he's cute

Broadway is getting sick of his iPhone and wants to get the new Android when it comes out. This past weekend, he made this off-comment to me:

"I thought about it. I'm going to get the new Android when it comes out, and I'll give this iPhone to you so then you can always play your games."

Hahaha, I do always steal his iPhone to play games. And every once in a while, he'll poke me after getting home from work and tell me he found a new game I might like on his iPhone. I smiled inside.

Also ... we got engaged this weekend :)

helping people

When friends, or even acquaintances, ask me for help, I really try to be as helpful as I can. I put myself out there, maybe more that I should, to not just answer some silly questions but to REALLY help. I'll put them in contact with people I know, or I'll do some leg work researching something, basically going out of my way to help them as much as I can.

Most of the time, I am disappointed by the result. I usually end up feeling very underappreciated, that my efforts were pretty much taken for granted. I then start to feel bad about myself, wondering if I am trying too hard to desperately help people, wondering there are subconscious insecurities manifesting themselves in weird ways motivating me to help every Peter and Bob and Jill who asks for a second of my time.

Take last week for example. A college acquaintance of mine is writing up his masters thesis and asked if I could help him reserve space on my campus. He needs to conduct some focus group meetings with college seniors for the thesis research. If there's one thing I know, it's my campus. I know the ins and outs of getting things done (reserve space, "reserve" space, casually drop by as if the space is already reserved). Most of all, I know people. I know a lot of people.

So immediately, I offered to help. He needs seniors for his focus group. I offered to send emails to seniors whom I know. He doesn't know where he could hold a focus group meeting. I offered to meet up with him and show him the secret meeting places in our student center. I expected ingratiating behavior on his behalf in return. Not so much. He didn't even seem remotely excited. Maybe I was being too eager. He just said that my offer was generous and he would follow up with me.

Fast forward a week. Wednesday morning, I get a frantic email from him. He wanted to know if we can talk at 7:30 that night so he can enlist my help to set up a focus group in our student center center for lunch on Friday. I felt really awkward: do I, or don't I, tell him that planning on Wednesday for something on Friday with a campus full of flaky students is a bad idea? He is on a campus himself. Surely he knows this?

But I said, "Sure, give me a call at 7:30pm, and we will talk."

Unbeknownst to him, I rearranged some things in lab that I had to do in order to be available at 7:30pm to talk to him. Nothing big, but I did adjust things.

7:30 rolled around, and he didn't call. 7:35, and still no call. 7:45, and still nothing. I sat around this whole time twiddling my thumbs waiting for his phone call. It was ridiculous. I don't know why I was taking it so seriously when he obviously 1) wasn't that serious about his own thesis, and/or 2) just plain don't didn't value my time. I had more lab work planned for after the call, and the longer I waited to start those, the later I had to stay in lab Wednesday night.

Fuck it, I finally decided, and went to do my own stuff.

8pm. My phone rings. It was him. I was so annoyed, yet so undecided as to what I should do. Do I answer it? Do I ignore it? Do I ignore it but call back 5 minutes later just to passive-aggressively rebel with hopes that my very very subtle behavior will somehow convey my supreme annoyance?

In the end, I put down my lab work and just answered the phone.

"Sorry for the slight delay," he said. SLIGHT??? You're 30 minutes late.

"Oh, that's okay," I replied. WHY???? Why do I pretend that his behavior was no big deal?

"Do you still have a few minutes to talk?" he asked.

"Sure, what's up?" I answered. I kicked myself. Why can't I say no to things?

We ended up talking for 15 minutes. I manage to convince him to delay the lunch until next week, and in the meantime, if he sends me something, I can circulate around to some seniors I know. He agreed to send me something Wednesday night.

This (Friday) morning at 1am, he emailed me the blurb he wanted to me forward out. It looks like spam. It has multiple colors. It makes a false claim. Well, he would say it's looking forward to the long term goals of his thesis. I think it's a hell of a stretch, thereby making it a plain and simple false claim. He also asked me to forward his email along with a very specific subject line. The subject line promotes the false claim.

So now I am caught in a weird place. I've gone out of my way to help this guy already. He showed no semblance of appreciation up to this point. He has, what I believe to be, unreasonable requests in his email blurb that I somehow feel obligated to foward out to my friends. I really don't want to. I feel like sending something like this may jeopardize my relationships with people I know, expending my political capital (in corporate speak), to what ends? I'm not even getting a sincere thank you from him.

The rational, but pissed off, part of me wants to email him back and say that his email is inappropriate, and that I will not forward it as is to people I know. The other part of me thinks that the recipients are busy college seniors who don't really care that much, and how can a silly little email like this really hurt me? Is it really worth it to make this situation worse by now retracting my offer to help, which I very voluntarily put out there myself with little to no prompting from his part?

I just feel caught in a weird situation, feeling the same awkwardness I often feel after perhaps trying too hard to sell my help to those who mention the smallest things that I can help with. I just don't know why that is. Why I feel the need to so desperately be deemed helpful, and why I still keep doing it after all the empty letdowns I feel after wards.

bridesmaids

Coming out of college, I worried that I wouldn't have enough good, solid girlfriends to have the "right" number of bridesmaids at my wedding, whatever that number might be. And then I worried that none of my good solid girlfriends would themselves get married anytime soon, so when will I ever be a bridesmaid? What the heck?? I am glad that I'm past that mental phase of my life now.

After my bridesmaid experience last summer and a wedding that I attended two weeks ago, I now wonder what is the point of bridesmaids? Are they there to help celebrate YOU, the bride? Or are they there for you, the bride, to celebrate and honor their friendship? Realistically, it's probably somewhere in between the two, but I wish it where more on the side of celebrating the friendship.

Being a bridesmaid sucks. It's so much time, money, energy, with little to no appreciation. I suppose you want to do something nice for your friend the bride, and the proper bridesmaid mentality is that you'll sacrifice yourself so your best friend in the world can have a fairy tale wedding. But really, it's just a super sucky job. You parade down the aisle in some off-green silk taffeta or other gown that matches the girl's next to you. Neither one of you particularly liked that dress, but it was the only one that all 5 of you didn't decidedly hate. Fantastic.

The wedding I attended two weeks ago also had 5 bridesmaids. They paraded down the aisle, only to sit back down once the priest started the ceremony (Catholic ceremonies are too long to stand through, apparently). As an old friend of the bride, I got invited to some of the pre-wedding festivities for the bride and girls. So I went to the bachelorette party with a sex toy rep (actually kinda fun) and a bridal lunch with an awkward assembly of the female members of both families. Wow, what a mess. I was so glad I could bow out, but the bridesmaids, they all had to stay there for many many hours longers.

So that made me think about where I now stand on bridesmaids. I don't think I want any bridesmaids at my wedding. I think I will just have one big party for a wedding. No walking down the aisle, no officiant making you exchange vows in front of everybody, no speeches by family and wedding party--just one big fat party. When you're talking about one big fat party, it makes even less sense to have bridesmaids. What would they even do? Help me get dressed before the party? But it was that exact part that I hated doing as a bridesmaid, and I feel rather royal and princessy making my friends help me dress and put on jewelry.

I wonder if my friends would be offended when I don't ask them to be bridesmaids. I do want to celebrate and thank them for their friendships on my big day. I definitely want them there to be a part of the big fat party. But would they feel weird getting some special acknowledgment without being a bridesmaid? This might be too much off the beaten-path. I like the part where the bride & groom give gifts to their wedding party. I really don't like the part where the wedding party is subjected to become servants, taking the "maid" part almost too literally.

individuality

It turns out that Mr. Guy was writing a paper for a sociology project studying students and extracurricular activities. He went to websites of several big schools in the area and just looked up student groups and their officers. So now I helped Mr. Guy write his paper, and that made me feel pretty good.

I went on a 3-day ski trip again this past weekend. Broadway was too stressed about work, so he stayed in town wanting to crank out some experiments. I had a blast with my friends on the trip. I missed him, but ... I feel rather guilty that I know I had a better time without him than I would have had with him.

While some of the reasons for this is specific to Broadway, I also think that's just the way that I am. I feel tired in relationships, with Broadway and in past relationships. I feel tired that I need to think for two people instead of just one, myself. When I'm out with friends, I always feel guilty indulging in something I know the other person may not want to do. With Broadway, I often cut our night out with friends short and go home, or do things in ways that I know wouldn't bother him.

That's fine--I don't mind readjusting some of my ways for another person. You give and take in any relationship. It was just a relief to not have to think about any of this while away this weekend. I did so many things I wouldn't have otherwise done had Broadway been there. I went to the terrain park for the first time with a friend to try jumps. Broadway would have never done jumps with me (nor probably allowed me to go do jumps), and I would have felt bad leaving him to ski on his own while I did jumps. I went to apres-skis and parties that Broadway probably wouldn't have wanted to go to, wanting instead to just go home. I got up early every morning to hit the slopes, whereas Broadway would have wanted to sleep in for sure. I didn't mind skiing with a big group (more than 10 people), waiting for each others along each trail fork, which would have definitely annoyed the heck out of Broadway.

So maybe the difference between Broadway and me is our social behavior patterns. I have definitely come to crave activity and social interactions, especially with people I like. He loses patience with a lot of people, including people I hang out with. He keeps a small group of very close friends, whereas I have a really big social circle. He gets stressed out when I take him places because he doesn't know anyone and has to make small talk with strangers. I'm not the biggest fan of small talk, but I am inherently interested in people, so I liking meeting new people and finding out their experiences.

I don't always like the new people I meet, but more often than not, I find out something neat and interesting. Broadway's just not open-minded about social activities and would rather not meet anyone new. That doesn't mean he's unfriendly ... I think the cost-benefit for him just isn't worth it. He seldom meets someone whom he is that interested in, and with social situation being such stress cases for him, he just opts to bow out.

Which leaves me in a weird predicament. On the one hand, I feel guilty leaving him home while I go and hang out with my friends. On the other hand, his coming along just means he is miserable and I have a hard time enjoying myself knowing that he is miserable. I'd like to not feel guilty for going to hang out with my friends on my own, without Broadway. But I think this arrangement would be much less stressful for both of us, but it just doesn't feel right. Doing it means seeing him as a burden, and that feels wrong.

How much do couples hang out with their friends independently of each other? Broadway is pretty dependent, and I just feel that I'm in a different place than him on this issue. We are socially mismatched, and at what point would our coupledom lose its two-ness because I'm spending time with other people and Broadway is spending time with himself?

strange ...

Here's something quick ...

I got a random email today, from someone I don't recall having ever met. In fact, googling the name turns up nothing. He's not a student, nor does he have a Google footprint. The email went as such:

Hello Seine,

I am very impressed that you are able to juggle a specular [sic] load of extra-curricular activities on top of being a graduate student at [University]. Has this negatively impacted your work? Do you think you would have been much more productive in research (and perhaps even have graduated by now) if the time and energy you spent on activities were instead directed at your work? Looking back, do you regret having spent your time in this way? Does your advisor know and/or approve? And what do you plan to do after graduation?

Sincerely,
Random Guy

Not sure what to make of this. All of his questions are so negative. Would I have been more productive? Would I have been a better student? It pretty much implies that I've not made academics my priority when I should have as a student first and foremost. Well, first and foremost, there is not a single sentence about himself.

Broadway said I should just ignore the email. I probably should have, but I'm so weak for stuff like this. Someone contacts me out of the blue ... it makes me feel kinda important, you know? Even if it all seems to judging and negative.

So I shot the following back:

Hi Random Guy,

Are you wondering about juggling the two yourself? I'm curious as to why you ask. Perhaps we've met, and I'm just not recalling ...

Seine

Let's see if Mr. Guy responds.

more random thoughts

Not sure how it happened, but it seems that I have entered a phase of my life when I need to write recommendations for others. Back in August, a friend asked me to write a recommendation for his business school applications. I spent considerable time on it because he deserved to have a good recommendation. In the end, I thought I wrote him something pretty darn good.

"The problem," as Broadway pointed out, "when you do a good job is that people come back asking for more."

Which is exactly what happened. The friend was shocked at how good he thought it was and asked if I would be willing to modify it for his application to another school Then another. Now, worrying that his first round MBA applications may not pan out, he's applying to two more schools and wants my recommendation for those as well. Most of it is just rearranging what I already wrote, but every school has its own unique questions. This time around, I have to answer "If you could change one thing about the applicant, what would it be?"

How do you answer a question like that? Maybe "I wish I hadn't given him a copy of the original recommendation to read." But that's actually something I would change about myself, not him.

A former student also asked me recently to write a recommendation for something he is applying for in graduate school. I really like the kid, so again, I want to write something that deserves him. But I didn't know him all that well, so I feel a bit stressed about that.

In other news, my parents took me to Arby's for lunch today because I love their roast beef sandwiches. My dad also ordered two fries for all of us, but didn't specify the size when he ordered. The lady at the registered assumed two small fries, and my dad only realized the mistake after having already paid. He asked her if it's possible to change our order, and she kinda thought about it at the register, then without saying a word just went and filled 2 large fries containers without charging us anything extra.

When she came back, my dad gave her a dollar bill (actually the exact cost difference) and thanked her. She smiled really big.

That made me happy, much happier than if we had just ordered everything correctly the first time around. I'm glad we made her smile so big.

I also asked Broadway today what, if anything, are we going to do on New Year's Eve. He said he wasn't sure, so I mentioned this cruise thing that I had heard about (and some fringe acquaintances were going to). I didn't think he would be interested, I said. Not surprisingly, he agreed, but it didn't stop me from being curious about the cruise nonetheless.

So I went in search of Boston New Year's Eve events and found this website. As much as I'd like to bash the silly people who don their holiday dresses and go to these events, I was part of that crowd myself just a couple of years ago. Some high school friends and I went to an expensive bash down here in the South, going because it was The Ball to attend if you were anybody in this town. It made me wonder if I was over all this stuff mainly because I'm older now and don't really care or mainly because Broadway doesn't like these things.

Regardless, I visited the event ticket sites to see what there was to see ... and was surprised that there is a $25 discount on this. I would deduce from this that they're not selling that many tickets, or as many as they're used to selling in previous years. The economy's so bad that people don't even want to celebrate New Year's Eve.

Or maybe in these lean economic times, more people are realizing the frivolity of these "society" balls.

things I thought about today

My parents are getting old, but they still have the same faults that they've always had: my dad's stubbornness and explosive temper, and my mom's nosiness and cluelessness. They raise their voices a lot, but sometimes only for 30 seconds. The moment passes, and they're back to laughing and smiling. Sounds weird for any relationship, but it's worked for them. I just feel lonely watching their lives, but they themselves are the ones who say they really just enjoy interacting with each other and don't care about other friends.

Coming home once a year is actually kind of strange. Nothing here has changed, but I know that I have changed so much. Besides my room and my bed and the things in our house still being in the same place they were when I was little, my parents are still the same. Their thoughts and perspectives are the same as they were when I was little. Yet, I am completely different. It's like my parents live in a time capsule that I open once a year around Christmas time.

Sitting around reading blogs and daydreaming today, I came across Roxy's entry about sugar daddies. It made me curious enough to go browsing around a sugar daddy website myself to see what kinds of men are available in my area. A couple of them actually caught my eye (if their profiles and pictures are to be believed). Would I ever do this? Wow, I don't know. I definitely wish I had the guts to do it (and in a more single state of being that I would be able to do it).

Ultimately, I think I would be too chicken and too afraid that something bad would happen to me. But wow, I'm tempted, and not exactly sure why. What does that say about me? I'm not really sure either. But at 26, I feel I'm a bit too old for sites like that. Aren't they looking for 20 year olds?

I've been holding out on Twitter for a long time. I know everyone is doing it, but I just didn't think it's for me. I don't own a phone with data (and have no plans to get one), so I would never twitter on the go. I'm at my computer most of the day, but do I really need to broadcast what I'm doing constantly? Isn't that why I never update my facebook status? But at home with nothing to do, I signed up for Twitter, just to "try it out." Very nicely, it offered to check my email account for friends who are already members. I was surprised at the list ... even a couple of professors!

So in the end, I gave in to Twitter. I'll give it a shot, but don't hold your breath.

On the relationship front, I've been thinking about Broadway here and there. We had some interested conversations about our future right before I left for the holidays, on a jet plane. We're both graduating sometime in 2009, so the question is "Then what?"

Where do we go? Do we stay in Boston? Do we go somewhere else? To him, the question is how to both find jobs in the same location, if not Boston? To me, I think I'm still a little hung up on the whole "Do we look for jobs in the same location, even if that's Boston?" part.

So I've been thinking about this last part the most. What does it mean that I am still mulling that one over in my head? That I question whether or not it's important for us to be in the same place geographically after graduating?

Am I doing the same thing to Broadway that the Ex did to me three years ago? If I'm not sure about things, I should just lay it out straight for Broadway, right? But I guess I'm not sure if I'm sure about things, which probably was where the Ex found himself then, too. So really, I can't blame him too much. But I'm thinking hard about it ... and I don't think the Ex ever did.

But that honestly is the only thinking that I've done about the Ex and his whole engagement stuff. I couldn't care less anymore. Ever since writing that email, I've just stopped thinking about it all. And now, I am really glad I kept that email as uncomplicated as I did. I know I took the higher road. Ha!

Will write more on Broadway later ... it deserves its own entry. I also got an internship, which was a nice surprise.

the email i didn't think i could write

Hi [The Ex],

I heard from [Mutual Friend] this week that you got engaged! Congratulations!!! I'm really happy for you and [New Girl] and am really glad that you guys found each other and are as happy as you must be.

[Mutual Friend] also mentioned that [Your Brother] got engaged earlier this year, and I laughed at that (in a good way!). It was wonderful to hear about all this good news, and I'm sure they're helping to lift your mom's mood. (Last time we really talked, she was having some hard times ... )

So, do you guys have a wedding date in mind? Is she still in [Midwest City]?

Happy holidays, and I hope you're staying warm! (It snowed tons in Boston today, and it's still snowing)

[Seine]

Once I decided that the email needed only to be congratulatory, it was much easier to start it. Once I got the first sentence down, the rest just flowed. So now the email sits in email land. I don't know what I want him to say. I don't think there is anything he can say that would ever be truly satisfactory to me. So it's lose-lose to him really. His best response is probably to not respond at all. Any response will most likely disappoint me.

No response would mean I can be justified to hate him and despise him forever.

new day, old thoughts

I forgot to eat dinner today, and it's now 11:45pm.

I never forget to eat. I only ever forget when I'm not well, when I'm in a bad state of mind. In a series of very frustrating but unrelated events, I had to revive an old email account this afternoon. With it came a whole set of folders with emails from a different place, different time. One of the folders was labeled with the Ex's name. I found that folder around 4pm. I've now been dysfunctional for close to 8 hours.

The emails span from 11/4/2005 to 12/11/2005, right after the Ex and I broke up on my birthday that year. I guess the same feelings that I feel now, I actually said in those emails. I hadn't remembered. I blamed him then for our breaking up, citing that he was the one who made religion THE issue. We would be okay without the religious thorn, I said then (and I said yesterday). He admitted that the breakup was one-sided, but said that there were lots of other little issues too. Religion was so BIG that it overshadowed the rest, but without religion, all that the other stuff would have probably themselves become breaking points for our relationship.

So in that sense, he did eventually come to tell me that I wasn't the one.

I wrote:

About why we broke up ... i guess i never saw any issue that was so big that we wouldn't be able to work through them, including religion. It goes back to what i was saying before: I see marriage as a reason to work through these differences/problems, whereas you don't think marriage should even be considered before these problems are worked out. just a difference in perspective.

Pretty naive, and honestly, marriage probably shouldn't be considered before these problems are worked out, but I was trying so hard to hold on. I didn't want to believe that the our problems were insurmountable. I wanted to believe that we would, and should, be together.

He replied:

I was thinking about the one-sided break-up versus the mutual break-up, and think you're right that I was the person who saw our problems as too difficult for us to work through (at least right now). And yeah, we definitely disagreed about when it's appropriate to ge married, and I still think marraige shouldn't even be considered before working out fundamental problems.

That just made me sad. That was why we didn't work, because we had what he thought were fundamental problems. These fundamental problems obviously don't exist with his current relationship. It's just as Daisy said--the "He wasn't right for me, either" part is almost irrelevant. I dwell so much more on the fact that I wasn't right for him. I can't see past that.

In another email, he wrote:

The more I look at other people's relationships, and think about our own, I realize that sometimes people just aren't in the same place at the same time. And yeah that's horrible, and it causes a lot of hurt. But that doesn't mean that people can't figure things out, can't change, and can't get back together some day.

I talked to my parents about us breaking up, and they felt bad, and my mom said that she didn't want us to make the same mistake she did, which was getting married too young. And I explained to her that every couple is different, and her being too young doesn't mean we are. And I think it's really strange, and there really seem to be two groups of people on the age issue. Some people think you have to be around thirty years old to get married, and other people just focus on being over twenty-one.

The correct answer is probably just that you're ready to get married when you meet the right person. With him, I felt that I had met the right person, but he didn't feel the same way. With the new girl, it didn't take him long to realize that she was the right person. Three years after these emails about us, he is ready to marry someone he hadn't even met then. His mom doesn't think he's too young anymore now (she used to say no marriage under 30). Or maybe she still thinks the same, but he loves the girl so much that he doesn't care, that he'll fight for her. I never got to experience that love from him. It was all uphill for me.

And what of that part about figuring things out, changing, and getting back together? False hope, all of it. But what can I do? It's never easy to break up with someone when there are no obvious reasons. When the only reason is that s/he just isn't the one, it's always easier to approach the end like maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be final.

So where does that leave me? I think about how I used to feel about the Ex, how sure I was that he was THE ONE. I never believed that stuff until 2-3 months after we started dating, and I just FELT it. He was the one, and that was the feeling I ought to have (maybe I was just young and too naive and too much of a romantic).

But honestly, I think the only reason I am glad he and I didn't work out is the religion. But that's the most heartbreaking part ... without the religion, I would still want to be with him. Even today.

And that made me cry all over again. I haven't cried in a long time about the Ex. There was always something there in the back of my mind, but I guess I always suppressed it. Of course, I had wanted to write it all down here, tell the whole story of how I was wronged and jilted, but it never seemed to be worth the time to rehash everything. To much to explain; too much hassle; too much story.

But knowing that he proposed recently, I guess I couldn't hold it in anymore. Here I am, crying the same cry three years later. I'm listening to the same song on repeat, thinking of the same memories that made that song come full circle three years ago. Just like three years ago, I am unable to stop myself from reminescing. I deliberately run through good times in my mind, places we went together, things we did together, the future we planned together ... knowing full well that it will all just make the tears come harder.

I'm in no shape to face Broadway right now. I don't have room in all of my emotions to make space for him, to see him and to love him and to adore him like he deserves. Yet what do I say to him?

"I really need some time alone because my ex got engaged"?

"These tears and emotions have nothing to do with you and are things I need to work out on my own"?

Broadway won't see it that way, and how can I possibly expect him to? Whatever hurt he would feel would be justified and reasonable. I would feel hurt, too. And really, can I honestly say that these tears have nothing to do with him? Maybe I'm crying because I don't feel it with him.

I can't think about anything else

THE Ex got engaged. I found out today while talking to a mutual friend of ours from college. He proposed a couple of weeks ago.

Just last post, I was talking about how bitter I get thinking about our relationship now. For whatever reason, I've been thinking about things with him a lot lately (some kind of weird premonition that he would get engaged??). As I mentioned last time, I think it was all spawned by the lack of anything from him on my birthday (all I would want is an email).

I can go on and on and on with the list of things during our time together that I now realize were signs that he just wasn't that into me. During the relationship, I made excuse after excuse for him because he made the excuses for himself (I'm busy; we're in school; my brother's not married yet; my mother's going through hard times). Now, I just get pissed off thinking about how he never faced his questions about our relationship because it was easier to not question. I get pissed off that he strung me along, making me believe that we were it for each other.

So how do I feel about him getting engaged? I don't know. If I were to really sit down and unbiasedly think about it now, I know deep down that we would have never worked. The religious differences were too great. It probably was the only problem that really stood between us, but it was too overwhelming of a problem. His now fiance is super Christian religious, so in that sense, I'm happy for him. I'm glad that he found someone who shares his faith. I just hate the fact that the girl he dated right after me was the one he ended up marrying.

So why can't I stop think about the fact that he's now engaged? I don't know. Part of it is for whatever sick reason, I want to know every excruciating detail. How did he propose? I know that whatever he did would have been so incredibly sweet and romantic. What is she like? I've never met her. What kind of ring did he get for her? That's something he always was quite progressive about, for a guy ... He knew that the ring can matter.

So I don't know. Is it the engagement itself that bothers me? I don't think so. I think there is a part of me that is a tiny bit resentful, thinking that it should have been me on the receiving end of that proposal. But in the end, no I don't really want to be the one he's asking. What we had was kind of a lie. Back then, I managed to convince myself I could become religious for him, or at the very least be open to his supreme religiousness. But I know now that was just wishful thinking, and that it would have never worked. It really is a shame that religion ended up being the thing that came between us (but that's coming from me, non-religious). And now, it's way past the point to dwell on all of that.

So, no, the engagement itself doesn't bother me. I am happy that he is happy.

I think it bothers me that he's not comfortable having his then-girlfriend-now-fiance and me as a friend in his life at the same time. The engagement bothers me because I know it is something that we will never be able to talk about.

There was a facebook episode last summer that made me think the girl is not happy seeing him interact with me. Why would that be, I wondered then? Is she insecure in her relationship? Well, now that they're engaged, that shouldn't be an issue anymore, right?

And then I think about how when we were together, he once got so mad because I asked him why a picture of a high school ex was still up on his wall. He said it was none of my business. So it really does piss me off that it is different with this girl, that he would cut me out of his life because somehow that is her business when it was never my business.

It reinforces the fact that he never loved me in that same way. It drives home the point that while he talked about us getting married, he was never serious. It pisses me off that he was so wrong in the way he treated me, in never facing up to his doubts about our relationship, at least never telling me about them and just continuing to lead me on, knowingly or unknowingly.

But all of that is past now that he is engaged. She shouldn't feel insecure in her relationship anymore. So why would he still be uncomfortable with me in his life? We have so many mutual friends from college. He always said that he wanted to be friends after we broke up. He wants to know what is happening to me. He wants updates and to know that I am happy. Yet whenever I reach out to him wanting to hang out, or god forbit to come to my birthday party, he always passive aggressively deflects. Sometimes I call him out on it. Then he just pretends like nothing is out of the ordinary, that what he did was the perfectly normal thing to do.

We are now both in happy relationships, so what is his problem? Why is he still so uncomfortable interacting with me?

I want to be able to call him up to congratulate him and tell him that I'm truly happy for him. I want to meet the girl and laugh with her and talk about her wedding planning (since I secretly aspire to be a wedding planner). But I can't. So maybe I just feel rather left out. He wants to stay updated on my life, yet he doesn't afford me the same thing with his life.

Once upon a time, he told me that he thought a year or so after he started working would be a good time to get engaged. So now here we are. He's been working for a little more than a year, and he's decided to get married. Except, I'm not the girl in that fairy tale.

So there is that, too.