Spoiler Alert: He was Lying.
No one is going to draw the line in the sand for you. Your life is yours to define.
Nothing major had happened between us. I just wanted something different and understood he was never going to meet me where I was. With such understanding and clarity, I thought it was going to be an amicable split. After all, I wasn't asking anything of him. I just wanted to be left alone.
I don't know why I thought it would be that easy. Maybe because I would never try to hold anyone back from growth. Maybe because I have always walked away from people when it was obvious I couldn't meet them where they were. I believe leaving people alone when you know you cannot offer them what they want is what common sense dictates, and back then I thought that was everyone else's belief too. Turns out it wasn't
Sometimes people hold on to you even though they aren't sure about you because they need a backup partner. Just in case they never find someone better. They know you aren't the person of their dreams, and they would let you go except they also know you are pretty great, and that it would be foolish to let you go without a solid replacement.
When I was in that period of walking away from someone who wanted to keep me regardless of the unhappiness I felt by his side, I learnt of a term called FUTURE FAKING.
Future faking is when a person uses the future to manipulate you in the present. It involves telling you what you want to hear or making false promises to gain your trust, affection, or compliance without any intention of fulfilling those promises. You only discover later they didn't mean anything they said.
In my case, this person requested a last meeting. I granted it. One hour into our “last meeting”, it was obvious he wasn't there to break up when we started making plans for the next month. My mistake is I had trusted this person enough to imagine he always operated from a place of honesty and moral clarity. It was shocking to realize he wasn't above lying or manipulating to get his way.
When I was younger, there's a lot I did not understand.
For example, there's a girl who wanted to get married and I never understood why she remained with the same non-committal man for ten years despite the fact that she could have walked away and found someone else.
I never understood women who kept forgiving cheaters and alcoholics or church girls who got pregnant although they had always sworn marriage would come first for them. It was strange for me because I could tell these women had clarity about what they wanted in life. How someone had managed to hold them back was the puzzle I couldn't figure out. I figured it out the day I learnt of FUTURE FAKING.
Future faking is a man who isn't interested in marrying you, taking you home to meet his parents to show how serious he is about you.
Future faking is a man who isn't interested in having children with you, telling you he can't wait to have a child with your eyes.
Future faking is a man who isn't interested in commitment asking you to give him six months to get his life in order.
Future faking is a man who is still looking for his future partner telling you he can't wait to grow old with you. It is him describing how he wants his life to be in ten years and inserting you there. It is him knowing what your dreams and aspirations are, and weaponizing them against you to keep you in his life.
If men are not saying single women in their 30s are h0s who didn't want to settle down when they were young, they are saying single women in their 30s prioritized career over love.
In reality, most single women in their 30s are women who “wasted 3-6 years being faithful to someone who wasn’t ready to settle down” but not big enough to let them find someone else.
They were just strung along by a man who ended up getting married to some other girl in less than one year, and that's why you must never be considerate about men.
The only needs that should matter to you are your needs and if they are being met within your preferred time frame. Because the moment you factor in what a man wants or what he's telling you, he will lie and manipulate you for as long as you are of service to him. Then one day he will walk away like you didn't spend years of your life waiting for him to change like he promised, or for him to get his life in order.
1: Relationships demand compromises. However, you aren't the only person who should be making them. If you find you are the only party compromising and postponing dreams, you are being manipulated by someone who is never going to fulfil his end of the bargain.
2: If you must compromise for important life events such as marriage and children, do not do it indefinitely. Settle on a time limit. If they are not ready by the date you discussed and agreed on, walk away.
What I Read Last Week,
Books;
Completed.
1: Auditions, Katie Kitamura
2: Things In Nature Merely Grow, Yiyun Li
Incomplete.
3: Groundwork For The Metaphysics Of Morals, Immanuel Kant.
4: Life Of Pi, Yann Martel.
Essays.
1: The Eros Monster, Breaking free without breaking up by Agnes Callard
2: The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons, Yiyun Li, The New Yorker.
3: Degrading Intimacy, Apoorva Tadepalli
4: Breaking Points, by Agnes Callard
What I have been listening to,
Philosophize This, Stephen West
I am listening to their old podcast episodes on Kant’s philosophy. (Reading philosophy is pretty much doing a lot of homework)
A dear friend of mine introduced me to Harvard’s Professor Michael Sandel’s work and it naturally led me to Kant. If you are interested in philosophy, you should check out Justice with Michael Sandel.
Future faking. I knew it! I did not know that there was a term for it but I noticed in the last few people I had dated. They would name drop big things that we "would" do in the future, all the while behaving really badly in the present.
Such an enlightening read❤️
I am glad you have put a word on it.... Now as I take stock of my youth, I won't get confused on what that was that had me spend so much of my time in a futile endeavor.