Monday dinner and ramble

We're having a perfectly normal conversation when mom puts her finger on her cheek and says,

Mom: Your hair doesn't look good like that.
A.: Here we go again.
Mom: It just doesn't. It's just not a good look for you.

The finger on the cheek was natural enough, but it served to remind me of this super-creepy guy I went out with a couple of months ago. The creepiest thing about him, at least at the time of the date, was when a question came to him, he would get a fakish look of epiphany of his face and put his finger on his cheek to further communicate the epiphany. But I digress.

Mom: Why didn't you stay friends?

I shrugged. Mom doesn't really have the patience for complicated answers, so I may as well have launched into an explanation and let her cut me off, but I didn't want to risk it. The truth is, even though I have no regrets about the fact that the breakup happened, I have regrets about how it happened; I wish it had happened in a way where either of us had maintained more personal integrity.

The only way for two people to have a 'good' breakup is, when either party recognizes that the relationship is doomed, is to have the anatomy to end things, no matter how enmeshed "things" are. That did not happen. What happened, as both of us individually sensed that there was no way we could be happy together, was that we each took a less direct path that led to more resentment. I tried to suppress the truth and pretend to myself that I could be happy, but this suppression manifested itself. I didn't do it on purpose; I didn't say, "I'm going to resent this person because of the things I have to give up for us to be together." I said, "I guess those things matter less than being together," but my subconscious wasn't having it; my subconscious was taking it out on him. He, meanwhile, was also done with the sacrifices he felt he was making. I could be wrong, but I think he did consciously know that he was done, but wasn't willing to act on it, so he started being a dick to inspire me to end it. Which I was tempted to do, but, not realizing he was doing it with a purpose, I thought I owed to him, instead, to explain that the dickish behavior wasn't working for me. He also tried to set me up for dickish behavior of my own so he would have a solid excuse for ending the relationship, but eventually he had no choice but to man up and make his intentions known. At that point, there was plenty of bitterness to go around--even more so on my end from the attempted set-up, which convinced me beyond deniability that I'd been dating a complete man-child who was entirely devoid of anatomy and incapable of taking any responsibility for himself. The bitterness on his side from feeling that he'd given too much to the relationship, together with the bitterness on my side from having understood the gutless wonder that this person I thought I'd cared for turned out to be, squelched any potential for friendship, which would have been a bad idea anyway.

There, mom. That's why we're not friends.