Dating Articles
Wednesday 25 November, 2009Maybe Breaking Up Isn’t the Thing to Do...
I know the movies make fun of breaking up with someone. They make it seem the easiest thing to do unless the person you’re trying to break up with is neurotic or psycho. Yet when it comes your turn to let go of someone that you may not even love anymore, what then is this difficulty in saying: “I don’t want to be with you anymore?”
How about the idea that a lot of us aren’t mean-hearted people by nature and that we don’t want to hurt anyone? How about the idea that even though we have been yearning for this other person to go away, that when it came to the very real point where he or she could be gone on a permanent basis, that all of a sudden we hesitated and became afraid? Maybe we re-thought what we were complaining about or maybe we saw in that blinding flash of sudden insight that it takes two to have a relationship. Maybe we remembered their goodness. Whatever the reasons, when it comes to the ‘face-to-face-this-is-it’ confrontation, some of us change our minds.
And sometimes, it’s good that we do.
There’s something very scary about the truth coming out between two people. We all know that this is how we are supposed to be living and acting within our relationships with other people but sometimes, some of us have discovered, bringing the truth out into the open causes more damage than we ever thought possible. And no-one wants to neither experience more damage nor be a party to contributing to it.
Why do some people change their minds? Some of it comes with maturity, don’t you think? You might suddenly realize that you’ve been down this road before, not just once, maybe not even twice but a few times, with other people. As we age it becomes harder to ignore something about yourself when you have had more than one person bring it to your attention. Blaming the other person for making you this way is only a dead-end that almost guarantees that your next relationship will experience a variation of the complaint you hear now.
“So what?” you might think. “This other person has done plenty to annoy and irritate me-why should I care about what she or he says about me?” But isn’t the whole point that you do care?
No-one wants to admit that they have contributed negative emotions and perceptions to their relationship(s). It’s easy to pick out when someone has been annoying or irritating or downright unfair, but what about when you’ve been the same? Why should you be able to dismiss those actions of yours but not your partner’s? Is that really fair? Would you like it if someone did this to you? Probably not.
Hey, maybe I should re-think this…
