Everyone who has commented about her reaction to the "Fuck You" is probably 100% correct. If that comment elicits this kind of severe, cut-and-run, long term reaction (or is the tipping point at least), then the whole relationship was probably doomed from the beginning in that I just wasn't going to cut it with her. That is a very sharp-edged pill to swallow.
I'm still very confused as to what precisely happened in her head or her heart. I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't really know either, but that doesn't mean I still don't want to know. I was talking to my friend James about that point this afternoon. He knows both of us pretty well and he made a very simple point that was almost startling. He said, "it doesn't matter what her reason was or what you did. It's not about that. The bottom line is that she just doesn't like you enough."
I was unaware there were things on this earth that could, at one time, make you both sick to your stomach and refreshingly relieved. I guess a really big post-Guinness, post-2am Mexican fast food early morning shit attack might fall into that category, but that's for another time...probably this coming Saturday.
James and I were walking to get wings for dinner when he dropped that bomb on me. I walked in silence for a good 60 seconds letting it work its way into my cluttered, spinning brain. He was right. If something like a "Fuck You" in the frustrated heat of an argument--of which we only had 3 in the course of our relationship--then the issue isn't that I irreparably breached all manner of social, interpersonal convention; it's that she just doesn't like me enough to get over it.
Who would have thought something like that could make you feel relieved? My brain can't accept that she fell out of love with me because I said something stupid and mean 2 months ago for which she has forgiven me. My heart can't accept that she's the type of woman to give up all hope and raise the emotional drawbridge based on one regrettable incident. What they can both come to terms with, however, is that none of this other stuff is really relevant because, in the final analysis, she just doesn't like me enough to put herself out there and get past it.
I can live with that. After all, there are 6 billion people on this planet. Granted many of them shit in a hole 3 feet from where they cook and sleep, but that's not the point. The point is that the vast majority of relationships end. They fail with varying degrees of spectacularity and most often it's because one person just doesn't like the other enough to get past whatever it is they are billing as the reason for the break-up.
There are limits to this concept, of course. You can love somebody to the core of your being, but if you come home from work one day to find your significant other in the kitchen dismembering your mother's lifeless body so s/he can get to the chinchilla s/he shoved up your mother's ass during foreplay, I think it's safe to call it a day.
Freshly dumped people would be very well-served to take what James said to heart. In the end it's not about the snoring, or the dirty clothes on the floor, or the extra 10 pounds, or the busy work schedule, or the politics. It's simply that they just don't like you enough at this point to get past those things. In the beginning it won't provide much solace since, as the person being broken up with, your ego has been bruised. But after a day or two, if you embrace that idea it will answer all those unresolved questions that torment you as they bounce around your head like so many superballs.
Why can't she forgive the "fuck you"? Why won't she give us a second chance? What can I do to fix things...make them better like before the "fuck you"? There won't be any satisfactory answer to those questions. Shit, she probably doesn't have an answer for herself. That shouldn't surprise you if you can understand that her reaction to the incident is really just symptomatic of a deeper condition: she just doesn't like me enough to get past it.
I sent my girlfiend...ex-girlfriend...an email asking those questions in a slightly more composed fashion. After talking to James it doesn't really matter how she responds because the underlying truth is still the same. I'm going to tell her that too. It'll be interesting to see how she responds because it may compel her to reckon with the idea that it wasn't really something I did or something about me specifically, it was about what was inside her with respect to me and her as a unit. Talk about flipping the script. We'll see how that goes...
Posted by nils at 5:56 PM