My perspective was that I had to get married. I would not be happy without marriage. In fact, I wanted to get engaged by the time I was 26 and married by the time I was 27. BI is already 26, so this sort of talk no doubt alarmed her. She was ready for a serious relationship now, but she certainly wasn’t sold on marriage. In fact, if she had a committed relationship that never led to marriage, she would be just as content.

Although we could not agree on the “need” for marriage, there was one thing we could agree on: relationships² are not what they used to be. And we believe this is mostly because women’s roles in society have changed.
In the past, women were financially dependent on their male counterparts. Thus, finding a husband was absolutely necessary for survival. Nowadays, women are financially independent, which means finding a husband (or a life partner) is no longer about need, but about want.

I’ve talked about this before but I had another realization this time. The tricky thing with “want”, and the reason for all these failed marriages nowadays, is that “want” changes much more quickly and easily than “need.” A need for a breadwinner exists perpetually, unless you win the lottery or a huge inheritance falls into your lap out of nowhere. However, without that need, what you want becomes rather capricious. What you want can change several times a week, much less a lifetime. For example, right now, you may want someone who can make you laugh and cheer you up no matter what, around whom you are more impulsive and fun. But in five or ten years, maybe you’ll want someone who can take things seriously, who won’t make light of things that are important, and who can be a steady rock, no matter how boring and predictable. As a result of these changing “wants”, not only does your life partner feel superfluous for not being able to satisfy a need, but they feel uneasy because they are at risk of being kicked aside on a whim.

Of course, I exaggerate the effect of this problem, but it is indeed a real problem. Unless our need for human companionship³ is as strong as our need for survival, a marriage for a lifetime no longer seems plausible.

The rain stopped just as we were about to buy tickets to see Blue Man’s Group, since we decided that doing something indoors was the best course of action on a rainy day. Seeing that the rain stopped, we decided to go to Millennium Park after all. If we can change our mind three times during the course of one day, how will I be sure what I want for the rest of my life?

1. In China, when you near the age of 30, people around you start frantically setting you up on dates, with the idea that if you like what you see, you’ll get married. This is very similar to practices in Korea and India.
2. Marriage being the ultimate form of a relationship.
3. But I question the strength of a marriage if the philosophy behind is companionship for companionship’s sake.

Her story got me thinking. What is the point of a long engagement? I mean, if you love someone, and they love you, why wait a year, or two, to get married? Why date for three or five or eight years? What are you waiting for?

If you never want to get married, then fine, I will put you in the “never getting married” box and ignore you. But what about the rest of you? Are you testing the waters? Do you want “to be sure”?

I’ve always thought that I’d date at least two years before my engagement, and then another one year before the wedding. But now that I think about it, why do I need those three years “to be sure”? I know there are people who have been married for over 20 years, and they say that they were always sure about their feelings for each other. Good for them. Me, I don’t think I’ll ever be sure. I don’t think I’ll be sure after dating someone for two years, I don’t think I’ll be sure if we lived together for four years, and I don’t think any length of engagement will make me “sure”.

Maybe being sure isn’t about the other person but about myself. Maybe I am just somebody who can’t be sure of how I feel. That doesn’t make it any less real.

I’ve always admired how quickly marriages were decided in the old days. You’d court for a little while, and if you found each other to be pleasant, the man would propose, and a wedding would take place soon after. In those circumstances, you would only see each other a few times before the engagement, always in public settings. Now we have all these checkpoints in place like anniversaries and co-habitation and long engagements, and still we have people (like myself) who never seem to be sure. When will it ever be enough? It’s like the show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, every time the host asks “Is that your final answer?” you re-evaluate yourself one more time. He could ask you a million times, and you would still hesitate. At some point, you just have to bite the bullet and say, “Yes, that is my final answer.”

So Erika, you have inspired me to re-evaluate my position on long lead times for marriage. Perhaps in a few months, I will be married too. (Ok, probably not, but anything could happen.)

——

My boss told me he is heading toward a divorce.

Where is the hope?

I don’t understand. My boss is AWESOME. Seriously, best boss I’ve ever had. He’s a cool guy. I know I don’t know everything, but what I ask myself is: where is the hope?

Is there anything left to hope for? Another story, another separation, another divorce. It’s not even surprising anymore, but it’s always heartbreaking.

When someone tells you they’re divorcing, your reaction is no longer “how could that possibly be?” but rather “there goes another one….”

Is there even reason for me to hope anymore?

Please, married people, give us single people some hope here. I’m out here in the dating jungle, and I’m trekking through murky waters and turning away perfectly good prospects because I keep hoping that just around the river bend there’ll be some guy that I’ll actually want to marry and not just settle for.

I don’t want to end up in divorce. It’s one of my biggest fears. Which helps explain why I’m so commitment-phobic–what if I make the wrong choice? My parents have been married 25 years, my grandparents 50 years…It’s a lot to live up to. It hasn’t always been easy for them. There were times, I remember, when my mom was thisclose to separating from my dad. But they held on, they struggled through together because isn’t that what marriage is about?

It’s not about being happy all the time. It’s about going through the ups and the downs, sacrificing through those bad times because in the end, the end result is knowing that you’ve stuck through it all together. But at what price?

Why do I value marriage so highly? Why do I believe in till-death-do-us-part? I don’t believe in happily ever afters, it’s ridiculous to believe that you’ll always be happy every day of every month. But I believe in marriage, so very much so. I don’t know why, but I do. I want to believe that there’s something greater out there, that sharing my life with someone, going through all the ups and the downs of life together gives me something to root for.

I want a family, I want a husband, and I want to be a mom and I want to love. Am I fool for still believing in marriage?

——

To introduce myself shortly, online I go by gem, in real life I live in New York City. I have also been single my entire life. So I’m going
to talk about validating men, something that I fail at miserably and which is one of the main reasons for my constantly single status. The most recent example of my failure to validate a man is with my newest paramour, whom I met almost two months ago. I’ve seen him once or twice a week since then, he’s nice, he likes me, I like him, etc. However, when it comes to actually showing him that I like him, I end up unintentionally coming off like a total jerk. Always. This past weekend was a prime example of this…

We’d just spent hours being absurdly cuddly and discussing silly little things in our life. It secretly made me a little nauseous, but the outward happiness was real too. (It’s a paradox, but it’s true.) And then suddenly we noticed how long we’d been lying around for and he realized he had to leave. He asked what I was doing for the day and I mentioned that I was hanging out with my friend and her Italian friend who was visiting her. I concentrated on how I’d be with the Italian, with his cute broken English and his wild Italian hair. My paramour watched me as I talked about this Italian guy, and his response was a simple, “Don’t hook up with the Italian.”

I just smiled at his advice, and moved on to my plans for after that, how I’d been invited to a few parties, none of which I particularly needed or wanted to go to. And he quickly invited me to a party he was going to that night, as any nice paramour would do. But before he’d even finished I said a curt, “No.” And without looking at him, I rambled that I’d told all the parties I was going to go, so I had to at least go to one of them… even if I didn’t really want to. He concentrated on the fact that I didn’t actually want to go to any of the parties and obviously I couldn’t go to all of them, so I might as well just go with him! Didn’t I want to go with him?

I didn’t go with him.

Now, I understand the Italian thing a little. Keep him on his toes, blah blah blah. However, I definitely should have gone with him to the party. I wanted to, even! But… well, once I start meeting more of his friends and he meets mine, then, if we stop spending time together, we have to explain it. I don’t want to explain where he went and I don’t want him talking about me after we’re done. I want our relationship to exist in a bubble and if it pops, I want that pop to have zero effect on anything else in our lives! Slash I am an idiot who lets her fears force her into making poor decisions when it comes to men. Because what if the bubble never pops? Why jump to the negative conclusion instead of hoping for the best and just doing what I know will make me happiest in the moment… Which is why my new plan is to validate him and our relationship from now on and say yes when he wants me to say yes!

Except this weekend. I sort of have a really busy schedule with some old friends and a friend who just moved back to town. And then I’m going out of town for the holidays… so basically I’m not seeing him for awhile and by the time I get back he’ll have forgotten me. Oh well, good thing I kept the bubble small!

“Do you think… Tell me honestly, what do you think about MFL and I?”
WAF paused for a second. “I used to think you two would end up together,” she said quietly.
“End up together? Like, as in, married together?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah. Like married. But that was when I thought you two would both be in Toronto after university. Now that you’re going to Singapore, that changes everything…”
I sat back in semi-shock. Did all our friends think we would get married someday? How could they harbour these thoughts when MFL and I haven’t been together in nearly four years? How could they harbour these thoughts and still let me cut him out of my life?

It makes me wonder whether I should tell MFL that I’m leaving. It feels weird to break our no-speaking pact just to make an announcement. And what would be the point? To see his reaction? To get him to finally admit, or even realize, that he still has feelings for me?
Even in my own mind, I think it’s absurd to expect anything. He’s MFL. He’s always been passive and complacent. If he didn’t step up when I made it clear I was giving up on him, he’s not going to step up just because I’m moving halfway around the world. And let’s be honest, I’ve enjoyed these past couple months of not thinking about him. In fact, I can honestly say, “I am not in love with him anymore.”
I am not in love with him anymore.

Maybe I will always feel something when I’m around him – or around any guy that treats me like he does, for that matter – but it doesn’t mean that he can make me happy for life. In spite of what a great boyfriend I know him to be, it is now clear to me why he was not enough. He doesn’t go after what he wants. He won’t fight for the girl he loves, nor the relationship they have. And after the break-up, I wanted to believe that he could, that he just needed a wake-up call. Maybe that’s why I waited so long. But not anymore.

No, not anymore.
SG is officially single and looking.

We have been extremely comfortable with each other, altogether too comfortable, and I am terrified. I feel like I am driving on the highway, speeding past signs warning me that the highway will end soon, and still I cannot stop, I cannot even slow down. And inevitably, I will just drive right into a cement wall at 100 miles an hour.
And I will die, because that’s what happens when you drive into a cement wall at 100 miles per hour.

One day, he texted me asking if I wanted to get some sushi after work. I ended up forcing LDB, one of his friends, to come with us because I didn’t want to have dinner alone with MFL. All night, I acted as if LDB and I were super close now. I don’t know why I did that. Maybe to make him think I had a life that didn’t involve him? Maybe to make him think that he wasn’t the only boy I was close with? I honestly don’t know.
But of course I wasn’t that tight with LDB, despite staying at his apartment the night of my birthday celebration and talking till 3am in the morning. Nothing compared to the history between MFL and I.

Not two days later, MFL asked me to go see a movie with him. After making him jump through some hoops, I finally agreed. That night, we somehow found ourselves in a bookstore, and I made him read “Where The Wild Things Are” to me. One time when we were dating, we had gone into a bookstore and I had picked out a children’s book and made him read it to me. He was extremely reluctant, but eventually he gave in to my demands. Then, for a Valentine’s Day gift, he bought the book and replaced the character’s names with ours (it was love story between two dogs) and added a poem onto one of the pages. It was a really thoughtful gift. Anyway, making him read “Where The Wild Things Are” to me was extremely reminiscent of that memory.

When he dropped me off that night, I turned around and said, “I’m glad you’re back.” I had meant to say “I missed you” but I didn’t have enough courage. I could see something on his face, a sort of curiousity, but I didn’t explain and left it at that.

I have been debating back and forth between telling him how I feel and ending this tormenting friendship. I have never been so indecisive in my life, and to such extremes! What I can’t decide on is whether I do, in fact, still love him. A few months ago, I read this on Michelle’s blog and saved it. It’s a good summary of my internal turmoil.

…do we ever fully move on? Is there a little piece of our heart that is left behind after the rest of it has been put back together again?

A billboard on a highway…
A song on the radio…
The hint of cologne on a crowded elevator…

…brings you back. Even if only for a second, you can feel it. Your heart isn’t completely whole.

We are fragile. Just breakable girls and boys.

Is it just the feeling of being whole when I’m with him? Am I meant to feel that way? Does everyone feel that way about their first love? Am I breakable or am I broken?

Whenever I see roses, I think of the bouquet MFL surprised me with one rainy Sunday afternoon.
Whenever I hear Linkin Park, I think of CJB.
Whenever I see anything orange, I think of HB.
Whenever I see a boy holding an umbrella for a girl, I think of the rain shower GB and I were caught in on our way to dinner. He held the umbrella over me the whole way, even though he was getting rained on.
Whenever I see turtles, I think of the many turtle-themed gifts MFL and I exchanged, and the photos he took in Costa Rica with the turtle plushie in the foreground, representing me being there with him.
Whenever anyone mentions street racing, I think of HF.
Whenever I see a couple splitting an ice cream sundae, I think of DB.
Whenever I see a Chinese buffet, I think of PKB.
Whenever I make egg fried rice, I think of the first meal I ever made for MFL.

It seems the ghost of boyfriends past will always haunt me.

How do reminders of your past relationships manifest themselves in your day-to-day life?

This was a statistic I rarely offered, especially around girls, especially around girls with boyfriends, but it came up over dinner one night with The Sisterhood. Immediately, FF decided I was never meeting her boyfriend¹. It’s that bad.

Now, before I go around telling girls to be weary of me around their boyfriends, I needed to make sure the trend/statistic was accurate. So I started doing a mental inventory, but then I figured, might as well blog about it. Here you have it folks, the ultimate dirty laundry list (chronological, starting in Grade 7):

1. CurlyHairedJewishBoy: First boy to crush on me at my new school (our “high school” started in Grade 7). Did not have a girlfriend at the time, but he continued to crush on me well into Grade 10, at which point he did have a girlfriend.
2. BlondeDorkTurnedCool: I have no idea how we became friends, suffice to say we were quite close. I was trying to set him up with another friend, BlondeBeauty, who he had a crush on, but once they started going out, he started majorly crushing on me. He broke up with his girlfriend three times because he wanted to start dating me, but each time, he got back together with BB because he couldn’t handle the pressure. I, on the other hand, felt enormously guilty and recall sobbing in the middle of our hallway one time because BB, my former friend, now hated my guts.
3. CockyTallBasketballBoy: He asked me out on a date “as a joke,” although why you would joke about that when you have a girlfriend is beyond me. Word got around and soon enough, his girlfriend also hated my guts.
4. NerdyRussianBoy: Did not have a girlfriend! Score! Although he is kind of a huge nerd and I don’t think he’s ever had a girlfriend, even to this day.
5. ChristianJelloBoy: Was either on the verge of break-up or had just broken up with his girlfriend when he started crushing on me. Either way, I did not have a good rep. I totally crushed on him too, but he told me he wasn’t ready to start another relationship. Fair enough.
6. ChristianJelloBoy’s friend: Did not have a girlfriend! Score! Although he’s very popular with the ladies.
7. MFL‘s friend: Did not have a girlfriend! Score!
8. MFL: I don’t know when exactly he started crushing on me – I assume it was before his summer in Cambridge. He met a girl there while continuing to pine for me (I know, I know), and broke up with her a month after summer ended. I don’t know if she ever hated my guts because I never met her. I do know that his girlfriends since me have all hated my guts. What? It’s not my fault I was his first love.
9. MFL‘s other friend: Did not have a girlfriend! I think my luck may have turned around in Grade 10 – but to be honest, by then I was hanging out mostly with MFL‘s friends and NONE of them had girlfriends. They were too busy growing acne and playing Magic Cards.
10. BBB: Did not have a girlfriend, although I was still going out with MFL at the time. My best friend had an enormous crush on him though, so when MFL and I broke up and BBB asked me out, she hated my guts for a little while.
11. HB: Had a girlfriend, has a girlfriend, etc. She definitely hated my guts.
12. OSB: I don’t know when he started/stopped crushing on me, but he did not have a girlfriend for most of the time I’ve known him.
13. SketchyFobWannabe: First boy to ask me out in university. This marks the end of crushes and the beginning of sketchy encounters and even sketchier flings! Woohoo. He did not have a girlfriend, although asked me to be his girlfriend the night I met him. Um, no.
14. PKB: Did not have a girlfriend, although was hella annoying. Eventually I had to pretend I had a boyfriend to get rid of him. Later, his girlfriend and I became friends. First girlfriend to not hate my guts! I am getting better.
15. ER: He crushed on me, but I didn’t return the sentiment, so he started dating another chick, who was sort of a friend. I think he told her that he liked me (Why? WHY? WHY?) because she has been completely intimidated by me ever since.
16. PrivateSchoolBoy: Has a girlfriend. I met her once. She is totally dull. But then again, so is he.
17. Lifeguard/SwimmerBoy: Did not have a girlfriend. Was too shy to even admit he liked me.
18. RedCrossBoy: Did not have a girlfriend, although when he did have a girlfriend, she totally hated my guts.
19. RLBB: Did not have a girlfriend, wanted me to sleep with him, I said no, end of story.
20. SCB: Did not have a girlfriend, was getting over an ex and seriously emo.
21. GB: Did not have a girlfriend, was incredibly sweet to me, and I was a douche.
22. CDB: If he had a girlfriend in Denmark, I did not know about it.
23. YAR: Was in the midst of reconciling with ex. I never met her. Woohoo.
24. CHB: Super good-looking, but not the brightest bulb. No girlfriend – that I know of.
25. YoungerSwimmerBoy: Had a girlfriend. Not anymore. Totally cute, but I don’t date younger guys.
26. UC: No girlfriend, but a complete creep.
27. DEB: Totally has a girlfriend and totally a flirt. Ugh.
28. NB: See above. Completely ditto.

Of the 28 guys that I can remember having liked me (that I know of), 10.5 of them caused some girl to totally hate my guts. Although, only 4 or 5 of them liked me while they were in a relationship, so maybe the statistics don’t look as bad as I thought. Maybe girls just hate my guts.
I think I started doing a lot better after high school, maybe because the “relationships” in university were flaky to begin with, or because I started hanging out with more girls than guys. I definitely learned my lesson though – if I am friends with a guy in a relationship, I have to become friends with his girlfriend, otherwise she will hate my guts. It’s as predictable as your favourite shirt shrinking in the dryer. It sucks, but you know it’s going to happen.

I guess I am a public menace, at least to those members of the public in a relationship. I should get one of those “Beware of Dog Girl Who Is Irresistible To Your Boyfriend” signs.

1. Ironically, once I did meet him, her boyfriend and I got along swimmingly. She’s told me on several occasions that I am his favourite of all her friends. I avoid him like a skinny girl and lard.

We all have secrets, from little lies that we tell, or what we don’t tell. We already know there are plenty of things I don’t tell. Here are some more.

Secrets from my boss:

• I told the CEO at Not-A-Real-Job that I wasn’t doing anything this summer other than this internship. Complete lie. As you all know, I am desperately secretly searching for another job.
• He is obviously going to find out when he receives a call from places I have applied to because I put him down as one of my references. I probably should have told him that he is one of my references. I also said I’d been an intern with him for two months. Slight lie, considering I started last month. Hmm…

Secrets from my parents:

• My parents think I have never bombed a single course in university¹ and that I am awesome at science. Neither of these beliefs are correct. I did bomb a course (Cell Biology), which just goes to show I am not awesome at science. I just left the field before it became obvious. My parents desperately want to believe I am awesome at science because 90% of the people in my family are serious scientists, and they want me to join their ranks. Imagine their disappointment when I went to business school instead.
• My mom thinks I am trying to lose weight. Not because I said I was on a diet or anything, just because she thinks I should. So it’s really her fault for making assumptions. When she is not home, I eat ice cream. Lots and lots of it. She also thinks I go swimming every other day. I do not.
• That stain on the bathroom rug that my mother loves? The dog peed there. But it was because I locked the dog in the bathroom when she was getting really annoying. My parents think the dog just went crazy on her own (which does happen sometimes) and I’ve never corrected their notion. It’s not like the dog is going to tell on me.
• One time, my phone dialed my home number on its own while I was out clubbing at 2am (it must have been pressed against something in my purse and hit speed dial). All my parents heard on the resulting answering machine message was “loud noise” (their words, not mine – my guess is it was very loud music). They called me back and when I saw that “Home” was calling, I didn’t answer because I was drunk and I didn’t want them to know I was still out clubbing. They thought I’d been kidnapped or something terrible had happened to me and the recording was all I could get out, so they called the police. I never told them the truth. I switched phones after that incident.

Secrets from my friends:

• I have not told WAF what I really think about the guy she’s seeing. He sounds sketchy as hell, and he is probably bad poisonous for her. But she has fallen pretty hard for him, and anything I say will fall on deaf ears or incur a slew of defenses. I secretly think she wants to be with these bad boys, some form of thrill-seeking or self-destructive behaviour. I mean, her last boyfriend seemed like an angel until he beat her up on my birthday. So who does she rebound to? A guy who is a player, a cheater (he has a girlfriend), and a drug dealer? This can only end badly.
• I secretly think WAF is exactly what I would have turned into had I had more neglectful parents or weaker moral boundaries (maybe the two have something to do with each other). That is why we are friends, and why I do not judge her for her bad habits or moments of weakness – because in another life, I would be her. I actually kind of admire her for being able to vent all of that out. I, on the other hand, might explode one day with all my repressed sinful thoughts and run away to be a prostitute addicted to hard drugs who eventually falls off a hotel balcony.
• OBF knows that I want her relationship with USG to end in their marriage work out, hence I am the first person she runs crying to every time they have a fight. What she doesn’t know is that I think she’s the cause of these fights, because she is needy and demanding and emotionally unstable. I mean, I love her and all, but seriously, this girl can blow up like Mt. Vesuvius.

Any secrets you’d like to share?

1. The Asian definition of bombing: getting below an 80 – or a 3.7 out of 4.0.

Are you a little bit creeped out yet? Because I am.

After reading the jacket of the book, the similarities were what led me to take out the book from the library.
“When successful 29-year-old Manhattan attorney Emily Haxby ends her happy relationship just as her boyfriend is on the verge of proposing, she can’t explain to even her closest friends why she did it.” – I have been asked a million times why I broke up with MFL and I have never been able to give a real answer.

But I was not ready to read about my own love story – my big mistake – which is why I returned the book without ever getting past the first two pages. But a few weeks later, I took it out again. This time, it took me until the end of my loan period to finally read the book.

Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop.

Because this book, by an author I have never heard of but graduated from Harvard Law School (the same path I plan to pursue if I am lucky), tells with uncanny accuracy the story of MFL and I. If you are curious about how we broke up and then how I fell apart, you should read this book. There is stuff in here about what happened to Emily after she said “It’s over” that I haven’t even blogged about. It is almost as if I confided my story to Julie Buxbaum in deepest confidence, and then she went and wrote a book about it. But that would be ridiculous, right?

There are some generic parallels between my story and this work of fiction. Feeling like I wasn’t “ready for an Andrew,” this perfect specimen of a boyfriend who wanted to commit to me for good; seeing evidence that he still cared for me; not reacting emotionally to the breakup, and then over-reacting emotionally to the breakup; contemplating whether I made a huge mistake but not feeling like I can fix it. These are all similarities that I can handle. It’s the details that freak me out.
Like their names, for instance. The length of their relationship. The way Emily felt when she decided she wanted to break up with him (“I don’t even want to spend the rest of my life with me. How can Andrew?”). The way Emily felt when she started to realize why she did it (“I was afraid of losing him. I wanted to end it before he could stop loving me.”¹). The way she tried to tell him how she felt by writing a short email with only three points (“I miss you. I love you. Let’s try again.”).

I wrote something like this once myself. I was thinking about MFL as I tried to fall asleep one night, and it suddenly became clear as day to me that I still loved him. So after some tossing and turning, I got up, grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and jotted down the following:
“There are only three things I want you to know:
I love you.
I will always love you.
I want to marry you.”
At the time, I wanted to write it down because I knew I would forget the next morning. Looking down at the three lines on the paper, it seemed silly that I might forget something so short and yet so important. But I knew I would. Not forget so much as not remember. As if my subconscious was trying to protect me, as if remembering would poison the start of my new day. I suppose being confronted with the fact that you screwed up your own happiness is a pretty shitty way to wake up. Some part of me still believed I needed to cut my losses and move on. “MFL was great,” the voice said, “but there are other fish in the ocean. He can’t be the only one.” Either to defy that voice or to succumb to my other voices, I thought it would mean something if I wrote it down. Like a resolution that I needed to act on. But the next morning, I promptly stuffed the piece of paper under a pile of other papers and forgot about it. When I did come across it again weeks later, telling him these things seemed so ridiculous that I threw out the piece of paper immediately.

Then there’s the part where Emily doesn’t leave her couch for a week, vegetating in front of soap operas and letting herself go numb. I did the same thing when I started to feel overwhelmed with confusion over MFL and stress from other commitments. The worst part about this scenario is not that we (the heroine of this book and myself) let ourselves vegetate but that we knew exactly what we were doing – to make ourselves feel nothing – and saw nothing wrong with it. We had absolutely no reason to stop it from continuing. At least Emily had a friend to rescue her from this desperate situation, whereas I had to just pull myself together at one point and face the music.

Finally, at the end of the story (spoiler alert – although I’m not sure if knowing this really spoils anything because you kind of see it coming), Emily does what she needs to do and confronts Andrew face-to-face, and they get back together and live happily ever after. That ending hasn’t come for me (yet) and I don’t know if it will. In a lot of ways, Emily is luckier than I. She has the benefit of time. The time between her breakup with Andrew and her realization and confrontation cannot be more than a year. 12 months. My realization took twice that long. And my confrontation, if it can be called that, took three years. In three years, a lot can change. Andrew may not have been seeing anyone else in the one year it took Emily to come to her senses, but in three years, he could’ve been engaged and married already. Not that MFL is married, but you know.

So how does the story of MFL and I end? I sure as hell would like to know. Should I follow the courageous footsteps of this heroine and show up at his door, risk everything, and tell him how I feel? I’ve thought of this before, but always chickened out. It sounds like madness to show up and say those things. And yet, they have to be said. Or do they?

The thing is, MFL never cut me loose. When I told him I never wanted to speak to him again, he complied, until a year later, when he told me he wished we could be friends again. After that, my emotions took me on a roller coaster ride. And I never found the strength to tell him that I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be friends with him. Because after everything, he is still great to me.
I have wished, more than once, that he would be the one to let me go. Even though I was the one to break his heart, even though I was the one to break us, I can’t be the one to let him go. I wish he would just tell me, like the Andrew in the book, to leave him alone. I have witnessed these situations before, in other books and movies, where the girl is sobbing hysterically and crying out something like, “How can you be so cruel? How can you not want anything to do with me at all?” And the boy would be indifferent to her hysteria, because he no longer loves her and that’s what the opposite of love is: indifference. Sometimes, I have felt empathy for the girl. But now, I realize that the boy is not being cruel at all. In fact, by cutting her out, the boy is doing the kind thing. It forces her to move on. It is better than what a therapist could do.
What MFL is doing to me is the cruel thing. To let me perpetually debate between love and its opposite. To let me lose both sides of this battle, all on my own.

1. Not a direct quote – I can’t find the actual one but I read it in there somewhere.