The question I have gotten asked the most in the past month is by far "Why do you still talk to him?" You see, when you have a breakup nowadays, you are expected to cut ties immediately. You are encouraged to hate the other person, to talk crap about him, to tell everyone in your life how horrible of a person they are because they broke your heart. And when you choose a different option, you are looked at you like you are crazy. But that is exactly what I did.
Last year, right before Christmas, I got engaged. Chances are, if you are reading this blog you probably already knew that, which means that you also know that it didn't work out. We had a rather messy breakup. It happened unexpectedly on my end (though hindsight is always 20/20 and things made sense rather quickly) and pretty public (I was at work when everything went down). In fact, when we talked after the fact, he admitted that his goal was to make me hate him, not because he hated me, but because he thought it would help me move on. We didn't talk unless absolutely necessary for a few months afterwards.
During that time, I started dating my roommate. The complicated part of this was that I started out as the other woman. Yeah, he was (and is still) legally married. I caught most of the blame from his wife for why their marriage ended and I accepted it because I felt guilty for how we got together for a while. I don't regret it now. I am ok with being the catalyst that gave him the strength to leave a toxic relationship, even if things didn't work out for us. And yeah, they didn't work out. He started cheating around the same time of me moving out. It didn't take long before the guilt made him tell me what was going on and that led to us breaking up. I do wish that I could say that as soon as I found out I left him or at least threw a drink in his face, but no, I wanted to give him another try for a good 24 hours.
The day that I found out, I had saw my ex-fiance for the first time since we broke up. It was pure coincidence. I had found some of his books when I was unpacking at my new house and had met up to return them. We ended up talking for an hour and a half in a parking lot. I missed him. Not in a "please take me back" way but in a "I've really missed this friendship" kind of way. He ended up being one of the first people I told about breaking up with the boyfriend, and over the past month, he has become one of my confidants. You see, there is something to be said about the bond you form when you are planning on marrying someone. Even if things didn't work out, at one point, he knew me better than anyone else. Becoming his friend again reminded me of that. Becoming his friend again allowed me the opportunity to find closure on our relationship. It opened the door for me to ask the questions that every girl has after a breakup. I got to ask him what went wrong, if there was anything I could have changed, why he ended things the way he did, etc. It was healing in a way that I didn't think I was going to get. I talk to him at least a little almost every day and I wouldn't change it for a thing.
The weird twist is that becoming friends with my ex-fiance gave me the strength to become friends with my most recent ex. Asking questions of the guy you were supposed to be marrying the weekend after you got back in touch is a lot more difficult than asking the guy who cheated on you why he lied. I'm someone who processes things through research. I always have. This means that by getting answers to all those questions that most people are too busy hating to ask, I was able to find closure. I didn't have to sulk or cry for weeks on end to get over the guy who broke my heart after my heart was broken. Asking questions allowed me to heal two broken hearts in a lot of ways. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
Becoming friends with my exes didn't solve all of my issues. I have over a decade of serious trust issues that were caused by more than just my past boyfriends. I have a tendency to date guys that I know will probably hurt me or keep me at an arms length because I don't trust guys that seem like genuinely nice guy. I make all the excuses in the world for why I'm too messed up for nice guys. That is until I gave all those excuses to the guy that had stayed my friend even after I turned him down months ago and he called my crap. I'm not going to say that I don't have trust issues anymore because of him but I will say that he is showing me that sometimes it is ok to trust the nice guys. I don't know how things will end up with him down the road, but I will say that I am very interested in figuring it out.
So, that's the answer to that pesky question of "how can you be friends with him after everything?". I can be friends with them because it allows me to heal myself. I didn't lose myself in those past relationships, they helped build me into the woman I am today. Having my heart broken helped shape me and teach me who I actually am. I have been told more times than I can count that if I don't find myself, I will never be happy with someone else. I don't believe that. Knowing who I am doesn't mean that a relationship will work out long term. I fully believe that just because a relationship isn't supposed to last forever doesn't mean that it was never supposed to happen. I don't regret giving my heart to the guys who ended up breaking it. I love big. I always have. I will never regret that. I know who I am and with time, I will know who my soulmate is, whether it is this new guy or someone else. I won't lose myself because I loved someone. I will, however, love people because I know who I am and I love who that is.
Until next time,
ACE
