Monday, June 21, 2004
Tubing, Weddings, TV, Breakups, Quitters
What inherent quality in human personality creates the wide, wide, wide variety of ways of dealing with relationships?
Let me be clearer, since that lead sounds like total angsty-teen crap.
I went to yet another wedding this weekend. Throughout the reception, the bride was a wreck. Her face was pinched with stress, and when she smiled, it wasn't a "smile" so much as a grimace. A painful, angry grimace. Suggesting she eat something caused her to storm across the dancefloor clutching a plate of grapes. Not usually one to restrain her language, the number of "fucks" I heard from her mouth seemed somewhat excessive for "the happiest day of her life."
But she is who she is, and her new husband loves her and she loves him and they are, indeed, a very well-suited match. For all the terror and pissiness and, honestly, for the number of times she screamed at her new husband, their relationship is strong and neither one lets the other push too many buttons.
Conversely, my officemate just broke up with her long-term live-in boyfriend. In and of itself, this is not a big deal -- except that for her, it is. She is quitting her job, moving in with her parents for the rest of the summer, and indefinitely postponing any return to this city, where she's lived for the last 10 years and has many roots set down -- because it's just too hard for her to stay here.
The first situation -- I get it. When you love someone and you fight with them, you make up and figure out how to move on, even if the fight takes place at your wedding. The second situation -- damn, but it confuses the hell out of me.
I understand being distraught over a breakup. I understand needing space and time and a change of scenery. But quitting your job and moving seven states away because where you are is too hard to be -- that screams immaturity to me. Life sucks and is hard, and moving away won't make things better or different or easier.
Urgh.
Let me be clearer, since that lead sounds like total angsty-teen crap.
I went to yet another wedding this weekend. Throughout the reception, the bride was a wreck. Her face was pinched with stress, and when she smiled, it wasn't a "smile" so much as a grimace. A painful, angry grimace. Suggesting she eat something caused her to storm across the dancefloor clutching a plate of grapes. Not usually one to restrain her language, the number of "fucks" I heard from her mouth seemed somewhat excessive for "the happiest day of her life."
But she is who she is, and her new husband loves her and she loves him and they are, indeed, a very well-suited match. For all the terror and pissiness and, honestly, for the number of times she screamed at her new husband, their relationship is strong and neither one lets the other push too many buttons.
Conversely, my officemate just broke up with her long-term live-in boyfriend. In and of itself, this is not a big deal -- except that for her, it is. She is quitting her job, moving in with her parents for the rest of the summer, and indefinitely postponing any return to this city, where she's lived for the last 10 years and has many roots set down -- because it's just too hard for her to stay here.
The first situation -- I get it. When you love someone and you fight with them, you make up and figure out how to move on, even if the fight takes place at your wedding. The second situation -- damn, but it confuses the hell out of me.
I understand being distraught over a breakup. I understand needing space and time and a change of scenery. But quitting your job and moving seven states away because where you are is too hard to be -- that screams immaturity to me. Life sucks and is hard, and moving away won't make things better or different or easier.
Urgh.
