Love Prizes

Since my very recent break up, I have received some unsolicited, well meaning, but misguided relationship advice regarding “winning back” an ex. Again, I understand that this advice is coming from a place or caring and not wanting to see me hurting, and for that I am appreciative. It is an idea oft touted in magazines marketed to women and it is absolutely rubbish.

My first objection is to the notion of “winning back” someone, which suggests that rather than thinking, feeling human being, my previous relationship was with a prize. We met, we became friends, we fell in love, love ended; I did not enter a contest and correctly answer a skill testing question.

If you have read any of these articles or been the recipient of this type of advice, you will notice there are always steps to follow. Essentially, it is a how to guide for becoming a manipulative, disingenuous person, with helpful tips about how not to be yourself. I am all for personal growth and firmly believe constantly striving to become the best version of one’s self is every person’s duty as a member of civilization. Pretending to be some outdated and skewed view of the “ideal” mate is not the same as growing. It presupposes that all men want the same thing in a female which implies both you and your former mate are one dimensional characters. It does not even take into account the actual problems your individual relationship had.

Problems, of course the relationship had problems or it would not have ended. That is not to say that we didn’t try to work through problems, but change is very hard, human emotions are complicated and no matter how much you love someone, you cannot erase their past experiences or the beliefs that developed before you met. You cannot change another person; you can only work on yourself and your ability to accept someone as they are. Believe me; I have learned this through some very bad choices. Experience may be a harsh teacher, but an effective one. If you require someone to change fundamentally who they are in order to be with you, the relationship is doomed.

What about love? No matter how much you still feel for a past lover, once they have stopped loving you, the end has come. You cannot make someone love you, but you can definitely make someone hate you, pity you (not a positive thing at all) or have contempt for you, which is what might happen if you try to employ tactics to “win back” your ex.

Diary of a Break Up

Suddenly, albeit with plenty of signs pointing in this direction, I find myself alone again. I am forlorn, but relatively low-key. I am not rehashing every nuance of my relationship in my head nor to my friends. I am not waking up at 2 a.m. with fists clenched. I have not touched a drop of alcohol. It occurs to me that, after all the practice I have had, I have finally become better at break ups.

The End – Day 1 The Final Conversation

I accept what I am hearing, no bargaining, and no attempts to prolong the inevitable. Yes, I exhibit a cringe inducing bout of self pity. Hopefully it was brief. Not my most dignified moment but I think that some allowance needs to be made to anyone who hears “I don’t love you anymore”, even if, deep down, they have known this for a while. Mercifully, I don’t begin a tirade of “you done me wrongs”. I go for a walk to watch fireworks while he packs some things, it is 10:00 p.m. Canada Day

Day 2 The Evacuation

The plan is for him to come over after work and pack the rest of his belongings. The idea of enduring an entire day of waiting for this final knife to the heart and then watch its proceedings is more than I can bear. I get some boxes and bags together and pack all his things between crying jags. When he arrives I say little and sit in the other room crying.

Day 3 The Reckoning

In a prescient moment, I had quit all social media (and re-watched 500 Days of Summer) earlier in the day before that final conversation so at least I don’t have to answer the questions of the morbidly curious on the change of my relationship status. “Hi, I know I haven’t bothered with you in quite a while, to be honest I had totally forgotten about you, but schadenfreude is thicker than water so I am going to ask you all about your heartbreak because I’m bored and in need of some light entertainment. If you'd be so kind, please, reveal your pain so that I may feel better about myself.” I’m too old for this crap. I am also curious as to how long it will take for anyone to notice I am missing.

I begin to tell some people, only a select 3. I don’t speak ill of him that I am aware of. I don’t discuss the past year of our relationship and how it has been spiraling toward this inevitable end. I don’t mention Valentine’s Day or my birthday and what dismal affairs they were.  Mostly, I listen. I also rearrange my apartment. I purge crap that should have been binned a while ago. I dismantle the room he spent so much time ignoring me in, in front of the laptop, headphones on, and I set up my home gym. I have the space now. I also move clothing around so I am not staring at empty drawers and closet space. Going through old papers I find a bunch of his pay stubs. I put them aside, and mull over what to do with them. Does he really need them? Do I drop them off? I download Sloane Crosley’s “How Did You Get This Number” from the library, buy Caitlin Moran’s “How to Be A Woman” for Kindle from Amazon, and dash for the bus. Teaching kickboxing feels pretty therapeutic.

Day 4 Getting On With Getting Over

I wake up late, read in bed and try to convince myself that some laziness is perfectly acceptable given the circumstances. I haven’t touched my bicycle in a week. I know I should ride or workout or do something both physical and productive. I dig the invitation to his cousin’s girlfriend’s baby shower out of the garbage, peruse the gift registry and buy the first thing I can almost afford. Not the cheapest, not the most expensive but at least it qualifies for free shipping. The note wishes them joy and apologizes for not being able to make the shower without explaining why – his job, not mine. I look at the t shirt his mother had brought back from a vacation for me, one that had been sitting in a bag with his gifts in the apartment for several days but he had not bothered to give me. He left it on table when he departed for the last time. I think about how it would have been a nice gesture if he had also left the bottle of rum she brought back. 

I send his mother a text thanking her for the gift, apologizing for not being able to attend the shower and signing off “best wishes” without mentioning the break up. I am trying to be mature about all this, and acknowledging gifts and invitations is the proper, grown up thing to do. Besides, I don't wish anybody ill. I have a few moments where I think I’m going to begin crying again, but I don’t. I go through old contact information, address an envelope to him care of his father’s house, put the pay stubs inside without any personal notes and walk to the post office. On the way there I congratulate myself on the 3 km walk and the fact that I did not use the pay stubs as an excuse to see or communicate with him. I am getting better at this, I think. I walk home; make a smoothie and a salad, then walk to the grocery store. I convince myself all this walking counts as exercise.

I have a disagreement, through text messaging (the worst possible medium for anything other than arranging to meet at the restaurant at 8:00 p.m.), with a friend who was trying to cheer me up. I know that her attempts to point out that others are having a rough go of things too is her way of telling me it is not the end of the world and that I shouldn't sit around mopping, but my feelings are still raw and she used the words "don't feel sorry for yourself". No matter how 'well' I am handling things, the person I love has left because he no longer feels for me and that hurts. Mostly I am annoyed precisely because I was taking some pride in the fact that I was approaching the break up exactly with the awareness that plenty of people in the world are enduring much greater hardships and that, though I was sad, I was not 'devastated'. A word I am embarrassed to admit I have used in the past. Victims of natural disasters, war or violent crimes experience devastation and even many of them refuse to feel sorry for themselves. 

That night I finally watch “Her”, a movie he would not watch with me, and am both compelled and unnerved by the story. I shed a few slow tears but that doesn’t ‘really’ count as crying, right? I decide that I am going to communicate either in person or in full paragraphs from now on. I allow one bad thought about him to cross my mind; he had terrible taste in films and zero appreciation for literature, something that usually works as an anaphrodisiac on me. I have a friend who believes that, if they truly want to accurately match people, the questionnaires for dating websites should include favourite books, films and music. I think he’s right, they reveal how your mind works.

Day 5 She's Not Lost Control

I think about the past and all the yoyo relationships I have had where break ups and getting back together (and break ups and getting back together) had happened more times than became prudent to count. I think about the few break ups when I have used items left behind, or pre-planned social events as an excuse to see an ex. Red hot embarrassment sears through me as I reflect on my less than exemplary handling of complex human emotions in the past. I realize I haven’t cried (movie tears don't count) in two days, that I am sad but strangely calm. I wonder if this is just denial setting in, but I don’t think so. And I hope. I hope really, really hard that this calmer, more philosophical, more mature version of myself stays in control, that I don’t begin sending reams of abusive or wistful emails, letters or small forget-me-not gifts through the mail. That I don’t humiliate myself trying to reestablish a relationship that was not working for anyone. It is 2:00 p.m. on a sunny Saturday; I think I’ll go for a bike ride.