Trials and Tribulations

My life, my thoughts, my trials and tribulations...

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Men, Women, and the Ability to Move On


I've never quite understood why it's always so easy for a man to walk away from a relationship, yet so hard for us. Some think that it's because women dive into situations with their feelings and emotions head first while men take months or even years to express those feelings and emotions, or even realize that they have them. Some think that it's because he never really cared about that particular woman in the first place. But regardless of whether it's one of those reasons or the other, my question is, why is it so easy for men to completely disregard the feelings of us women anyway? Why is it so easy for them to just completely throw away something after having put a given amount of time into it?

I write my blogs only when inspired. As the title of my blog states, I write about my trials, my tribulations, and my life-- whether it be something that has affected me directly, or something that I see affecting someone that I care about. My last blog entry was inspired by both: by how I currently feel, and from what I've been witnessing lately, is the way a lot of women feel. It all boils down to one thing-- how we are being and how we have been treated by men, and how we always seem to be the only ones left picking up the pieces and struggling to move on. Now this blog isn't meant to be a male-bashing entry or anything of the sort, but this one is solely for the ladies to relate to and for you fellas to comment on. All we want to know is, why is it so easy for you to act the way you do? To live life every day, acting as if you don't care (and we know you do...you're just better at concealing it) and that feelings are never an issue? To jump from woman to woman, claiming that you are "emotionally unavailable" and unwilling to love? To take full advantage of a woman's feelings for you and use them for your own personal and physical benefit? To be here one day, and gone the next? Why is all of it okay to you? What about us? What about our thoughts...our feelings...our hearts?

Putting myself out there for a moment: I've been in situations where I've spent days, weeks, or even months crying my eyes out over a guy who had just randomly walked out of my life, while he seemed to move on the following day (if not immediately), never look back, and be just fine. I didn't understand it, but eventually learned to accept the fact that it wasn't meant to be, and that he apparently just wasn't into me as much as I was him. But one situation in particular I found (and still do find) extremely difficult to understand. Me and this guy started out just friends...hanging out, going on "dates", and having fun. After a few months, things got a little more intimate, and although we had not established a relationship, we remained cool. But eventually things took a turn for the worst. We went through many "on and off" periods where we would talk, then don't talk. Ultimately things turned ugly, with the end result being him completely turning his back on me and ending up in a relationship with someone else. It hurt like hell, and I will never forget that day. But I finally came to terms with myself and thought, okay fine. Him and I aren't meant to be...they obviously are. But even if him and I did not work out from a relationship standpoint, what happened to the friendship we had developed? What happened to all of the talks we had...the good times we shared...the laughing, and joking...the times I was there for him and him for me? Was he really just going to throw it out the window and proceed to treat me like a complete stranger? Well, he did...and did so without any regret or remorse. The almost 2-year friendship I THOUGHT we had built was gone, just like that. It's been months since we've spoken so much as one word to each other, and that alone hurt me more than him breaking my heart. I will NEVER understand Why it had to end that way. I mean, I knew he loved her, but did our friendship really mean nothing for him to just let it all go so easily?

I know that us women are to blame for a lot of what we put ourselves through-- we often have the inability to see the truth when it's right in front of us, we have the constant tendency to only hear what we want to hear and twist everything men do and say to fit to our liking and what we want to hear, and we also have the tendency to hold onto a failing or failed relationship, with the hope that we can somehow convince him that we are "the one". We are wired completely differently when it comes down to love and relationships. But regardless of our emotional differences, we all have feelings. Yes, we know you guys have feelings too-- so why is it a sin to express those feelings and love back? You know that us women love hard, have delicate feelings, and want to do nothing but give you the deepest of our love and affection. So why is that so hard to reciprocate if you know you feel the same way? For those who don't feel the same way, why is it so hard for you at least understand what we go through and try to respect those feelings as you part ways?

What goes around comes around, so next time you're walking away from a situation in a woman, why not ask yourself, how would you feel if a woman you cared about-- truly cared about-- just picked up and walked away, showing no remorse or paying no mind to everything you thought you had built?

4 Comments:

  • At 6:44 PM, Anonymous David Gaines said…

    After reading Kim Miles' posting about Men, Women, and the Ability to Move On, I started reflecting on some of the relationships that I walked out on. I don't consider myself one of the good ones; I know I am. And yet, I know I've emotionlessly moved on without looking back, regardless if it hurt or not.

    Why?

    One of the first things to cross my mind is how men and women see the breakup from two completely different perspectives. Men, well, we live in a world where we face a series of letdowns over and over. I'm a Redskins fan so for the past decade or so [has it really been since 1996 that we won our last Super Bowl?] I've had to put on my game face to stand tall in front my Giants and Patriots and even Cowboy fan friends. We men are extremely competitive and evolve into creatures who can take a loss with grace. We lose at Madden; we lose at not making more money than the next man; we lose at the clubs and bars when women seem to always have to go to the bathroom when we roll up.

    In the process of all this losing, we almost get used to two simple facts. The first being that it is inevitable that you win some and you lose some. The second being that you will continue to lose if you don't put it out of your mind.

    You can't be at the free throw line with no time and two buckets to win and think about the first quarter missed layup. We develop an instant case of amnesia, not out of having no emotions, but because lingering tends to cloud our judgement moving forward. "Shake it off," we're always saying to each other.

    This isn't to say women don't experience failures like men do. Women just handle them different. When we say "shake it off," women listen to each other's frustrations, they get emotional and empathetic with it, embrace the pain and try to make sense of it. If a woman doesn't get a promotion, it's about the supervisors not knowing what they're missing. We just get back on our feet before the 10-count and go another round.

    When a relationship comes to an end, I've never wanted to not be friends. I prefer to be friends. Especially if we started out as friends. No man wants a woman scorn running around putting him on blast. It doesn't benefit us to seem to be so callous and indifferent when ending a relationship which seemed so heavenly on the outside.

    The part that makes a man completely sever ties is the part that makes him feel guilty for not being That Man. It's when we see an ex-flame and she hasn't extinguished the fire. Somewhere in a conversation, the question pops up, "what happened to us?" Or when we run into mutual friends and they ask how's such-and-such as if we're still responsible for that her happiness.

    Not every woman does this, I know, but most woman think they don't when they really do. It's the comment about "remember when we went skiing in that log cabin?" or "how's my favorite nephew?" or "tell your parents I said hi." Innocent enough, on the outside, but it's the same thing as saying, "remember when you missed those free throws at the buzzer?" or "have you gotten that raise yet?" or "did that girl ever call you back from the club?"

    We don't want to be reminded of our failures. We know we fail. Everyone knows we fail. It is in our best interest to stay away from all things that remind us of how we let someone down or didn't live up to the billing. We don't look through old photo albums reminiscing about past vacations with the ex. We don't ask her friends how she's doing [oh she's been crying for the past three weeks — you should call her...]. And we surely don't want to be face-to-face and see that smile that was once reserved exclusively for us, reminding us of how we were supposed to be the one to co-star in the Hollywood Romance Story that everyone is supposed to be envious of.

    I can see why a woman feels that a man is being cold-hearted about it. We men can't understand why a woman would even want to indulge in the aftermath of a breakup. It's not to say we can't be friends, but we can only be friends once we've both accepted the "agree to disagree" about whether or not we should be together.

    And I'm still trying to figure out why exes want to know the details of the next relationship. I mean, I know we're "friends" now, but I don't go around telling all the details to my other lady friends. Do you go around telling your other guy friends about your 23 positions in a one night stand?

    In the same breath, though, I've been the one at the other end of the stick. I've had exes walk out on me and disappear in the wind. It sucks, I know. Every night you're staring at the phone wondering if it's disconnected because so-and-so hasn't called. It's not because so-and-so doesn't care. It's because so-and-so doesn't care to be reminded of the utter failure.

    I remember once when I called a wise woman [the great Mudiwa Mustafa] and was spilling my guts. No shame in it. I hurt. She asked me if I thought my ex was sitting somewhere in the dark thinking about me. "Of course," I responded. That's all she really had to say. But then she said that my ex simply couldn't handle the responsibility of making me happy. She [Mudiwa] said I simply invested too much of me into her [the ex].

    It's not fair. We men will walk, but it's not because we don't feel the pain or don't care. It's because we [well, some of us] have mastered the art of getting over any failure quickly enough to we don't miss the next opportunity, be it a missed free throw to the breakup.

     
  • At 7:11 PM, Anonymous David Gaines said…

    Ummm, I meant to put "Of course NOT" at the end when Mudiwa asked me...

    Ahhh, whatever.

     
  • At 9:32 AM, Anonymous theDJ said…

    i dont think guys just blatantly disregard womens feelings and any man that truly gives a f*ck about a woman he is ever friends with wont just drop the entire puzzle and leave, i think that if that does happen (esp. after a 2year friendship was built...) then he's just not speaking out of spite, maybe he still likes "some" things about you, but in his eyes the bad outweighs the good. Either way i think the time invested says alot about the man, unless as u said he is a "woman jumper". some guys have no problem with investing time/money/friendships with alot of women, it keeps options open and allows a man to sit back and pick which direction he'd prefer to go. I understand that still does not explain as to why some guys dont speak at all even though there was a well developed friendship from the start. honestly i have done that before and it was just because i knew that me and the girl would have eventually ran right back into that circle of love/hate. there were still feelings for the female but i knew and understood that i couldnt be with her. i have sat back and thought about her feelings invested and everything weve been thrubecause of the intial friendship but once again i was REALLY into her and it jus seems that there was really only one solution to being able subdue those feelings.

     
  • At 1:40 AM, Blogger ~Shirly Girly~ said…

    Two months later & I thought I had already read this post but apparently I hadn't or else I wouldn't be sitting here crying about it. Believe or not, Miss Kimmie, I've gotten myself in that same type of situation except it hasn't been a year, it's only been six months. Yeah the whole "dates" thing, "just friends," "fuc% buddies," whatever you wanna call it; it's not a good situation and it sucks. I'm with David on this one when I say that I need to have the 'man' mentality and have the ability to 'shake it off,' too bad it's easier said than done.

     

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