like when I was in high school, and I remember that when it descended into said boy saying suicidal things premised on my rejection of his love (“your refusal makes me want to kill myself”), his mother was inclined to blame me.
Sometimes it is SO NICE to have high school be many many years ago.
On the other hand, a boy I did maybe like once carved me a rose, and we did eventually date (though it didn’t last forever) and I still have the rose. So sweet! So charming!
It is really funny/odd that a thoughtful gesture from someone you like feels flattering (oh, wow, he thought of me!) and a thoughtful gesture from someone you don’t like feels creepy (oh my, how much time did he spend thinking about me?).
This is an EXCELLENT point to bring up. I feel like girls are expected to welcome the attention of any guy. There’s so much nonsense around the internet about this or that poor guy getting friend-zoned. Well, dude, she’s just not that into you.
(Good luck to Rob, though!)
YES YES YES. I can relate to your stories! This happened to me in college, freshman year. It was a sweet, fun gesture but it absolutely could not “manufacture” feelings in me. At all. The poor kid.
I hope it goes well for sweet Rob.
I could have greatly benefited from reading this post about fifteen years ago. You are SO BRILLIANT sometimes about human nature stuff! I’ll read it and think, “That’s so simple! It’s so obvious! How has no one (including ME) ever said this to me before?!”
I had a guy drop out of college because I didn’t return his affections. It was scarring (for me). Also complete nonsense, once I was a few years old and a few years removed enough from the situation to see how insane it is for an 18 year old to blame me for something like that, but still. Not cool.
I think it’s wonderful both to let teenage life take its course (there are some lessons you can only learn by experiencing them, painfully, for yourself!) while also gently teaching him that attention =/= owed reciprocity.
Hoo, boy, yeah. I have been on both sides of this. Unintentional-creeper and unintentionally-creeped. I contain multitudes! Anyway, being a teenager/human is intensely difficult.
Ah, me too! I believe I did portraits of a few different people in HS. Cringe. Cringe.
…
But then, I think, hey, I expressed my feelings, albeit awkwardly! What of it!
YES! I think there’s a HUGE gap between expressing feelings with gifts, which is fine and good and normal, and thinking of those gifts as purchasing reciprocal feelings, which is where things get dicey and wrong.
Oh yes, I DEFINITELY did not mean that Rob is being creepy in this case. I want a boy I like to write me a fugue! But I empathize so much with both side of non-reciprocal feelings.
Oh, gosh. This sounds really (potentially) difficult. I hope Rob’s friend is gracious and that he is able to understand/accept her response, whatever it may be. Of course having you in the background can only help. What you write is so true. When I went off to college (I had not dated much in high school, though — a bit) I somehow felt that if I could not explain to a boy why I DIDN’T want to go out with him (beyond, “I’m just not that in to you,”) then I had to say yes. Now, this did not get me into LOTS of trouble and I did, among other things, have a decent sense of my own worth and could perfectly clearly articulate that a boy who did not respect my physical space or the word “no” was someone I didn’t want to go out with for entirely GOOD reasons (which I mention only because one hears so many examples of cases where those things are not true), but all the same, I wasted plenty of time with a young man I was not, in fact, interested in.
I’m long since married now, and may never need to know this again (for my own self, obviously still useful to know for e.g. raising my son) but knowing that, “I just don’t want to” is the only reason I need to decline an invitation (romantic or otherwise) is a wonderful thing.
Awesome post! And I only knew what a fugue was from re-watching Feliticy (only the first season) a million times.
I remember how much I HATED getting gifts from boys that I didn’t like romantically. There was no gift that would ever make me like someone more, and I hated that feeling that someone liked me more than I liked them. It made me feel so uncomfortable. Cue me literally jumping out of a running car after my freshman homecoming dance, just because I didn’t want my date to walk me to the door. I should never have accepted in the first place, but was pressured by my older sister, who thought I should go. I felt awful. Now I look back, he was absolutely adorable, funny, smart-but at 15 I guess I wanted that magical feeling you get from certain guys. Funny- I do still feel bad about this…he lived miles and miles away, and would ride his bike to my house, never knocking, but going up and down the street with his friends. I was a hard hearted jerk!
The fact he went on to be an Air Force pilot, and probably had girls falling at his feet-shows my lack of good taste at a young age :)
Happily I ended up married to a very nice man, that also gives me tingles…in fact we are celebrating our 21st anniversary next week!
Please never stop writing these types of posts. I am so grateful that people go before me and share so that I can be somewhat more prepared when I get there.
A decent number of his posts are not appropriate for teenagers but if you google Dr. Nerd love he does a lot of posts on this subject. If you want to see it really well articulated you may want to read some his articles on the ‘nice guy’ and ‘friend zone.’
In college a boy I didn’t like LIKE THAT gave me an amazing, intricate bouquet of the most beautiful origami flowers for Christmas. It was stunning. And I felt guilty for ages because I just didn’t feel anything romantic towards him. He ended up dating a close friend of mine for years and then turned out to be kind of a hot mess, so I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t let my guilt push me into dating him myself.
I hope Rob one day write fugues for a great girl who finds it heart-clinchingly romantic.
I have a lot of retrospective empathy towards teenage boys now, but whew, nothing makes a boy-girl friendship more awkward than gifts that vastly outweigh the situation. All things said, that is incredibly classy and romantic of Rob, and part of me is rooting for his success on this (a fugue? be still my heart!) However, if I put myself in the girl’s shoes (shoes I found myself in a few times as a teenager) I think it has the potential to make an easy friendship quite awkward. I sincerely hope she’ll be touched and not creeped out!
I’ll never forget the worst situation I found myself in (actually as a young adult, which makes it less forgivable) when I was in a committed, long-distance relationship with my now husband, and a man I worked with thought that a “distant” love interest, meant an absent one, and that “friendly girl” meant secretly attracted to him. He recorded a cover of a mushy coldplay song for me, which was absolutely not welcome under the circumstances. I’ve vowed to tell this story to any sons I have as a cautionary tale: DON’T. Especially if you’re over eighteen, just DON’T.
I commend you for letting Rob’s gift take it’s own course. That sounds hard to do. I remember in high school they would do those classroom delivered roses on Valentine’s Day and a boy I didn’t like sent me a red one. I was cringing a little inside until I saw that three of my friends had one from him too! I guess to him we were interchangeable!
Fugue writing is not typical for high school students. If he did it correctly, it is really complex stuff. You should send his music teacher a note and maybe chocolates. That is awesome.
I will be anxiously awaiting any updates that you care to write about this.
In my late 20s a boy I had dated for awhile in high school and remained good friends with took the opportunity of my being between relationships to declare his eternal love for me. He said that he felt we were destined to be in each other’s arms in our 80s, and that he’d always regret it if he didn’t say so, then declared that when he left my apartment we’d either be together, or he’d never speak of it again.
My response was that if we were a movie we’d be together, but it was all or nothing right at that moment then it would have to be nothing. And he never has mentioned it again and my husband and I truly enjoy socializing with him and his wife these days, and I know it’s mutual.
The irony is, if he had just asked me on a date to feel things out about giving it another try, I would have said yes.
*if* it was all or nothing
AHHH this is bringing up so many high school memories. A guy wrote me a symphony (An Amaranth for Adar – I still remember it!) on valentine’s day one year. Apparently it was good, it won awards and stuff later on. I couldn’t read music and he couldn’t play a symphony by himself so I never heard it. Anyway, I was so not into him but I did end up dating him later on (because I felt like I SHOULD like people who repeatedly do really nice and thoughtful things for me, regardless of my level of attraction). We dated for 5 months which is basically forever in high school years, but it was such a disaster. I wish I had the kind of mom I could talk to about these things back then, and that she put the amount of thought into everything that you do. High school would have been a lot less messy! I saw the update / Press Release on this but good luck to Rob anyway! (Also – who knew that writing actual music (not something your garage band composed, Jordan Catalano style) was such a popular high school gift?)