I'll break things down into a few choice quotes written by Rachel, and a simple dissertation of how things have been, since, oh, January or so. This was written last October.

"It's so amazing to hear my significant other compliment me on how I look. It's infinitely better than hearing the negative comments, or not hearing comments at all... and even more so, that you think I'm beautiful in spite of any extra effort I put into my looks. I've always felt the person I love should be able to look at me and see beauty, no matter what anyone else sees."

"If I come home having a bad day and you're having one too, I feel better trying to make you feel better. "

"...And I appreciate the stupid little perverted jokes you make all the time"

"..I guess would lead me to talk about your visits. I can't express how wonderful I fell when the phone rings at midnight on a Friday. The giddiness is almost overwhelming, the chance to see your face again after whatever period of time."

"You are an amazing man, and a great boyfriend."


January hit and I don't know what happened, but pretty much all those above things that she thought, she felt, changed completely. For the next 8 months, it was me fighting to get back those things. It was a losing war, and I inevitably lost. All the fights we had, whether important or not, really all goes back to the fact that the woman I loved, the woman that had a ring on her finger, is stuck back in December never to return. January was about the time when everything started to fall apart, when the problems arised. Some may say we were in a 'honeymoon' stage for the first 5 months, I really don't see it that way. Because throughout the entire relationship I've attempted to be myself the entire time, not changing my actions because I felt that if things were going right the first 5 months, then they'd stay that way without much adjustment. I don't know what happened on her end, but I was totally happy with the way things were going and felt no need to make any changes or adjustments as to how the relationship worked. The chemistry was great, why change it?

Fact: Rachel now hates it when I tell her she's pretty or beautiful.
Fact: She now hates it when I'm down, because it ends up bringing her down.
Fact: She now hates my perverted jokes.
Fact: She stopped acting excited or showing at least some sense of happy emotion when I showed up for a weekend.
Fact: I stopped being a great boyfriend/fiance without even changing any of my actions.


But through all these issues, all these problems, the ones that REALLY mattered, they were things that I had to deal with, there was nothing she would do to change about it. Sure she made changes for me here and there, but it wasn't the changes that mattered. Rachel chalks this up to us both needing time to "mature" but in reality if anything the relationship made us more IMMATURE because we'd get involved in dumb fights and stupid arguments that really didn't matter. I have a firm belief that if things kept going the way they were back in December and earlier, we'd probably still be together and be happier than ever.

Now of course I'm writing this like I need to defend myself, like I never did anything wrong... but that's not really true. I fucked up a lot, I caused a good deal of problems, I'm not going to deny that. But the premise of a lot of the fights came right down to things that she enjoyed only a few months prior, and then suddenly hating it. So she'd fight with me about that stuff, and I'd fight about stuff that she'd used to do and never did anymore (and never getting a decent reason why, which only made me press the issue more) and it was just one big snowball effect. That's why I was so upset a lot, that's why I felt down a lot... the person I fell in love with disappeared and was replaced by someone else.


So in retrospect I'm actually been taking this a lot better than most of my other breakups mostly due to the fact that I really don't think I've been getting out of the relationship what I want/deserve since the beginning of the year. It's easier to lose something knowing that you won't have trouble not missing it. If the Rachel from December magically came back, I'd snatch her up in a heartbeat. But I feel as though that person I knew is long gone.