Breakups, moving on and new beginnings.

Today I’m talking about something personal to me. Relationships and breakups and friendship breakups.

I’ve not been broken up with yet. Every ‘romantic’ relationship I’ve had, I’ve ended on my own terms, but it doesn’t make it any less hard. (Ok, maybe a little). Sometimes I think about what I would do if I were to be on the other side of the table, how I would act-and I can’t come up with anything except letting go. I don’t see myself fighting for the relationship. I don’t think I can fight for someone who doesn’t want me- again. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t even know how to fight. I know I would just move on.

I know now after breakups (platonic and romantic) that it’s not moving on I have a problem with. Yes, it hurts, not immediately, but eventually. At first, you brush it off, try not to think about it, and then one day, your brain reminds you that you’re yet to feel sad about that particular breakup. That’s when it hits. I know the pattern now like the back of my hand. Anger, sadness, wistfulness, and then in Taylor Swift’s words, ‘time takes its sweet time erasing’ them. One day, they cross your mind and you can’t even tell why you fell out in the first place. You think about them and you don’t feel anything. Like a casual passing thought. A distant memory your brain holds on to but your conscious self has no recollection of.

I know the pattern now like the back of my hand. Anger, sadness, wistfulness…

What I do have a problem with is the breaking up. I was once in this relationship that one month in I wanted to end it- so many times but I just could not, because every single time, I felt like, ‘I haven’t even dated him long. It doesn’t make sense to just end it. Don’t be an intolerant person. You need to learn to tolerate people’. I’d learn like 9 months still stuck in that relationship that I DID indeed have a high tolerance level.

When it finally ended I promised myself, I swore that I would never EVER do that to myself again.

That promise had terms and conditions apparently. It did not apply to platonic relationships.

Then again, platonic relationships are not like romantic relationships. You don’t think, ‘I’ve been friends with this person(people) for xxx time’. You just realise one day that they’ve become close to you and you don’t know when exactly that happened. You know that sometimes they make you mad, but then again, you know you’d get over it and before you know it, you’re laughing together again. You notice their bad habits, or you notice a pattern in the things they do that piss you off, but if you’re anything like me, you don’t comment on those things. It’s all parts and parcel of them.

It’s only when the friendship ends that you realise, it was never a one-off. It’d been a long time coming. Those vices you tolerated in good fun had grown to become your undoing.

I learnt from that one ex-relationship that I don’t have to remain in relationships that I was no longer into.

I’ve learnt now to speak up on things that irk me.

I’ve learnt that I don’t have to tolerate things till I can’t any more.

I’ve learnt now that it’s not just romantic relationships that need boundaries, that even the platonic ones do too.

I’ve learnt now that there are habits that can be tolerated and habits that are just plain inconsiderate or disrespectful.

I’m still learning to end the later without feeling guilt.

I throw the phrase emotional attachment around a lot in regards to objects I cherish, and people around me, and my body parts but in truth, I am emotionally attached to certain people -and objects yes- and my body parts too.

And I think that’s why I try to keep them(people) longer even when I shouldn’t. Same reason why I hoard things. See the pattern here?

For friendship breakups, this attachment doesn’t just die at the time of the breakup. It’s still there and maybe that’s why they hurt the most. There is also the fact that with romantic relationships, you have it in the back of your mind, the possibility of an ending. Friendships come with their own kind of intimacy, and you don’t think, ‘oh we might break up one day’.

Why is that though?

Now, I’m learning to cherish the time I spend with people cause you just never know long it’ll last.

Any laugh can be the last you have with them. Any banter, any picture, any phone call; and you’d both move on, and one day you’d remember them in a fleeting thought, the kind that leaves you with a peculiar feeling you just can’t place.

A lone piece of a puzzle.

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This was not what I planned to write this week but I was on my bed and I was just thinking about how we fall out with people and sometimes there is just no reason. You just both grow apart, and I thought of the people in my life and was like, ‘do all these relationships come with expiry dates?’

Why do we not expect breakups in friendships? Let me know what you think in the comment section. Also, which do you think hurts the most, friendship breakups or romantic breakups? Letting go or moving on?