So there I was, fearlessly waiting for a call that never came.
I took all the pressure off, I made sure he knew I wanted to talk without needing to get back together, but to be two people who care and respect each other. I wanted clarity. I wanted to understand.
I soon realized that, as so many times before, there would be no rational explanation provided by the other party, I would have to sort out the chaos running through my wired emotions myself.
It’s always a curious process, when you have to create a narrative about why someone else made a certain decision or acted a certain way or has completely disappeared into thin air. It’s out of curiosity By definition you know that explanation cannot be true, but you must find a way to believe it in order to survive.
I decided to focus instead on the knowledge that I didn’t really like this guy, not as a person, not as a partner, not in conversation, not as a person, not physically… Fundamentally, I only liked this big kid because he created a vision of the future together and the consistency and frequency of interaction.
I liked the picture he was drawing, but I liked him less and less every time we talked.
It was time to move on.
But in the loneliness of the night I couldn’t help it. I checked her social.
There he is a new girlfriend to the tune of ‘I can see clearly now the rain is gone’.
Blondes, like me, look more snobby and money driven, more like her.
It hit me like a knife.
The first thought was why he would like someone else a month apart, but my mind logically connected the dots to several details that I decided to skim:
- When we started dating, he told me he broke up in August, yet he put a picture with his ex’s heart on his Facebook stories in November that he thought I hadn’t seen. This was a pattern.
- A friend of his told me on the phone early on to be very careful with him, not to trust him.
He told me he loved me once he met me.
And so much more.
I was merely a stand-in suitable ex-girlfriend. I fit the mold. Tall, beautiful, polished, smart, kind and loving, feminine. He must have overlooked that I also have a brain and personality when we initially met. Ops
I knew that this man was a self-righteous, lying, superficial, narcissistic and quite unintelligent man.
However, it’s not on him, it’s on me. It’s time to take some responsibility for my own suffering: I should have finished it on day one.
i knew
When life tests you (to see if you’re really a fool)
Why do we keep facing the same situation again and again?
There always comes a moment, usually after a failed relationship, or after several failed relationships, when life looks you straight in the eye and says:
You think you’ve learned your lesson, b!tch please, let’s see how you handle level 2.0.
Here I was, telling a close friend of mine that I couldn’t imagine myself liking another man of the male species after all the sad endings of the past years, when the hottest guy added me on Instagram.
R (my latest ex), but 2.0 — taller, better looking, better photos, but same exact type. Elegant, showy, magnetic, narcissistic.
There is no way! I thought I learned my lesson!
In all fairness I looked at this guy in judgment and chose the ‘no’ sign, knowing full well that he was bad news.
But you never really know how bad the news is unless you really dig a little deeper.
In fact, life does not present you with the same challenge that you have obviously lost, it raises the level: now you have experience, let’s see if you can beat the next level.
Here she was, in my DMs, and no ‘nude’ bikini photo on my profile, it had a rather ‘friends and family PG13’ feel, no one added me out of the blue so I started thinking- how bad could it be to add her again?
At one point I sat there laughing and Googled my name (yes, our generation still Googles sometimes): he’s a two-time convicted felon who just got out of prison in the US for smuggling a kilo of cocaine.
It can’t be, I think — who would put their name and create an Instagram account open with these credentials in several articles online?
Well, my friends, he was!
I’m sitting here laughing. The first person I hurt after R was a convicted felon. There really is no end to evil!
Repetition Mandatory: It’s time to stop playing the game.
There’s this funny thing called ‘repetition forcing’, aka — let me relive the same situation and see if I can win the match this time.
It doesn’t work.
It doesn’t matter how many rules of the game you’ve learned, how many times you’ve tried to beat level 1, it doesn’t even matter if you’ve reached level 12 before.
In the long run, you have to learn not to play the game.
It’s like playing a slot machine. In the end, the house always wins and you’ll leave with a broken heart and long lost time that you’ll never get back.
Will I ever win?
Perhaps, but not a game. Not in this game, at least.
For now, my friends, I’ll focus on the usual: work, balance, wellness, and some alone time. Not that it ever worked in the long run but, as Albert Einstein famously said:
Life is like riding a bicycle. To maintain your balance, you must move.
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This post was Previously published at medium.com.
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Photo credit: The.Fr_me on unsplash
