I don’t talk about my relationships here ’cause that’s not my thing, but there’s a lesson in this. And I feel like I should do some actual writing here once in a while, like one of my favorite writers is doing on her awesome new blog. Some time back, I posted Alicia Keys’ “Lesson Learned” and didn’t offer up much of an explanation as to why the song meant so much to me…
About two years ago, me and my boyfriend of four-and-a-half years at the time broke up. There wasn’t any one reason: growing apart, loss of trust and things of that nature. It was, is, the longest relationship I’ve been in and it taught me a lot. However, there was infidelity on his end (hence the loss of trust), emotionally and somewhat physically. I still don’t really know the whole story. Losing him hurt like nothing ever hurt before and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bring myself to hold conversations with him right after we ended it. It was too easy to cry afterward. Why put myself through that?
A little after we officially broke up—it seemed like we’d been in the process of breaking up for months—he started dating another girl, three years younger than him. Of course I was crushed. He was the love of my life and I wasn’t his I guess, or I was and then I wasn’t, and I had to come to terms with that.
Though we kept in contact over the next few years, he never talked about his new girl. Every time I would ask, “How’s The Girl?” he’d offer vague replies like “She’s fine.” This went on for two years. During this time, he apologized for his behavior when we were together, and for hurting me. He was remorseful and he couldn’t believe some of the things he did as a boy, not yet a man. I slowly allowed myself not to hate him. I always thought I was the (almost) perfect girlfriend—I tried to be anyway—but this only made it more hurtful when it came time to part ways. I hadn’t done anything wrong… except I snooped a bit because I had tried to communicate to no avail. Okay, that was wrong… But he was the flirty type and I was the curious type and those two types don’t quite mix.
Which brings me to now. A few weeks ago, he calls me to tell me that he and his girl are having problems, and that he doesn’t think they’ll last. She’s been unfaithful, it seems. I offer an ear. He relays that on more than one occasion he’s thought that he possibly made a mistake with us (he made many. we made many). How could she do this to him? Can’t she see she’s making a mistake? I tell him she has to see on her own. Just like he did. He doesn’t know what to do, feel. He’s lost. I don’t know what else to do but listen and say it’ll be all right. But I’m saying it’ll be all right to someone who had once made me all wrong. He tells me he’s about to talk to her about how to proceed with the relationship but that he’s doubtful it’ll sustain. He’ll call me back. He doesn’t.
So the next day I phone him to make sure everything’s okay, ask how it went. They’d broken up. I listen.
A week or so later, we’re at a mutual friend’s new apartment and he tells me The Girl is engaged to the guy she’d been unfaithful with. He can’t believe it.
A couple of weeks later, he finds out she’s getting married literally in a few days…shortest engagement ever? As much as I see he’s trying to brush it off, I know it hurts terribly. I know because…well, I know.
One day a close girlfriend of mine who’s very aware of the situation asks me: “Why are you helping him when he did the same thing to you?” I don’t really have an answer except that I cannot hate him. I will not. All the time that I’d been listening to him and offering advice, yes it did occur to me that this was karma (it occurred to him too) and that perhaps he was being hypocritical. How could he be hurt by the same actions that he hurt me with? Some of his feelings—his disgust with her behavior, not being able to talk to her at all—echoed my sentiments about him. So at times it did feel weird. Why was I even listening? Should I not have? But the past is past and I’ve forgotten how to be resentful toward him anymore. We’re just friends with a beautiful thing that turned sordid but is beautiful still. Yes, I was burned but I called it a lesson learned. I gather he does now, too.
“Every time I would ask, ‘How’s The Girl?’” A man will never answer that question because we feel talking about the girl to an ex is a bit rude, especially if the ex is single. It’s like rubbing your relationship in her face. But if she’s boo’d up then it’s open field because you feel it’s less disrespectful.
Overall your scenario sounds like an old blog I did pre-dot com where I spoke on this philosophy that “Roles change every other relationship.” Basically if you were the heartbreaker in last relationship, you’ll be the heart broken in next, and vice versa. He was “dominant” in yours, now he was the “passive” in the next.
As for your helping him out, eh, tricky, slippery slope
re: helping out, I guess it depends what kind of relationship you have with the person
It’s interesting that he called you to talk about the problems he was having with his girl, but you never really talked about her when things were “fine” with them.
I don’t think it matters whether you should or shouldn’t have listened because something inside you felt compelled to and like you said the past is the past. I do agree with Naked that it can be a slippery slope. But it seems listening to him helped you heal on many levels. There’s a bit of vindication knowing that he now can truly understand what you went through during your breakup…karma indeed.
This is a hard situation and it’s like on the one hand you want to be the mature person in the situation and on the other hand it’s so hard to hear about someone that you loved so much being with someone that they now love so much. It’s a double-edge sword. The other thing that’s similar and just as difficult is watching someone you like and have built time into trying to be with them, enter into a relationship quickly and easily with someone else. It leaves you with that same feeling of “what was so wrong with me?”
Damn this reminds me of the song “Nikki” by the dream but on the guy end(you should listen if u never heard). Your a good girlfriend I can see, to help him out I respect that 100%. But for him damn I feel bad for dude, he thought he was doing something by moving on, it catches up to all of us. Mine should be coming soon