That reminded me of why Bub is so great

so one of my non-resolutions for 2008 (they are decidedly not resolutions, they actually stand a chance of being undertaken that way) is to be more honest with people. Not as in "wow, I never realized just how big your ass is", but rather in admitting that something hurts, or how sensitive I can be. I have trouble doing it even with people to whom I'd say I'm close. For instance, my best friend Shmoopy and I have been friends for 9 years and it took me about 6 to open up. Now she wants me to shut up because now I'm an introspective never-ending-story, lucky girl.

But I digress - I realized that I blogged on New Year's and mentioned my failed engagement. It's one of those stories that most people know but certainly didn't know how bad the relationship was until it was over and I told them what had gone on. Then, through a combination of openness and, okay, fine, vindictiveness, I told pretty much anyone who asked how bad it really was. This ended up being a good thing, because it made me feel better to admit to making such a tremendous mistake and it resulted in a moment of knowing I did the right thing - a friend of a friend was engaged to a guy she had dated since college and the wedding was coming up quickly. At nearly the last minute, she broke it off and supposedly said, "hey, if 14th Street Girl can do it, so can I". And then she dropped 20 pounds and looks absolutely banging and went off to live in the Middle East. So, several things - I learned a lot about myself, I learned to share those things, and someone took that small point as a springboard to make a really tough decision herself. I still say I got off easy.

But I continue to digress. As I re-read the blog, I remembered a conversation I'd had with Bub in 2003. He and I had been friends in high school and continued to keep tabs on each other with a yearly email or so and through friends - I always said I'd only go to our high school reunion was so I could see him. Anyway, he happened to call right around the holidays that year, and we hadn't spoken in ages. He opened the conversation with: "so, talk your engagement." And I guess I gave the usual spiel, and eventually he said in his perfectly straightforward way, "for someone who's engaged, you really don't sound very happy". And I made the usual excuses, that this whole process was a lot harder than people make it out to be, and it's a very big decision, and it takes a lot of effort, and so on. We continued to talk for about an hour until my mom needed to use the phone (another high-school-esque moment).

And I don't want to overstate the effect, because I didn't go and dump my fiance that day. But I started realizing that there's a difference between working on a relationship and a relationship that's a lot of work. And that you should probably sound happy when talking about the person you're planning to spend your life with. And I stopped giving in to this guy's many idiosyncracies - mind you, very slowly and not always guilt-free. And I started re-asserting myself - including the night we were heading out for dinner at the pub where Shmoopy worked and he was being his usual complaining self about how much money we were going to spend and how hungry he was and how he hadn't gotten to work out that day - comments that would've made me feel guilty and turn around and make dinner at home and go to the gym with him the next morning - and I just stopped the car in the middle of the street and said "just get out. I'm sick of you ruining every nice thing we try to do." And to make a long story not too much shorter, a few weeks later the same feeling hit - just stop the car - and I went into the living room and I told him I was moving out the next day. And he cried and he asked me to stay and it was like a lightbulb had blown, it wasn't coming on again - I slept in the living room, and got one of the best nights sleep I'd gotten since we started living together. And there were horrible fights after, and pettiness all around, and of course the lovely revelation that he'd been cheating on me for several months, and so forth. But I got out.

But the point is that no matter how hard you try to keep that face on, some people can just see right through you - like Bub. And so few people can be honest back to you the way he was. I had friends and family around me throughout the whole relationship and no one sat me down even though in retrospect it was obvious what a mess I'd become, that I'd lost 20 pounds, or that I was scared of the world. I asked people later and guess what, turns out the face worked on almost everyone in my life - almost uniformly people responded, you always know what you're doing, I figured you knew what you were doing. And yet Bub gets on the phone and goes "gee, you don't sound happy" and it was like turning a leaf blower on a house of cards. He still does that to me and it still has the same effect, a sudden realization that there's no point to the face. And to his credit, he never had any intention of belittling my engagement--we didn't have our first date for another 2 years--and has since never overstated, from his side, what he did during that conversation - and why should he? Now he's stuck with me!