A Conflicting Understanding of Friendship

This blog of mine here is going to contain my thoughts. No matter what thoughts they are, albeit dirty or cumbersome. So, without further or do, I will now speak of my conversation with my departed girlfriend. No, she is not dead, but x is just too harsh a word.

She broke up with me this summer. I think I took it better than even I could have expected. I still feel a bit hurt by the whole thing, I mean, we went out for nearly 3 years, but I think I’m over it. She told me she doesn’t have the feeling she once did for me. I think that hurt the worse. I don’t know how feelings could just change like that. We still talk, or as she likes to say “I am the only one who calls,” quotith her.

Now, she broke up with me- so we must have had some problems in our relationship. I think I was too dumb to really grasp said problems at the time, but through my ultra-clear retrospective bifocals we did have a problem or to. I always found myself on the verge of breaking up with her, but I couldn’t, because no matter the problems I still loved her. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were both in a major relationship for the first time. We didn’t have the experience to deal with some of the things that came up. I feel confidently that I could dissolve a lot of the problems that we have if they came up in a new relationship. However, I did try to stop said problems. I think I changed significantly throughout the relationship. The shitty thing about it is, I felt I finally caved in and changed for her. And the moment when I felt like I had done something good it was over. Maybe she liked the old me better, no matter how jagged. Breakups don’t make sense to me, this one especially didn’t.

But no matter what I think about it, or have thought, or how confused it made me we are not together. That is fine, I’m still living in Chico and she has moved to Sonoma. However, we are broken up. The crux of the matter is, we still talk from time to time, be she still has the tendency to get mad at me.

She feels that a relationship, such as the friendship we’re now sharing, must be reciprocal. Friends should call one another (especially is they live far away). It is the duty of a friend to be there for another and so on. She says our friendship isn’t reciprocal. She calls too often (meaning I don’t call enough), and I have the tendency to end conversations too early. Or as she puts it “Before the conversation has picked up” or “before any meaning.”

I feel she is right when it comes to the definition of friendship. I believe friends should show reciprocity, and I also think she is right to point out I have been ending calls quickly. The problem here is that every time I say goodbye, I do so for a good reason. She has caught me at a couple of bad times. I’m single now, I don’t think I need to talk to her the very moment she calls. I value her calls and I want to talk to her when I can, so she is going to have to wait for me to call her back. She also says I never call, but that’s because she has called the last three times within the same week. I don’t feel an obligation to call all the time, I only call when I desire to call. And since I am her friend that will happen often, but I’m not the type of person to call people outside of my town all the time. My best friends that I have known since before I even knew her I don’t talk to nearly as often. But we still consider our friendship reciprocal, we just hang out when there is time.

Your probably asking yourself… why is he writing this??? Hasn’t he resolved anything? The answer is yes and no. Please don’t take this essay to be hatin’ on my prior girl, I also act in ways that make it easy for shit to go down. And quite possibly our friendship is over, since at the end of our last conversation I acted very childish. She told me I wasn’t treating her like a friend, that I was treating her badly. I became intensely offended. Over the years I tried so hard to be the guy she wanted but failed, so she broke up with me. I still feel tremendous guilt for failing, and yet the girl who left me is still there yelling at me. I just couldn’t take it. In a cleverly sarcastic, yet childish act I hung up our conversation when she told me I always end the conversations to soon.

What you just read may seem trivial to you, but she takes her virtues seriously. I wasn’t up to par, and it was a serious offense. In an odd way, that’s something I liked about her. She had a lot of virtue, intellect and passion for life.

That could be the last time we talk. A fitting end to something that was more meaningful to me than any other series of events that have taken place in my life. This long-term relationship changed me in ways I could never have imagined.

p.s. I hope we do talk again soon though.