I’m going through a period in my life that I hit probably every four or so years where I take stock of the people in my life, and I decide who I want to stay around and who I want to leave.  The last time this happened, I ended up moving back into my parents house and playing World of Warcraft for six months and not seeing anyone.  It was time for me to re-evaluate where I was, and what I was doing, and who I was doing it with.   I’m there again, and it’s the reason I haven’t left my bed today except to open the door for the Chinese delivery guy.

I’m going over in my head the last couple weeks where I pretty much dropped all of my friends.  (With the exception of Katina and Leo.)  I’m trying to figure out if maybe there’s something wrong with me that I keep ending up these situations because hey, I’m the common denominator.  I’m especially analyzing the blow outs with Mary and Amr.

Mary is especially confusing to me because she has spent the majority of our friendship telling me the way I’m fucking up.  For instance, when I first broke up with Amr, the majority of my friends were trying to tell me that he fucked up and I shouldn’t feel so bad. Mary on the other hand basically told me tough shit, I made my bed and had to lie in it.  She was no bullshit, and I respected and appreciated that.  I didn’t get angry at her, I didn’t get upset, it was her opinion, and that’s why I kept her around as a friend… because that’s what I need from friends.  However, when I give her some pretty sage advice regarding her actions over the past year, she flips her shit on me.  I’ve been reading over months of conversations where she slams me for decisions and choices I make, and the one time that I did the same to her, it ends our friendship.

Then, I look at my blow up with Amr today.  I mean, I saw this one coming a mile away.  I told him multiple times that if he kept me in this limbo stage I would eventually lose my shit, and I did, in a pretty spectacular fashion.  I laid it out in an email everything that I ever felt slighted for and told him that I didn’t want him in my life, ever again.  In reality, I do have definite complaints – the fact that he never wanted to do anything with my friends, the fact that he never actually called me his girlfriend, the fact that everything had to be his way, all the time… (and we won’t even get into the whole Mike had to take me to the hospital because he left me thing)

So, I’m thinking two things right now – the first is, I always live life with the treat others as you would like to be treated mentality.  The problem is, I can’t find people who actually want to be treated the way I that I prefer.  I like brutal honesty.  Am I fucking up?  Tell me.  Let’s have it out, let’s get in a fight, let’s figure it out.  That’s the way I want to be treated – and if you don’t want to be treated like that – you probably shouldn’t be friends with me.

The second thing I’m thinking right now is that I have a serious problem picking out guys to date.  I thought Amr was different because we had been friends for so long before we dated.  He told me I could trust him, but it turned out he wasn’t that dissimilar from all the guys I had dated before.  Selfish, unforgiving, and unwilling to try to meet me halfway.  I kept thinking to myself, “Maybe my halfway is unfair.”  But I mean, really, I don’t believe it was.  Being acknowledged as being in a relationship with someone when they say you are exclusively dating is not that much of a demand.  Not to be blown off five times when it comes to hanging out with your friends, when he requires you to hang out with his (despite how uncomfortable it may be since you know, he never introduces you to your friends), is not too much to ask.  I don’t know why I always try to date guys who are like this – but it’s definitely a pattern that I need to break.  How do break that kind of pattern though?  How was it possible that I was friends with Amr for 9 months before we dated and once we started dating all of a sudden these horrible traits come out?  If I didn’t notice them before – how would I notice them in someone new?

I do think the one common trait that happens between all these relationships is that I’m typically so easy going I tend to explain away everything until I blow up.  If I was honest with myself, I should have lost it at Amr the night before we left for the beach because I was still upset about the fact that he blew me off the weekend before (for the fifth time).  Instead, I was like, “We’re going to the beach, there’s no reason to ruin a vacation over something so small.”  But of course, when he blew me off when we got back from the beach, all of a sudden the anger from before we left came flooding back in addition to the new anger – and BAM!  Break up.

If I had been honest with Mary about my frustration with her plans all along instead of just being the “supportive” friend, when I finally became upset because it effected me, she wouldn’t be thinking it was just because I had an agenda.  It wasn’t that I never thought any of this, it’s just I never thought it needed to be said because come on, everyone knew she wasn’t actually going anywhere.   Then I watch her talk so much shit about April for three weeks straight and how she’s being so all over the place, so I talk to her about it.  Then I see the passive aggressive message on facebook… I just lost it because I had so much pent up aggression over all the times that she had failed to follow through on something and BAM!  End of a friendship.

Perhaps the thing I need to change within myself is actually that I need to address these things as they come up, instead of as a final screw you at the end of a relationship.  The problem with that is, these things always seem so small at the time.  It isn’t until they become a mountain of bullshit that I finally erupt and end the relationships.  And if I’m bringing up all these small things all the time to get them off my chest, doesn’t that make me a nagging bitch?  I mean, where’s the middle ground?

I think I need to figure this out before I try to enter in any friendships / relationships again to avoid where I’m at right now.