Just go away!
I love that snappy ditty, Gloria Estefan’s “Go Away”, from her 1992 “Greatest Hits” album.
What is wrong
Only, like so many songs, the story is awful. A parody of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways (To Leave Your Lover)”, “Go Away” lists some of the many ways for an arrogant woman to dismiss her lover.
Instead of the simple, “I don’t want see you again.” She skips the end of the relationship.
I guess that is supposed to be ‘obvious’ - it is implied. But she is ending the relationship (in the song) without actually stating, “I need you to be out of my life. Whatever my affections or feelings toward you, I can not afford to have you in my life.”
Bindings
Baggage Reclaim has a theme of women trying to deal with a specific type of bad relationship. The guy is Emotionally Unavailable, and many of the women that visit are bound into a cycle of picking one Emotionally Unavailable Man (EUM) after another. Part advice, part education, part sympathy and support, Baggage Reclaim is a reasonably safe place for those caught in this frequently co-dependent web, this frequently abusive relationship, to find help.
Several recent stories from comments at Baggage Reclaim have been especially troubling. EUM’s are also bound into a cycle - they have soured their relationship with disrespect, with deceit, and with abuse, and they don’t know any different. And EUM’s don’t change. The afflicted lady has a single chance of escape - to recognize that he is the Unsolvable Problem in their relationship, and that she has to leave for her own sake. Those women looking for help discover at Baggage Reclaim the tools, such as NML’s No Contact Rule and war stories from others that are suffering or have escaped the EUM degenerative cycle, for escaping their individual cycle of hell.
Lovefool
Then there is this cute, needy, desperate little obsession ditty by the Cardigans, from their “First Band on The Moon” album. With lines like “Pretend that you love me”, and “Just don’t go”.
NML asks today “Why can’t men and women break up?“.
Let me count the ways*!
- People are hard wired to addictive behavior. Like a good work ethic, staying with someone is more comfortable than leaving, until things get really horrible, unless ..
- The only people that learn to break things off readily are way too experienced in beginnings and endings to be a good mate. Most of us never learned how to begin or conduct a relationship, or end a bad relationship. We have to be taught, as individual, in the School of Hard Knocks (life experiences).
- We never learned how to tell when a relationship has gone bad.
- There are times a relationship demands things that are harmful. We haven’t learned to tell when those things happen in time to avoid them, or to end the relationship in time. We haven’t learned self-defense (a good offense!) in the midst of a relationship. The closest most come to ‘training’ is locker room sniggers.
- With all the examples around us of couples that split, we still misunderstand when to go and when to stay. It is apparent that this is true for many, many people.
* - Umm, this is a list of things that come to mind.
Trapped
For those caught up in a bad EUM relationship, there is usually an ego dysfunction - we feel that if we give more, if we avoid angering our partner, or if we try to be more compliant or more submissive, that our partner will come to treasure us. We invest so very much of our attention and effort into accommodating a dysfunctional partner (usually disrespectful, often abusive and / or deceitful) that we narrow our perspective. The world focuses on existing within the confines of our partner’s relationship - we cannot see anything outside that focus. We don’t see that we are responsible for defending ourselves. We often acknowledge the pain and weariness of our lives, but we fail to acknowledge how damaging our romantic life has become to our emotional life, to our ability to function in family and community. Not only do we suffer, by example we put children and others in our community at risk. Those around us suffer by our withdrawal from a healthy community.
And we can’t see it.
Why don’t people end a bad relationship? All too often they can’t see anything but to drudge on.
On the other hand
NML mentions the way people drag things out, or act out to make their partner be the one to leave. I expect most of the time this is false pride, disrespect, and inexperience. And sometimes standing and waiting is misunderstood - waiting is actually wanting to fix things and not a clue how to proceed.
Sometimes, it might not be the end, if you try something different, get some assistance, or try harder.
Ah, hope (and desperation) springs eternal, and the clearest answers often aren’t all that clear at all.
Very few of us are trained psychologists, to assess whether out partner is dysfunctional or merely making mistakes from inexperience and ignorance. Some few trusted authorities, including the body of wisdom at Baggage Reclaim, do have ways for the interested person to tell which is which. My notion is that picking an honorable partner, and living a moral life, will avoid the worst of the dysfunctional problems.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
This makes me shudder because it is all so true. I can see just what I’ve done in the past. Those 5 reasons were very real. As are what NML brings up.
Now I hope with all the information, to make more effective/better choices for me in the future…
I think it is vicious/devastating/leaves no closure when someone leaves without an explanation.
Now however, my perspective would be that that alone told me I was better off without them.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
It gets even more confusing when people who are supposed to have your best interests at heart (and maybe even they do) give you bad advice because they don’t know the whole situation. I know plenty of people who stay with someone they know they’re not truly compatible with because of the opinion of parents or close friends. The fact of the matter is that no one really knows what a relationship is like except the two people in it, and if you feel you have to leave, then you should trust that gut instinct over the (however well-intentioned) advice from people who can never know the full story.
August 13th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I read your comments on another page… and I couldn’t say it better. I was thinking the same thing when I read about it a few weeks ago…and Since I’m a guy…I totally understand cutting your ties while you have nothing invested.
August 13th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
@Loving Annie, Welcome! When you assume that someone slipping away unexpectedly doesn’t care about you, a relationship with you, or likely himself, that leaves you in the safest, sanest place - *knowing* that ‘Good Riddance’ is the way to think of him.
Even if later events offer an explanation, caution and skepticism are both warranted. He slunk away once, count on it happening again.
@Honey, Reading your comment, the first thing that came to mind was that people offering advice likely haven’t learned to read disrespect and deceit in others, either. Most people never learn what it means to get up close and personal with a deceitful, hurtful, disrespectful person. There advice just can’t accommodate that level of emotional risk and damage, so their advice tends toward economic or family reputation concerns. Which need to be considered, but are secondary. Everyone is entitled to defend themselves.
@Eathan, thanks for visiting!
What I was referring to was the partner (guy or gal) that leaves a long-term (greater than 6 months) relationship without actually stating, “There is nothing here for me. I am going.” At the other end of the relationship, when you have just met, common courtesy demands that you excuse yourself if you step away from your very first introduction or meeting. And that social expectation persists, forever as far as I know. I feel it is courteous to let someone know if you think of them as a possible future contact or not, or if you no longer think of them as a contact or dating partner or life-mate.