Enough is Enough

Enough is enough. I think I’ve had it. I don’t mind giving advice or helping people out with their personal problems, but what I can’t stand are people who are possessive. And here we are once again with my friend who was breaking up with her boyfriend. I have even given my long explanation about how only self-centeredness and vanity keep people from breaking up when they know they it’s over. So, why won’t her boyfriend get the picture?

It isn’t love that he is fighting to hang onto, it’s something else, and I’ve seen it a thousand times before.

Unfortunately, too many people have seen too much bad TV, listened to too much bad music, and watched too many bad movies. People think that with a little background music and plenty of moving about, they can turn a lost cause into a winning situation as if it were an episode of the A Team. But, relationships are not about winning or losing. Think about what you have learned from movies, for example. Get on a plane, go to her, fight for her, and you will get her back.

What they don’t tell you is that no one in the world wants to be fought with or intruded upon, and no one really wants to be forced to love someone they no longer love. While the same woman who cries while watching the film’s protagonist rush to the airport to reclaim his beloved, she does not react positively when the same thing happens to her in real life.

As Lyle Lovett told us, there is nothing more unwavering than a woman who has already made up her mind. That’s life. And love is like a faucet that turns off and on, and when you aren’t careful, sometimes she turns it off — for good.

When she decides that she no longer loves a man and tells him so, she really means it. What he must do is patiently listen to her. And if he actually love her, then he let her go. Screaming at her, stalking her, calling her 50 times a days, and showing up on her door step do NOT help. That is not love, that is harassment. That is emotional rape. What does he want, her pity? To go back to him because she can’t bear having her arm twisted?

Here’s a piece of good advice: if someone ever tells you that no one else will ever love you like they do, then run away. That is not love. That is emotional abuse. It is a scare tactic. Even if it were true, having someone love you does not make you love them in return, especially if your heart has already closed like a “nocturnal flower”.

There is no love in harassment. The aggressor is only afraid of losing his “possession”. How many times have I seen people ignore their girlfriends until the moment they are about to lose them, and then, suddenly they want to fight for love? That is not love.

When you love someone, you listen to them. When they want to leave you, you let them. You don’t call everyday or send thousands of emails, and you don’t cry and complain. No woman will ever go back to a cry baby, a complainer, or an angry person. Think about Florentino Ariza. He patiently waited for Fermina Daza for fifty-three years. He didn’t get her back by stalking her or starting from where he left off, reminding her of the past. He quietly waited and prepared himself. Then when he had his chance, he realized that the only way to win her was to make her fall in love with him from scratch, all over again.

Although it is cliché, when you love someone you set them free and hope that freedom will be too lonely a place for them to bear. That is all you can do. In other words, you give them

the open fields, relying on the prairies’ vastness to one day smother [her] body’s latitude like oversized sheets.

Everything else is just self-centered. Saying things like, “how could you do this to me?”; “how can you say you no longer love me?”; “no one will ever love you again like me”. Those are all about “me”. So, please get over yourself, get on with your life, and love the person you think you love by letting her go.

It’s textbook psychology, my friend! She didn’t fall in love with you because when you first met you begged and cried and stalked and threatened. So why would that work now? Why don’t you take a few steps back and try to be funny or charming or kind. Even pretending to be compassionate and understanding sometimes works.

Enough is enough.