You Were Never My Official Boyfriend, So Why Does Losing You Hurt So Bad?

We could have had something special, maybe, but we never actually did. I liked you a lot, but for one reason or another, things never worked out. Now that you’re no longer in my life, I’m devastated and I don’t know why. You weren’t even my actual boyfriend, so why am I so upset that you’re gone?

  1. Oh, my ego. Everybody’s ego takes a knock once in a while, and I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m aching over the loss of you. You were never really “mine,” per se, but my own ego — a very valid part of myself and one I can’t really ignore — won’t let me believe otherwise. It sucks but I can’t help myself.
  2. I beat myself up over why I didn’t see it sooner. “Why couldn’t it have been me who pulled the plug?” I find myself asking. Oh well. What’s done is done, and no amount of hindsight is going to change the outcome, but it doesn’t mean that the loss of you doesn’t hurt a bit more than it should — more because of my “fragile” ego than your desire to leave things half-cooked before bailing. Who even does that? (Oh, right; you.)
  3. I wonder about the “what could have been” way too much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a personal thing. When I don’t feel in total control of a circumstance (Type As unite!), I’m not all that happy. Wondering about the “what could have been” is only inevitable for the type of person that I am, and I have a very active fantasy imagination.
  4. You didn’t even give it a chance. In my mind’s eye — the one that loves those rose-colored glasses so much — we could have been everything. Instead, we’re nothing, and that grates on my nerves (and my sad little heartstrings) so much. Even if you had a valid reason for pulling the plug on us so early in the relationship (whatever “relationship” it was), couldn’t have you just given it a little more time? Not to sound all melodramatic and pathetic and clingy, but damn, I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through showing you the best sides of me that would naturally outweigh all the bad in six months. (Ha!)
  5. Who am I going to spend my weekends with now? Yeah, it was fun while it lasted, but I invested enough time with you, my non-boyfriend, that now I know what it’s like to be out of the loop of a real social scene, and anyone who’s been removed from a situation for so long will tell you that you have to find your sea legs all over again — and man, that is NOT fun sometimes.
  6. My girlfriends aren’t exactly thrilled. They’re ride or die chicks for sure, and any good, well-rounded friend would be. Because of you (and, okay, me), I have to make amends to them for phoning it in so much. At least they, unlike you, are a little more steadfast in their loyalty. Even though they were put on the back burner for awhile, they totally understand it because they’ve been there too. Looks like I answered my own question of who I’m going to spend my weekends with now. Thanks for that—and not much else.
  7. A waste of time is a waste of time no matter how you slice it. Many people say that there’s no such thing as an accident or a waste of time, but when you were never even “mine” to begin with, retrospect tells me that what we had was a great big waste of time. And life is short, so maybe I’m lamenting the loss of time and moments more than I am the loss of you.
  8. I’m not getting any younger. Even if I don’t want to settle down just yet — and dammit, I don’t — it’d have been nice to have the option to make that decision mutually, and not waste the weeks I had with you for no apparent reason — and to what end? To the end that I’m sitting here nursing my wounds that you weren’t even really “mine” to begin with. Save the games for someone’s who’s not over it next time, okay?
  9. Starting over before you’ve barely begun really sucks. I’m not even saying that I wanted to make things permanent with you, or even semi-permanent. But we made some progress and that in itself was probably a good reason to see where things would have gone.
  10. Quitters never win and winners never quit. Nobody’s saying stay in a relationship because they’re so Type A that quitting just isn’t an option, but come on. You quit before the game really began, and now I have to start from scratch with someone else and the fact is, I don’t want to. Nobody ever said half-relationships were easy, but whoever thought that a no-strings-attached relationship would be so complicated or elicit such an emotional response? Not this girl, I’ll tell you that much.
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