Fear of Commitment, continued

"Calling All Cynics"

This is, I feel, a good definition of skeptic, cynic, and pessimist. It’s like the definition I heard or read once for introvert vs. extrovert – I can’t remember where I heard or read it, but I have completely adopted it – where an extrovert is someone who recharges by being around other people and an introvert recharges by being alone. With that definition, I am definitely an introvert. I need to be around other people sometimes, or I go stir-crazy, but being around especially large groups of people definitely drains me.

I feel the same way about the definitions given here, especially when it comes to me and love. I think I’m somewhere between a skeptic and a cynic. I trusted, and was betrayed/let down, and it was devastating. I was devastated. By that criteria, I’m a cynic. But I don’t think that I refuse to trust now. I am reluctant to trust, definitely, but I don’t think I completely refuse to trust. There are people I have met recently that I trust.

But then I think about how I was with my last ‘boyfriend’ – I was and am still totally crazy about him, and wish we hadn’t had to end things, and am going to miss him terribly when he finally leaves town. But I deliberately told myself I wasn’t going to fall in love with him. I wouldn’t let myself – even in my own head – use those terms. I like him a lot, and there’s no one else I’d rather spend time with right now, and talking to him in any form makes me happy, and seeing him (especially dance) with other women makes me insanely jealous to the point where I feel physically ill. But I won’t let myself, even in the privacy of my own head, say that I’m in love with him. Whenever I started coming close to that idea, I would remind myself of the reasons that it would never work long-term, or I would force myself into an emotional or communication distance – deliberately so that I wouldn’t get too close to him and fall in love. So, yeah, I suppose that, with him, I refuse to trust. I suppose that I am, when it comes to relationships, a cynic.

This also plays into my previous post about what-ifs. What if I’d let myself get closer to him and fall in love with him – or admit it, at least – and just let myself go all-out emotionally, the way I did with CD? Would things be different now? Would we have been willing to at least attempt a long-distance relationship? Or would I just be devastated again, and have lost him from my life completely? Obviously, there’s no way of knowing, but I can’t stop myself from dwelling on it.

It’s like the article says, “Deep inside all skeptics and most cynics is a deep ache to trust again, but to do so without the fear of being let down, disappointed, betrayed or devastated.” I doubt that he reads this blog, or even knows that it exists, but I almost wish that he did. I wish I could say these things to him, but I can’t. I don’t trust him – or really myself – enough to think that it would make a difference. The cynic in me can’t believe that it would make any difference. Even though deep inside I want to be proven wrong, I want to have that chance, I can’t and won’t let myself take that emotional risk. And I will be stuck with these what-ifs forever.