Big shockeroo; here at the house of fab,we are recovering from yet another train wreck of a relationship (we being myself and Malcolm the cat). I got dumped last night. Although, come to think of it, the exact timing of the breakup is subject to debate. My boyfriend came over last Tuesday night and said that he wanted to take a break (this was not entirely unexpected, but more on that later). Now, my perception is that 'taking a break' in guyspeak really means 'i'm going to dump you but don't have the cojones to do it just this moment, so i'm going to drag this out for a little while longer'. Therefore I suspected that a dumping was imminent, although a little (woefully naive) piece of me still hoped that he would change his mind. Cut to Saturday morning, when I get a text from a female friend of his who I have subsequently become friendly with. She texted me to say that she was sorry that X and I split up and that she hoped I was ok. While this was a gracious and thoughtful move on her part, unfortunately she was unaware that the dumping had not yet, in fact, occurred. I sent a rather sharply worded text to X, he came over last night, and after an hour's conversation and multiple discarded kleenex (some of them flung at his head, I'm sorry to say), it was over.
Why, you may ask, would a catch like me be flung back into the ocean yet again? In a word: butterflies. Or the lack thereof, to be more accurate. As much as it pains me, I'm trying to keep the trashing of X to a bare minimum, so I'll ignore the apparent multitude of relationship issues he has for right now. What it boils down to is that he wants to feel butterflies in his stomach every time the woman in his life walks into the room, and since I have been thus far unable to produce a swarm of intestinal insect activity in him, he has concluded that he does not love me. Despite the fact that he is 37 and has yet to experience butterflies in the context of a healthy, functional relationship, he has taken up his net and gone in search of them.
The irony here is that I really tried to take this relationship slowly. This being the first significant relationship since the divorce, I was worried about getting in over my head and getting hurt all over again. I didn't want to fall in love; I wanted to crawl into it, take my time, and hopefully avoid making another huge mistake. And that's how it worked out. Things didn't happen overnight; it just gradually grew better and better. It was really only in the last month or so (we started dating last August) that I finally realized that I loved him. And he admits that we're compatible and click on a number of levels and that the problem is not me, it's him (funny how that last part doesn't help AT ALL).
I would like very much to hate him, but putting aside the bad sitcom circumstances of the 'breakup by proxy', he's not an asshole. He just keeps thinking that there's something better out there and (I think) he's terrified to commit until he finds it - or realizes that the perfect girl isn't there, that we all get moody on occasion and wake up with bedhead and generally act like the flawed beings that we all are. And he is right about one thing; I deserve to be with someone who sees me and all my neuroses and wants me despite them - or maybe even because of them. As hurt as I am now, I hope he figures it all out, because he was often a perfectly lovely boyfriend and shouldn't end up alone (but seeing as how I'm not the first girl he has dispensed with for this reason, I don't think he's any closer to a real solution).
The thing I miss most of all is that on nights that we didn't spend together, he always called me before he went to sleep to say goodnight. I think I need to start shutting my phone off around 10pm so that I'll stop waiting for it to ring. Maybe I should put bedtime calls as dating criteria on Match.com - my coworkers and my mother are both threatening to force me into online dating. I think my mom would like to have more of a say in who I date, since as she pointed out to me several times this past week, if there's a guy out there with issues and emotional baggage up the wazoo, he's going to ask for my number. Very helpful, my mom.
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