I have always been able to talk my way in and out of everything. From debates to soapbox political rants, I have always valued my power of communication. The only problem? A side effect of being a Leo, I seek validation. This means that in a world of read receipts and ghosting, I don’t adapt very well.
I started this semester by trying out something casual. I want to go abroad next semester, and hopeful not to recreate the emotional drama of last semester (see: the dropped quesadilla and being “the other girl” ), something casual sounded like what I needed. I reconnected with someone I had met freshman year who only seemed to get cuter than I had remembered.
One risky Facebook message and 20 minutes of stressing about his response later, we were talking again. We talked for a good majority of the summer, passing the days with puns and talks of the things we wished we could be. When I moved back to Boston, before we hung out we had the “what are we?” conversation and agreed that there would be fewer casualties if we kept it casual.
Once school started, communication naturally diminished as we filled our schedules with responsibilities and in my case, too many extracurricular activities for one person to handle. We were able to find time to hang out, and the transition from cellular conversations to real ones felt natural.
The second time we hung out, he opened up about his past relationships, his fears and his friends’ perceived sense of commitment issues for him. I asked if he thought he has commitment issues; he said he didn’t think he did. With a focus on the present, the conversation ended at that.
Things seemed to be going well until I heard from him less and less. Our frequency of conversation diminished even more after that until I asked him if something was wrong. After only hanging out twice, he responded with “Getting a little worried you’re too attached…”
Once he had deemed me as “attached,” there would be no fighting it. There’s nothing a pre-law student hates more than not being able to give a rebuttal. I liked talking to him, but that was a side-effect of being a Leo.
I told him we should talk because he could be hard to read. He laughed it off, but the lingering sentiment remained — I wanted to reach him and he was blocking me out. My next moves would have to be strategic ones. Any effort I made to fight the claims could be seen as attachment, which would play into his perception.
I equated communicating with him with my practice of boxing. Each time I would try to reach him, I was reopening the battle scars I had acquired, wondering which version of him I’d be getting; the silent, the attentive or the accusatory. I had to watch where I stepped, when to strike and when to be on the defensive.
After a few days of radio level silence, I broke the barrier and told him exactly how I was feeling, what I wanted, in an attempt to reach him. His silence spoke louder than any words he could muster.
When it came down to it, there were too many differences between us. He is a man of numbers, and I am a woman of many words. I believe that communication is key, he believes that silence is golden. He said he never wanted to be in my column, I believe he wrote himself in it. The problem we had was a failure to communicate. Until pressed, he wouldn’t tell me how he was feeling. As much as I wanted to sit him down and just talk things through, we never got to that place. Maybe my attempts at communication had proved to be too much, maybe I was destroying the casual vibes we had tried to establish, I’m unsure. I’m not sure if I’ll ever know. One can only analyze and overanalyze so much without it turning the whole situation into a whodunit novel.
It has taught me that no matter that nature of the relationship, an open line of communication is imperative. This does not mean that every time two people get together they have to discuss their feelings over Ben and Jerry’s and an Adele album. It means that communication must be open. Both parties should be able to feel like they can express their feelings and cue their partner into what their perceptions of the relationship are. When we talk, as cliché as it might be, we should be prepared to listen.
Meredith loves telling stories and pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw, minus the man and comfy NYC apartment. She, however, eats enough brunch to cover all six seasons. When she's not drowning in 16th-century literature, she can be found lamenting over the bad grammar and bad boys in her middle school diary.
Find her on twitter @merewilsh or email her mwilsher@bu.edu with all your love musings or questions.
