the reason I have always gotten increasingly annoyed with friends gushing about their relationship problems. It’s not that I don’t enjoy listening to a friend vent about a fight, or over-analyzing screenshots to figure out if a guy really meant what he said. I do. I crave those conversations. I love seeing a friend in love. I hate seeing a friend going through heartbreak. I want to be there with them, through all the details.
I thought back to my childhood. The way I grew up, dating was a sin. Having a crush was not allowed. When I was 15, a boy in a play told me he had a crush on me. I told him that I wasn’t allowed to date, that we could just be friends, but that I cared for him (I didn’t even like him more than a friend). I tried to have a conversation about the situation with my mom, thinking that she would be proud of me for staying “pure” and doing what I had been taught to do. Instead, she told my dad. I was no longer allowed to email with the boy, not allowed to hang out with him. My mom didn’t “like his attitude”. That day I decided I would NEVER go to my parents about anything pertaining to love. And I never did until my parents forced me out of the closet at 18. Can someone say trauma. I learned to not speak about my relationships with others. I had a series of major crushes from 15 to 18, mostly on boys and girls who paid me absolutely zero mind. Through all of that, no one knew. I talked to no one about these feelings of love, puppy oriented or not. Until Emily, then I had a best friend who cared and wanted to hear all about the ups and downs of my first girlfriend. She asked for screenshots, we stayed up all night talking about our dating lives, our frustrations at still being virgins, and once we were coupled, arguments, hard decisions, and asking ourselves what the hell were we doing.
I lost that best friend a while ago. Literally a week after she got married. That’s another story for another time. From then on, I didn’t have any friends who acted interested in the least bit about my relationship with Emily. I had learned not to talk about my feelings, and no one thought to ask. I was bursting at the seams to talk to someone. I had huge feelings. But when I would try to bring it up…I didn’t get any interaction. I was straight up shut down and gaslighted into believing that I was the one causing the problems. I felt like a burden. I just stopped. My relationship eventually crumbled. It was my fault. But regardless. Once you break up with your spouse, I guess everyone walks on eggshells about the topic. I get it, you don’t want to pry, you don’t want to make me upset. I may not be in the mood to talk about it. I’m closed off. But when no one talks about it, when no one asks me about it, it makes me feel invisible. As if no one really cares to talk about it. Like I’m expected to be just fine and dandy when on the inside I’m screaming, confused and upset and needing reassurance that I did the right thing and that I didn’t just ruin my entire life that I had spent so much time building.
My closest friends are my entire heart. I have a hard time trusting, but the people I have let in, I have let in for a reason. I wish I could be less selfish, but the reason I don’t like to constantly talk about my friends relationships is because they never ask about mine. I end up listening to hours of relationship talk, but maybe only get a few minutes of divided attention to talk about my own. They don’t ask if I’m talking to anyone new. They don’t ask if I’m putting myself out there, if I am feeling hung up over my ex, if I have a crush. If I try to talk about it, no one follows up. I told a few friends about a crush I had a while ago. Not a single person has mentioned it since (and it was a big one, with some actual drama that ended in setting a boundary I didn’t want to set even though it was for the best, and some kind of grieving period that I’m still navigating through.)
I am not naive in thinking that my friends should be constantly thinking about me, about my problems, or about my love life. My love life is actually incredibly boring, I will admit. I’m just confused all the time. But I want to talk about it. I don’t know how to tell them I want to talk about it. Talking is so droll. But I need it, and I don’t want to talk about it with my therapist, I want to talk about it with my friends. The people who know and love me and want me to be happy. But even though my life is boring, there are still highs and lows. There are still texts from a crush I need analyzed. I need someone to slap me and tell me to get over myself and stop obsessing over when someone will text me back. I need someone to tell me that I’m not crazy, that I’m not imagining certain things. Validation and accountability. I guess that’s the basis. I don’t know how to ask for it. We’ll see.
