Balancing Hope and Disappointment After a Breakup, Part 3 of ?

The words of BSEW regular, Big Mark, triggered this series for sure. He offered the following words to describe the His Side/Her Side split (and pinpointed a deep feeling that I had yet to specify on my own):

Keeping the disappointment from mixing with the hopes is a challenge for sure.

So instead of cussing out Big Mark for swimming around in my head and finding the words I couldn't even express, I decided to blog about it. LOL

Continued from Part 2, which I had to break apart because it was becomming its own damn book...

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The weekend ended when His Side returned to his cousin's house, tried to call me, but I was on the phone with an old friend that I reconnected with. The old friend was a flame in my late teens, and we've had a good time catching-up on all the changes that 20 years can bring. His Side Lost. His. Mind.... first when the reconnection was revealed through the magic of Facebook friends lists, and then when His Side actually couldn't reach me because my phone was busy. The nerve of me using my phone. Based on the accusation, clearly old friends only reconnect to make plans for hot steamy affairs... right?

Anyway, I take ownership of three mistakes I made in this process:

1. I underestimated the challenge ahead of me and got loose on my watch.

2. I greatly underestimated how difficult it would be for His Side to fight his own personal battle with hope and dissapointment.

3. I didn't take the sage advice to go "no contact" for at least 30 days straight after the breakup. Somewhere deep inside me, a naive hopeful girl believes friendship should never die. Well part of that girl died this past weekend. She needed to. And the next time I see her, I'm gonna slap her in the mouwf.

Everything happens for a reason. (Dammit. Another cliche I couldn't avoid because of the unmistakable truth at its core. But I digress...) Even our mistakes become springboards for lessons that we need to learn. I count this the tuning point in successfully balancing hope wiht disappointment.

I suspect there will be a Part 4 to this series. Shit, I may do like Rocky, forget when to stop making more "parts," and just continue this until I'm too old to box I complete all the transitions that come with the territory.

Holla at me in the comments... even if it's to spank me for being dense. Y'all know I can take it.

A Relationship Public Service Announcement...

This PSA comes with a T-Shirt: STOP BLAMING ME FOR YOUR SHYT.

I believe I've had this conversation before with my BFF Negril. I'm kinda glad we're not in the same office today, because she might be foreced to slap me. In spite of sage advice and hard-earned wisdom, it is amazing how the mind plays tricks while submerged in the middle of a situation. Before today's PSA story comes the conclusion: You really can't do enough to appease a person who wants to blame you for their problems. End. Of. Fracking. STORY.

His Side called me first thing this morning. I'm talking before I oozed out of bed to prepare for the morning routine. I didn't expect to hear from him, because he lost his job yesterday and claimed he didn't want to hear from the rest of the world - including me - for a few days. He only had the job for about four weeks.

"Hello."

"Do you have COMPANY?"

"Wha???..."

That's how the conversation started. Because of course if I choose not to sleep with him, I'm whoring around town looking for random dyck to satiate me.

[Note to self: Don't be offended. Hold it together. He knows you're not a ho. If he really believed that dumb shit, he wouldn't be interested in you in the first place.]

Anyway, his monnologue consisted of declarations of his love for me coupled with a tongue-lashing for having friends other than him. Male. Female. Straight. Gay. It doesn't matter. They all make him feel threatened, like he has to complete for my affections. I was told how I should understand him and his request, because of things that have been done to him before. He went on to lament his life and his mistakes, and rolled right back into what I should and should not be doing for him.

Now I spent most of this monologue rubbing crusties from my eyes and staring at the phone like I just got a call from aliens. I very calmly said fuck you informed His Side that I object to his calling my house for such nonsense and he'll nevah own the right to play Director in my life. I kindly declined the challegne to defend myself against his ridiculous accusations. He apologized, which historically only means "excuse me for a moment, and I'll see if I can implement my mind control in another attempt I have planned for this afternoon."

I feel badly for him. This empathy led me to overlook too much as his girlfriend... and sometimes engage in the fray trying to make things right. And now I'm starting to overlook too much as his "new-found" friend.

I thank Susan Elliott for this great post dealing with taking the blame for our partner's actions. Today's PSA comes from Susan's blog post (which you should stop and read, by the way):

They will not change. There is NO such thing as acting “right enough” or loving someone “good enough” to keep them from doing crappy things. A monster will act like a monster. A cheater will act like a cheater. A liar will act like a liar. And a bananahead will act like a bananahead. No matter what you do or do not do.

The bottom line is that everyone is responsible for his or her own behavior. Do not let someone else blame you for their bad behavior. No one can make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. [Source]

Reminder: Part 3 of my Hope vs. Disappointment series will auto-post tomorrow morning.

Balancing Hope and Disappointment After a Breakup, Part 2 of ?

The words of BSEW regular, Big Mark, triggered this series for sure. He offered the following words to describe the His Side/Her Side split (and pinpointed a deep feeling that I had yet to specify on my own):

Keeping the disappointment from mixing with the hopes is a challenge for sure.

So instead of cussing out Big Mark for swimming around in my head and finding the words I couldn't even express, I decided to blog about it. LOL

Welcome to Part 2 of The Shittiest Lesson EVAH

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I have been working on Part 2 of this series for weeeeeks. The landscape of this battle changes so often, that my draft posts go stale before I have a chance to dot the i's and hit "publish."

But today I reached a place where I can say something important about the ongoing battle - a battle I never expected to present so many challenges. I have to thank Mark again for forcing me to pay attention.

Most of the time, I'd say 85% of the time, His Side and I have a great time re-exploring friendship without the stress of "working on relationship issues." Those issues became deeply distracting, and we owed it to each other to go to our separate corners to work it out. That 85% represents "Hope." But the other 15% of the time, OH GOOD LORDIE, we take randomly unexpected turns manifesting "Disappointment."

His Side fluctuates between two ends of the spectrum: Deep understanding of how much time it would take for us to come together again in the future and hurt frustration that wants to make it happen right now.

I stay firm on the expectation that reconciliation would take a looooong time, but find myself feeling frustrated at key times that he seems to avoid his personal business with eyes fixed on recreating an "us." Dammit, how is that time gonna come while I'm still young enough to have wild sex if you keep wasting the days on dumb shit?

Anyway, it isn't fair for either of us to dump our disappointment on the other. My style is to go all blue and get motherly about his decisions. His style is to have a blow out until he hits the right button and I go up like a flare.

This weekend was particularly bad. We spend time together every-other weekend, but this weekend he was on a deep romantic mission. He got nasty when I didn't flow with it, and he said more hurtful things than a single human should say in a lifetime. I was floored. And I reacted. Talk about a flare. I think my hair caught on fire.

He continued the rip bouncing back and forth between apologies and more frustrated words. For the first time, I wondered if this was a person I even wanted as a distant associate. I simply told him, "Friends don't treat each other this way, and there's no way I can count you a friend."

It was like the end of an era. It was like breaking up all over again.

Worst of all, it was like looking into the eyes of a stranger who evokes fond memories because he bears a striking resemblance to a lost loved-one. Except it's not the loved one, and you have to deal with the reality of who is standing in front of you.

:: breaking the rest into Part 3, which will auto-publish in 2 days, because this is a long one ::