After Forgiving: Forget or Move On?

I finally contacted him this morning. It was the longest we’d ever gone without speaking (5.5 days, to be precise). I barely slept, and I was mad at him (stemming partly from Instagram, but I don’t know if I even have the energy to write about that right now). I texted to tell him that I was angry with him, after which he said it was pretty deserved (due to the break-up itself and the communication issues that resulted in that). I fired off plenty of reasons why, beginning with IG and then moving on to short bits of things that I “let go” while we were dating but that were never really resolved to satisfaction.

So of course, he called because he wanted to hear it from me…and we ended up talking for an hour and a half, both of us running on 3-4 hours of sleep and him with an incredibly full day ahead of him. I hate (or love…both? I don’t know) that his voice still calms and soothes me, that I trust what he says, that all I want is to be beside him. Still. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an idiot or because I believe in him, believe that we have something that is still worth trying for (eventually).

He said he still wants to be in my life. I told him that if he wants to be my friend, he’s got to be there consistently. All or nothing. And that if he were to start seeing someone down the road, I would want to know so that I could disappear and work to heal and get completely over him (and I would extend that same courtesy). It’s just really hard, because we still care for each other. We just show our love and affection in different ways, we approach dating differently, and we have different space needs and coping mechanisms.

I certainly will have to let him pick up any slack from before were I ever to consider dating him again down the road… But Lord have mercy, I can’t help but hope that someday that would be a possibility. He said that he expects me to be angry with him, and to intermittently “go off” sometimes when we’re talking or together in person. He kept talking about how he had been a jerk. But I don’t think he understands that I can’t stay mad at him. I can’t help but to forgive him. Isn’t that what relationships are partly about? Seeing someone’s flaws that they can hide from everyone else, being the recipient of some of their worst behaviors (barring abuse and such, obviously), and then loving and forgiving them anyway?

I just don’t want to be stupid and end up getting burned again. But how do you know the difference between someone who is worth struggling for at times and someone who just isn’t worth your time, who isn’t willing to put in that sort of work or who will never love you? I’m afraid my heart is not always the most trustworthy of entities when it comes to matters such as these.

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