The fear of being unlovable and the desire for love you feel you cannot give yourself leads to an unhealthy desperation for love from other people. It was the all-too-familiar discomfort of being shown a mirror and hating what you see inside of it, a sensation which we learn is also a key part of the broken ways in which Eric conducts his relationships. It was the discomfort of getting a taste of my own medicine, of experiencing for the first time the kind of shitty behavior that I myself had inflicted on other people when I was younger. Unfortunately you don’t get much of a choice as Eric continues to send you text messages and gifts, flirt with you when you tell him to stop, and takes advantages of situations where you can’t leave his physical proximity to confront you about why you don’t want a relationship with such an “obvious” catch.Įric is meant to make you uncomfortable as the player, and for me that discomfort hit in more ways than one. Eric’s Nazi-adjacent obsession with “purity” alongside his disturbing desire for control in his relationships immediately position him as someone that you the player will not want to spend your time with. His weapons don’t have minds of their own – they are obedient to his will and fully under his control. Eric dislikes weapon people because he doesn’t see them as “pure” like the weapons he crafts at his forge. He spends that date making it very clear why you should be uncomfortable in his proximity. For you as the player, he is your first date. There are a lot of terms for the way I was behaving at the time, but for the purposes of this article I’m going to describe my young self as an Eric, the antagonist of the indie dating sim and dungeon crawler Boyfriend Dungeon.Įric is a blacksmith, a craftsman of weapons in a town where a number of the people living there have the magical power to turn into weapons themselves. And I made it everybody’s problem, particularly the poor girl whose only crime was being polite enough to talk to the people sitting next to her in band class. A spoiled brat who got everything I ever wanted at home, when I went out into the real world and faced rejection for the first time I had no idea what to do with myself. Tone is hard to convey sometimes through text so allow me to be abundantly clear: I was a piece of shit during this time in my life. It didn’t take long for my frustration to be directed to other kids in the school, all of whom were idiots who were lucky if they ever got my time or attention. And if this girl was this way, then so was every other girl at the school, probably! Nice guys like me who didn’t respect boundaries couldn’t get dates at all while jackasses who did awful things like *checks notes* enjoy sports seemed to be getting girlfriends left and right. Frustrated and angry at her for putting me in this awful position that I so clearly did not deserve, my affection turned to disdain and I made sure to let her know that I didn’t appreciate this mistreatment at her hands.
Despite how clearly amazing I was, this girl could not see me as anything other than someone she could be friends with. It wouldn’t be long before I heard a term for the phenomenon I was experiencing: the Friend Zone. But for some reason none of those worked and she just got more and more annoyed by my advances. I made sure to whip out all the greatest lines: telling her she was cute and telling her she was pretty and telling her she was beautiful. I put on what we in the southern US call the “full court press,” an endless barrage of flirting at every conceivable opportunity. “If she doesn’t see why you’re so great then she’s not worth your time anyway.” But I wasn’t ready to let go, so I decided to show this girl why I was such a likeable guy. To say I handled my rejection poorly would be an understatement. There was no reason not to like me, right? So what was wrong with this girl that she wasn’t interested in ALL OF THIS? *gestures to a poorly dressed dork with braces who only talks about Star Wars* Everyone I trusted in my life told me that I was essentially the ultimate boyfriend material. So you can imagine my surprise when I told that young lady how I felt and her response was to – as nicely as she could manage – inform me that she didn’t really see me as boyfriend material. Luckily, I had the advice of my family to lean on, gems such as “you’re such a smart and handsome boy, you won’t have any trouble finding a girlfriend” and “you’re a sweetheart, any girl would be lucky to have you.” The whole thing seemed like a slam dunk, really.
I was smitten and I had no idea what to do with the sensations I was feeling. She met my incredibly high standards immediately. The subject of my affections was a girl who sat next to me in band class.
I experienced my first crush in middle school.
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