decision making

I need to get my head around the fact that just wanting to be with someone is not enough to make a relationship stick. I feel incredibly guilty for daring to analyze this relationship. I´ve spent my previous relationships over-analyzing everything and I guess this time I went all the way to the other side and I have avoided looking at this liaison too closely. As time goes by I find myself rethinking if this is working out for me. After 8 months something has to be going in the right direction or we wouldn´t be together, right?

I´ve been head over heels in love, I´ve also been in relationships I had to be talked into and with time fell in love the other person. A few I got into just out of curiosity to see what would happen, and some of those I wasn´t able to cut off in time and they became train wreck relationships with yelling and bitching and general unpleasantness. I felt too cowardly to break up , I felt guilty, I felt the other person deserved another chance and that maybe I deserved whatever I was getting out of the relationship.

Funny how I try and see what I´m doing "wrong" or "right" according to past experiences: since all of them are former relationships, I can´t say I´ve learned or improved my techniques and have come up with proper practices, if they had worked out I´d still be going out with that same person. Me? I´m just walking in the dark.

I´m not the most stable person when it comes to jobs or relationships: I´m not the most stable person when it comes to anything in my life as a matter of fact. I get bored easily, I strive for novelty, I like variety, I like adventure. None of them conducive for long-lasting relationships with minimum drama. He shouldn´t have to be blamed for my instability and he doesn´t have to be my personal jester, keeping me entertained 24/7 when I know things just tend to get old and boring for me. Everything eventually does.


Today I shared with him the idea behind a blog post Logtar wrote:

Everything you like about the other person or you share is a thread that strengthens the rope of that relationship. One thread alone can be easily snapped with little force, but the more threads your rope has the stronger it becomes.

I tried to start a conversation on what things we have in common, to go against my urge to pinpoint all the ways in which we are different, and came out empty-handed. Basically it´s "we use internet and our names start with the same letter". It´s scary. We don´t share hobbies, interests, family background, life experiences. I tried to bring it up again when we were lying in bed at his house and he laughed it off. He tends to do that whenever I try to broach any conversation topic that requires deep thinking and analysis. It seems that his 6th sense of skirting possibly conflictive issues is the reason why we´re still together: we haven´t had the chance to fight about anything yet.

Still, the not having things in common isn´t enough reason to end a relationship. I don´t really have all that much in common with any of my other friends here in Medellin, but we´ve managed to start projects and work together and have fun. With 8 month guy? Only the fact that we made out one night at a party and then continued hanging out and we just started hanging out more often until one day we were boyfriend-girlfriend and that was that. No romance or wooing, only the jitters and excitement that any new relationship brings. He´s been my complimentary color, balancing things out and being a perfect contrast for whatever I tend to do.

Louann Brizendine once mentioned in an interview that women´s biggest mistake is expecting our boyfriend to be our girlfriend, and I think I´m making that mistake even as I´ve been conciously avoiding doing so. I don´t have female friends in this city and he´s the closest I have to that. But I can´t hang onto a person in a relationship just because they are a good friend.

But I´m also selfish. And scared. I´m scared of being lonely. Scared of spending my weekends alone, of coming to my computer and not having a cute IM message appear while I was out. Scared that I could bring up the idea of breaking up and he wouldn´t mind. Scared of breaking up just a couple of weeks before summer holidays and then having nothing to do and no one to hang out with during that time. Because I know that breaking up with someone and expecting that person to remain a friend doesn´t work out, so I shouldn´t count on that.

All this hemming and hawing just so that I didn´t come out and say the most terrible thing of all: I don´t love him.

I thought it would happen over time, and nope. Nothing yet. It hasn´t happened and I don´t think it will. I like him and he´s the person I hang out the most with, but wouldn´t that just make him a friend? A friend with whom I´m intimate every once in a while? But friend and sex do not a boyfriend make.

I´m scared and feeling guilty of wanting to break up and the feeling guilty for not wanting to break up. I wish the guilt would just go away and I´d grow balls to just go ahead and do what I know needs to be done.