joreth | Is It Me?

My point here, Alan, is that there IS a good way to breakup with someone, and it DOESN'T include a POST-IT!
~Carrie Bradshaw, Sex And The City

Phone Conversation:

Brian Smelt: (paraphrasing) I'm sorry, I have to cancel our 3-day vacation together that starts tomorrow. My grandfather died and I'm leaving right now for St. Pete to be with the family.
Me: Oh no! I'm sorry, I know how much he meant to you. Is there anything I can do?
Brian Smelt: (paraphrasing) No, I don't know how long I'll be there or when I'm coming back home, but I'll call you when I get there so you know I arrived safely
Me: Thank you. I'm really sorry. Call or text me anytime for any reason. I'll be here if you need me. And let me know when you know what the plan is so I can reschedule our trip.
Brian Smelt: (quoting) OK baby, I love you. I miss you and I can't wait to see you again. Goodbye.

***2 weeks pass***

Yes, you read that right, 14 fucking days go by without a single phone call, text message, IM, or email of any sort. The last thing I heard from him was "I love you, I miss you, and I can't wait to see you again". The only way I knew he wasn't hit by a bus on the way to St. Pete was because I saw his fucking login stamp on his OKC and his MySpace page several days later.

Normally I don't play the "he said, she said" game online. I prefer not to drag my exes through the public mud in the sort of catfighting that happens in LJ. But then again, most of the time my exes are decent people who just happen to not be compatible with me. In this case, however, he deserves the rank of Online Skeezball for his asshatery. And, once again, I have only myself to blame as I approached him online first. We had not been dating very long at all, and the distance made our in-person dates only about a handful of times. But he had already said he loved me and things seemed to be going perfectly. He said all the right things and was exactly what I was hoping for.

Then, with no warning, he disappears.

After 2 weeks, I finally drive the 3 hours north to his house to wait for him and find out what happened. Long story short, he gave me plausible, although unsatisfactory, excuses about his phone getting turned off, his satellite internet dish getting blown away in a storm, etc. I'm pissed at him for disappearing, he's pissed at me for something I said online ... when he finally checked his email. I left there with an answer, incomplete though it may have been, and a promise to contact me in 1-2 days with an answer about whether or not to continue the relationship and a promise to return my email if I haven't heard from him by then and I want to prod him to find out what's up.

I gave him 4 days. He never returned my email. I sent him one final email telling him he's an asshole for not breaking up with me properly.

Seriously, do I have a sign over my head that says "Assholes Wanted, Apply Within" or something?

**EDIT** This guy also made it very clear that he had no interest in a casual relationship and proclaimed many times he felt "seriously" about me. He went to great lengths to assure me, even when I wasn't asking for it, that this was something long-term and "real". I actually thought it was kinda early to be making those kinds of statements, but I felt that the things he claimed to want and the person he claimed to be were very much in alignment with what I wanted in a partner.

His lack of contact was very out of character for the person I thought he was. He habitually called and texted me several times a day, to the point that my phone bill was nearly 3x my usual amount that month. He actually freaked out when it took me 2 hours to respond to a text from him once. Regular and instant contact was the norm here ... until his little disappearing act.

When he did disappear, I did give him a few days before I started to freak out. After all, I knew his grandfather had just died and things were likely chaotic. But when I saw the login timestamp on his profiles several times and no responses to my emails at all, that was just unacceptable. He had time to check his MySpace but not to email me with "sorry, things are fucked up, I'll call you in a couple of weeks"? There was absolutely no one with a cell phone he could borrow to call me and say "quit emailing me, I'm breaking up with you"?

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If I had the answer to that, I'd be rich :-)

Damn. Why didn't he just man up and say "I'd like to move on now. It's over."
We definitely need to get together and exchange stories. You available weekday afternoons for tea?

Yep, I'm actually free every afternoon next week. In fact, Wednesday, the 29th, is Free Ice Cream Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's! But any afternoon next week is good for me.

What an amazingly jerklike series of things to do! I'm sorry, and vexed on your behalf.

Dunno why asshats seem to have a way of finding you. I think you're a fantastic person and deserve a whole lot better.

Thanks, I think so too ;-)

Seriously though, it's just all so unnecessary, which is what pisses me off the most. I would have been accepting of a more casual-based relationship in which long stretches of no-communication are common. I would have accepted a breakup speech with a minimum of drama. I don't need to be told "I love you" in order to have sex with someone. There just didn't need to be all this deception and cruelty.

Simple honesty really does take care of most of life's complications for me.

Oh, and I don't know if you read his profile, but he specifically states he values honesty highly and he doesn't want to move fast and he prefers to develop "friends-first" relationships.

Obviously not. This is why I'm so defensive and so angry online.

I'm sorry you had to go through that. He really should have just told you he wanted to break up.

Yeah, that's all I wanted was for him to say he was done with me. When I showed up on his doorstep for answers, I got a continuation of "I love you, I miss you, things have been really crazy, I don't want to lose you" and then he disappeared again.

WTF? What's so fucking hard about just saying "I'm not interested anymore"? Why the lying and stringing along? On top of having my heart broken once again, it's all just so fucking unneccessary.

It's my observation that in casual dating, even if there's love, it's not uncommon for great stretches of time to pass without communication. Also, I've noticed that it's not uncommon for dating to kind of taper off instead of ending officially.
He said he would contact you, and then he didn't, and that's not cool. But I don't know if his behavior is really that unusual in a casual dating context.

This is a guy who got upset when it took me 2 hours to return one of his text messages, and routinely texted and called me so often that he trippled my phone bill that month. So it was really out of character for him, which is what got me so upset.

Oh, also, we had the "is this casual or serious" conversation, and he insisted several times that he was absolutely not interested in a casual relationship with me. He was telling me that he was making long-term actual plans, like Christmas vacations and introductions to the family. As I said in my final email, that had he wanted a casual relationship, that would have changed my expectations of how he should behave, and all he needed to do was say so and I'd stop freaking out about the lack of contact.

Yeah, my first boyfriend did this to me. It's the "emotionally disarm the other person and then become a sociopath," technique. Of course, he was 14; one expects a bit more from adults.

Yeah, I've had this done to me several times. The most frustrating part of all is that it's so unnecessary. I'm not opposed to casual sex, so I don't *need* to be "emotionally disarmed" first. In fact, doing it that way causes more drama as the person who is emotionally hurt reacts and does all kinds of things to cause trouble, like obsessively calling, emailing, and MySpace stalking ... not to mention driving 3 hours north and parking in the driveway to wait for someone to come home.

If people were just honest about what they wanted, there are plenty of ways to get casual sex ... some of them even from me specifically. But I've come to realize that expecting honesty is apparently asking too much.

I told

tacit recently that I used to think I was a "low-maintenance" partner, but I've decided that I must be "high-maintenance" because of all the communication and honesty I require. He said "you're not high-maintenance at all, you just have very high expectations".

It's very depressing to me that "honesty, communication and respect" are considered "high expectations", to the point that most people think it's excessive and are unwilling to even attempt to comply (see the most recent Online Skeezball post just prior to this one). It's like looking for the simple, basic, "black dress" we were talking about at Frolicon. Apparently the basics are too much to ask for, but we can get tassles and sequins and bright colors (i.e. drama and game playing). It seems to me the amount of effort that goes into avoiding the "work" involved with the basics far outweighs whatever work is required for those basics. But maybe that's just me?

If we were local I would totally ask you to be my hetero life mate.
just sayin.

is it possible to have long distance hetero life mates?

I'm just askin ;-)

Cuz I'd totally say yes.

You're actually the example of a "metamour that works" that I use most frequently when explaining anything in polyamory ... particularly how it's possible to have difficulties and misunderstandings and differences and *still* be totally accepting of that metamour as a metamour and trusting that any difficulties will be worked out one way or another because of the two people involved being committed to honesty, communication, and relationships in general.

Your dedication to honesty and communication is the most reassuring quality in a relationship partner of any kind that I never worry about any temporary negative situations we get into. I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate all your efforts in the past and future, even when we disagree :-)

I feel like enough time has passed and we've seen each other behave in a variety of situations - some better than others, that I can say I trust you absolutely. I feel I can trust you to be accepting, forgiving and honest. And of my female friends, you have been one of the most willing and able to let some of my sharper edges roll off of you.
So, yeah, at minimum, we can be anchors for each other. Just know that I'm a 3am when things go to hell kind of friend. (err, meaning I'm someone you can call, hopefully I won't ever cause things to go to hell :) )

I feel exactly the same way about you :-)

That is unconscionably bizarre and shitty behavior. It's stories like these that help me accept my utter dorkiness for never having really dated. Freakin' A.

Sounds like such a miserable interaction. :/

I was wondering, to myself, if thinking that I was getting the brushoff I would push the three hour drive and the additional contact to 'get' the (no) answer. And I would. Fuck help me, I would too.

I wonder - is it possible he is just confused about what he wants enough to have been telling you the 'truth' but not able to act/work on it because of a lack of follow through skills? I know when I have been under a mountain load of stress and have been unable to act even when I wanted to and I wasn't sure WHY I was failing to act. /devilsadvocate

Edited Date: 4/25/09 12:53 am (UTC)

I suppose it's possible, but I fail to see *how* it is possible for a person to be adamant that they love someone, to make claims that they can't wait to see someone, to call someone while pulling out of their driveway just to say that they miss you already, and *still* be "confused" about what it is that they want.

I also fail to see how it is possible for a person to have a month-long pattern of nearly obsessive contact, and to *believe* that they love someone, and manage to go a full 2 weeks with absolutely no contact in spite of the fact that they *are* receiving hurt and confused emails wondering what's up.

I realize the Argument From Ignorance could apply here - that just because I don't understand *how* it could have happened that way, it doesn't mean that it didn't happen that way. But that's a pretty big leap to have made - from "I love you, I miss you, I can't want to see you, I haven't even left your driveway yet and I'm already aching to see you again" to 14 days of not bothering to contact this same love interest in any way. When *I* love someone, having my phone get disconnected would not stop me from contacting them in some way to tell them that my phone got disconnected or that I'd be out of touch for a while. This is the information age ... there is no reason whatsoever that excuses complete and total disconnection. Hell, my house was on the way home from his grandfather's funeral to his house. He could have stopped in person. I also offered to pay for his gas anytime he wanted to see me because I make more money than he does and it was worth it to me.

I keep getting questioned as to why I bothered to make the drive. After all, no answer *is* an answer. But damn it, I deserve that real "no" answer. I deserve the respect it takes to tell someone that you are no longer interested, for whatever reason. And I want the data on what went wrong so I can prevent it from happening again.

Excuse me ... there are *some* reasons, none of which apply. Death, for example, is a pretty good fucking reason. Imprisonment is another. Having one's car break down in the middle of a one-horse town with no internet connection, a dead phone (so no access to the phonebook), and no money to leave is a pretty good reason.

But living in a technologically advanced society, with friends and family nearby, and a girlfriend who offers to pay your way, and actual proof of internet access ... in these circumstances, there is no excuse for having no contact that includes respect or love.

And, as I said, had he wanted a casual relationship, he could have had one - he was good in bed and I would have enjoyed just that. *He* is the one who established the pattern of regular contact.

I get your discomfort/hurt/frustration and I agree with many of your statements.. I think your points about communication in the information age are valid. Fucker should've called. Fucker should've outlined the limitations of interaction they could give you and explained why if they knew.

The only one other reason I can see (besides the individual being an utter asshat - which has been covered in the other comments) that you didn't touch on - would be the individual being crippled by stress or self esteem issues.

Generally, if he's a crippled by stress and self esteem individual - this is an individual who would not make a good dating partner (yet, and until after they get their own internal house in order, or ever?) and they are not yours to fix, unless of course that sort of thing is your kink.. so breaking it off more completely on your end despite their inability to break it off with you is still the best/healthiest thing.

I guess.. I am always a little hesitant when _I_ am writing someone off while angry and frustrated with them.. that I can assign/know/or effectively judge their motives. I would rather walk away with confusion on the matter and realizing that I can close the door and not allow myself to be vulnerable to them anymore without needing to castigate them fully.

I say this.. not because I care on their behalf that you are pissed off at them.. but because I seem to care on yours. I would love it if encountering this person's putatively assholish behavior left you feeling confused, ready to take action to protect yourself from further poor communication, but at peace.

And, of course, upon reflection the reason I would love that peace for you is because I would like it for myself. I recognize the feelings you have described and would like to be so DONE with that. I want to not wince after a great first meeting that there will be no further contact. Or that people will disappear off the face of the planet for no obvious reason with no communication about it. *headache* Ugh.

Sounds like a rough week.. ..and rough other times as well. *generally supportive thoughts and encouragements similar to *hugs* you know if we knew each other better*

My big problem is that I don't close doors when I should. I don't write off people when I know I would be better off doing so. Even in my final email that said I have better things to do than wait around for someone who doesn't want me around, I still left the door open for him to contact me again if/when he ever gets his shit together. Ask me sometime, if you really want to hear, just how many completely fucked up people I continue to allow into my life to avoid making the mistake of writing them off in the heat of anger when they or the relationship (or some relationship) may be salvagable.

The death of the grandfather took place 2 months ago and I'm only now getting around to writing this entry. Hell, I still have his pictures on my phone and two of the text messages I've always saved because they were so touching that they made me smile just to read them.

This is one reason among many why I don't like to do the mud-slinging thing online ... once it's in print, it's hard to take back or pretend like it didn't happen.

The whole reason why I felt the need to confront him was expressly to prevent myself from assuming motivations that could be untrue.

This is my attempt to, for once, close the door on something that should be closed. As you pointed out, even if he's not an asshole, but is crippled by stress, someone who is that crippled by stress and self-esteem is not mine to fix and does not make a good dating partner. And I need to stop playing at being everyone's therapist, hoping that simple contact with me as a good role model will fix people.

So I'm closing this door. And not without a whole lot of reservations, either. In spite of this whole affair, I still miss him and I still mourn for the future I thought I would have with him. I keep catching myself eyeing people who resemble him, hoping that if they have those superficial characteristics that I liked in him, I might be able to salvage some of that future with someone else ... sort of piecemeal it together out of other people. So this is my attempt to burn the bridge for once in my life and to convince myself that, regardless of the actual motivation, I'm better off without him.

Right. So then what remains if for you (me) to find the Peace that comes with shutting the door (even if leaving it cracked) and moving on and letting these people have access back into your life, but only after they fundamentally show they are a net positive and not a net loss.

I would love to have that.

I wonder if some people grieve the loss more keenly because we'd the imagination to understand the potential futures. I don't actually WANT to limit the field of vision to eliminate that.. but maybe some people 'don't get it' about why a relationship ending hurts so much is because they have a nearer horizon line?

My tone, fwiw, is not meant to be an antagonizing one here. If you'd rather not continue the sort open air navel gazing your post has inspired in me there is no need to do so. I'm sorry to hear you hurt, were hurt, and that it hurts still to place a boundary on what you will accept.

I would love to have that too.

I'm fine, I am not receiving any antagonistic tone on this end. I've actually struggled to explain why I keep holding on and I keep doors open and why this hurts so much before and I think this may help somewhat.

Taking your recital of the story as Truth (as in there are no grey areas, capital T truth) I would say he is a coward that has very clear indications of separation and/or isolation anxiety.

Knowing that there is always at least two sides to an incident I would be a bit more hesitant about passing judgement but would still say that having your feelings hurt is never pleasurable and even though he lost a family member (true or not true irrelevant in this case) a simple "I'm not dead and you're not forgotten" Email/text message is really all it would take.

Which could just kind of serve as a reminder to everybody: If you know or even just suspect you could alleviate some emotional anguish by typing less than 10 words to someone you haven't thought about in a while, it is propably worth it. A smile instigated, whether you see it or not, makes the world a better place.

-N

Oh, I harbor no illusions that I'm missing half the story. Even the side that he *did* tell me isn't complete. But the reason *why* he disappeared is much less important than the fact that he did, and then subsequently followed it up with a story full of holes. *That* is the reason I pass judgement on him as an asshole.

One of my current sweeties had his father die last year. Not only was this a difficult emotional time for the family, but my sweetie was the executor of the will and therefore responsible for all the annoying practical little details that no one wants to deal with during the death of a family member.

He called me at 9 PM every night he was away, just to let me know how he was.

I'm not asking for meticulous devotion, I'm asking for not being a complete and utter jerk who *receives* my queries and *ignores* them. As you said "I'm dead and you're not forgotten" is really all that was necessary. I wanted information, a status update, nothing more. I cannot conduct my own life to the best of my ability when I lack information.

Damn. I am going through EXACTLY the same thing with Steve. I miss having a lover who is 6'4" and looks like Tom Cruise AND open to polyamory. I doubt I will ever find him again and so I am tempted to take him back, despite his ugliness on the inside.

Yeah, it's very frustrating. I've always had an "oral fixation", and I don't mean that in necessarily in the sexual sense. I bite my nails, I chew on things, I keep gum in my pocket at all times. Somehow I have managed to go my entire adult life not having kissed anyone with a tongue piercing. Mainly because the types of people that *I* know who have tongue piercings are people I don't like very much (or are the wrong gender for me), so I'm not interested in kissing them.

But I have always been curious.

So this guy had one and I finally had the chance to try it. On top of the piercing, he was also a good kisser in general, so with the very first kiss, the tongue piercing curiosity turned into a full blown fetish. I'm totally addicted to tongue-pierced kissings, I keep thinking about it and fantasizing about it, and it's one of the things I mourn with the loss of this guy.

So it's very annoying that I find myself looking carefully at guys that I think are likely to have a tongue piercing and evaluating if that person could be somehow fitted into my life in a manner that includes kissing, just so I can have that sensation again. And I hate that. Every so often, I think, if he approached me again and gave me even a halfway plausible explanation and an apology, I might relent just to kiss him again.

I was wondering, to myself, if thinking that I was getting the brushoff I would push the three hour drive and the additional contact to 'get' the (no) answer. And I would. Fuck help me, I would too.

So would I. In fact there have been a couple cases, where, to varying degrees I think I came off as someone WAY more obsessed with the person than I actually was. The truth was, I was obsessed with *clarity*. The desire to know where I stood became so strong that I came off as being kind of pushy, and maybe to them, pathetic.

The truth was, I was obsessed with *clarity*.

That's exactly it. I just wanted to know why, I wanted to know where I stood, I wanted to know what happened. The "what" was much less important than the "why". Although I felt strongly for him, and I miss him and I mourn the future we will never have together, the truth is that I will survive without him. Better than that, I will get over him and get on with my life. So it's not that I am trying to hold onto *him* beyond all reason. I just want to know what the fuck happened.

The Sex And The City quote I referenced above came from a larger scene where Carrie's boyfriend came over one night, fucked her, then snuck off in the wee hours of the night leaving only a post-it that said "I'm sorry. I can't. Don't hate me". She spends the rest of the episode wondering what happened but trying not to act on her impulse to call him and leave obsessive messages on his machine. Then she runs into one of his friends and, although she tries to avoid leaving the angry message on the friend, she ends up discussing the breakup with him. She wants to know why guys disappear like that. The friend says there is no good way to break up with someone and ends up admitting that it's because girls get scary when you try to break up with them.

So Carrie goes on a rant about how women don't get all psycho unless the guy treats her like shit. They want a breakup that is respectful and honors what they had together. She ends with that quote above.

I don't often agree with Carrie, but in this case, I'm 100% behind her. I want to be treated respectfully and if the relationship is going to end, I want him to do it in a way that honors what we had together. Of course, in order for him to do that, he would have to have been honest about what we had together in the first place. I keep wanting to believe that he was, but I just can't wrap my brain around someone feeling the way he *said* he did and then treating that person the way he treated me. So I have to conclude, in the absence of any further evidence, that he didn't.

And I hate making conclusions without proper information, so that leads me back to appearing obessed by staking out his driveway for 4 hours waiting for him to come home from work to confront him, when I just wanted an answer to "why".

i dunno why my pic won't show up here. i hate being faceless :(.

one of my lovers is like this. it freaked me out the first time he did it. less so each time, but still.

it really is bec he gets overwhelmed by stress (not generally related to our relationship) and just /can't/ communicate. but i still am always trying to decide whether that behavior is just somethg i can't cope with.

does your ex have ADD?

when i read how u left him, being unwilling to put up with this, i felt like you were so much more together than i.

then, later, when you wrote about how doing that was difficult for you, and was an attempt to break an old pattern of trying for too long to support ppl to heal, rather than acknowledging unworkableness, i felt like we are on the same path.

virtual hugz,

-- zz from okc, who doesn't swing by lj very often.

I don't know if he has ADD or not. He never said, and I wasn't with him long enough to detect the signs on my own.

I can believe that some people get overwhelmed by stress. I'm a very strong introvert and I tend to hide when I get stressed. After too many days at work in a row, I will spend the next day or several in my room, not leaving except to eat and use the bathroom, avoiding social activity.

It's the 2 weeks of absolutely no contact to someone he professed to love that doesn't make sense to me. He is either lying or his mental problems are so large that they interfere with his ability to function in society. Either way, not someone I should tie myself too.

But it still doesn't stop me from wanting to now which it is.

Even today, I am *still* angry and bitter about how this ended and I can't seem to let go of that. I have finally stopped obsessing about tracking him down, but I am still plagued with a random thought of him from out of nowhere that sparks a rage for not having this question answered.

Oh, and I see your pic.

i figured how to get the pic to work after i posted :).

i think u & i are a lot alike, in how we react to this behavior. not knowing, not communicating, drives me bonkers too :/.

my guy thinks he is doing so much better bec now when he 'hides' (he uses the same word as you, in a different context :) he texts me once a day. but his texts say things like, 'i'll call u tonight. really!'. and then he doesn't.

he does care about me a lot, but he is also very closed-off emotionally, which i find frustrating. i think that's not unrelated.

the disappearing always makes me think he doesn't want to be lovers anymore (last time i even put an ad on craigslist to replace him). and he just can't see why i think that, when he's told me it isn't true.

so, here u can see what it would have been like if u hadn't dumped his ass :/.

Yeah, glad I did. Although, technically, since he just never returned any of my messages, one might say he dumped me :-)

I had a boyfriend a couple of years ago who kept pulling the disappearing act, blaming it on being busy with school, but I never developed any strong emotional attachment to him, and he never claimed to love me. So it was just someone would ask me how he was doing, and I would realize that I hadn't actually talked to him in a couple of weeks.

That didn't hurt me like this one did, but I still ended up breaking up with him because, in every practical sense, we were *not* dating. I never saw him, I never talked to him, neither of us were a priority to each other, and we had no strong emotional attachment - any more than a friend. We just *weren't* dating, regardless of what we were calling it.

So I called him up and said "look, I like you and all, but we're not actually dating, so let's just call this relationship what it is. When you have time for me, give me a call and we'll try it again". He tried to get me to change my mind, but he never did attempt to make me more of a priority, so we remain casual friends who occasionally see each other at parties.

Seriously, do I have a sign over my head that says "Assholes Wanted, Apply Within" or something?

Don't let thing rattle your self-confidence! You live, you learn. I've been so impressed with your brains, your level-headedness, your strength, and your great values. The guy is the loser here for what he threw away.

Cheers,

Alan M.

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Joreth

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