Sometimes it Takes a Little Work

The exact phrase is “It sounds like you’re giving him an excuse to me.”

TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE

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Let me rewind, and see if I can get this done in a single paragraph. My boyfriend of 6 months asked for s p a c e. But only after saying a couple hurtful and misplaced things to me and a few days of already ignoring me. So we were no contact for a total of 6 days. I was upset of course. but it wasn’t the end of the world — I’ve been through worse. This was on a Monday and on Thursday he came back around and asked me how I was doing and started the texting back and forth as if nothing were wrong.

I finally got the contact and explanation I needed for clarity of why he needed space and my goodness it’s a doozy. He lost his phone at a winery (I knew this) an ex-girlfriend tried to unalive herself because she found out he had a new girlfriend, his uncle passed away and his daughter had to be rushed to the E.R. (but he didn’t have his phone, so he didn’t find out until he got home).

Now let’s add to this; the 10 minutes we did speak; I told him about running into my ex-fiance, and that kind of tipped his already on the floor scale. Now this wouldn’t have tipped the scale if there wasn’t already some concern about the ex. Not concern in the way that people worry their partner will get back together with the ex, this concern was coming from protection. He wasn’t there to protect me from running into the man who emotionally abused me for just about a decade.

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Does all of this constitute ignoring me and isolation? Absolutely not. But can things get overwhelming and we not know how to react? Absolutely. When things get tough most people retreat. That’s just human nature. Go back to where you are comfortable. It’s a learning curve when you have a new partner.

So as I give him grace to learn what it’s like to have a partner and how to work with stress with a partner, why can’t my friends accept that? Why is it so hard to see what I see. Why do they only choose to see the negative and not the beautiful 6 months we’ve spent together.

Now, I’m not blind. A 48 hour break with no contact was the last thing I think should have happened. But the conversation that happened after was more productive than it would have been had we not taken that emotional separation. Sometimes a break can be good? Right?

Right. Now, why are my friends so concerned?

They don’t want to do the work.

It’s obvious. They don’t think a relationship should take any sort of work. When their partners are going through tough times, they believe their partners need to work on it on their own and not react in a way that may not be perfect.

This isn’t for all people though. Some people are still learning how to cope with situations and having a partner next to them could be foreign.

So when I say, “this is new territory for him.”

The rebuttal is “that’s an excuse.”

The only reason it’s an excuse is because they aren’t willing to meet their partner where they are. They want their partners to come ready with no issues to go through. But in reality, that just isn’t the case.

So how do we fix this? I don’t know, but I’m going to figure it out.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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