I’ve have always loved fortune cookies. Trivial and meaningless? Sure. That hasn’t stopped me from eating them. Or keeping them. Today I got one with my awesome egg roll vermicelli take-out.
On my awesome I love you, you Valentine’s Day I was hit like a ton of bricks by a Facebook message from my nice ex-boyfriend, Parker. I haven’t really written much about Parker, but really all you need to know (for now) is that we dated for 3 and 1/2 years, before I met MF. I broke up with him in 2009 for mainly for one reason- he wasn’t committed to building a future together. And I couldn’t change that, or him.
So this hit-you-in-your-gut message read that he no longer could be my friend, out of respect for his current relationship and moving on with his life.
And I respect that.
But I was pissed. On Valentine’s Day…really? In a Facebook message…really? It was cold, emotionless, and completely out of nowhere. A week ago we chatted about some filmmaking stuff and I mentioned that I didn’t want to call him after that because I didn’t want to cause any problems in his new relationship. He assured me that it was OK. That his new gf was cool and didn’t care. I thought that was weird. Because I would care if I was her. But I thought, OK, well that’s been addressed. We never talked much anyways.
And then that message. What a shitty way to go about something. Really though.
But like the fortune cookie says, anger begins with folly, and ends with regret. I’m glad I didn’t say anything that came from a knee-jerk reaction. I thought about it for a couple of hours and wrote my response:
“I completely respect your decision, because I’ve had to make it before. But why would you send this to me in a message on Facebook, on Valentine’s Day? Out of respect for our friendship? You don’t have to respond. It just hurts my feelings. I wish you the very best, Parker!”
I don’t regret that. The message he sent me was more about him than me, anyways.
I think we should all take a little time to say things we aren’t going to regret (I’m ALWAYS working on that).
Yours non-regretfully (this time),
25swf
25 Single White Female 
We had a convo about this, and it is for the best, but did he really have to announce it to you like you were causing a scene?! Girls aren’t clueless like men…most know boundaries, except for Teale…ugh!
Welp Lucy, all I can say is things are not always as they seem.
Yes, and the thing about saying something important, or ending a friendship, over messaging or in the written format, is that you’ll never know the emotions that went behind those words… Whose they were, where they came from, what (or who) instigated the change. I believe that if you have something important to tell someone, and you’re in the same place geographically, you need to look them in the eyes and say the words. Of course, it might not have allowed you to step back and release your anger before you replied, but like you said, we’re all learning!