Labels or Love?

Even I, the infallible Riella, is incapable of learning from her past errors at times. By errors, I’m referring in specific to the men (or should I say boys) in my past. Never one to be in a relationship for long, after every breakup I inevitably swear off men forever. Until the next big mistake comes along. Like my Sex and the City counterpart, Carrie Bradshaw, it seems that my problem is that I choose the wrong men. They’re either emotionally immature, unavailable, or “toxic bachelors” (to throw out another Sex and the City catchphrase).

It’s been over a month since my last big break up, and since the official mourning period is over, and most of my rage/depression over the issue has subsided, I feel that it is time to comb the wreckage of this failed relationship for the gold that makes so memorable. And to exorcise the demon, once and for all hopefully.

The latest mistake was really no different when it came down to it. He was still broken from his last two failed relationships (even though assurances were made that he was clean), and throwing himself into another relationship without thinking probably wasn’t his best move. In every relationship there is going to be baggage from the past, since everyone is an ex-something (with some exceptions of course), and as we grow up the baggage only gets more difficult to deal with as our relationships progressively get more intense. So, we’ll allow him an extra suitcase of issues, since obviously I was taking my own issues along for the ride. We all know that my trust issues didn’t just appear one day along with my morning coffee. They were developed due to a lifetime of betrayals by people who I should have been able to trust. But that’s a story for another day.

The main cause of our breakup was because we were in different places in our lives; I was going somewhere and had my future planned out, while he was flailing and not really thinking about anything past tomorrow. There are some things I am willing to compromise for a relationship, but my future is definitely not one of them. Especially since I’ve had my plans in place since grade 6, and have been on a relatively clear path since the beginning. I don’t plan every detail of my life ahead of time – I don’t even know which grad school I’ll be attending in the fall, just that I will be attending – but having at least a loose plan, and having some of the larger details organized is how I deal with the randomness of the rest of my everyday life.

Apparently we also wanted different things from the relationship. I wanted a long term relationship, which is also what I thought he wanted. The few conversations we had about our future seemed to be copacetic, but maybe he was just agreeing with me to keep me happy, and I was the one doing all the talking. This doesn’t seem like a very healthy thing to do, and for that reason I am always upfront with what I expect of my boyfriends, but apprently he had to be forced into talking about what he wanted, and I didn’t try hard enough to get into his head.

As our relationship progressed it became more and more clear that we live very different lifestyles. His idea of a good time is to sit around the house and play video games (which I admit can be fun at times), but I need more than that. I love staying home for days on end, but that’s generally something I do by myself. When I’m with other people I don’t want to sit around talking all the time; I want to go out and do stuff! Whether it’s going to the movies, out for dinner, or just for random adventures, I want to be out being active. At least his constant need to sit around and play video games by himself while we were hanging out gave me time to catch up on my reading. And it was pretty cute that one time he fell asleep curled up on my lap while I was finishing a level of Lego Star Wars.

What really kills me about our breakup is that in breaking up with me is that I lost my trust in him, and because of that I started questioning his feelings for me during our relationship. By no means was I in love with him, but that’s where our relationship seemed to be headed, and I was totally willing to go there with him. Because of the strength of my belief in us, I was willing to try to make our relationship work regardless of what happens down the road with my potential move to grad school. Yet, when the idea of grad school became a reality (when I got accepted to Dalhousie) he bailed because he couldn’t deal with me moving away. This action makes me think that his feelings werenn’t as strong as mine because he wasn’t even willing to try to make us work; he just wanted out before he got hurt. After we broke up, everyone said that I was being paranoid, and that he was crazy about me, and he only broke up with me so that we wouldn’t both be hurt in the future. I can’t quite believe that, since him breaking up with me out of the blue hurt me more than us breaking up because of long distance ever could, since that’s not a sudden random break, it’s a cooling off and drifting apart. If he really was as into me as everyone claims he was, then he would have tried to make it work instead of giving up.

Apparently he still wants to be a part of my life, yet he’s made absolutely no attempt to actually do this (no, talking to our mutual friends does not count, that just makes me annoyed). He made his choice when he broke up with me, and he’s going to have to learn to live with the fact that I don’t forgive people who betray me the way he did without a pretty damned big gesture.   

For the time being, I think I’ll take Fergie’s advice, and go “shop for labels instead of look for love,” since it really is true that “a Prada dress has never broke[n] my heart before” (though the Prada spring collection was rather disappointing…).

Post Script: It seems that with writing this post and getting all my lingering thoughts down on paper I have finally have exorcized the problem. If any of you were surprised at only detecting a scattering of bitterness through out the post, you are not mistaken. I toned down my words, and kept the extreme themes safely confined to the first draft (you're privy to the third edition), so as not to cause anymore drama with my friends. Yes, I do know you're all sick of hearing about it, so hopefully this shall be the last of it. Having written it all down and made an official public statement not fueled by my overwrought emotions, I feel like I'm in a much better place about the whole situation, and I'm almost back to who I was before all this drama came about: someone who was single and fabulous! For all of you who put up with the month and a half of rants, anger, depression, and many many many mood swings: the storm has passed, and Spring has arrived :)