manslations

Tough situation today. Our requester is a regular reader here working under an assumed name. And by “regular” I mean she comes by here often, NOT that she poops daily. Though I hope that’s true as well, of course.

Moving on, in a moment of knee-jerk-ish-ness, she broke up with a man and now wishes that she had not done it. Is it possible to get the genie back into the bottle? (If ya know what I mean…Oh, hold on…no innuendo there. Sorry, I overreacted to that metaphor.)

Well…maybe. Let’s see if your situation adds up to a possible re-entry into couplehood:

I had a super great boyfriend. Really super. Two weeks ago I felt I had to break up with him. He agreed. You see, there was a Super Secret Issue involved. He did not stop me from breaking up with him. He just kept telling me I was doing the right thing.

(MANSLATOR’S FULL DISCLOSURE — The original request included the actual secret, on the condition that it not be revealed. So I will be operating with a little more information than all of you readers. Then again, I likely have a LOT more information about headphones than most of you do. Nobody seems to mind. So we’re probably fine. Suffice it to say that the Super Secret was something negative about himself to which she had an initially not so good reaction.)

We were away together for the weekend. In spite of all the breaking up and tears, we had a great time.

Sure, sounds like a blast…

Within hours I felt something was wrong with this picture. There must be a way to save two people who were so good together, so intent on not hurting each other, could get along so well in spite of such circumstances. I told him I didn’t want to do it, after all. He said, “you have to.”

Uh-oh. Not a great sign, that one. Lots of guys believe that it is their duty to save their loved ones at all costs, even if it means being alone. Not unlike the Incredible Hulk, say. (If that helps you.)

When we arrived back into town at the end of the weekend he not only had me meet his 2 11 year olds for the first time, he asked me to end the weekend by having dinner with the 3 of them. I thought this must be a sign that he really wasn’t taking the breakup seriously and was hoping for rapprochement.

Actually, that DOES seem to be a good sign.

I emailed him 24 hours later that I had serious doubts about what I had done. His response, again, “you did the right thing.” A couple more exchanges like that and he agreed to come over for dinner.

Hrm. Seems like even HE is on the fence about this thing.

He showed up with a DVD player in hand, knowing that mine was broken. When I saw that, I knew he couldn’t hate me and I saw a good forecast ahead. I told him how sorry I was and how my thinking had changed and could he please forgive me and let’s go back to being happy. He said there was nothing to forgive and could he please think about it. I went to bed happy.

Fence sitting confirmed, ok. And he came back with?

But last night he came over and I ended up crying all night. He said it was too painful, that breaking up, and he had vowed never to do that twice with the same person. He said it was inevitable we would break up some time in the future because “insert incomprehensible pyschobabble here.” I had just accelerated the process and there was no going back.

Ah. Not so good. Sounds like he’s having a tough time forgiving your initial negative reaction to his Super Duper Secret. As in, his worst fear ahead of time was that you would react, you know, like you did. And when you actually ended up HAVING that reaction, it was exactly as painful as he had feared it might be.

You’re always saying the truth is in his actions, not his words. He kept me with him as long as possible, definitely including non-sex time and taking that big step of letting his little girls meet me, he brought over and installed a DVD player because he knew I needed one and so forth—those are the actions of a man who cares for me, yes?

Yeah, it seems that there’s no question that he cares about you. Wouldn’t be too many reasons to go through all of that if he didn’t.

It’s the words that are breaking my heart–”can’t go back, too painful.”

Tell me, what’s wrong with this picture? And please, just give me the magic incantation to make it all better. I begged last night—when I finally saw he wasn’t going to budge, all I could do was cry. BTW, he was the one who started the crying at the first breakup in the mountains. I’m really, really sorry!

Dear Wondering What Happened,

Well, from what you’ve told me, the tough part is that he’s having a hard time trusting you right now. For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, let’s assume that he has told you that he is a werewolf. Easy to imagine, and fun for me to picture. Win-win.

Ok, so he tells you that he’s a werewolf, and you freak and decide you can’t deal with it. (Why wouldn’t you react that way? He is literally a moon-fueled killing machine that could go off at any moment.)

Chances are, this is the exact thing that he was sure might happen. And then it did. Obviously he cares about you. That’s the problem. If he didn’t care about you, what would it matter if you rejected him? But since he allowed you so close to his heart, it hurt him. Badly.

HOW CAN YOU GAIN BACK HIS TRUST?

Answer: You can’t. Trust is given, not gained. As in, that part is totally up to him. Whether or not he is ready, willing or able to do it is just not something you can try for. He needs to WANT to trust you again. Does he? I don’t know.

The good news is that he seems to have every reason to want to. He clearly cares about you, and he at least had plans to integrate you into his life.

The bad news is that he seems to be, for the moment anyway, willing to pass that up — rather than risk putting his neck on the line with you again.

SO THEN WHAT CAN YOU DO?

I can only think of one thing you can do. Well, only one that might help. Hell, I can probably think of all kinds of things you can do, but some of them would involve throwing anvils at roadrunners with giant slingshots and such. So let me amend this. I can only think of one thing you can do — related to THIS problem.

All you can really do is to communicate the following:

• You felt how you felt at the time when you broke it off — no point in pretending that it never happened. It did. You both know it. Start there.
• It was a knee-jerk reaction that, while honest, wasn’t the complete story about YOU. After a short time, your heart opened up further than it had before, allowed the possibility for being more accepting than it had.
• You are sorry that you spoke before your reaction had fully filtered through you, because you know how much it hurt him. And you’d hate to end the relationship because you opened your mouth before letting your feelings settle down a little.
• You know you made it difficult for him to trust you, and you can’t take that back. However, if he would be willing to give you a chance, you would prove it to him over time.

After that, again, it’s up to him and whether or not he can go for it. But that’s the best you can do. I’m rooting for you, WWH. I hope that he can have the same kind of reversal that you had.

Oh, ladies? Ever broke up, and then taken it back later? How did you regain his trust?