So. Riin has decided to end our relationship. Here's the link to her blog entry on it:
I Think I'll Eat Some Cookies
I'm not one to air my dirty laundry in public, either, but I feel I need to respond here in some fashion. So I'll talk here more about my feelings than the specifics that led to this.
Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that we've been having problems, but I have been very willing to work on them. The problem is, this conflict only really got serious six weeks ago. There hasn't been enough time for us to really work things out, and now Riin says she's not interested in trying anymore.
She's convinced that, because we keep fighting, that there's nothing to save. Yet, we have been getting better. Yes, we fight, but the fights have been steadily getting less and less frequent as we've made progress. Problem is, Riin tends to focus on the negative and minimize the positive (she's said so herself), so she sees the fights, but not the progress made.
The problem is, when we do try to discuss problems, it feels really one-sided to me. The discussions make me feel like I am making all the mistakes. Like Riin, I don't want to go into details here, but she, too, has made mistakes. Even though she admits that, it feels like we always end up dicussing what's wrong with me.
Worse, though, is that we never discuss what's right with me... and I know there are things about me that are right. Riin did fall in love with me and stayed in love with me for three years. I can't be all bad.
Now that she's decided to end it, she refuses to talk to me because she knows that, if she tries to explain why she's doing this, she'll end up giving in and agreeing to stay in the relationship. Since she sees nothing but problems in the relationship, she doesn't see it as worth coming back to.
For all of the mistakes I've made, though, I honestly don't think I did anything so bad that justifies ending everything. Even Riin herself said, while we were reading a book she found for me on abusive relationships, that the book wasn't of much use to us because it was written about relationships "a lot more screwed up than ours." Those were her own words. If that's true, then our relationship hasn't sank yet. I think it's premature to abandon ship now.
If I ultimately lose the fight to win her back, I can accept that... but I'm not ready to accept now that the situation is hopeless. I once had a situation with a friend which was ten times worse than this (it was stirred up by rumors started by a bunch of her "friends" until it got way out of control). Today, that person is one of my closest friends in the world. It took us many months, but we finally managed to work it out after a few months apart and a lot of talking.
If that situation was salvageable (one of my friends at the time compared it to World War III :(), certainly this one is.
I've spoken about this to several friends (I wasn't seeking advice, but so many people noticed how down I was yesterday that I finally had to tell them something so they wouldn't worry). Interestingly, they all had virtually the same advice: leave her alone. Most were convinced that, once she calmed down, she'd realize how much she missed me and change her mind. Even those who weren't so sure about that basically said, if there is any hope, you're not going to help by continuing to persue her when she's asked you not to.
The problem is, that's one of my big character flaws. I never could leave a problem unsolved. Even when I know the wisest thing to do is to back off, some part of me just keeps screaming at me that there must be something I can do...
In fact, it's probably that character flaw, more than anything else, that led us to where we are now. I tend to pressure people without even meaning to. When she decided not to move to Canada, she was still in a relationship with me then and wasn't planning to leave. She just didn't want to move here. In my panic (I've been looking forward to "bringing her home" for three years), I lost sight of the fact that she doesn't necessarily have to live here for us to love each other. After all, it was her idea originally to move here, not mine. In the beginning, I was perfectly willing to keep our relationship long distance.
I don't think there's any hope of her moving here anymore. As for whether our relationship can be reestablished, most people seem to think it can. I'm not so sure... but I'm not going to give up. Not yet.
I'm going to take the advice my friends have given me. We'll see where this goes over the next while.
Riin, I can't call you, but you can always call me. If you want to talk about anything, just call. I'm here.
I love you.
I second the motion about it being wise to leave people alone for a while. Not that I'm very experienced in that area. I'm an almost-complete newbie at bothering to try to get chicks.
ReplyDeleteBut you know how I boasted to you several weeks ago that I was going to wish a Happy Valentine's Day to a certain excellent one that I started substituting on a Sunday morning paper route for? Well, I bungled that because when Valentine's Day came, so did _too_ _perfect_ of a _way_ of wishing her one: We had an 18-inch Valentine's Day Snowstorm, during which I started pipe dreaming about how the ideal way to wish her a Happy Valentine's Day would be to sneak down to her house and do a phantom driveway-shoveling. I ultimately decided that that'd be _too_ romantic for a relationship that was only weeks old _and_ still only a business relationship. But as a result of my merely _thinking_ about whether I should wish her the Happy Valentine's Day in that deluxe of a _way_, I forgot to wish her a Happy Valentine's Day at _all_!
So, after I do her paper route again on 2/18, she abruptly, or so it seemed, drops her communications with me. For the next week and a half after that, I start thinking that she's flaking on me, either because I'd ignored Valentine's Day, and/or because she'd caught me looking at her bust for a fleeting moment, and/or because I was only incrementally improving my speed on the paper route.
_But_ _I_ _leave_ _her_ _alone_ for that week and a half. And sure enough, she contacts me again, about doing the paper route on 3/4.
Snippets on 3/4 indicated that _she_ had produced a flurry of customer complaints when _she_ did the route on 2/25, and now she's asked me if I'd like to simply take the route over. Hmmm, I thought: This could provide her with another perfect excuse to flake, because if the route is mine, I'd no longer have any excuses to see her. But on the other hand, maybe it was her way of forcing me to increase the speed of the increments of my forthrightness! Well if it was the latter, it worked: I replied that if I were to take the route over, _I'd_ need a substitute eventually, and that she's the first person that I'd ask because (and then I came right out and told her) I resisted a "huge" temptation to sneak down there during the Valentine's Day Snowstorm and do a phantom driveway-shoveling.