Spilling my guts in Everyday life

Hi! It’s been a long time since I’ve written here – honestly, I forgot about this thing. I should return to it; I may have to put an alarm in my phone to remind me to do so.

What follows is novella-length, so be warned if you dig into this. I was too lazy to trim and give it a thorough edit; this is very stream of consciousness.

I’ve been doing relatively good lately. Until last week. I had a good job, a decent relationship, good family.

Then the relationship thing fell apart.

I can’t say it happened overnight. It most certainly didn’t. But it happened pretty quickly for something that had been going on for more than six months.

Things had progressed slowly at first. We saw each other once a week a few times, then I was out of the country for 10 days, then we started seeing each other maybe twice a week. It was more than two months before we slept together, three months until I actually spent the night there.

And I was okay with that. I had a really, really good feeling about this.

We’d made a couple day trips together, including a long drive up the coast, and spent at least one consecutive 24-hour period together. I wasn’t trying to rush things, but I thought everything was pointing in the right direction. I opened up to her about some stuff which, while not major, I hadn’t ever discussed with a peer before. It was me showing a side of myself that I usually don’t.

We had some minor hiccups along the way, but really nothing serious.

I really dug her. I could’ve seen myself marrying her.

In late July or early August, I sensed her pulling back a tad. I couldn’t figure out why, exactly, and it did spook me a bit, but

Around that same time, I went out with a couple friends of mine, friends that had met her a couple times. They’d picked her brain about where things were going, and she told them that she felt I was holding back.

Okay.

How did I react to that? Instead of being coy about my emotions, I was more straightforward, tried to provide her more reassurance about things in general. This was also coming as we were spending more time together, as things were kinda ramping up.

In hindsight, I probably got too close, for both of our own good. She pulled away, I pulled in a little closer, lather, rinse, repeat. I neglected other social activities to spend time with her, when I should’ve probably been trying to expand my social circle up here (I just moved back into the city for the first time in a long time) and not relying entirely on her.

She went on a weekend trip a couple weeks ago with female friends and started becoming really noncommunicative when she returned. We’d always text each other at the beginning of the day saying, hey, what’s up. We communicated via text a lot because we worked opposite schedules, and I never felt threatened or insecure about that. She doesn’t dig phone calls, I’m not a huge fan of them, and that was all fine with me.

This went on for a week. We hung out a couple times in the interim, but something was still off. I sent her a message asking if she was upset or anything – and that I’d gladly talked.

She said she was just pulling back from everyone in general, not reaching out to folks. I felt like that was a lie then, and still is. But I let her control that narrative; I wasn’t interested in a massive showdown over it.

She came over last Thursday after we’d texted back and forth that week. “I can’t wait to see you,” her reply for much of the relationship, turned into “I wouldn’t mind seeing you.” “I love talking to you” turned into “I don’t mind talking to you.”

Anyway … she comes over Thursday. We hang out, sit on my back porch and listen to the trains that run on the other side of the fence (we’re both into trains). After a while we go into my room where, as we often did, we just laid down together and kind of rested. We cuddled; she’s a good cuddler.

She fell asleep for a bit, and that was fine. She got up to get going, and we talked about something, I’m not sure what or how we even got onto this.

She mentioned, “I care about you as a person” – that’s about the third time she’d said that in the past week. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what she’s getting at. Apparently I made some facial gesture in response to this comment. She asked what was wrong; I tried to brush it off, say it was nothing, as I wasn’t going to get into a deal as she was on her way out the door, but she knew I was lying.

I said to her that I loved her. I probably didn’t do this often enough in the past… we’d exchanged that word, and I wanted to not throw it around 24/7 so it had some meaning when I said it.

“I love you as a person,” that was the reply.

What followed was the quickest breakup in history. If the entire situation lasted five minutes, I’d be shocked – it feels much longer, in retrospect. She said she was overwhelmed by me, frustrated by me. She didn’t know when she’d fallen out of love with me, but she had, and she didn’t look at me that way anymore.

I was more shocked than anything. She’d played the passive-aggressive card for a bit, and now this was all coming out?

She had to go to a meeting, and I suggested that she do so. We weren’t going to accomplish anything staring down one another.

She said she’d understand if I never spoke to her again, and scurried to get her stuff.

I walked her to the door, because it’s the polite thing to do. She gave a quick hug, then said, “Guess I’ll see you later.”

We haven’t spoken since.

I’ve gotten over the immediate shock of it, I think. I’m more now upset and annoyed – annoyed that someone who said she cares about me would really just bail so quickly.

I don’t get it. Six months, to me, is not an immaterial relationship. We were doing very well for probably 4.5 months – at least I thought we were. (And maybe that’s the issue.) We’d get frustrated with each other and it’d be over in 30 seconds – or so I thought – and we’d laugh it off or smile or forget about things.

I’m not looking for answers here, necessarily. I think I know a lot of them: she got tired of me, she moved on, maybe even to someone else. Fine. So the why, while it’s lingering in the back of my head, isn’t really the point of this.

I just … I’m still shocked, I guess you could say. I’m okay for now; as these things go, typically I’m okay for a while after a breakup, then get into a bit more of a funk as time goes on. We’ll see if this pattern holds. I’m going to try to avoid it, but I also am smart enough to know my history.

I also feel pretty disrespected, shit upon, etc. None of us handles breakups well, I suppose, but I thought I deserved a little bit more than a rushed “peace, homes” and a “see ya!”

Yeah … that was my summer. How was yours?