Do you know why your last relationship ended?
Oh of course, we like to do the very familiar. We weren't compatible, we just stopped having sex, she felt more like a friend than a lover or my all-encompassing favorite: she never cleaned up the cat litter i.e. she's selfish and doesn't love me enough to pick up the shit!
Lately, I've been watching a lot of my friends in their budding relationships tout and toast to the beginning of a thing. We love the good and constant sex, the attentiveness, and the little things.
Now, I'm not knocking it -- Libra that I am. I can think of no better way of spending my time than in the falling of uncontrollable, passionate and never ending love. But, I think that it's that "never ending" part that I'm a little stuck on right now. Cause a couple of months into the relationship, after the first big fight where she yells and you scream and nobody is actually hearing anything, the thought of the ending begins to creep into what was once a very warm and active pile of promises and potential. As I'm looking at the delicate balances that these beginnings take I can't help but wonder... if all of the breathlessness and hopefulness is possible at the beginning then why the hell do these things actually end? It seems to me that the endings are just as important as the beginnings and probably more useful.
Over several bottles of Two Buck Chuck, we sat on the balcony and my friend asked me, "Do you know why your last relationship ended?"
"She was selfish," I slurred. "Pass the wine this way."
"What about the one before that?"
"She was selfish! And I can't do long distance."
"What about the one before that?" She questioned.
"You wouldn't believe how selfish she was-. I had to pay for everything! Matter fact, I'm still paying off that credit card. Can you pass me the wine opener?"
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(continued)
"Well, what about in college, your last boyfriend?"
"He was selfish not very tall, and didn't have breasts!"
My dear friend began to laugh-- almost uncontrollably. I kept on going...
"Very short that man, and I was afraid that I'd have tiny babies."
"I'm not laughing at his height. I'm laughing because you keep saying that everyone is selfish. Don't you see that?"
"They were selfish," I quipped, and then recounted my standard cat litter bit. And as she began pressing -- therapist that she is-- it became apparent that not only had I ended all of the relationships, but some how, unknowingly, I believed that I had managed to attract the most selfish, self-consumed people in the entire world.
If I pause for just a brief moment of honesty- there was something in me that was being fed in the constant giving. The open hand made me feel needed and the giving also made me feel exhausted. The constant giving I thought made me better than and therefore apt to leave for greener pastures.
The ending of my past relationships has just as much to do with their taking as it did my giving -- beyond the distance, the litter, and the lunacy. If it truly takes two for a relationship to work and as much as I like to assign blame -- she never, she always, and she wasn't -- the demise of my past loves is as much a reflection on me as it on the ladies that I loved.
So if an old dyke wants to learn knew tricks- it would seem that this dyke would have to look at the tricks that she's turning in order for them to change.
Read more of Gloria's musings here.
