Can you love someone even if you’re not a couple? David was the love of my life. Well, we never dated for real and we weren’t technically official, but I was in love with him and I thought he felt the same. Or at least I thought he felt similar. We would sit around for hours and laugh and talk about nothing in particular or everything under the sun. When we walked around the city, people stopped to tell us what a cute couple we were, and every time I looked at him I felt lucky to be so close to his body. It was mine.
Things went awry when he started canceling our plans and making weird excuses about why he couldn’t see me. “I have a work thing” became “I’m sick” which turned into “I can’t make it can we reschedule.” Hey, I can take a hint. And I know that sometimes people just aren’t interested in you. But that’s when we should be the most honest. If you know you’re not feeling someone, be an adult and let them know right away instead of dancing around the subject. Nobody wants to be led on.
David knew exactly how I felt, and for a minute I started wondering if he even ever liked me or if he just liked the fact that I liked him. You know, an ego boost. When we are in love with someone, we do all kinds of masochistic things to ourselves that would be total red flags if it were anybody else. But because it’s us and our feelings, we hand ourselves over to the masochism because we think it’ll be different. Because our feelings are so strong.
It’s like my friend always tells me: unavailable people are always available to somebody, maybe just not you.
The straw that really broke the camel’s back, though, was when I saw that he was tagged in a photo at someone else’s house the night he was supposed to stay over at my place. “I’m sick,” he told me earlier, but apparently not sick enough that he refrained from enjoying what looked like a delicious curry meal and a marathon of Nip/Tuck.
Not jealous, just mad he wasn’t straight up.
I stopped talking to him because I realized he was full of shit. I erased his number from my phone. I didn’t respond to his messages. I wasn’t even mad at him, but I decided that I just couldn’t treat myself like that anymore. You can’t throw yourself at somebody who is not willing to catch you. And honestly we shouldn’t be throwing ourselves at people, period.
After months of not talking to him, now he’s back for more. Texting, sending me messages, all of that. But what do I do? Do I respond, coldly and matter-of-factly? Or do I give him yet another chance?
How many chances should we give our loves before it’s finally time to let them go? 
