I’ve been in four really bad relationships with the same person.
This means there were four breakups, each one caused by different factors. This also means there were three times that I was a complete idiot. This was because despite all evidence to the contrary, I continued to think things would get better.
The first breakup had something to do with the amount of text messages she was sending me. There were about 50 or 60 messages a day. I’m ill equipped to handle 50 or 60 sentences from a woman every day, much less have to respond to all of those as texts.
To be honest, even though I had unlimited text messaging, I wanted it more as a safety net than as a necessity. Also, a phone’s keys can only be pressed a specific number of times before they start to malfunction when they’re really needed, as when trying to make a phone call to the police. The ‘1’ key is important for punctuation and for dialing 9-1-1.
But despite the soundness of my logic, this still seems to be a terrible reason to break up with someone.
The second time I ended things because I thought she was cheating on me. As astounded as I was that a woman would date me, I still had enough self-esteem at that time to think that I was the only one that she would be sleeping with.
I later confirmed that she was indeed sleeping around. This time, text messaging came back both as something victorious and crushing. She would later drunkenly text me after we’d broken up for good and confirm my suspicions by telling me whom she was with.
After this, I felt a great deal better about the first breakup. However, it was a weird feeling; I felt a certain sense of victory because I was right, and at the same time terrible for the same reason.
The third time she broke up with me was around Valentine’s Day. I do not know her reasons for doing so, but I like to blame the holiday.
This also marked the only time that I would beg her to stay in a relationship with me, and it worked. This was terrible because it showed me that all I had to give up to spend a bit more time with this girl was all of my self-respect.
The fourth and final breakup is still a mystery to me. I’ve never before had so many of my faults pulled out into plain view and thrown directly in my face. This was not as educational as I would like a list of my shortcomings to be and caused no real self-improvement on my part.
During her lecture, I tried once again to relinquish the rights to my dignity, but thankfully, this time it didn’t work.
As disastrous as these breakups were to me, I do not blame her for anything that happened, and I wish the best for her. This is because bad relationships teach you things. They teach you about yourself and about relationships in general.
A rule about relationships that I now know is never date somebody more than once.
As with any other dating rule, exceptions do exist. These special cases to the dating norm are very few, and most of the time they are just lies told to oneself to prolong a bad relationship.
But in general, this rule should be followed and self-respect should never be handed over.
