Dating : Lessons I learned from a broken engagement

Once upon a time, I was an idiot. I fell in love with someone who was not. He knew exactly what he was doing, namely, manipulating me. We dated for almost four years total, give or take a few months of “break ups” that never stuck. We lived together for two of those years and were engaged for all of one month. The engagement ended in a whirlwind of lies and betrayal, and I promptly hit the eject button, moved 2000 miles across the country, and started over. It’s been almost five whole months since everything blew up, and I like to think I’ve gained a lot of wisdom in that time. Here’s what I’ve concluded thus far.

This is nothing revolutionary; everyone knows the old saying, “actions speak louder than words”. But it’s hard when you’re dating someone who is an expert at words. He can craft a speech to fit any occasion, he’s great at apologies, adept at making promises, and flatters you with 500 compliments a day. When there’s so many words, they almost hide the fact that there’s very little action to back them up. But eventually, especially once the initial honeymoon phase of the relationship is over, the lack of action becomes glaringly obvious. Towards the end of the relationship, I found that I had literally memorized his every response, apology, promise, etc. There was nothing left that he could tell me that I could reasonably believe, because over the course of four years, he had revealed that his words were completely empty, because his actions never aligned with what he said.

They’re probably not wrong. Everyone loves a romanticized story about forbidden love and disapproving parents, but in reality, those scenarios don’t have the best endings. It’d be great if life worked out the way it does in Taylor Swift’s classic song, Love Story. The dad hates the boyfriend at first, forcing the couple to date in secret, but eventually he wins the dad over and they have permission to marry. Hooray hooray, happy endings all around. Except, in my own personal experience, the ending was anything but happy. I’ll readily admit that 99% of the time, when it comes to decisions I’ve made, my dad has been right, and I have been wrong. But even if he didn’t have such a great track record, or if you don’t have a relationship with your parents, it still makes sense that the people closest to you (whoever that might be) know you the best. And the people that know you the best are probably pretty good judges when it comes to evaluating your romantic interests. Of course, there are exceptions to this. Sometimes people make snap judgements that are wildly off base. It’s also impossible to please everyone. However, if the vast majority of the people in your life, who know you the best, are saying “RUN”, then, well, you should at the very least consider running.

If anything, looking to someone else to fix it for you only makes it worse. I’m reminded often of one of my all-time favorite quotes from Perks of Being a Wallflower, “We accept the love we think we deserve”. Yikes. Because honestly, I’ve accepted a lot of really shitty love. But that has always gone hand in hand with my estimation of my own self worth. I used to struggle with an overwhelming amount of insecurity and low self esteem. When I started dating my ex, I looked to him to solve that for me. Ironically, I thought he was, with his constant reassurances, compliments, and promises. I placed all of my insecurities on him, hoping he could carry them. But his empty words were not enough to support them, and I quickly became very codependent. I tied up my self worth completely in him and our relationship, and it made it that much harder for me to leave when it became glaringly obvious that I needed to. Now that I’ve finally gotten away and have had some time to myself, I’ve learned how to build up my self confidence on my own. I know now that I am freakin’ amazing, and I would never allow myself to settle for the pitiful excuse of “love” that he offered me. But it took exploring and diving deep into my insecurities on my own, so that I could be the one to fix them (note: this is uncomfortable and not at all fun, but very much worth it).

This is a hard pill for me to swallow, because I love giving people second (third, fourth, thousandth) chances. I’m a big believer in grace and forgiveness, and I do my best to give them freely. However, I had to learn that sometimes, giving people another chance only enables them to continue their destructive patterns of behavior without consequence. Every time my ex lied to me, or forced me to have sex with him, or punched a hole in the wall, or verbally abused me, etc., and I gave him another chance to fix things and be with me, I was teaching him that he could get away with that kind of behavior, and I would always be there to take him back. At the time, I saw this as me offering truly unconditional love. I now see that it only perpetuated the destructive cycle and made both of us more miserable. It’s one thing to give someone a chance for isolated instances of less than ideal behavior. No one is perfect, everyone needs grace sometimes. However, if it’s a pattern of behavior, it needs to be broken. And the only way to break it is to stop enabling it.