I believe “shego” is a reference to the female ego (she+ego). That’s my thought anyways.
Kittenblue, I say get 'im. Snowboarder Bo has the right idea.This guy is acting like a weasel. Call him on it. And you know, a good kick to the jimmies would put a nice punctuation on the lesson. YMMV 
I hear you, kittenblue, and I sympathize. You seem to be hurting quite a bit right now, but still you’re taking it in stride, and for that I admire you.
Count me in on the side of “Don’t go see him.” If he’s not dead, he doesn’t want to see you, and he’s too cowardly to tell you straight out.
I’m sure of this, because I did it. And let me tell you something, I’m not proud of it.
Sigh . . . Here’s the story. In some of my previous posts, I’ve alluded to this flaky coed I was seeing in college. Let’s call her Jane. I had been in love with her for some time before I asked her out, and when a relationship developed, I was astounded. She was so pretty. She was so talented. She was so smart. She was so witty.
She was a psycho whore. She cheated on me, and I broke it off with her. I figured it was for the best. I even managed to see another girl for a little while as kind of a rebound thing. I thought I had put Jane behind me.
But colleges are weird places when it comes to relationships. Jane was very intelligent, more intelligent than I had given her credit for, and when she wanted something, she could be very manipulative. She tried everything from letters to pleading with me to sleeping with a casual friend of mine. In the end, she just wore me down, and I came back (I know. Pathetic, right?). I tried to break it off, with some success, but the last 3 weeks of college, we hooked up again. It was sort of an unspoken goodbye arrangement. Of course, she was sleeping with someone else, but at that point, I don’t think I even cared. I was so burned out from classes and worrying about the future, and worrying about her that I had sort of “flat-lined.” I don’t think she even knew that I knew, but if I had brought it up, it just would have created problems and arguments. In the last semester of the last year of my undergraduate experience, I was just too tired to deal with it… Deep down inside, I think she still believed we could somehow make it work, but I knew that there was no way, no fucking way I could spend the rest of my life with her. I think she knew it too, but she just didn’t want to admit it. I did tell her that I didn’t want to marry her, but then again, I had told her before that I didn’t want to get back together with her, and she got past that easily enough.
We were together right up until graduation. After the ceremony, I kissed her goodbye, watched her get into the car with her family, and that’s the last I ever saw of her. She called me once about a week later, and I was kind of indifferent. She wrote me a few times, but I didn’t write back. After a while, I got a teary letter about how betrayed she felt, and how she didn’t want to hear from me anymore. And that’s it. Mutual friends told me later that she didn’t stop crying for days. That was 12 years ago.
Why did I do it?
I was pissed, I suppose. I was sick of all the lying and the manipulation and the cheating and the sexual politics. I was royally pissed off at myself for being a grovelling little worm afraid to stand up to her. I was pissed off for letting myself be manipulated, for being so weak, so out of control. And I was pissed off at her beyond words. The thing is that to this day, I don’t know if I was angrier at her for the manipulation or at myself for letting it happen. I wanted to get payback, I suppose. That’s why.
But that’s not why. The real reason why is because I was a snivelling coward who couldn’t speak my mind and who was used to taking shit. The real reason why is because I didn’t feel strong enough confront her without her talking me back into it. The real reason why is because I was a backstabbing creep for doing it. That’s the reason why.
A few months later, I was in the army, where I learned all about standing up from myself and taking responsibility for my actions and life. I swear, I learned more from four years in the military plus my relationship with Jane than I did in sixteen years of school. I’m to the point in my life now where I would never put up with that level of BS from a lover or anyone else. I know how to stand firm now, and I know that some things, you just don’t do. And what I did to Jane was a definite don’t. I still feel ashamed about it today, and if you thought less of me for this, kittenblue, I would be the last person to blame you.
Whenever someone talks to me of getting payback now, I sit them down, and I tell them about Jane. I tell them that while they should defend themselves, they should not go looking to hurt the person back any more than they have to. I tell them that it takes a certain abnormal personality to relish revenge and that anyone without that mutation is going to regret it. I tell them that while I’m happily married, there’s not a day that goes by that I wish I had handled it like a grown-up and let her salvage what little dignity she had left. I tell them to go back out and give the shit-thrower hell, but when they back down, it’s over, especially if they used to be friends. Bad feelings between friends eventually fade, at least to the point where they can get on with their lives. Bad feelings from revenge last a looooong time.
I realize this was a bit rambling, kitten, and I realize by reading your OP that the situation doesn’t apply to you, but I wanted to make sure you got the full story about why someone might do something like this in a certain situation. My advice? Forget him. You deserve better.
You came in here asking for advice that you obviously have no intention of taking, and then you make a snarky remark about the people who’ve taken time to respond:
You’re very lucky you didn’t open this in the Pit.
And don’t pretend that your actions are on behalf of oppressed women everwhere, because they aren’t.
Don’t confront him, don’t talk to him, don’t give any indication that you know he still exists. I know it’s hard and you don’t want to do it, but as others have said in this thread, you’re not likely to be the one who makes him sit up and say, “Hey, I’m being weaselly! Let me stop it right now.”
First of all, the good of humanity thing was a little joke. You know,like if I’m going to act all smug as I was accused, then I’d better be doing something worth acting smug about, so I must be doing this for noble reasons.
And you’re right, that comment was a bit snarky, and I regretted it…a bit. I do sometimes wonder about the intentions of people, not just here on the board, but even friends who say, “oh, just forget him and move on” as if none of this matters at all. It matters to me, and if this guy was insignificant in my life I’d turn away with no hesitation. So I wonder, do those people just hate confrontation and conflict on all levels, or are they people who sympathize with the dumper’s tactics, or do they just not give a fig about me? I did say that “I would hate to think” the advice was given to discourage people from ever asking someone to be accountable.
And yes, I did say up front that my mind was made up, but I still was interested in opinions. I’m sorry if anyone thought I was looking for advice on whether or not to do this…more just opinions on whether or not it helps to resolve things in one’s mind. I asked people here because this is the best place to get a wide variety of experiences and opinions from such an incredibly diverse group of people, all of whom are articulate and thoughtful, and who have no emotional connection to me (except for one poster/friend who has already given her opinion in person and whose motives I understand) that keeps them from being honest. So thank you, laina_f for letting me know I’d hurt your feelings…that’s the kind of openess I appreciate.
And now I’m off…decided 5:30 is better than 7:30, so I’ll let you know how it all shakes out.
Kittenblue - maybe he’s done the very thing you’ve said you do?
I’m back for 10 minutes, to get a bottle of wine. I’m meeting his sister. Things are getting complicated…back later
You’re the one who said you were “smug”, so don’t call it an accusation. See post #12. Your own choice of words.
That was after msmith537’s comments:
You know that little voice inside your head that tells you when you’re doing something reeeeallly stupid??
YOU DON’T HAVE ONE!!!
:smack:
We’ll be talking tomorrow about how his sister thinks he’s stupid for letting someone like you go and that he’s never met anyone like you and he just doesn’t know how to deal with that… and he’s confused… and needs time… to think… and maybe see other people to confirm his feelings…
Kittenblue, I’ve been in your shoes more times than I’ve liked. It never ends up good. Took me way too long to figure it out.
Now I have taken on the role of Pro-Active Person. Being Really Mellow Friend is just too much for my heart to take. I make it clear I’m looking for a relationship not a friendship and if Dude has no plans of reciprocating what I feel then he can take a hike.
This attitide is pretty much as painful as the “I’ll wait till you’re ready” attitude, but I find that sitting back and waiting means alot of prolonged pain and the up-front attitude is a shorter span of less pain.
But…well, looks like you’ve chosen to prolong the pain. C’est la vie.
I’ve got to go against what seems to be the flow here and say go see him. Not his sister. Him.
Putting myself in kittenblue’s place, I don’t see how I could ever end a relationship without having a last meeting, face-to-face, just to confirm the situation. How would you know what’s really going on?
How could anyone just let it go without actually speaking to their soon to be ex? I couldn’t do it.
If I confronted a woman in such a situation and she accused me of not being able to take a hint, I’d simply say, “No, I won’t take a hint. Get up some guts and tell me that it’s over and I’ll go, but you ain’t gettin’ off the hook without at least looking me in the eye and telling me to get lost.”
Or something similar.
and
and
Obviously he’s not in the very best health, kittenblue is puzzled by this behavior, so she’s trying to find out what’s going on. I’m going to reserve judgement over whether or not she is prolonging her pain until we find out if he’s okay. Lordy, folks, he could have had a stroke on the plane or something.
kittenblue, do give us an update.
Okay, I’m home. When I first got there, he wasn’t home, so I went to the grocery store and listened to Prairie Home Companion for an hour. Then I went back, he was there, we talked, and he apologized and said that when he got back from Arizona he was not very happy because his Arizona dream was not gong to work…too much air pollution, too expensive, water shortages, too built-up. So he was back to square one of “what am I gonna do with my life” and he felt it wasn’t fair to me to continue seeing me when he really needs to figure out his life and finances and his current job, and he had warned me from day one that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, that he was looking forward to his daughter leaving for college and being alone for the first time since his wife died twelve years ago. I chided him for being rude and thoughtless, and reminded him that I’d gone into this knowing it would be short term and casual, and that he really owed me the courtesy of an explanation. And then we did what we always seem to do…start talking about daily events and got off-topic.
Dragging him back to the subject, I asked what every woman wants to know (okay, I stole it from the book “You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs”)…if you really enjoyed what we were doing together, how could you never want to do it again? I told him we had some basic differences in how we looked at the world, and that I feared his attitude toward his job (“hey, if they fire me, so what, there’ll be other jobs”) was his attitude toward women, but that I couldn’t afford to reject people as friends just because they came along six months before some arbitrary date. I don’t make friends that easily, and I didn’t want to lose his friendship. He had no good answer, just that he had really missed me but felt I’d be better off not pinning my hopes on him, and that he really should have called. I told him I was pinning no hopes, but just wanted to enjoy his company for however long he would be around.
And then it all changed. It was hot in the hallway where we were talking, and he asked me to come in, have some wine, sit with him and his daughter and continue talking. His sister was coming over to borrow a suitcase, and he wanted me to stay. His sister arrived, he introduced us, his daughter went to her room, we three sat around and talked and drank wine and ate grapes and he was exactly how he has always been…friendly and affectionate and in no hurry for me to leave. We joked about a merlot I’d bought…The Little Penguin…and he asked if I’d run home and grab the bottle and come back while they went to the storage area to get the suitcase. As I left he grabbed me and kissed me, and I asked if he really wanted me to come back, and he said yes. When I returned, we three shared the bottle of wine and then his sister went home, and then he made me a turkey sandwich, and made it clear that he wanted me to stay. It was like the last month had never happened, and I guess we’re back to being friends.
So. I never really got answers, just an apology, and I got to say what I wanted to say, and now I guess we’ll go on from here, having made it clear to each other what we want from this non-relationship relationship. I need lots of alone time, he has responsibilities and needs alone time, and we’ll see what happens. No scenes, no drama, no promises, no change. It’s very strange. Not what I expected. But for now, I’m no longer pissed off at the world, and that’s a good thing, which my co-workers and my kids will benefit from.
Now, aren’t you glad you went? I know I would be.
Good luck, whatever your future brings.
Just so you are clear on this:
What this means is that he does like you, he does like your company, but he doesn’t like it so much more than being alone tha the isn’t willing to go out of his way to get it.
Again, he likes you, he likes your company, but the thought of your discomfort or worry doesn’t really bother him.
As long as you are ok with that attitude–and that’s a valid choice–everything is fine. But he knew you would be worried and didn’t call, didn’t do anything until you cornered him. Don’t delude yourself about the depth of his emotions here.
kittenblue, I’m glad that things worked out alright tonight, but I have to say that I pretty much agree with Manda JO’s assessment.
Think long and hard about whether or not the time spent with this man is worth spending in the future.
Glad your calmer, tho.
Bo
Oh, believe me, I’m under no illusions here. In fact, I’m feeling a lot clearer now about what I want.
I third Manda JO’s post. Be really careful kittenblue, if you were my sister I’d want you to at* least* call a time out with this guy so both of you could take stock, calmly. Getting some perspective is worth it’s weight in gold.