The Modern Break-Up

by Daniel Chidiac

Sometimes, where pure light is perceived, darkness lingers.

Just by the way he was leaning on the bar, he looked confident enough to make me feel insecure.

Usually it’s not really anything they do that makes my behavior change; it’s me. I get nervous. I almost always do something that makes me look like a psycho. And sometimes, because I know I’m going to screw it up, I stop communication before I can.

sometimes it’s because I’m so intimidated that being myself goes out the window.

We all have our way of letting go. I don’t have to be straight as an arrow to be spiritual or have self-awareness. I’m a free spirit. I live on impulse, and sometimes that causes me to act spontaneously and live on the edge. I’m not a nun and I don’t pretend to be,”

That’s part of the reason things are fucked these days, the reason we don’t understand each other. We don’t even have the respect to look someone in the eye and speak to them.

“You know they say that rudeness is a sign of insecurities. The rudest people are the most emotionally unstable,”

Givenchy doesn’t make you classy; attitude does.

“You’re right. I don’t know you. I only know what you’ve shown me,”

I guess it’s not the number of experiences you have, but what you learn that matters,”

wanted answers, and I wanted to get into a man’s mind, to understand them more. I think a lot of the misunderstanding in the modern dating scene comes from not communicating properly. We don’t speak; we don’t even try to understand each other. And I’m not ignorant. I know I will never understand some people, but in general, there are answers out there when it comes to why men act the way they do.

Sometimes I can’t deal with the whole social thing. I want my own company, and I don’t want to see anyone.

You speak to someone so much, and then they act like you never shared any real connection.

feel like I need to be myself and stand up for what I believe in more. But there’s always that battle going on in my mind: should I stay silent or should I express myself?

These days, it’s like we’re expected to accept people’s ignorance and rudeness, and if we do express ourselves or call them out on it, we’re the ones who are seen as crazy. We’re all so scared to say what we want in case we get judged for it, or God forbid, it gets shared on social media.

“Honestly, social media has become a way for people to send subliminal messages. We try to get someone’s attention by liking their picture or make them feel a certain way by posting things ourselves. The times of openly expressing how we really feel to someone are going. It’s time for all these hidden messages now. We’re all getting weaker. It’s like, if you want to text, text. If you want to call, call. Make proper contact. And if they make out they’re interested and then don’t respond positively when you actually reach out, FUCK ‘EM!”

“You’ve been honest, and your intentions have been pure. I don’t think he showed you the real him. He showed you what he wanted you to see so you’d like him. I think there’s another side to him that he hides from you because he knows you won’t accept it.

to love the wrong person or to be obsessed with someone can be like a drug. Having a bit of it feels good at the time, but it’s not good for you. They say if addicts just get over the hurdle with no drugs, they won’t want it anymore. It’s the same as this.

knowing that he’s still on your Insta will affect what you post too. You won’t be posting what you normally do. All your activity will have a hidden agenda,”

“I feel like I’m too extreme. I don’t think I’m cut out to be with someone. I either love them too much or I just don’t care. It’s always one way or the other. Maybe I should’ve been less available to him. I should’ve made it harder for him to get my time.”

If you can’t act like yourself with someone you’re seeing, then who can you with?

If he cared, he would be begging for you back. But I don’t think he has that in him, and I think you deserve someone who does,” she said.

They’ve been hurt; they’re insecure and scared to be themselves. They don’t want to let people in. We’ve all created this vicious circle of everyone fucking over everyone. We’re all making each other vulnerable. We’re all scared to look too interested. We don’t want to scare people off, but by tiptoeing around, we aren’t being ourselves, and that’s always a recipe for disaster. Then again, sometimes I feel like we’re all hypocrites in the dating world.”

“Well, I’m guilty of acting interested in someone and then pulling away. We expect someone we like to give us a chance even though they’re not interested. But we don’t give people a chance that we’re not interested in.

“Closure comes from knowing ourselves, knowing our worth, and finally realizing what we deserve. It’s seeing the other person for who they really are, not who we’ve made them to be in our head. I don’t think he really knows why he acts the way he does. I don’t think he truly knows himself. If anything, your closure right now is knowing how confused he is. You want a man, not a little boy,”

So many people have said to me that you can lose who you are when you are infatuated with someone, but I think they forget to add that you can often become just like them.”

Sometimes we take on their traits and then treat other people the way they treated

Next time, don’t sacrifice the person you are to suit somebody else’s insecurities, jealousy, or lack of love. And stop letting your happiness be solely dependent on someone else’s mood. That’s how it got with you in the end. You changed. He brought out the worst in you,”

When he was giving you the cold shoulder, you’d always be agitated. You would snap at your mom and all of us. You were always down. But when he was happy, you were. He’d message you back and you’d be on cloud nine. Honestly, Amelia, that’s not something you can build on.

Call me a dreamer, call me an idiot, but I won’t give up on the hope that one day a true, lasting relationship will meet me halfway. I put up a big wall sometimes, but I want to spend my life with someone special. I’m not afraid to admit that anymore.

I see it with my friends, too: guys and girls. We have this overwhelming desire to feel wanted, to feel accepted. In a world that seems so connected, yet so far from having real communication, we crave it. Our high levels of insecurities are making us want it from people who don’t even care about us.

We get caught up posting what we think other people will like instead of things we actually like. Makes me wonder who our Instagram profiles are actually for. Most of us are losing our identity and our individualism.

I can’t take the risk of being sexual with someone in the hope that more will come of it and then them never speaking to me again. It made me feel like

Being compatible with someone isn’t always about the obsessive feeling I initially get; I realize that now. It isn’t always waiting for their text, wondering what they’re doing all the time, or chasing because they’re running. That’s not being genuinely interested in who they are; that’s being fixated on trying to force an energy to sync when it doesn’t.

Real love feels better. It’s more available. It’s long conversations. It’s feeling like you can call that person at any time of the day, but more importantly, not being scared that you’ll look desperate in the process.

know deep down that I should be stronger than this. I know that I need to close the door and accept that my love wasn’t appreciated. Not because it was wrong, but because I gave it to someone who couldn’t understand it. I know I went too deep in my emotions for him. I know that I surrendered my power, my trust, and my mind to him. I fell. And I’m not sure we should “fall” for anybody now. Why do we have to fall? I want to stand next time I love someone. I want to be stronger.

I wonder whether he’ll treat another girl the way I wanted him to treat me, whether he’ll want to spend time with her the way I wanted him to spend time with me.

Whether they’re short-term passings with people that don’t go the way I want or long-term relationships that end, I’ve noticed that the impact they have on my emotions can be the same. When I’m not at peace, I find myself latching onto people I like but who aren’t giving me the same attention.

Usually, I’m a happy person and try to keep a positive mind-set, but sure enough, every now and then, I meet someone who makes me swallow the advice I would give to anyone else.

We’re all confused. It’s like, historically, we’re at a standstill when it comes to relationships. We don’t know which way to go or how to act. And truthfully, I think most times we don’t even know what we really want … we just seem to know what we definitely don’t want.

We’re part of a generation that can have anything at the click of a button— clothes, movies, information, and we expect that from love.

We want someone when we want them, and when we don’t, we don’t. It’s sort of sick. Most people look for the closest exit when things aren’t working out because they can just replace someone with the next swipe. We’re so disposable, so replaceable. The fight to make a relationship work seems to be rarer with each generation.

“You have to stop expecting people who don’t love themselves to love you the way you love them.”

It’s always okay to look at things from the outside and judge, but when you’re in it, it’s just not that easy to switch off. I wish it was. And it doesn’t make me a weak person because I can’t be positive or in control all the time—I’m learning that.

No one likes to invest in something and not have it go the way they want.

Whether it’s right, wrong, or stupid to feel for someone you haven’t known for long, it doesn’t make the pain any less real when you feel rejected, when you feel unwanted.

Because of my soft heart, I excused things that didn’t sit well with me, like getting a call back hours later or getting short replies to my texts that didn’t answer my questions properly.

I’m so involved in my thoughts that I feel I overanalyze everything. I’ve learned that even the most self-aware people can succumb to heartbreak; that’s how powerful it is. They say love is blind, but I saw everything. I just chose to turn a blind eye to things because, when I love someone, it has no boundaries. Maybe people who know what they have to offer are too loving, too understanding, and too caring to be with someone. I’m too forgiving.

It’s like he’s a stranger now, so close in my mind, yet so far from my actual life.

People can say what they want, but I know it was real because I felt it. And what would life be if every time I felt something with someone, I denied