Tuesday, December 08, 2009

A thousand years of wisdom

Today, my girlfriend of a year broke up with me because I didn't fight some guy that started hitting her right in front of me... In a dream. She was totally serious. FML

Today, I threw an elaborate surprise birthday party for my boyfriend of four years. He though we were going to a quiet dinner but when we arrived, thirty of his friends jumped out and surprised him. Instead of kissing me to thank me, he broke up with me because of how easily I had lied to him. FML

Today, it was raining. I was out walking with my girlfriend, and decided it would be cute if we bit of dancing in the rain. As I was swinging her round, I swung her head against a lamp post. She broke up with me. FML

...And hundreds more. While of course the veracity of FML posts should not be taken as given (I've tried to submit two myself, so I know this firsthand!), one thing that reading that site seems to show is the ease and abruptness with which some people end relationships. I shake my head at these and laugh with people about how those relationships must have been barely existent in the first place, to end so trivially. Like clearly, I would never do such a silly thing.

So then, when are you allowed to end a relationship? I have this feeling that no break-up should be vulnerable to being summarized in 300 characters. That no given incident, no given fight should be able to end the relationship. So then where's the balance line? How long do you have to feel unhappy in a relationship before it's legitimate to end it? How do you do it? How can you first bring it up? How many friends have I had IM counseling sessions with on this dilemma -- how do you get out of a relationship you don't want, when there's no individual moment when it's okay to cut it off?

One day last March I was on IM with Andrew. I told him that the linguistics program at Stanford had nothing about second language acquisition or TESOL, so really wasn't for me. I hadn't applied, and the deadline had passed. He laughed. "So no Stanford for me, huh?" I remember a startling relief wash through me. We'd been talking less and less those months. I'd been edgy and stressed all winter, tentatively aiming toward this future with a guy I felt less and less tied to. But no, that was just an illusion, just because we couldn't talk as much as we wanted -- because here he was, still taking it for granted that he wouldn't go to Stanford if I wouldn't be nearby. So that future still existed. I smiled and breathed more easily than I had in weeks.

Five minutes later we broke up.

It wasn't abrupt and capricious like the FML breakups. We'd been drifting farther and farther apart and I'd known all winter at some level that it didn't make sense anymore. But I remember so vividly that the moment I finally had to face the crumbling of this life I'd imagined for myself was preceded literally minutes before by the moment I felt the most sure that things would go back to how they used to feel.

One of the first things Adam promised me last August was that we wouldn't break up until December 20th at the earliest. Not like a trial period -- a commitment. We wouldn't give up on this just because we'd learn new things about each other, struggle with how to be there for each other in the right ways, how to negotiate our bad moods, how to balance schoolwork and Skype calls. And yet, a month ago, there was a week where it all went wrong -- he was swamped with work, I was stressing over a paper and fighting PMS, and every conversation devolved into pure tension -- me crying and apologizing, him trying desperately to get me to calm down so he could do his work and get to sleep, an impossible cycle of guilt and anger. So I convinced myself I'd blown it. Sure he wasn't allowed to say so, not for another couple months, but the love was gone -- who would want a girlfriend who kept him up until two in the morning when he had three more sections to grade and an algebra problem to TeX, just because she couldn't stop crying? No one. That Friday I went for a walk down to the ATM and Chipotle, and I kept my hand in my pocket waiting for my cell phone to vibrate. I'd texted him. This should be his free hour. Surely he'd text me back. He didn't. That was it -- I'd blown it.

But it turns out, my life isn't an FML, and one bad week didn't break anything. That weekend we talked about techniques to deal with nights we're both stressed. We haven't had a fight that bad since. I know about myself that I'm terrified of the fading of relationships. I know that it caused dozens of fights with Andrew, when I would analyze the minutia of his behavior for clues about whether his love was fading. I was certain it would eventually push him away. I have moments when I'm sure it will eventually push Adam away, too. But I think I'm wrong. I don't think people break up just because they're imperfect and struggle with things. I think they break up when they stop caring enough to struggle. I didn't lose Andrew because I was too paranoid and clingy; I lost him because the time in our lives when we were the right people for each other ended.

Meanwhile, December 20th is only thirteen days away...eep! ^_^;;

Eric Stuart, I believe, has the most eloquent take on the matter:

But if I had ten thousand years
of wisdom to my name,
would the answer become clear
or would the question still remain:

Should a man whose love is gone
stay a play the part?
Or should he carry on,
even if it breaks her heart...