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For me, the end of any relationship begins with anger and finishes with guilt. Or rather, my processing the end of any relationship begins with anger and finishes with guilt. Marriages, boyfriends, friendships, family ties. I have had three or four relationships with people very close to me end or fundamentally change within the last year or so. With each of these relationships, the pattern was the same. It has been the same pattern for my whole life. When a relationship ends, I am angry. I do not feel angry very often. I am a people pleaser and I usually have unhealthy control over my emotions. I don’t like feeling angry with people. But endings make me mad.
Mad at the people in my life, for dismissing me, not listening, making me feel bad about my weight and my intellect and my interests. For not recognizing my efforts, visible, invisible, sometimes imagined, to fix things between us. For not giving me credit for everything that I do, for the ways that I care, for the love that I give them. For not reaching out to help me when I need help, the way I feel I have tried to help them. For not working hard enough- for not working correctly- to fix what’s wrong.
Very angry at myself, as well, for setting boundaries in my mind and then letting them be chipped away, slowly, until they didn’t exist any more. For not speaking up sooner, not drawing harder lines. For crying too much and always backing down from the fight.
But that anger isn’t entirely honest, is it? Anger at myself for trying too hard and being too kind, too much of a push over? I have never had a break up where, when I view it honestly- admittedly with the bias of authorship- I have been a saint whose only sin is loving too hard and people pleasing too much, tied to a villain by my naïveté. That’s a ridiculous thing to think and is not why any relationship I have ever been in has ended. I don’t believe that most people ever experience a break up where only one party is at fault. Which means I am also at fault for these endings.
And then comes the guilt.