Himay Zepeda discovered something worse than fighting with his girlfriend, not fighting for anything.
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Go see what happens when you don’t water a plant for awhile. It goes the way of one of my previous relationships: it dies.
One of my gnarliest breakups taught me a long lasting lesson on how you know, truly, if you care about something.
I loved this girl. At the time we could still excuse ourselves by saying that we were too young to think about marriage, but I considered it. I wondered what that’d be like, what sort of trips we’d take, and so on.
But we also fought. Constantly. When it happened, it was quite a show. She loved seeking attention, and I reeked with insecurities, which made for a potent brew.
One weekend, after a few rocky months, we reached another point of argument. I found out she had spent a whole evening with an old flame, so I confronted her. We began the old one-two step, getting louder and louder, until something odd happened. We both got quiet. We shrugged it off, too tired to give a damn.
Soon after that she broke up with me. She crushed me into many pieces, and despite my many attempts to get back with her (which happened, but it was never the same), we drifted apart forever.
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Here’s the back story I left out. During the time when our bickering reached 11, we were also not paying much attention to each other. There were some things that she’d do that I didn’t like, and vice versa. But we stayed quiet. We let things just sit there, festering. We’d bicker and fight and throw a tantrum, but in a lazy way. Like saying, Yeah! Someone needs to do something about the garbage outside!
Even though we didn’t officially split until she uttered “I think we need to quit this,” we had begun the process within ourselves long ago. We had stopped caring about each other, it’s just that the other was just the last to know.
♦◊♦
As goes the plant goes everything else.
To keep something alive, and, hopefully, to make it thrive, you need to care for it. It’s an active thing. You can’t passively love something, or feed it, or work on it. It’s a verb.
If you care about something you will care for it; you will act on your intent. (tweet).
She and I had stopped doing the work we needed to do long before that heartbreaking night. And we didn’t do the work because we had stopped caring about our relationship. The breakup was just the anti-climactic dissolution.
If you tell someone you love them, but you don’t show or act on that love, what’s it worth? As much as you telling that plant you’ll water it, but never do.
There’s that quote, Love is a verb. I always thought that was corny, like something you read on the cover of a romance novel at Walgreens. But this experience taught me that it’s true.
I try to bring this to my relationship with my lady today. I love her tremendously, and want to be there for her in whatever way she needs me. So whenever I do something that either does not articulate that love, or does not articulate how important she is to me, I cringe. I wonder, Is my intent all there is to show for how I feel about her? Have I stopped acting out that feeling? Am I slowly quitting?
I just can’t tolerate that. I know how that slippery slope goes. I know what happens when you stop being invested in your relationship. I know what happens when you start shrugging your shoulders, giving up on things as they are, even though they are hurting both of you.
Love is work. Anything that you want to keep alive and grow is work. Friendships, family, four-legged companions, and our own personal growth. Those who don’t work on what they say is important to them are liars.
To care you must show that you care. And not just once, but constantly. I am not married yet, so I can’t say whether this is a recipe for success, but something tells me that doing the opposite is a guaranteed recipe for failure.
I am learning the hard way to let go of fighting for a more respectful relationship with someone who seems to care more about fighting for herself than for the same with me. She claims to care about me, but her actions and words scream otherwise. It is no longer worth the fight for me.