Paul (not his real name) and I broke up over a year ago because of a number of complicated factors, but mostly, when you get down to it, due to our combined weaknesses. We were a mess. We were only seeing each other about once a week and fighting the rest of the time. My mental illness only exacerbated his anxiety (which is also a mental illness, but he didn't at the time seek any treatment for it, only I did. That makes me the crazy one). His anxiety caused him to fly off the handle at my symptoms, which is NOT the way to deal with a mentally ill person calling for help. Yes, he was calling for help, too. But he was the more functional, the more sane of the two of us. We both needed the same type of person to be with, but neither of us could be that for the other.
We were an explosion waiting to happen, which had already happened to an extent, but as my doctor put it, what had happened (a year earlier, which I'm not going to talk about) wasn't by far the worst thing that could have happened. It could always get much, much worse. Since Paul was also the father of a preschooler, that was NOT a good thing. But we didn't break up because of that. On one of our nights we watched a TV show that prompted me to ask, "Would you rather be with me than not be with me?" Stupid female question, I know. I was wanting a generic, feather-smoothing response, but he couldn't answer. At all. So it all fell apart.
We said we'd try again in a couple of years, maybe. We stayed "friends" for a month or two, then I decided to stop, to reject him as totally as I'd been rejected by other men by completely ceasing ALL communication with him. It lasted six weeks. I received a note from him on the door of my apartment during that time, saying that he understood why I'd cut him out of my life, that he only made it worse. I was heartbroken, but I didn't contact him.
My sisters and mother all received texts from him, asking if I was ok. They checked with me before responding, and I told them the situation. They all decided, independently of me and each other, to not respond. When I finally broke the silence, we both cried. He said he'd checked the obituaries in my hometown newspaper. I grew a lot because of that experience.
Over the next year, I continued to text him (our relationship consisted of many, many texts) about things that were happening in my life, getting mad at him occasionally, forgiving him when he apologized, but his texts were significantly less in number and in content. I was giving him the highlights and lowlights of my life, but he wasn't really sharing his.
Until a few weeks ago. He texted, while I was talking to my dear friend, that he'd been seeing someone. I ignored the text until I got a second one, which was simply a question mark. I then read the previous text quickly, then aloud to my friend. We hashed it out, and I decided to tell him that he didn't need my permission to date anyone, and why was he telling me this anyway? (Of course I needed to know.)
Over the next 24-36 hours, I texted him a few more times, and I received the following text from him: "I don't want anything to change between us." I responded, "This is the status quo: I text you everything that goes on in my life, to which you barely respond. Of course you don't want this to change. You don't have to do anything." He said, "You're probably right." I asked him what he was going to do about it, and he said he didn't know. I was nonplussed, so he said the easy answer was that he did want to stay friends, he just didn't know how.
That was basically the last of it. I received a picture of his daughter with her birthday cake, to which I sent no reply. A couple of days later I received a text asking how I was. I replied, "Great," and that was the end of that. I don't want him to think I'm dead again, like I said I grew from that experience. I just don't want to be a topic of conversation between him and his new girlfriend, although I know I am to an extent. I just don't care to continue to be that person.
I loved him and I received love back for the first time in my entire romantic life. There's reason to hold on, but he's moved on. And so should I.
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