Tonight I found out my ex (boyfriend of 2.5 years) is in love with someone else. Six months after we broke up. What is this? The opening scene of Under the Tuscan Sun?
I described my feelings to a friend after this recent discovery as a dish shattering on the ground - startling, unsettling, messy, but not the end of the world. Why? Because although it’s an inconvenience, you can sweep it up and move on. Just like he did with me.
So here’s what I know quantitatively.
It took him seven months from when we met to call me his girlfriend. Six months from that point to say he loved me. Another eight months from that point for him to commit to and take a trip with me. And four more months from then to remember my birthday (sort of).
The best of friends tell me “Don’t compare it.” “Each relationship is different.” But I say - YEAH RIGHT. Standing in a room breaking up with someone who was never quite wrong, but also never quite right makes you feel sick. It make you feel like either you’re dodging a bullet or throwing away the jackpot lottery ticket. It makes you psychoanalyze and second guess every. single. interaction. For clues that what you’re doing is right or what you’re doing is wrong. And in the end you find an inward peace, and you do it. You end it. And then you reap NO immediate benefits. You become single, the bad guy, the quitter, the one who had the audacity to think you could find and deserve better. You revert to a life of no one to tell your mundane happenings to and a flicker of hope that it’ll be worth it in the end.
…and then you see him do for someone else the very things he would not do for you. And it hits you like crushing bricks that you weren’t wrong. You were, in fact, only getting 75% of what he had to give. But worse, someone else quickly earned 100%.
That word. It cuts deeper than an insult in the sense that it means you just didn’t matter. Not even worth mustering a positive or negative emotion about. In the aftermath of being the girl who has an ex who loves someone new and seems to want the whole world to know it, I feel insignificant. The ground we covered with patience (mostly on my part), they sprinted through. So what’s the meaning then in our time? The warm up lap? The pregame? The poorly done and mostly unnecessary prequel to the story that actually ended up mattering? I’m not sure, but it stings.
So here’s what I want to know now - Where’s my thank you? Where are my kudos? Where’s my badge of bravery for saying what he was too afraid to say to set us both free so that he might find love and I might also…
Wait. I guess this isn’t a romcom and I don’t get that. But I do get the self-assurance that 75% is not 100%, even if you round up. Being mostly happy or even content, is not deep and lasting love. And if ever you feel insignificant, you are not. You are brave and strong, and know your own worth. And it’s okay if that is your happy ending.
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