I Wanna Know What's the Worst Way to Break Up
I had been seeing someone exclusively for over a year. We didn't have any long-range plans together but he constantly dropped little hints about a future together. I didn't think we were engaged or anything but I felt pretty confident that we were, in fact, a "couple". We had keys to each other's apartments and for heaven's sake, I think we had a shared Blockbuster card.
We both moved to opposite sides of town and saw each other less frequently. His job was a 24-hour on call type of thing so often we'd be at dinner or in bed asleep and he'd get paged and have to go. I had no qualms about it - it was just part of the relationship.
So, after a few months of things slowly slacking off, I'm casually reading the sunday paper. As pretty as you please, there was a large engagement announcement for him and another woman. I read it over and over, name matched, employment matched, hometown matched....it was definitely him. I couldn't believe it. In fact, it was even funny - my first (ok, second) thought was, "Why would she want to marry him? He gets called out all the time, he can't have a full evening to himself. . . . . . oooooohhhhhhhh, (big lightbulb flashes) He was going to meet her..... DUH!
He called a few days later, said nothing of the engagement until I wished him congratulations. Without a moment of hesitation, he say's "it isn't me". A weird Q & A followed, with most of his answers being "Seriously, it isn't me". Finally, the frustration did me in and I didn't even care what the explanation was. And because the universe would not allow him to get away with it, the paper ran the engagement announcement again the following weekend. I took it as a personal message to me from the universe "it's true, it's him, he's a looser, move on". Which is exactly what I did.
