Chantelle asked me an interesting but rather disturbing question last week, the answer to which I wanted to expand upon in this blog, but kind of dragged my feet a bit. The question in question was: Would you ever get back together with Liz again?, apparently stemming from something I had written in this blog pre-Chantelle-hook-up days, combined with the lyrics to a Daughtry song that was playing on the radio as we were driving along.
Obviously my immediate reaction was of course not, and I hurriedly fumbled through a reasonable enough explanation, but the goal of this particular post is to lay the most concise reason for my answer out in black and white. And while this answer is relevant to my case in particular, I feel that it can be applied to almost any relationship that suffers a permanent breakup.
So why shouldnt people, or rather, why don’t people get back together again? (Not counting people who get back together again simply for conveniences sake those people are living in denial anyway).
In my opinion, the most logical reason is this: when you meet a person for the first time, you are guarded, being selective of what aspects of your personality you wish to show off. You tend to only show the good sides to you and keep the other, perhaps slightly anti-social sides in the dark. As a relationship matures, you reveal more and more of yourself, your habits, characteristics and traits, all part of the process whereby you and your partner get to know one another better. Obviously the amount of yourself that does get shown grows with time, though I would wager that even couples who have been married for decades still don’t truly know one another complete and utterly.
The thing that I’m trying to highlight here is that a person generally takes another person into a relationship while only knowing those characteristics that their partner has chosen to reveal. Generally you fall in love with what is presented with you, which makes sense. Yes, the words are that you love your partner no matter what, but in all honesty, that love is based on what the other person has presented you from the get go which is very seldom the whole picture.
Now as time passes and the relationship matures, you begin to see more of your chosen partner that you perhaps werent aware of in the beginning. Most of the times you accept these, but what if they were something that was totally against what you wanted in your partner? There are aspects of human nature which can be very unattractive to a person, so why would they be in a relationship or love a person who displayed those characteristics?
Let me give a quick example of my old relationship that Chantelle has questioned me on. Liz is an extremely possessive and jealous person when it comes to her partner. This aspect only became apparent around a year into the relationship, and it was an instant problem for me. Here was a character trait which I absolutely abhor, and it immediately caused a rift between us.
Obviously there are other traits and characteristics that became apparent as the time went by, and as they were revealed, one by one, I became less and less romantically attracted to Liz, which as much as I can publically deny, in my heart I know to be true. Obviously this works exactly the same in reverse, and there are aspects of me that were revealed which she probably didnt appreciate at all. A quick example that comes to mind is the fact that I could want to spend time playing games instead of doting all of it on her that pissed her off to no end.
Small things, big things it doesnt matter, the point is simply that there are things that I now know about Liz that means that I probably would not have gone out with her in the first place, had I known them from the start. Yes, the positive parts that I like are still there, and therefore I wont lie by saying that she wont make a good friend but I can most definitely say that she has no chance of being my partner ever again mainly because now I know the parts that she chooses to hide from people in her daily life.
So Chantelle, the answer is NO, I wont ever get back together with Liz – and I’m hoping that this piece of writing explains more clearly why. That said, please don’t worry about this piece of writing either were still in the early parts of our relationship, and babes, youve got nothing to worry about because so far it is ALL good! :)