06.15.07
On being told, “I don’t love you anymore.”
My friend Sam is trying to break up with his girlfriend. Correction - he has been trying to break up with his girlfriend since January. We all the know the cycle: He takes a stand, she cries and begs for forgiveness, and he, being torn, lonely, scared, unwilling to be the “bad guy”, takes her back. Lather, rinse, repeat every couple days. “I’m going to have to do it,” he told me recently, “I’m going to have to come right out and tell her I don’t love her anymore.”
He did, and this time the break up seems to be sticking.
Sometimes, I think about laying it all out on the table with Sebastian. How I feel like he’s not interested in keeping up this “relationship,” like he’s moving on, and if he would just tell me this, then I could move on too. It is cruel to keep me benched when he never intends to play with me. I would tell him that I love him that I would re-commit to working things out if only I knew that he was committed in the same way too.
But I don’t. Of course, part of it is that I don’t ever ever want to hear those words come out of his mouth - “I don’t love you anymore” or any other iteration from “you’re not the One,” to even “I don’t want a relationship with anyone right now.” But, mostly it is because, deep down, I already know it. Everytime I listen to his stories and don’t hear a word about missing me. Everytime I check my phone and he hasn’t called. Everytime. All the time.
I don’t need that final kick in the heart to know that this is not the kind of relationship I want. No, I will not give him the satisfaction of telling him just how much I still love him and think of him and that I would be willing to forgive any manner of prior sins to still be with him. And it is not out of spite, or defensiveness, but out of respect for myself, and knowing my own worth. I know when it is time to hold and when it is time to fold. And this to me feels like it is time to fold. And I really don’t need him to spell it out for me.