Obligatory Break-Up Post
Log Opened 2010/09/01: Rob and Melissa
5:36pm Rob: Meeting at SWIHA still?
6:53pm Melissa: Crap. It would appear not. Sorry. :(
7:08pm Rob: Lol yeah. No worries. I was just hoping to have that money for the birthday weekend :) When can we get together?
7:10pm Melissa: (she tries to call)
7:13pm Rob: In class.. also can’t answer calls on this phone.
7:13pm Melissa: Get on google talk?
7:20pm Melissa: I remembered that. Get on gchat as soon as you can? Kthx. :)
7:20pm Rob: Can’t on phone I don’t think. If you prefer to email that should work. :)
7:26pm Rob: K :)
7:28pm Melissa: Ok. I think you’re an asshole and I don’t owe you any money so forget about that. I threw out your facewash and if you want your coat we can swap stuff sometime. Until then, don’t talk to me, don’t talk to my roommates, and don’t even think about attending their wedding. You’re just another loser I dated for two months who doesn’t have his shit together and is totally unrespectable.
7:52pm Rob: I gave you 150 or more for gas and whatnot on our way back, of which you paid me $120. You said you were going to pay me for the other 30 at another time and that was our agreement. Your view toward me does not change that. Also, you had no right to throw anything of mine away. I do need that coat back and we had agreed to exchange today. You could have told me you wouldn’t be here, and we could have discussed this before.
8:11pm Melissa: Hey? Fuck off.
Sometimes it’s useful to vilify an ex as part of the healing process and I understand that. It doesn’t make it any less hurtful or offensive to hear. I never knew that she had such a scornful, bitter side. I suppose I had seen hints of it in her passive-aggressive approach to problems and her propensity toward anger and rage. I think what I can learn from this is that it is the undercurrents you have to watch out for in the character of a person you haven’t known for long enough to recognize meaningful patterns.
In her voicemail she said that I “treated [her] poorly” and she doesn’t “think [I] deserve” the money that I loaned her for gas on the way back from Michigan. I have to wonder, with such misplaced judgments, if her evaluation of her ex-boyfriend Joth was misguided, and if his general avoidance of her was actually a reasonable move on his part. The interesting thing to me here is that she is doing to me exactly what she claims he did to her… which includes dodging the responsibility of an exchange of goods, throwing away of items that were mine, and arbitrarily deciding not to pay out on a financial commitment that she made in good faith. The cycle comes full circle, I guess, if in fact Joth is guilty of anything other than falling prey to her manipulative wiles.
She says that I “treated her poorly” as quoted above, and I’d love to know how she’d choose to back that statement up. She knew exactly what she was getting into with me. I’m a broke college student following my calling to healing. I do hippie stuff and try to surround myself with people who are non-violent and spiritually oriented. This is the only attack that she is able to forge against me, which is an attack on the fundamentals of my character. I don’t value the same things that she does. Money ISN’T the most important indicator of success in life to me.
To be clear, we decided to break up because I wanted to continue our polyamorous relationship, and she wanted to move into a monogamous situation. I don’t think either of us should settle for less than what we want in a relationship, or in general, and she agreed with that. The weekend prior to our break-up, she went to California with her roommates. I had been thinking of breaking up already, and I needed time to consider it, so I chose not to go with them. Before she left, she wrote me an incredibly vicious email attacking every potential flaw in me she could think of, to which I responded in as kind a way as possible.
Upon return home from California she responded to my email. Excerpt: “I am sorry for being so hurtfully judgmental of you. You are right--most of the things I said were completely unfair, totally biased, and very undeserved. It was wrong of me to have lashed out at you, someone I care so much about, and love, instead of taking some time to realize that my internal stressors had nothing to do with you at the moment. I am more than a little deeply ashamed at what I have written and what I have done. I took just about anything I could use against you and used it, and then with that same negative mindset started drawing imaginary lines between imaginary dots. I let me constant need for information lead me somewhere where I don't want to be.”
She later says: “I didn't end up bringing my laptop with me to California, so I didn't get to read your email until now. It is much kinder than the responses I framed in my mind, and I thank you for that. :\ I felt I deserved a much harsher response. It makes me all sad again because of how awesome you are and how much you didn't deserve a thing of what I said.”
It is interesting to contrast what she said when she wrote that letter (which was sent on August 14, just 18 days prior to her text) with what she is saying now. It appears to me that she was fumbling over herself in apology, hoping I would forgive her and choose to be in a monogamous relationship with her, while either purposefully concealing her true feelings, or simply being unaware of them. Also a possibility is that she still feels the same way as she wrote in her letter, but is casting the illusion of resentment in order to push me far from her life, to facilitate her healing process. Or maybe she’s just being a bitch so that she doesn’t have to pay the $30 to me? I really hope the latter isn’t the case, because if it is, then I’m clearly the worst judge of character ever.
At first, it seemed like she was my alter ego… I guess the only things we had in common were on the surface. I try to see the best in people and unfortunately it sometimes leaves me blind to their negative qualities. I don’t regret that. I like to think it is one of the few shreds of innocence that still remains in me. We weren’t together for long enough for this to be any kind of major trauma, but my ego still aches for some measure of satisfaction, and thus it is difficult to restrain the impulse to argue with her. It is best that I vent here instead though, rather than feeding what would surely be an ugly cycle.
I don’t care much for this part of being human. The part that demands an eye for an eye. I lived that way for a long time and it’s hard to shut it down. Her tearing into me with vicious remarks, even though untrue, make me want to fight right back and bite into her with all the ugliness I have never called to her attention. Seated there on her pedestal, she is ignorant to her hypocrisy. She condemns behavior and calls it “unrespectable” or “low-class”, and then in the next breath does those very things. I suppose this may be a lesson on judgment - “judge not, lest ye be judged”.
An excerpt from the letter she sent prior to going to California, before we broke up: “I'm an awesome, amazing person and I'm a catch. I'm hot, I'm brilliant, I make good money, I'm loving, and I'm loyal. Etc etc. I do not belong in second place.” I remember blinking a few times when I read that. Second place… where did this idea even come from? I had put her first above everything, even myself in many respects, and she was still unable to recognize that.
In her defense, I think we were operating on very different ideas of what it means to be polyamorous, and I think some confusion may have begun early on. It is my contention that you’re either polyamorous or you aren’t. This means that you are capable of loving or having strong feelings for more than one person. I don’t believe in the philosophy of a “primary”, thereby elevating one particular love above the rest. Love is love, and each one is different. There is not one better or worse. When we were first together, it was just sex and friendship, and we called it being poly. Later she asked to be the primary and to apply a “relationship” label.
In spite of my philosophical disagreement with the idea, I conceded because I thought it would help others to understand the nature of our relationship. It would make it easier to bring in others for play. I did not realize this was something she wanted as a stepping stone into a monogamous relationship. In retrospect it seems underhanded and manipulative, after I had made it clear that I enjoy both loving sexual relationships and the intrigue of fresh conquest. Obviously I had no intention to change my lifestyle.
I think she may have thought that my other relationships were supposed to be purely sexual, and yet could sense my affection for one other in particular, name of Kat. I believe this conflict made her suspicious. She kept saying she didn’t feel like she was getting the whole truth, and that she thought something was going on, in the face of which I continued to clarify the nature of my love for Kat.
I illustrated my point by explaining intention. In romantic love, one generally imagines a long-term scope potentially including variables such as offspring and shared shelter. Friendship on the other hand can be multidimensional, including both sex and love. To me a loving friendship can come and go, because without specific ties people tend to wander apart in their journeys. Paths have a way of reuniting the same as life has a way of coming full circle, and my love-based friendships never lose their strength. We meet again and it’s like the days, months, or years never passed.
In my relationship with Melissa, the archetype of romantic love applied most, because I was giving serious consideration to one day starting a family with her. Kat, while more important to me than words can express, did not (perhaps only due to our history) inspire the same interest. Explaining this to Mel seemed to satisfy her suspicion, even though I made it clear that Kat would always be a part of my life.
As she understood, she said that she wasn’t comfortable with me having emotionally involved sexual relationships. I had at one point told her that sex with Kat was not conditional on emotional involvement, and at another point I said that it was, due to our confusion in definitions. I can understand how this would seem unstable and inconclusive to her, so when she said she wasn’t comfortable with me sleeping with Kat again I wasn’t surprised-but I wasn’t pleased either, because the nature of our relationship was beginning to defy what polyamory means to me.
Following that, she decided without speaking with me first that we would be monogamous moving forward, except if we were both involved in play. Those were her conditions, and she foisted them upon me without warning. I felt like my opinion had become irrelevant to her and I felt completely disrespected. I took some time to digest this turn of events and this brings us to her trip to California, after which we broke up (via email, because she doesn’t like confrontation).
In closing this post, I find myself introducing a new possibility. I had setup an account on one of her laptops that she let me use while I was at her house. I had it setup to automatically sign on once logged in. She could have changed my account password through her administrator account and then logged in to gain access to my FaceBook and other web applications. I have nothing to hide and I’m not sure what it could have been, but I wonder if she might have misunderstood some conversation she decided to snoop? Perhaps this is a lesson in trust and privacy? Heh! Well, passwords are changed. Moving on. So it goes…