Iconoclastic

It took a lot of digging and searching, some minor excavation, and a tunnel collapse or two along the way, but I've finally found what I was looking for. An explanation for the why. Why I felt so betrayed by his actions.

It wasn't because I had been broken up with, which is what I think he assumed. The reality of the situation was, we were never dating, I never thought we were dating, so I didn't feel like I’d been broken up with. He had been honest, and I hadn't deluded myself into not believing what he said. When he told me he wasn't ready for a relationship I didn't think I could change his mind; when he told me he needed time to heal from a past hurt, I didn't think I could heal him; and when he told me he wanted to be friends, I thought that meant I could trust him. This was where my sense of betrayal stemmed from, I felt like my trust had been broken.

I had sectioned our relationship into two neat packages, the physical aspect and the emotional. It's actually how I treat most of my relationships, I've realized. It's like I have segmented my existence into these two portions; my body, which is a tangible asset, something I don't have entire control over, and my heart/mind/soul, which is intangible and completely mine, and I can share with whom I choose. My body can be taken from me, against my will, or can be battered and bruised beyond my control. My heart can only be treated badly by those I choose to allow access to it, by the select few I allow in.

I had allowed him in. It had gone past the physical, past pleasure with no commitment, past "friends with benefits."

This segmentation of my life has allowed me to protect myself, while participating in the dating ritual we have created for ourselves in today's pop-culture society. I find guys who will never understand the complex creature that I am, but look great with their shirt off, and participate in the pleasures of the flesh, while never giving away any part of who I really am. And then, when it doesn't work, it's not that big of a deal, because the only connection I had was physical, and that's not hard to replace.

This makes it sound as if I have no respect for the intimate nature of being without clothes in the company of another human being. Simply not true! I believe there is a distinct difference between making love (witch connotates an emotional connection with someone), and, pardon my verbiage, knocking boots (witch implies two people using each other to fulfill a physical desire). I have not made love in a very long time. I will not allow myself to be connected in an emotional nature to anyone whom I am also physical with. The reason for this is a simple math equation: physical + emotional = possibility for love… and that scares the begeebers out of me!

This may be why I’m such good friends with my ex's. When it ends, I don't feel betrayed, because I never gave any of myself. And as soon as we are no longer being physical, I can share bits and pieces of myself with them. So a friendship develops that is more functional and mutual then the pre-existing "relationship." I know this is an odd way to deal with things, but most defense mechanisms are odd. We all have ways of coping with past hurt, this is mine.

Because of this dysfunctional coping mechanism I have developed, when I open up and let someone in on a friendship level, I am actually more vulnerable, and more emotionally involved, then when I am dating someone. So, when he said he wanted to be friends and I opened up, I was actually sharing a part of my intangible, a part of my control, a part of myself.

When he walked away, and that's what he did, without explanation or reason or even a goodbye; when he disappeared, it cut me to the core. This is where my sense of betrayal came from. Not from the physical aspect of our relationship, from a "we were sleeping together, you owe me more than that" mindset. It came from the gaping hole that was left in my heart when someone I thought I could trust treated me as if I was nothing. I had connected with him on an emotional level. I treasure that type of connection, it is rare, and unique, and special.

It was the loss of this connection, not the physical one, I was mourning.

I had trusted him with my thoughts, my insights, my opinions. Those are not given lightly. I had told him about my life, let him into my life, let him meet my family, come to my home. I talked with him about work, about friends, about me. These are things other people may do easily, but I’m a compartmentilizer, and I do not share my life easily. I had allowed him to permeate an aspect of my being, without fully understanding what that meant, to either of us.

It’s my fault, for two reasons. First, I have a dilapidated way of dealing with anything that even comes close to possibly looking like a relationship. Most people don't understand where I'm coming from or where I'm going (to be honest, I don't understand half the time). And second, friendship means much more to me than I think it meant to him, and I never stopped to find out what he meant by "friends." I just assumed we were on the same page and moved forward.

I truly believe that everyone who enters our lives is there for a reason. We are meant to learn something, or teach something, or both. This gave me the opportunity to really sit down and learn something about myself, and I appreciate that! Although I am still greatly hurt, and disappointed, I feel I can move on from this situation. I can move forward with a new understanding of myself, and perhaps work on breaking some of the trends that tend to lead me down Disaster Alley when it comes to "relationships."

~ ~ ~

The Wonderful World of Dating: a semi-caustic look at dating in today’s world, given from the heart of a chronically single girl, appears every Wednesday right here at iconoclastic