When someone tells you that they are not in love with you and they are going to leave you, you should be appreciative. You don't have to say thank you, you really should not say thank you, but you should know that this is the best thing.
And you should be grateful that they told you this now, as opposed to later, and that they told you this before they went off and found somebody else, as opposed to after they'd already found somebody else. Assuming that this is correct.
Someone said this to me on Monday night. "I'm not in love with you, and while I think you're (positive adjective, positive adjective), I can't settle for being with someone I'm not in love with." It hurt like a blunt object to the forehead, but I knew enough to appreciate the honesty, the brevity.
Which is not to say I didn't act psycho because oh yes I did. For one hour, exactly. I turned over in bed and refused to speak. Then I cried because he was leaving me. Then I cried because I had left other people and I'm just now realizing how much I must have hurt them and I hate hurting people. Then I swore and got angry and told him not to touch me. Then I said, "why aren't you touching me?" And then I stormed out of the room to get a glass of water and then I slunk back in and curled up with him and fell asleep. I had just sailed through Elizabeth Keubler-Ross's five stages of grief in one go, and in the morning I felt just fine.
It wasn't that I was in love with him. I wasn't. I like him very, very, very, very much and I enjoyed every minute spent together. I was not left heartbroken when he left but I was left facing that awful question: if he couldn't fall in love with me, well, why not?
And then you go on sort of a limping scavenger hunt into your psyche and you collect all of your flaws and you weigh them and sort them and you try and piece together an answer.
It's not an ideal way to spend an afternoon.
What's funny is that I've been dating someone for a while but didn't write about it on this blog, because I was afraid we'd break up before we really became official, and then we did break up before we really became official, and now I'm writing about it.