that girl allison

I’ve debated writing about this for a few days now, but I decided I should, mostly because I can. This is my blog, right? I vaguely alluded to a guy a couple of months ago that I had some sort of a relationship with. The road got rocky recently and we both showed a couple of personality flaws this week that have saved us a lot of trouble in the future.

Two weeks I’d gotten upset at him and didn’t have a lot of time on my hands, so I became slightly passive aggressive and short with him. He told me the day after that my behavior was “unacceptable” and that passive aggressiveness wasn’t something he wouldn’t “tolerate.” Excuse me, but I don’t have friends that I let speak to me like that not to mention someone that I was slightly more intimate with. I let him know, calmly, that his word choice was hurtful to me, and he dismissed my feelings because I was apparently misunderstanding him. He told me that his word choice was “completely free of judgment.”

Then last week my feelings came to a head and I decided I didn’t want to keep them to myself anymore. Calmly I told him how I’d been feeling and again, he took my feelings away from me and dismissed them as incorrect (though he’d probably deny this).  This was the second time in two weeks that I’d tried to be honest with him and again, he’d proven he wasn’t listening to me and couldn’t handle me being honest.

A girlfriend told me the acknowledge that maybe he just wasn’t someone who was able to accommodate someone with baggage like mine, but also not to let myself be defined by my so-called baggage.  If it was baggage and qualities that I could change, and I would be better off for it if I changed them, then I should work on those qualities before wasting energy seeing if I could find a guy who could handle baggage from past relationships.  The main personality trait that I can admit needs changing is my propensity to expect the worst of everyone (okay, mainly just men). I expect that every new guy I meet will be exactly like the ones that have hurt me before, when really every person is different. I’m basically just getting in my own way now, so I’m going to try hard to work on that.

A guy friend (who I’d begged to tell me the truth, and not just what he thought I’d want to hear) later told me last night that this guy did me a favor by showing his true colors sooner rather than later. I’d dodged a bullet.

I read The Daily Love (a daily email) and in today’s email was the following: 

“It’s soooo important to be able to feel safe to be ourselves and express ourselves in our relationships. That is how a foundation of trust is built.” 

This is exactly the thing that was missing from my friendship/relationship/whatever with the aforementioned guy.  I realized that once I’d started to try to tell him how I was feeling, he wouldn’t try to understand it. He didn’t care enough to do that. I need that in any degree of a relationship.  That being said I’m also not writing myself off as “high maintenance,” throwing my arms up in the air and saying, “this is just how I am!” because I can change that part of myself. There are probably guys out there who can handle “high maintenance,” but I don’t see high maintenance as being manageable for any long term period.

There was a lot of good with this guy, but it couldn’t outweigh the fact that I couldn’t express myself with him. I’m thankful that I was able to recognize this and not change myself to fit his standards.

Throwing out his toothbrush yesterday felt good too.