Tag: heartbreak

Kiki looks into dating… that’s it just trying to date

Dating as a broken person is daunting. Not only are the dates often ridiculous, but I have less patience than I used to. I’m tired in a way that doesn’t show on dating profiles, and that exhaustion makes everything feel like tiny paper cuts on my soul: painful for such innocuous marks. 

Recently, I went on a date with a man who turned out to have very, very different views from mine, though none of that came out until we were already face to face.

Don’s profile wasn’t sketchy. There were no obvious red flags or clues suggesting he’d turn out to be an absolute a-hole. Did he have of a “bro” vibe, sure, but was he also from the East Coast, yes- which is why this didn’t quite line up. When we messaged on the app, things flowed easily enough that we exchanged numbers quickly and texted as if we had been good friends for a while and still nothing alarming came up.

There was one small thing we didn’t agree on, musical artists, but it seemed harmless at the time. Just one of those hmmmm differences I file away and move on from. I didn’t know then that it would end up meaning more.

The day of the date, we met for ice cream and decided to walk around the cute downtown area nearby. It should’ve been easy. Casual. Like I said above two old friends catching up seeing if there might be more. Instead, he decided this was the perfect moment to unload all of his strange relationship proclivities. I told him it was too early for that kind of conversation, but he kept pushing. Each comment edged a little closer to subjects I’d asked to be avoided, until I finally had to change the subject altogether.

At the time, I wondered if I was just annoyed at being out with someone new, someone who wasn’t my ex. This was one of my first dates since the “breakup,” for lack of a better word. Was this actually weird behavior, or , was I just projecting my sadness? It was hard to tell.

But as he kept talking and then started mocking me I realized I wasn’t wrong at all. It was in fact intentional, inappropriate border line vile behavior. He was openly supportive of current policies supporting everything I abhor and he wouldn’t let it go. He just kept pushing. At one point we tipped into the vile and very much engaged in a an actual shouting match about language and current events and yes musical artists. 

I think my anger and the urge to absolutely demolish a man with all the rage I’d bottled up during my relationship kept me rooted there, shouting back. The fact that we didn’t physically tussle was honestly surprising. But the moment I realized I was on the verge of a fist fight with a grown man, I snapped back to reality: I have a pace maker now and can’t be swinging but there was a time. 

I shoved my chair back and stormed off. It would be another month before I went on another date.

Kiki looks into quiet quitters

if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you — you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again. ~ c.s lewis 

Dating is hard- finding someone to trust and who I want to spend time with is hard; but, nothing is more difficult than finding that person, connecting, and then watching the person who once felt safe step back just as I am teetering on the edge. Someone quietly quitting is a heartbreak all it’s own. At least when someone ghosts I don’t have to watch the relationship disintegrate day by day right in front of me. With ghosting they are gone- there is no lingering there is a finality that does not come with a quiet quitter.*

After many, many a first date, the first date with Sebastian seemed like a sigh of relief like I could finally relax. Conversation was easy from the beginning and there was a lot of laughter. No catfishing, no Disney character voices, everything seemed to align. As a side note – I have found it is best when I like someone to be exactly who I am that way they know what they are in for- begin as you mean to go on is my motto. So if Sebastian really was in it as he claimed many times over it was best to be who I would be throughout so he knew. I was untrusting and we hurdled several ptsd flashbacks, but he took it all in stride. He was consistent and reliable. He kept showing up – until he didn’t.

Almost three months from our first date he began to shut me out. Not all at once but slowly. First the messages dried up, he’d text just enough so I knew he was there. Then response times went from minutes to hours. What used to be voice texts throughout the day became one voice text, if I asked. And even his tones changed. Long phone conversations that lasted hours with no one wanting to hang up suddenly felt heavy on his end like an obligation or chore- if they happened at all. The Sebastian who had courted and pursued me decided he’d had enough now that we were in a relationship. The vulnerability and emotion he’d shown was tucked neatly back in and a wall went up. Numerous attempts to ask what was going on were thwarted. And of course the more I pushed the further he stepped back.

I can’t explain to someone what they are unwilling to see. So, although I knew all the reasons he was acting this way he refused to accept it or even admit that anything had changed. Here I was spinning in pools of anxiety, the worse of me coming out in this relationship with a person who was one foot in one foot out. The tangible things to point to as issues, Sebastian insisted were just some voodoo emotional stuff on my end. All I could do was watch him step further and further back like the meme of Homer Simpson sliding into the bushes and nothing would stop the slide. Deciding whether or not to walk away from a person who once made me feel safe is no small feat. It does a number on the psyche.**

* ghosting as a term doesn’t make sense because ghosts hang around much like the quiet quitter actually but I don’t make the labels

** The quiet quitter has officially become a ghoster