Kids!
Today’s lesson is:
*** Never cancel a date at the last minute. ***
Years down the road, the “what if” will drive you nuts.
As an added bonus: Spite is very bad Karma - and one which bites back hard.
The general category of today’s lesson is REGRETS
There are two types of regret:
When life makes you choose between those two, choose carefully
Great advice.
Move on. I think we’ve all felt that dead-inside feeling, but when you accept the fact that it’s over and find in yourself the willingness to get over it, it’ll pass.
It may not pass if you don’t accept that it’s over.
It may not pass if you are unwilling to get over it.
I just talked to my brother, who just returned from the funeral of a friend of ours (much closer to him). Great guy, great guitar player, made everyone around him feel better (about themselves and in general), perfect guy to have on a road trip or anything. But he had his demons, and he’d killed himself at age 50. A huge loss to all his friends, and he had many.
Oddly, he was single. He’d found his One True Love in high school. She went to college, he stayed home to run the family business – just like all those Hallmark movies. Only with a different ending. One of his faults was that he wasn’t willing to give up on his attachment to this girl, even after 30 years. What a waste. (He didn’t kill himself over that. He had medical and other issues. That doesn’t make it any less a tragedy.)
Anyway, don’t be that guy, OK?
Holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent-free in your head.
I don’t know who said that first, but they said it best. Stop trying to get back at her for perceived slights and move on with your life. You’re only punishing yourself if you keep thinking about her.
I’ve been in a somewhat similar situation in the past. I had a long term close friend that I’d had a complicated romantic history with and after ending a long term relationship, I had a great deal of desire for her companionship. It never got to a sour point like yours did, but in dealing with my grief over an ended relationship, female companionship is something that can quickly become an obsession.
The thing is, obsession is almost always unhealthy and I didn’t want it to come to that, so I essentially severed contact with her. I blocked her feed on facebook, I ignored her emails, texts, and calls, and I even declined attending her wedding, which was probably the most difficult part. It was rough, because she was a very close friend, but after a while, without regular contact, I thought about her less and less and it got easier. It went on like that for maybe two years or so, until one day she sent me an email that I read, and that whole charge just wasn’t there anymore. At that point, after I’d gotten over my grief and I’d been dating other women again for a while, I realized I just missed her friendship, and that whole latching onto female companionship wasn’t something I needed anymore. So, I reestablished contact with her and it was like nothing had ever happened. We’re still close friends now.
In your case, it sounds like you have a very simple decision, either be friends with her or, if you can’t, end your contact with her. If it’s the latter, maybe at some point you’ll get over it and be able to be friends with her, but since you can’t separate your feelings now, you’ll just cause yourself pain carrying on that way. You very well may be best just severing contact and finding a way to distract yourself when she does come up. Maybe after a while, things will settle down but, frankly, I’d expect me maintaining my friendship with my friend is probably the exception.
Be the best Ryan Liam you can be.
If she wants you, set the bar higher. If she doesn’t, you’ll be in better shape to take it.
If she left you any clues, find/ work-on those. Maybe even if she wanted nothing from you, she left you a sort of map that someone who might want you could find you interesting.
Ignore all the decade-meme guru-advice that will end up trivia game glurg like “what decade was “talk to the hand”? What decade was"wazzzzap?” "What decade was “oh he’s a Nice guy so I can’t like him”?
It’ll be gone faster than stupid-boots-with-no-toes in a rain storm… the poncy magazine article with quiz just hasn’t come out yet.
Good Luck.
Consider this: She doesn’t consider you to be *any *kind of date material. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have used the "don’t think…change’ line.
You are upset because you think you had a chance with her on the night of the canceled date. Well, you didn’t.
You have never “got back at her”:-you have flattered yourself that such was the case. You didn’t, you only inconvenienced her for the evening, but, you still think you had a chance, and this delusion is what is torturing you.
When she thinks of you, she thinks of you about the way I think of the guys I work with-not unpleasant, sometimes amusing, but, I surely don’t wanna kiss any of 'em.
Remember: When she thinks of sex, it ain’t with you.