I had my very first boyfriend when I was 7 years old. We would hold hands and talk and giggle during recess...which is pretty much all you do at 7 years old. For my birthday he gave me a little silver jewelry box in the shape of a heart with red velvet lining...which I still have. (!!) We never really ended things -- I just moved away and that was that. Ah, those were the days.
Actually, I've never broken up with anyone. Ever. Now, this doesn't mean that I never had a relationship end. It just means that I seemed to always find myself in the position of being the dumpee, not the dumper. I've spent many hours in therapy understanding why this is so, but suffice it to say that I tend to hang on to relationships long after their expiration dates have come and gone. I seem to adopt the attitude "I'm am going to hang on to this damn thing and fix it if it kills me!"
Thus, it was a very big deal for me when I decided I needed to break up with Bass Man.
There was so much that was right about our relationship
and that I loved about being with him. But ultimately I knew it just
wasn't the right fit, and that the relationship wasn't going to go the
distance. I won't go in to the gritty details of why it became apparent that this needed to happen -- let's just say his priorities were a little skewed. No amount of talking seemed to change things. It was time to move on.
I called my friend Erin for a pep-talk:
Erin: "Go out for coffee. Just tell him that you have different relationship styles, and it's not working for you. Be prepared that he may try and talk you out of it, he may become defensive, but stick to your guns."
Me: "That's brilliant! Wait...let me get that down in my Treo..."
A few hours later I picked him up, we went out for coffee, and I chickened out for a good 45 minutes. We sat there in Starbucks talking about other things. I got up to go to the bathroom twice so I could look at my notes in my Treo and steel my nerves.
Finally I realized no perfect time was going to come, and said, "Look, there's a conversation that we need to have that I really don't want to have..." And I proceeded to say all the things Erin and I had gone over. I tried to be as respectful and honest and gentle as possible. It took him a little bit to understand that I was breaking up with him, and not just talking about an issue to be addressed. He teared up. I cried. And cried.
It was HARD. SO MUCH HARDER than I ever thought it would be. I guess it doesn't matter which side of breaking up you are on...it is painful and it sucks either way. That was a shocker. I somehow thought it would be easier being the initiator.
Not so much.
A week and a half later it still smarts. He was my first "post-Ex" relationship, and though I didn't start writing about it until later here, we had been going out for a number of months. I know I did the right thing. But still...
I was talking to another friend the other day and telling her what happened, and she said, "You know, the gift in all of this is that you made a choice for yourself and realized you have a voice. That's important."
I hadn't really thought of it that way. I guess it is.
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