Thursday, June 12, 2008

ex-vasion

I came up with a whole list of topics to write about in my blog last night, now that it isn't only jew-related. I've decided on three themes that will probably give me enough blogging material for at least the rest of the summer. They are "moments in my life that seemed insignificant at the time but that in retrospect totally changed the direction my life was taking," "crazy dudes I've gone on dates with," and "crazy stories that are just begging to be told."

I was also thinking of a 4th category of "crazy drugs I may or may not have done and the crazy things that may or may not have happened while I was or was not on them" but since this is a public blog, I'm probably going to skip that one.

But instead of starting on all that today, I have something else to rant about today. The ex-vasion of my music scene.

See, after me and the ex broke up, I started going to see jam bands on a regular basis. That summer I went to my first music festival and now, 5 years later, I go to festival and ruined the whole festival for everyone.

Anyways, that was two years ago, and he hadn't gone to fests since then. At least not any fests I was at. Until this year. In mid-May he shows up at a fest I'm working at, and our mutual friend and him set up camp right next to where I had set up camp the day before (as a festival volunteer I got to come a day early, chill with the other volunteers, and nab some prime camping space). During the course of this festival, the ex has the 'brilliant' idea of vending some kind of food product his wife makes (trying not to be so specific here) at the next major festival of the summer. The festival that is a week from tomorrow, that is my favorite festival of the year (this will be the 4th year in a row I will be going to it). If that goes well, he may start doing this on a regular basis! His wife may or may not be coming!

Oh, his wife. Did I not mention? 3 weeks after he broke off our engagement, he started dating this girl that he had mysteriously visited the weekend before he broke off our engagement. A week after he broke off our engagement, she mysteriously broke off HER engagement with some other dude. A little over a year later, THEY were married.

Our mutual friend is fond of saying "Oh but you guys were HORRIBLE for each other" whenever I bitch about the ex. And he's right. We were horrible for each other. However, whenever this mutual friend says that, I get pissed off to no end. Cause what mutual friend seems to be saying is "oh, you were horrible for each other, so why should it bother you that this dude is now ex-vading your social life?" What this mutual friend doesn't seem to understand is that while I'm over the relationship (indeed, 5 years later I can barely remember our 4 year relationship), I am not over the break-up.

Folks, there are good ways and bad ways to break up with someone. Here's an example of a bad way:

Date someone for 4 years, get engaged to them, have a huge engagement party with family and friends, start making plans for a wedding, finalize those plans for the most part by 4 months after the engagement, including money deposits and everything.

Then, go visit a high school (female) friend for a weekend (a female friend who had come to your engagement party), come back, and act super weird for a week or so. Come visit one day and start getting it on, but can't finish. Tell your fiance that it's you, that you're feeling kind of sick. During this week, consult with rabbis and your fiance's parents about whether or not you should marry her after all. Do NOT consult with your fiance about your doubts, so she is totally in the dark, and has no idea what is coming, and no chance to talk about what is bothering you. Then, a week and a half after this trip, Call your fiance up randomly and say something mysterious like "We need to talk, I'll be at your place in an hour." Let your fiance worry during that hour that since you had visited a doctor for your 'sickness' that morning (that was most likely anxiety in retrospect), that your doctor had told you you were dying of some mysterious disease, cause it doesn't cross her mind that 'we need to talk' actually could have meant "we need to talk about how I'm breaking up with you" as it usually does.

Then show up at your dorm, tell your fiance you're calling off the wedding and can you have the ring back, and disappear back into the night HALF AN HOUR later. Leave your now-ex-fiance to deal with canceling wedding plans, returning the insane amount of engagement gifts you got (including writing checks to people who had given us money...man that was painful in a way that had nothing to do with the monetary aspect), and telling most of your mutual friends that the wedding was called off. Oh and then 3 weeks later start dating that girl you mysteriously visited a week and a half before you dumped your fiance, IM your ex and hint at how excited you are to be dating someone new, but leave it to the grapevine to tell her exactly who it is. All this while your ex is such a puddle of hurt that she can barely get out of bed, and is eating out of vending machines cause she can't bring herself to go to the grocery store.

Ok, maybe you get the idea.

It wasn't the break up itself. In retrospect, that break up was the best thing that's ever happened to me, and one of those "moments in my life that seemed insignificant at the time but that in retrospect totally changed the direction my life was taking," and in an awesome way. We WERE terrible for each other, as our mutual friend is so annoyingly fond of saying.

It was the method of the break up. Calling off an engagement and a 4 year relationship in half an hour. Consulting rabbis and MY parents (who didn't say anything to me, and that may have been the straw that broke the camel's relationship with her parents), but not saying a word to me. So that the whole thing totally came out of left field. Like being shot in the gut by the guy you thought was your best friend. And then afterwards, leaving me to pick up the pieces and deal with all the official wedding canceling stuff. Going on his merry way with a new girl (with whom I will never know if he cheated on me with during that mysterious weekend visit) barely 3 weeks later, while I was still incapable of getting out of bed.

That's not the way you break up with your fiance. That's the way you break up with your middle school girlfriend.

While the break up was a good thing, the method still has reverberations in my relationships with other people. For instance, there's a reason I'm not making a big deal out of the fact that me and B are planning on getting married. And that reason is there is no way in hell I'm going through the pain of telling a bunch of people I'm not getting married AGAIN if this engagement also goes south. That's also why me and B are getting married at city hall, cause there's also no way in hell I'm going through planning a wedding again. I definitely have some trust issues. In that I don't trust people not to suddenly leave me one day out of the blue. After we broke up I didn't date anyone (in any sort of serious fashion, I did go on many first dates) for a year and a half, and I didn't have a real relationship again until B, three and a half years later. I dated 2 other guys for about 6 weeks each in the interim, but broke up with both of them when things started getting more serious. I couldn't resist B though. :)

Meanwhile, I'm sure you, my dear readers, are not surprised that I am not so much looking forward to the ex-vasion of my favorite festival. I can hang out near him, and even talk to him when other people leave (so no more awkwardness?) and B is coming with me, so I have that buffer. But I'd just rather he wasn't there. He's like an ink stain on your jeans that you can live with, but you just wish wasn't there. I just have no desire to ever hang out near or with him again. But there's also no way in hell I'm giving up MY favorite festival and MY music scene cause he's decided to invade it.

15 comments:

  1. You know, I think that being around him will help with this whole process that you may not quite be over with. Honestly. Seeing him in the flesh will erase a lot of stuff in your head.
    Try to think of it that way.
    But I can understand why you're pissed.

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  2. I've seen him in the flash plenty of times since we broke up...especially in the year after we broke up, and at 2 fests since. Honestly, I think seeing him and hanging out with him in person went a long way towards getting over our relationship, and being in love with him, etc, as when years later I saw him and realized that we WERE terrible for each other, and how he hasn't changed in all those years, while I have changed drastically.

    Not sure how long it's going to take to 'get over' the break up though. That may have caused permanent damage.

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  3. Didn't your parents help (take over) all the wedding cancelling things and check writings and etc? I'd think that since they never liked him to begin with, they'd be more than happy to rush to unmake all the wedding preps and erase him from their lives.

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  4. They did help with wedding canceling things (since they had paid for most of it in the first place), with annoyingly in-my-face daily updates. But the gift returning and check writing was all me.

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  5. No reason whatsoever to avoid it! Hold your head high and proud.

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  6. I don't know what to say. You should be having trust in B and instead you put up a barrier to any kind of wedding celebration beyond perhaps barebones based on the possibility he would dump you which is a risk all who get married take. Headwise I would say to wait to get married to have issues resolved including this obsession with how you broke up with your exfiance, but with love the head is not the only department. In any event you have so many anger issues and it's not healthy or conducive to objectivity.

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  7. rg- you know what I love? How you always seem to tell me what I SHOULD be doing how I SHOULD be feeling, or better yet, telling me what I AM feeling! You come off as very patronizing, and frankly, nothing you post is ever a positive contribution...instead you seem intent on pointing out what's wrong with me for feeling the way I do, and how I should be feeling instead.

    This morning someone posted something about my ex somewhere else, which reminded me that I am seeing him in a week. yes, I still have anger over how we broke up. I don't actively sit around hating him, but when somethign reminds him that I'm seeing him in a week, it reminds me of said anger. That hardly counts as an 'obsession'.

    Not having a big wedding celebration is not only because of my ex. Yes, he left me, and that sucked, and that is part of the reason I don't want to bother again. But planning that wedding left me with a lot of other feelings. Like that planning weddings sucks ass. Also, that I'm not really into big pagentry symbolic bullshit with me in the spotlight. I'd rather spend the money on an awesome trip to Rome with me and B. Or a cruise around the galapagos. Finally, why have a big wedding when no one from my family will be there? So it'll be like him and his parents and sister and maybe 10 of our close friends...hardly seems worth the expense and time involved for a wedding that'll have 20 people at it, tops.

    Finally, you seem to have a lot to say. Why not start your own blog, where you can spew out your patronizing bullshit about everyone else's lives to your hearts content?

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  8. I've given you positive feedback.
    I wasn't telling you how you should feel. Nor was I being patronizing. If you talk about problems then I can either tell you only that you are right which won't help you or I can tell you things you can do to improve things. As for your obsesion yes it is an obsesion. You said you have a lack of trust yet. As for your wedding plans I wasn't saying it should be big or small but you mentioned about how you are doing things because of what happened the first time around. If anyone's giving bullshit its you. You write about how things affected you negatively. Rather than address comments you ascribed motives to me and yet have the nerve to tell me I'm telling you how you feel. By doing that you think you don't have to address issues. I've been polite to you and even supportive and trying to give you constructive opinion and you give me your stupid childish rants.

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  9. First you write:"For instance, there's a reason I'm not making a big deal out of the fact that me and B are planning on getting married. And that reason is there is no way in hell I'm going through the pain of telling a bunch of people I'm not getting married AGAIN if this engagement also goes south. That's also why me and B are getting married at city hall, cause there's also no way in hell I'm going through planning a wedding again."

    And then you write as if there was nothing affected as far as B by getting off topic and attacking me personally. Did I write about a big wedding? No I didn't. You were using childish tactics. If that's patronizing to say, no duh!

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  10. having my ability to trust people damaged by someone who I trusted compeltely betraying that trust is not the same thing as an 'obsession'.

    I don't feel as if your opinions are very constructive. Sometimes yes, but mostly I just get pissed off after reading them. Maybe there's actually a reason I get pissed off every time I read any one of your comments? Yes, it's possible that I just hate critism. But maybe it's ALSO the way you give it. Maybe you should examine your own tone. You frequently come off as patronizing, and not just in this post. Is there maybe a tiny possibility that your comments come off in a tone you don't intend? Or that you do intend your posts the way you write them, and other people might find them patronizing? Or is that outside of the realm of possibilities?

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  11. Sorry I didn't see your comment.

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  12. "abandoning eden said...
    having my ability to trust people damaged by someone who I trusted compeltely betraying that trust is not the same thing as an 'obsession'.

    I don't feel as if your opinions are very constructive. Sometimes yes, but mostly I just get pissed off after reading them. Maybe there's actually a reason I get pissed off every time I read any one of your comments? Yes, it's possible that I just hate critism. But maybe it's ALSO the way you give it. Maybe you should examine your own tone. You frequently come off as patronizing, and not just in this post. Is there maybe a tiny possibility that your comments come off in a tone you don't intend? Or that you do intend your posts the way you write them, and other people might find them patronizing? Or is that outside of the realm of possibilities?"

    It really should not sound patronizing. I only can imagine it if someone else is talking patronizingly as a know it all or is being nasty. In any event it is irrelevant. If you get pissed off from what I say it hardly would be because of patronizingness. rather it would be because you don't agree. What you see as patronizing is merely years of experience on my end. My parents are dead. And so i have some experience in seeing the fleetingness of life and what's really important. You are comming at it from the learning end. From your perspective your parents are there for who knows how long and they can be your punching bags or whatever forever or so.

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  13. If I wasn't rtrying to help I wouldn't have commented. I don't try to attack on personal issues. You didn't like what I had to say. But it would have been nice to appreciate why I say what i say. You can choose to ignore what i have to say and continue to live with blame and angerr for the rest of your life or not. in any event your parents should live to 120 but your 120 will still be beyond theres. i don't want to argue with you or call you names. I got no enjoyment from it only venting off anger which is temporary on my part in any event.

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  14. Look I never wrote in a way until in response to you today in way that should have pissed you off except if you didn't lioke the advice because it involved seeing things in ways you felt too uncomfortable to. I was always writing in a positive and gentle style. The truth is if you saw a therapist do you think you would be told what you want to hear, that you are always right and your parents always wrong? I happen to be a very bright fellow and sympathetic. I can give very good advice. If you don't want it fine but I won't apologize for trying to be helpful and I won't worry if you characterize it as patronizing. Who cares. If it's good advice fine, if not not. There is no objective reason to call it patronizing. It is simply my opinion with no aspertions. If it would be patronizing fine. So I was patronizing.

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  15. "abandoning eden said...
    having my ability to trust people damaged by someone who I trusted compeltely betraying that trust is not the same thing as an 'obsession'."

    Whatever you call it. It is not good. That's the point. I will take it that you apologized and I accept also. I hadn't immediately read your post so that is why I still posted angrily. I got no pleasure from it.

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