The Worst Form of Deceit

I can’t imagine a worse form of deceit than being cheated on since the first day he met you by someone who claimed to love you. I exposed him for the liar that he was, but I still cannot move on from this unhealthy obsession of knowing what happened after I exposed him. Did she break up with him? Or is he so good at manipulation that he talked her into staying? Exactly what happened?

Meanwhile, I am unmotivated and not enjoying my last year of college as I would have liked. I have all of this work piling up, and all I want to do every night is go out drinking. I don’t, of course, but I am drinking a lot more than any other year. It’s nice to sit down to a beer and just relax and forget that all of these emotions are there. I fear that I may be developing something unhealthy rather gradually, but I am determined to keep everything under control. Maybe this is the first time my world has actually been turned upside down and inside out by someone who I really cared about. It will be a while before I bounce back from this one, but I am determined to bounce back.

Imagine

Imagine dating someone for more than a year and not knowing that he’s been seeing someone else at the same time.

Imagine thinking that you have a loving and wonderful relationship with this person, still not knowing that he’s been seeing someone else at the same time, also pursuing this loving and wonderful relationship with her.

Imagine having to wake up at 7am to a text message from a girl you’ve never heard of but who has heard of you, and she claims that she’s been seeing your boyfriend the entire time you’ve been seeing him too.

Imagine hearing this girl tell you that your boyfriend has been talking about you to her in the past tense, as if you were his ex-girlfriend, for the past year.

Imagine having to read 20 e-mails forwarded to you by this girl in which not only is there explicit content but also sweet, sentimental things that you’ve heard being said to you also.

Imagine finding out this double life that your boyfriend’s been leading and having absolutely no idea how he pulled it off so well for more than a year.

Imagine finding out that your boyfriend also told this girl that he loved her and wanted to marry her, just like he had told you.

Imagine feeling like you’re the only person who didn’t know this was going on for almost a year.

Imagine having to be the one to tell her at 7am that she’s been played by the world’s most brilliant liar.

I had to tell her… It fucking sucked a big fat one. Why do I feel bad for something that I didn’t do?? This was his little sick game, and yet I feel so much sympathy for her and I wish I knew if she was ok. I know she probably has all these emotions she has to deal with since she was still in the relationship… I tried to warn her as best as I could. I’m trying to play it off like this whole thing isn’t affecting me since I’d already broken up with him and was starting to get over him, but I can’t help but feel depressed still. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it was this gross violation of trust. Maybe it was knowing that the last year has been a sham and I was the butt of a sick joke. Maybe it’s something else. Whatever it is, it’s still eating me from the inside out, and it fucking sucks. This was so fucked up.

Still More Afterthoughts

Sometimes I think of Spencer and all I wish is for him to suddenly appear in front of me so that I can yell, kick, and scream at him and tell him everything negative that I think of him.

Other times I think of Spencer and all I wish is for him to suddenly appear in front of me so that I can give him the love that I’ve been yearning to give him all these months. And for him to give me the love that I remember receiving from him.

Sometimes I wonder how much of Spencer is a culmination of my imagination in the last year and in the last month. I wonder how much of Spencer is an idea and how much of what I think is the reality.

I am frequently reminded of the things we used to share together. The happiness and the laughter. You know, before it all went down the drain. I think about how much we both enjoyed eating different kinds of food, watching TV, and just mindlessly sitting around. Somehow I get the feeling that I won’t be doing the same with Dylan. For one, he has already revealed a restricted diet — strictly seafood, no meat, not even chicken. This makes for a difficult selection of meals and restaurants. Food is so important to me. That was one thing I shared with both Spencer and Ethan. We all liked good food, and we would all do anything to get it.

I know food is such a small aspect of the bigger picture, but it’s things like these that make me yearn for the better days with Spencer. Sometimes I want to bite his head off, and other times I just want to be happy with him. Today is the latter.

Lesson #49203921

So a month has passed since I last updated. Spencer and I maintained an amicable friendship until the situation evolved into a confusing state of “maybe we’re back together and could try this again.” I was barely at his apartment for an hour before he told me that he couldn’t be in a relationship with me right now. That he loved me and wanted to be with me, but he just couldn’t be in a relationship right now. I was furious. Why couldn’t he have told me this earlier instead of stringing me along for the last six weeks? Well, he was probably confused too. Nevertheless, I stormed out of his apartment with my belongings. I left him on the street after hearing, “I just can’t be with you for the next two weeks.” And I said, “Then don’t ever be with me!” For the next two weeks, I texted him nasty messages and basically destroyed what little self-esteem and hope he had left for us. The third day I started to feel like shit. Not only because I had said so many degrading things to him but because I realized that I had lost him forever. And I started to think of all the things I wish I’d said to him or done for him. I was hoping that when he came back, we could give the relationship a second chance and I could fix whatever I could before we broke up for good. I wanted to salvage whatever was left, but his decision to end the relationship seemed so absolute, like there was no room for me to do anything. And it hurt like hell for the next two days.

I texted him asking him all sorts of questions until it occurred to me that when he said he still loved me, he might not have meant that he was still IN love with me. And so I asked him if he was still in love with me, and he said he wasn’t sure. So I asked him if he thought he could ever fall back in love with me, and he said he wasn’t sure but he’d like to. And that really was the cherry on top of this breakup sundae. If I’d known that he wasn’t in love with me anymore, maybe I wouldn’t have been so confused the last six weeks or held out so much hope for us. And so I realized that my heart had been broken by the very man who promised he wouldn’t break my heart.

The world seems like a different place after your heart has been broken. I seriously believe that you haven’t truly lived until your heart has been broken. It really puts a lot of things into perspective. I wrote Spencer this long e-mail on Friday, which was probably my worst day, and thanked him for being a loving and caring boyfriend while I was in Europe. I apologized for my mistakes and for being a difficult person to deal with over the summer. I said that I hoped he would somehow fall back in love with me some day and that I could get another chance to show him how much he meant to me.

He hasn’t replied, although I received a text from him last night that he would reply this week. He was still very much in pain it seemed.

I don’t know how we got to this point. I think this relationship was just one big misunderstanding and miscommunication. I think maybe if we had tried to be more loving towards one another and communicated our feelings, needs, and wants to one another, we would’ve been more than happy to oblige them for each other. We would’ve done anything for each other, so how did we get here?

Well, it doesn’t matter now anyway. He doesn’t love me anymore, so there is nothing left to salvage from the leftover pieces of this relationship. He doesn’t love me anymore.

Moratorium

Since we last left off, I had decided to end things with Spencer and give him the time and space that he needed to get himself back on track in life. We had also agreed to remain friends. This, however, did not work out. In the last 2 weeks, we’ve exchanged texts and e-mails both acknowledging that the relationship was over and that we both needed to improve ourselves before we could come back and try again. We also told each other that we loved each other and still wanted to be together — all while remaining friends. Bad idea. Because we had never taken a chunk of time to heal and to move on from the relationship, it was impossible for us to be friends. We couldn’t move from being lovers to friends overnight, and that’s understandable. I still had very strong feelings for him, which I expressed to him in a drunken string of texts a few nights ago. He was receptive and said he understood but needed time for himself to get better before we could try again. But in the mean time, he refused to discuss any of the issues with me regarding the downfall of our relationship. I needed answers and to know what he was thinking before I could start the healing process and move on. He couldn’t give them to me and avoided the issues to avoid getting hurt. He said he didn’t know what the answers until he got through therapy. But eventually, over the course of the conversation, I realized that it wasn’t that he needed therapy, it was that we were simply too incompatible to ever work — even with the therapy. We had different ways of handling conflicts and resolutions.

Finally, we fought our last fight yesterday afternoon. Our conversations had fallen into the old pattern of fighting and insulting and hurting that finally I decided that we couldn’t be friends if we still had feelings for one another. He, on the other hand, was hoping that I would still be in his life and be his friend while he figured things out for himself and then if I was still available when he healed, we could try again — all while ignoring and avoiding the pre-existing issues for which I resented him. And I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t pretend like everything was ok and that we were just friends now. So I told him that I couldn’t be friends with him anymore because I needed to move on and get over him. And he said ok because he had no other choice really. He said he was also tired of the fighting and he knew that we’d been falling apart since before he’d left the city 3 weeks ago. And I said I don’t think he could ever give me the emotional support that I needed and that we were ultimately looking for very different things in a relationship. And this relationship could never work in the long run. And finally, when I said all that, and he said all that, I realized it was really over. I realized that we were just too incompatible, with or without each other’s personal hang ups or issues. We just couldn’t agree on what the next step was or how we were going to get there as a team. He didn’t want to be on a team, he told me. He said, “I don’t need any support.” And I realized then that I could never be a part of his life the way I’d yearned to in the last few months.

So, I deleted him from my phone, contacts, chat list, facebook, and everything else digital that I figured I would bump into him again. I still need to pick up my belongings from his apartment, but that won’t be for another 3 weeks, so we’ll see about that. And I can’t remember his number from the top of my head, so there won’t be the danger of drunk dialing or texting him. Ever. I need this moratorium period to get over him for good this time. I need to move on and find someone who can give what I need and provide me with the support in life that I need. And someone who I would love to do the same for. And so does he.