When It Ends

The thing with casual relationships is that it always goes one of two ways. It's either going to be you decide to get serious or you decide to break things off and move on. I'm not going to lie, I didn't see Hershey being the one that was going to move on. I thought that he was falling for me... Everything he did the last few times we saw each other were these bright red flags that screamed relationship. Like ensuring that he was cuddling me closely at night. Or holding my hand when we left the building. Or repeatedly calling me a babe or beautiful. I figured that if one of us was going to end it, it would be me.

You've probably guessed by now that that's not what happened. Rather, I was blindsided.

I started to suspect something was up when his pattern of texting me changed. He started to miss days of texting me... which was weird because we had texted every day since we met each other three months ago. When I started to feel ignored on Sunday after him not texting me all Saturday, I started to think that there was someone else and found myself drifting to the world of Tinder and Bumble, talking to boys who wanted to talk to me. But when Monday rolled around he was texting me again like nothing had changed. So I didn't think anything of it when he didn't text me Tuesday. Nor when he changed plans with me on Friday, instead moving our plans to that day, Thursday. It was when the next weekend rolled around that I started getting annoyed. In the midst of making plans, after I turned down his first day choice and offered my schedule, he went AWOL. He remained missing in action for three days. When Monday came back around he was ever so kind to send me a Snapchat... not personalized, not apologizing for ignoring me, not even acknowledging the two texts I had sent him about making plans.

So, being the confrontational person I am, I called him on it. I asked him upfront if we were going to be making plans or if he was going to ignore me again. (Something I quickly regretted sending and apologized as I recognized he was most likely busy. But I was also still annoyed about him ignoring me and I wanted to know what was up.)

"I kinda met someone..."

I didn't expect these words to cut as deep as they did. I really didn't expect to cry. I didn't love him. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with him. I wasn't even sure I saw a future for us into the new year. But I was still hurt. Not because he broke my heart but because he broke my trust. From day one, I had asked him to be honest about other girls. He didn't need to tell me that he was fucking them or when, but he needed to tell me they existed. I figured when we decided to be exclusive that this eliminated that issue because he was sooo against relationships. I didn't expect him to find someone else.

Yet here I was completely and utterly blindsided because four days ago, he was asking for goodbye kisses and complaining about not seeing each other enough.

And now, I was pissed. Not because he found someone that he realized that he wanted to spend time with and love, not just fuck, but because he wasn't honest with me. All because he wasn't sure how I would feel about it. What does it matter how I would feel about it? Being casual meant I didn't really get a say in it. When it was over, it was over. And it was over. But that doesn't mean that I didn't use this time to teach him about just being upfront and honest. Had he told me last week that there was a girl he was interested in, I wouldn't have wasted the last three days freaking out about why he wasn't texting me. I wouldn't have put in the time and effort into trying to decipher the mixed messages he was sending between when we were together and apart. I wouldn't have even gone to his place that week to allow him the space to figure out his feelings and not worry about whether or not he was thinking about me or her while we had sex. All of it was just because he hadn't made up his damn mind about this girl and was dragging me along. I let him know that he had hurt me not because of his feelings but because he made me feel lied to.

"I goofed."

"No, you fucked up."

I let him realize that this wasn't a little mistake. This wasn't a goof. A goof was a mistake that could be laughed at... not hurting someone like he had hurt me. I really laid into the fact that had he chosen to be honest, I might not be hurt but he chose to 'protect' my feelings and hurt me far worse in the long run.

Honesty is ALWAYS the best policy in relationships, especially if you think that someone finding that information out will hurt them. Because it probably will... so let them know sooner than later when they can make the decisions about it, rather than it happening and them looking back on it all and questioning everything.

Seems like I'll have a lot more bad first dates coming your way.

Yes, that's right! I had my cry for an hour and I'm back on the dating apps. (If I could get over my boyfriend in 24 hours you know I'm going to get over a casual fling in less than that.)