“Nothing Lasts Forever”. “All Good Things Must Come To An End”. “This Too Shall Pass”. “Everything In Life Is Temporary”. We are constantly being told that nothing in life is permanent and are reminded to enjoy and appreciate the great moments when they are here and urged to do our best in times of sadness as they won’t always be here either. The hope is that the amazing times in our lives will fill us with enough joy and happiness to carry with us from then on and the bad times will strengthen us and help us  and we will learn from them. We all know that, especially in relationships, this is very true.  Relationships end all the time; some do last a lifetime and come as close to forever as possible while others are much more fleeting. Unfortunately most of us will one day find ourselves in a situation where, in order to find the kind of the love that will indeed last us a lifetime, we must end things with someone that shouldn’t be in our lives for that long. We all know the old saying about loving someone and setting them free to see if they were ever really ours to begin with, but what about those we set free and don’t want to have come back to us?

The end of filming a movie is signaled by yelling “that’s a wrap”, the film itself ends in credits scrolling through on the screen, a song fades out at the end, a theatrical production ends in applause (we’re not even going into an opera, there’s no need to repeat for the millionth time what they say about that . . .).  What seems to always be uncertain is what the curtain call is supposed to be for a relationship and how do you handle it when you notice the lights fading up signaling that things are over but your partner doesn’t?

The song says that “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” and in my opinion they hit the proverbial nail on the head (yeah I know we’re pretty quote/lyric heavy here today but clearly this is a much covered topic). Break ups are so complicated and most often the longer you were with someone and allowed your lives to entangle, the harder they are to UNtangle. I could go on and on writing up all the ways in which things can get messy: financially, emotionally, etc. We have all been through tumultuous love recovery periods in our lives and surely have come out on the other end of a relationship or two with a broken heart. But today let’s talk about when we are the heartbreaker. I won’t pretend to have a ton of experience being the one to end things (being in as long term of a relationship as I was tends to limit that a bit) but have had to do it nonetheless. It’s not something that I enjoy (but then again, who does?) and I’m trying to learn how to do a better job of it.

Personally, I tend to be a people pleaser. If they’re happy, then I’ll eventually be happy too, right? Wrong. Putting yourself first is tough but more and more I’m finding that isn’t something that I’m willing to overlook any longer. That means breaking up with someone when things don’t feel right. Sometimes it even means ‘pre-date breaking up’ (that’s my own little term for ending things with someone before they actually ever begin) and that is something that I am getting a lot of experience in.

I seem to still be trying to find my way a bit in regards to how to call it quits with someone. I have had times where I really felt that I handled things well and other times where it didn’t go as I planned. My favorite way for things to end with someone I don’t see myself being with is for things to kind of just fizzle, which usually means that it was mutual and you can pick up and move on easily without any hurt feelings or hard discussions but that doesn’t seem to happen as often as I would hope. One thing that has always driven me crazy when it has been done to me is the whole ‘just don’t reply’ approach to ending things. That has never sat well with me and so that is something that I just won’t do to someone else. I will always explain that things won’t be going any further between us. That being said, I have had guys who didn’t seem to want to respect my decision and weren’t backing off after being told no and so I have stopped answering them or blocked them from being able to get in touch with me and that I have no qualms about doing that (no means no, remember).  Recently, I went out with someone (a guy that I probably shouldn’t have even agreed to go on a date with to be honest, because I could just tell we weren’t going to hit it off) and I patted myself on the back for being straightforward but kind and explaining that he had done nothing wrong (as a response to him apologizing for ‘blowing it’) but that I just didn’t think there was any chemistry between us and wished him the best of luck. I felt like such an adult, like I had unlocked my ability to break up effectively.

Well . . . that was short lived, just this week I found myself having to tell the Vegan (remember him from Living (sorta) Young, (sometimes) Wild and Free ?) that it was time to cut our losses and sure enough my old bad break up habit crept back in. Now, this habit stems from good intentions but it’s still one that I have to shake. I so don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or offend them, so I end up telling one small truth in order to omit the giant truth behind why I am calling things off. The problem with that is, in leaving out what I consider to be the major reason I don’t want to be with someone, I make them think that there is a chance that they can fix things when it’s just not the case. When I was ready to leave my ex, I desperately didn’t want to tell him I wasn’t in love with him anymore; it wasn’t something I knew how to say to someone. Instead, I used a legitimate truth that I believed to be the trump card: he never wanted to get married and have kids.  It was an issue that we both knew would at some point bring us to a crossroads and I decided to use the ‘we just want different things’ excuse. Big Mistake. He started trying to really think about whether or not that was what he wanted when what I really wanted was to not be with him anymore. Fast forward to trying to let the Vegan down easy, a certain scaredy cat decides to use her hectic schedule and imminent move to claim poor timing as the driving force behind feeling like we shouldn’t make plans to get together. And again, just like before, my trying to be nice backfired. He responded that I just need to relax, he didn’t want me to be stressed and he doesn’t mind holding off because he thinks getting to know me will be worth the wait . . .Oops.

Now I’ve used too many old sayings in this post to stop now, so like they say “Practice Makes Perfect” and it looks like I just need to keep on practicing. Clearly I need to find a better balance between letting someone down easy and being true to myself and honest with them. Not sure that’s it’s the worst problem that a single girl could have.  I’ll just keep having a good time dating, navigating various relationships and figuring out what is temporary and what seems like it could last as close to forever as I can find.