Two things, hon. The fact that she’s calling off the wedding doesn’t necessarily mean the entire romance is over. Wanting to live alone, not wanting to be married, etc. does NOT automatically preclude a romantic relationship. Unless she actually said, “Johnny, I think we should just be friends,” you’re almost certainly jumping the gun. Doing the pole-vault over the damn thing, really.
Secondly, her personal issues have fuck-all to do with you, your personality, or the way you’ve interacted with her. THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. You are not a jerk. Repeat, YOU ARE NOT A JERK. A lot more of the time than people like to admit, the old “it’s not you, it’s me” chestnut is the god’s honest truth. Like in this case. It’s not you. It’s her. Her fears, her insecurites. Her issues. You did not create this situation, so please, please quit beating yourself up over this.
She did say we’re still friends. We’re just back to where we were six months ago. She said she might be ready to get married when she’s 65. In the meantime, if I found someone else I should go for it.
In my experience, ‘It’s not you; it’s me.’ is a nice way of saying, ‘It’s you; but I don’t want to hurt your feelings.’
Maybe it is her. She tends to go somewhere and then get tired of it. Bad marriages to abusive pricks didn’t help either. But she’d been thinking about marrying me for a while before she shuggested I ask her. She liked the idea for five months. I got on my knees and proposed when she came to visit, and she accepted the ring. She changed her mind after her visit. Sure, it could be that she realised that ‘Oh, my god! This is actually going to happen!’ and it scared her. But I have this nagging feeling that somehow I must have done something wrong.
As for being a jerk, what I meant was that I feel like a jerk for actually believing I could find someone to be with. If I hadn’t been able to do it in 20 years, why should now be different?
Sorry, Johnny, but it sounds like she’s got some baggage there that she needs to deal with, and you got caught in the fallout. It doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong at all.
As for not being able to find someone in 20 years, it only has to happen once.
This attitude is not helping. Women can smell a lack of confidence like a dog smells fear, and it sends them running far, far away. Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not being mean. Take it like a drill-instructor who is yelling at you because he wants you to be the best.
Don’t mope forever!
Get off your ass!
Start dating as soon as you think you can make it through a date without mentioning Sandy!
Excersize!
Seriously, you’ll get over this. It will take a long time, but it’ll happen. I had a pretty nasty breakup almost 2 years ago with a girl I thought I was going to marry at one point. I thought the world was ending, I was used goods, no one would want me, etc. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As soon as I stopped feeling sorry for myself I started getting more dates than I’ve ever had before, and within a couple months I met the girl I’ve been with for over a year now.
Keep your chin up. I swear on the person, deity, or material object of your choice that it will get better.
No, it doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong. It sounds like it sunk in that this marriage was really going to happen and she freaked. That’s all it sounds like.
I don’t believe for a second that there is something so wrong with you. Think about it for a second. Think about it. There are a lot of oddball, loser, bizarro-type guys that find a woman and settle down. You are an oddball (in a delightful way–that’s a plus) but you are not a loser, you’ve got a lot going for you. It will ultimately work out for you. You’ll find some (delightfully oddball) woman who will appreciate you.
Just let me clarify–you guys are friends, not in a romantic relationship, and she decides you ought to ask her to marry you. She does not ask you to marry her, nor say that you ought to get married, just that you ought to propose to her. She says yes, and things procede well for almost half a year. Then one day out of a clear blue sky, she calls and says, “Oh btw, we’re not getting married, and we’re not dating anymore, either. It’s not you, it’s me.” This push-you-pull-me, this-is-what-I-want-oh-wait-no-it-isn’t thing is something of a pattern for her. And you somehow think this is your fault. Does that pretty much sum it up, or am I missing something big like you beating the hell out of her on her last visit?
It seems so clear to me that this is indeed all about her and not at all about you that I just don’t know what to say to you. Okay, if you simply must beat yourself about the head and shoulders about something, you probably weren’t the bestest, most attentive fiance in the whole wide world this last visit. Nobody in your situation would be, and no reasonable human being would expect that of someone in your situation. And to be perfectly, brutally frank, the fact that she’s leaving you now, when you need all the support you can get, means that your marriage was pretty much doomed anyway because she wasn’t ready to be your wife in the true sense of the word. Ducking and running at the first sign of the shit hitting the fan in someone’s life is not what being a spouse is about.
And I repeat, you are not a jerk. There’s nothing jerky about loving someone, about hoping for something good to happen in your life, or about expecting good things to come to those who wait. You deserve happiness just as much as anyone else in this world, so why are you beating yourself up like this?
I may be completely off base here, but this was the sentence that initially struck me, and with which I can most sympathize.
From what you have written about her before, I seem to remember that she has had quite a tough row to hoe, what with her parents dying, a bad marriage, etc. I suspect that getting home to her own life, which she has built for herself, by herself, had more to do with her decision than with anything that might have happened during her visit. As you know, it’s not always easy being on your own, and if you can pull yourself through your emotional traumas alone, you gain enormous strength and - sometimes - a hard shell.
It may well be, that she feels safe with the life she has, and is scared of rocking the boat. It may be that she is simply one of those people who just can’t live with other people. It may be that I am just projecting similarities in my own situation onto the whole thing, but from my experience I can tell you that none of the above stops people from falling in love, but quite a lot of it does stop them from being able to make a commitment, however much they would like to.
You sound like I was a while back. I, also, am too old to start over, but I started over. I flailed around for a while. Still in the process of sloughing off the old life and making the new; rummaging through life’s attic, rediscovering old things, seeing if they’re still me, or if they go into the yard sale.
You still have the magic within you, it just may not be apparent for a while, at least to yourself. Especially to yourself.
Can’t think of anything to add beyond what the others said.
I didn’t get a call or a Dear Optimist letter, I just caught the two of them driving around on a fun-filled evening. She stayed with a female friend and moved out two weeks later.
Life sucked for a good long time after that. Eating and drinking too much, wallowing in self-pity, avoiding social situations. Been there, done that, I suspect we all have.
The important thing is not to give yourself a schedule “I’ll find my next girl by Christmas/My Birthday/whatever”. Just spend some time working the bad feelings out, holding them in will only make it worse. Focus on yourself.
And I suggest avoiding her for awhile. None of this “just friends” business, it only makes it harder. Once you’ve refound yourself you’ll be better able to judge if you want anything to do with her.
I heartily second this. My husband is a complete oddball, and I’m a complete oddball, and together we fit just right. If either of us had settled for good enough, we wouldn’t have been single when we found each other in our thirties.
And no feeling sorry for yourself, either. Have a good wallow, then get on with things. Feeling sorry for yourself no matter what the circumstances gets you absolutely nowhere.
I wasn’t in quite the same situation you’re in now, but eight years ago (my god, has it been that long?) I went through a relationship with a guy I thought I should love, but I just didn’t. After it ended, I thought I wasn’t capable of a romantic relationship, and just gave up on the whole concept.
When I met the future Mr. Neville a couple of years later, I almost told him not to bother trying for a romantic relationship with me. Fortunately, I didn’t. We got married in August 2003.
To take a line from my roommate and reverse it (we’re girls) “Boys suck, they make life hard and for right now, you don’t need it. Here, eat this ice cream and cry, it’ll seem better in the morning.” Now this over something stupid and petty, but when a few months later it wasn’t, the advice still held true.
Futuremore, it’s never too late. Storytime. One day this summer, I was walking from work to school. I saw a little old lady with a cane trying to take out her trash, but she was having trouble, so I stopped to help her. She asked me if I was a student at the university, what year I was and what I was studying. She then told me a little bit about her life. She had been a secretary at the VA for 30 years before retiring. Then in her early sixties, she relized that she still had a lot of life left, so she went back to school at the university. Got a degree in french. Then got a masters in modern languages and a PhD in linguistics or something like that. She said “NEVER let ANYONE tell you you are too old.” I’ve been trying for years to save my father, to get him to leave my mother, but he says he’s too old to start again. I can’t save him. I’ve tried. PLEASE don’t give up on love. It kills me to watch my father. He isn’t really living, just existing. PLEASE.
Oh, and sometimes the “It’s me, not you,” is the truth. I said it when I broke up with my kind, sweet, loving ex because it wasn’t right for me.
You said you felt like selling everything and joining the Foreign Legion.
I’ve had similar thoughts after a bad breakup. I wanted to throw away everything I owned while I was with her, and move far, far away. But I realized that it wasn’t my stuff that was the problem, and it wasn’t my location that was the problem. Running away would involve running away from everthing, the good and the bad…except that all the bad stuff would come with me. There’s no running away from pain, it simply must be suffered, and in time allowed to diminish.
I do have too much stuff. I moved here 13 months ago, and I still have stuff in the storage unit and other stuff in the house that has not been unpacked.
‘“Know thyself”? If I knew myself, I’d run away.’ – Goethe
When my mom was to be married to my dad, she went into the kitchen and told her mother she wasn’t going to go through with it. Her mother said, ‘Yes you will. We’ve spent too much trouble organising it.’ She married my dad.
My mom was remarried around 1980 or so. Her husband-to-be and she went to the Reno Air Races, something they enjoyed a great deal. He proposed there. She said yes, but the next morning she had packed and gone to the airport. Had there been a flight out, she would have gone. She re-married.
I’m hoping it’s just cold feet in my own case. I’d proposed before. She passed it off as a joke. (It was, really; but I was going to use it as an ice-breaker to get her thinking about it.) She said she was done with marriage and would never do it again. About two or three years ago, I sent her a letter telling her how I really felt. She wouldn’t answer my calls for a couple of weeks. It scared her that someone would be in love with her.
I won’t call her for a couple of weeks. Let her calm down a bit. (And maybe she’ll talk to her uncle, who has been telling her ‘Why don’t you marry Johnny?’ for a couple of years.) She may change her mind and decide to marry me. I hope so.
But while I hope she does change her mind, I’m not really optimistic. And it sucks.
There’s a line in The Year of Living Dangerously about Mel Gibson’s character falling into the ‘bitterness and promiscuity of the failed romantic’. I fear that will happen to me; only that would hurt other people, and I don’t want to do that.
Wow, that is really bad. Sometimes life just sucks and there’s nothing to do but get through it one day at a time. As you know from my own breakup thread I’m there with you. My email is in my profile if you want to, you know, wallow in it shamelessly.
Hurts likes a son of a gun. I know. I was left at the altar. No fun.
There are several dangers here. One is taking her refusal as final. It is quite possible she will change her mind again. It may not be uncalled for to leave the door ajar and encourage her.
The other danger is the opposite. That is to say to carry a torch for her for the rest of your life. It is too easy to hope she will come back to you until the hope becomes an obsession. Then you (like me) will live alone for much, much too long.
So you are free again. It is time (or it will be time) to pick up the pieces of your life and having learned lessons reassemble yourself in a new and better way.
Paul in Saudi: Yes, she might change her mind. I hope she does. But she may not. I’ve decided (as I said before) to get rid of stuff. Basically, I’m going to clear the decks for action. I can’t sell the house until next November (Capital Gains), and I think Winter is a poor time for house-selling; so I think I’ll be here until Spring 2006 anyway. (Unless I get a job somewhere else that allows me to own the house and rent an apartment; in that case, I may be able to sell the house or let it out for the Winter Olympics that will be taking place just a few miles from here.)
There’s always the possibility that I’ll meet someone else; but as I said, I’m not going to try. I’ve been trying to meet ‘The One’ for 20 years, and I’m tired. After I literally ‘get my house in order’ I may go somewhere else. She has until one of these events happens. I’m not going to carry a torch forever, but I will for a little while. Again, I’m hoping this is just a case of ‘cold feet’ like my mom exhibited when she got married.
Incidentally, I watched *The Year of Living Dangerously * yesterday. The line I remembered was in reference to Sigourney Weaver’s character.
Anyway, someone is interested in buying my little sailboat (dinghy) when they have the money. I’m in the process of selling my '46 Willys Jeep. (I sent the title to my BIL, who will collect the cashier’s cheque and send it to me.) I’m thinking of selling my ‘zodiac’, engine and trailer. (That will make it difficult to go crabbing. We’ll see what happens when the time comes.) If I do sell it, then I won’t need my Cherokee anymore. The '66 MGB is (finally!) progressing, and I can drive that. There’s lots of stuff I can sell on eBay. Friends have said they like my house, and they’ll consider buying it if it comes to that.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do. If Sandy comes back, then I’ll stay here. If she doesn’t, then I’ll probably move someplace where I can get a job that pays enough for me to fly. A guy from Long Beach, CA who moved up here around the same time I did wants to work with me on film projects. He’s offered to throw some videography work my way and to teach me Final Cut Pro, and wants to produce low-budget films. If that happens, I may be here a while.
I don’t fall in love easily. For it to happen again, I’ll have to be ‘tamed’ like the snake in The Little Prince.