"Meant to Be Broken."

Sunday, November 8, 2009
4:03 PM Get ready…

I’m not sure how I feel about rules.

I’ll give you a minute to get over the shock.

Are you okay? Okay. This is shocking because, as most of my friends and family know, I LOVE to make up rules. Coming up with arbitrary rules for myself has become like a hobby (and probably a slight case of OCD). To give you a look into my neurosis, I’ll give you some examples. I do it with everything. Clothes? I have a list of all my clothes for each season that I work through, systematically, so as not to wear the same outfit twice before I have to. On a given day I simply cross reference the temperature and occasion to find out what I’ll be wearing. Scary? I know. I’m scaring myself a little just writing this. But the thing is, I really do find it helpful to have a list of all my clothes in front of me. I just have a real knack for making helpful things complicated.

Like my To Do list. Now, I know I’ve written about my To Do List before, because it truly is the bane of my existence. But...it’s helpful to have a list of everything I need to do, so I don’t forget. Unfortunately, I’m really good at staring at the list just long enough to become frustrated and overwhelmed at the thought of doing it all. It’s a gift, really.

And relationships? Oooh, relationships. My romantic life is the area of my life in which I often feel the most out of control (I’m emotional, okay?), so I’ve come up with thousands of rules to trick myself into thinking I have some semblance of control. And the fact that I know every line of every episode of “Sex & the City” and just finished reading “He’s Just Not That Into You” doesn’t help. Because they just reinforce the fact that women need to go into relationships with a set of rules… and I’m starting to think that’s unhealthy. Of course, all women should have some nevers. Cheating is always a deal breaker. Lying? Also a deal breaker. Abuse equals a deal breaker and a call to the local police. But those aren’t the rules I, or the writers of SATC and “Not That Into You” are talking about.

For example, there’s an episode of SATC when Charlotte announces that it should take half the time you were dating a guy to get over him. You were dating a guy for a month? You’ve got two weeks to ponder what might have been and *poof* you’re over it. And I love that rule! It seems reasonable, there’s a bit of logic to it… I would do the break up math for every girlfriend who called me crying over her lost love: “Don’t worry about it too much, Sar! You were with him for a year, so it’s just the next six months of your life that are going to suck.”

You see, the problem I’m finding with rules is that they very rarely apply to any “unique” situation. What if you dated a guy for three years? Does that mean it’s going to take the next year and a half to move on with your life? Is this what we’re limited to? Or what if you’re like me and you like to make the same mistake, er, date the same guy over and over and over again? If it was on and off for five years, does that mean I should have expected two and a half years of misery? Or do I subtract the months we weren’t together? Or do I only count the most recent time we were together? It just doesn’t work.

Another rule I loved was the, “Don’t talk to the guy after he’s broken up with you” rule. I swore by it. He doesn’t want to be with you, but he still wants to talk to you? No way. He chose for it to be this way, so let him miss you. It makes complete sense… until you apply it along with the other rule. If you were with a guy for two years, you break up, and won’t be “over” him for a year, that would mean you can’t speak to him for year. But what if he’s in your group of friends? Are you supposed to ignore him for twelve months? Should you tell your friends that you won’t be addressing him in social settings for the next year, so could you please tell him to move his car, he’s blocking you and you need to get home? It doesn’t work.

I’m not sure what I mean by writing all this out. It’s just something that occurred to me today. I follow all these rules so I can assert some control over my life, but they just end up making things more complicated in the end. Because I’ve never believed that exes could be friends (another rule). And I’m still not entirely convinced that they can. But I realized today it’s awfully nice to have someone to talk to when you’re having a bad day, even if it is breaking a rule.

Love,
Tara