Pat Benetar famously mused that, ‘Love is a battlefield.’ While that doesn’t have to be the case, given the improvements in resources and societal growth that’s occurred in the 43 years since that song’s release, rest assured there will always be people like me who are steadfastly committed to making the hideous hall of mirrors at this miserable carnival known as dating as awful as it can possibly be.
Why even be in a relationship, you ask? Because, like many others, I’m codependent and prefer to have my demons squashed down into the sewers with the sweat equity of others’ energy and life force so I don’t have to live with the person I’ve become.
And how do you get in a relationship quickly? Personally, I’m a love-bombing fan. It’s particularly effective if the other person has been ignored a lot in their life or has abandonment wounds. You can get the mileage of many months of dating in a matter of weeks or days.
So, when I got into this newfangled union, I promised myself that not only would I tepidly commit to it in spite of my doting, saccharine words and sensational gestures of adoration that got me the relationship in the first place, but I’d abandon this union in the most cowardly way possible.
You see, at a certain point the novelty of another human being wears off, and it’s time to move on to the next one. However, direct, non-manipulative communication is difficult, and that’s why I don’t do it.
No, love is a battlefield, folks. And the fastest way to free yourself from the clutches of decency and get you out of the line of fire is breadcrumbing. It’s like calling in an airstrike from the Allies. You simply do a 170 (notice I didn’t say 180, that’s too hard of a pivot) on almost all of your behavior while still doing just enough so the other person plays along. Eventually they’ll be the one to dump you, and you can walk away with your head held high while you make them believe it was their idea the whole time.
You could call this cowardly, but that’d be inaccurate; I’m perfectly aware of what I’m doing, so really, it’s more sociopathic.
