“It’s not you. It’s me.” “I’m just not ready for a relationship right now.” “We can still be friends.” etc.
You’ve probably heard these before, whether you were on the giving or receiving end (or you were watching your favorite TV couple call it quits). These are the lines NO ONE wants to hear, and if you’re the one saying them, you probably don’t like the way it feels either. You might be too nervous or scared, to tell the truth. Maybe you don’t think the other person deserves the truth. No matter what, I’m here to overuse “honestly is the best policy”.
As someone who has been on both ends of this situation, all you want is to hear the truth from the person you’ve invested your time and energy into, and lying to someone that you respected enough to start something with will never let you rest easy. Once upon a time, someone asked me out, and I said yes. Three days later, I realized that I was in love with my best friend. It wouldn’t have been fair to my significant other or myself if I had continued with the relationship while knowing I wasn’t invested. I was right of me to end the relationship. I was wrong to lie about the reason why I did it. I told my s/o that I wasn’t ready for a relationship when I should’ve been honest. I should have said that there was someone else and how I didn’t want our relationship to go any further because even though I did care about them, it wasn’t in a romantic way.
I told myself the reason I lied was that I cared about them, and I didn’t want them to get hurt. The reality was that I was scared to come off as the bad guy when I was at fault, but they found out through a mutual friend, anyway. I ended up hurting their feeling and betraying their trust, hurting them twice as much as I would’ve if I hold been honest from the beginning. The person I claimed to be protecting suffered anyway because they trusted me, and I couldn’t swallow my ego and show the other person enough respect, to tell the truth.
I’m a firm believer, that you can’t control your emotions, only your reaction to them. If there is something wrong in a relationship, then face it head-on. Do not try to go around the problem to salvage feelings. People can recover from a break-up, but you can’t make someone trust a liar. Be clear and say how you feel. Not every couple is meant to be, and that’s okay. However, if your willing to start something, you have to be willing to end it with the same foundation of mutual respect as before. If you really aren’t ready for a relationship and it really is you and not them, then make that clear from the start so no one gets lead in the wrong direction. Communication is KEY, as overused used as that is. If you don’t belive me, try a relationship without it, and watch it bight you in the ass (and you best believe karma bit me in the ass when I got the same line used on me).