It’s Not You, It’s Me!

Why can’t this work? Who is at fault in this relationship; is it you, is it me?

“It’s not you, it’s me..” – is a line generally given to help ease the emotional process that occurs when ending a relationship. If you haven’t used it before, or someone else used it on you, you’ve had to have heard the phrase before. You know, it’s just a line or phrase that people say when trying to answer, what I would like to call the ‘Why questions’ that lie in the mind of who they’re talking to. ‘Why questions’ are questions like — Why aren’t we working out? Why don’t I feel the same way I felt when I met you? Why do you want to end the relationship? Why, why, why…

I’m beginning to believe that my attempts to find an answer those ‘Why questions’ is ultimately a chasing after the wind, basically meaning, it’s futile. It doesn’t really matter why. Those are not the questions I should ask myself.

In my twenties, I remember there was a girl I was so infatuated with. Though I didn’t know much about her as a person, I felt she was so attractive, smart, interesting, which are most of the qualities I would want in someone. We really didn’t hang out much, as we both led different lives. And at the time, though I flirted with other girls, I would always think about her in the back of my mind. I felt we had a special chemistry, and I even talked to her friends, they told me she found me attractive too. But, when I would call, she wouldn’t answer. I was like, what’s up with that??!? Anyway, for a long time up until I got over her, I always thought that it was something about me that wasn’t good enough for her. Thoughts entered my mind, even friends would tell me things like – “You don’t drive a nice enough car.”, “She doesn’t like tall guys; you’re too tall.”, “You don’t make enough money.”, “She likes real black guys; you hang around too many white people.”..etc.

Guess what? All of those things may have been true. However, I believe that though I feel she liked me, it was just that she didn’t like me in the same way I liked her. So, knowing the why and why not’s of her not reciprocating my feelings didn’t matter, I feel what really mattered was the fact that she wasn’t willing to be with me at that time. It wasn’t me, it was her.  And guess what? That’s cool. Even though I hated being infatuated with someone who doesn’t feel the same towards me, I still remained confident in myself, feeling secure in who I was as a person.

What matters lies on a balancing beam. You have The Things You Are Willing To Do to make it work on one side, which may include: being patient, denying yourself, the energy/effort it takes to keep the relationship interesting, etc.. On the other side you have The Things You Are NOT Wiling To Do to make it work on the other side, which may include: putting up with their type of personality, being rejected, feeling unsatisfied, etc..

And once you look at it from that perspective, the line – “It’s not you, it’s me”, is actually not a gimic line at all. It’s a true statement. You can’t change someone’s feelings towards you, and in the case I wrote about in the previous paragraph, I wasn’t willing to wait for her to start having feelings for me. I’m still not willing to do that.