Having supportive friends, and more importantly girlfriends, during a time of emotional turmoil and heartbreak are key. After multiple retellings of the sordid story between A. and myself to various girlfriends I was able to find some peace in the situation. Although there will never be any formal closure between the two of us, I was feeling better after having my feelings acknowledge as rational and some affirmation that his behaviour was not only all-round disappointing but also harsh and disrespectful.
I found that being able to discuss it over with girlfriends, and even Mr. Intellectual, proved to be a rather cathartic exercise. When Mr. Intellectual and I parted ways romantically I was all alone to wander through the experience. I’m typically a painfully private individual and what I felt cut too deep to put into words, let alone talk about with my girlfriends. At the time we weren’t especially close and my state of depression had further isolated me from them. It has only been in the last two years of being single that I have really reconnected with them and made a concerted effort to enrich the relationships I have with the women in my life.
Just when I thought I had found some peace and recovered from the anxiety and turmoil A.’s behaviour had caused in my life I was served up with another shock. He stopped showing up for our Friday night pick-up hockey games and I finally got up the courage to casually ask the organizer if he’d heard from him and why he didn’t show. It turns out the he had emailed sometime in the past week or so and said that he wouldn’t be coming to any more games without any explanation. It was then that I was talking to our interim goalie, a student employee at A’s office and a casual friend of his whom I had met several times before at various pick up games in the past 6 months. Three weeks prior he had mentioned to this person that his permanent managerial position was finally coming through after months of speculation of when it would happen, and it just so happens that the permanent position was in a different region. This would mean a 45 minute commute or so, versus his current 5 minute commute to the office, from the house he just purchased and closed on.
Hearing that news from the interim goalie was like a punch in the gut and I was breathless and confused again. At the time A. was telling his buddy this news we were supposedly still on great terms and things were still good between us. I had even asked him occasionally if he’d heard anything about the permanent position and he said there was no news. He directly lied to my face without batting an eyelash, and the week it becomes public fact he disappears on me. It left me reeling and wondering just what I knew about this man I was supposedly dating. I felt like I knew absolutely nothing about him and I couldn’t believe a word he had said to me. All that peace I had found from the confusion was thrown into question and I am back to square one.
I draw some small comfort from the fact that really, this isn’t my issue- it is his. I can’t control peoples actions or reactions towards me, I can only choose how I respond. After a week of anxiety and contemplation over these baffling events, and a near daily revelation of more information (like the fact that he’ll be going to the East Coast for 3 weeks training in the very near future), I’ve come to the conclusion that although it hurts, he’s done me a favour in the long run. I don’t want to be with a man who is a passive-aggressive coward.
I've come to the conclusion that even when you think you know someone, you really don’t.
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