Since Ace from 80 Proof Oinomancy has neglected to post recently, I thought I’d detail some salient points form a recent conversation we had over the phone…and pick up the slack.

You see, this past weekend, I broke up with my girlfriend. It was the most amicable break up I’ve had the pleasure of enduring to this day. The thing was, I knew it was coming. I knew it the night before. I knew it a month before.

Because I had warnings – repeated warnings.

Many men who say they didn’t see it coming either couldn’t read the signs or didn’t want to.

You know how it goes. The relationship cools down slightly. Comfortable. You’ve got a confidence that’s hard to rock.

Then it happens. Somethings’s amiss.

She doesn’t refer to you by your usual pet name. She doesn’t sign off in the usual manner. She replies to the messages you send slower than usual. She forgets to call you back. She is not as receptive to your advances as you last remember. She asks you what would you would do if she just didn’t want to have sex anymore. You can’t remember the last time she got jealous. She told you that if you broke up, she was happy she met you.

I’m sure you’ll recognize something in there.

Talking with Ace, he told me that in his experience it’s quite rare that a man gets less than a month’s notice. In my experience, I’d have to agree.

In my most recent relationship, were I to be completely honest, I had about 8 months advance warning, when she told me that she was happy she met me and that I was her first and if we broke up when I graduated, she’d have no regrets.

When she came back from El Salvador after visiting her family for a month, she tried my patience by revealing a new desire to be pure. Her family does not know about how far she and I have gone and constantly advise her to be chaste. She asked me a second time* about how I would feel if she didn’t want to have sex anymore.

She casually inserted “if we broke up” into conversation after Spring Break.

A month ago she sent me this message:

Hola amor. I can’t sleep.I have a lot in my mind and I want to send you this text, kind of like a letter. I have to say that This [sic] year hasn’t been going as I was expecting, and I’ kinda disappointed about it. What worries me the most is that it doesn’t that is going to get any better. Seems like you are going to be away most of the time, you graduated from college and your life seems to be going somewhere where I am not included. I’m so happy that you are becoming such an independent person and I’m extremely proud of you for that. I’m just telling you the things that I have in my mind, and that sometimes I can’t say when we talk. I remember how much we used to talk at the beginning, even though we were busy we found the time to discover more about each other. My love for you have increased since then, I could see the huge heart that you have, I love that you could open up with me and let me meet you better. I love how you care about your dog and cat, I like how you like to cook, and clean your house, I love when I make you laugh, I love when you get excited for something and can’t stop smiling. I’ve been thinking about how we talk about the future, and how I can see ourselves together,but is so hard to picture the present together for everything that is going on. The thought of break up with you terrifies me, because I don’t want to, I love you and I want you to always know that. There are time [sic] when I just like to stare at you because I like seeing you and I want to cross  the screen so I can hug you, but I can’t. I’m scare that you might meet someone while you are there, I’m not afraid I’m going to meet someone because I’m not interested on [sic] on meeting anyone else. But you are there alone, in a new place, and you are meeting new people, when I’m here with the same routine, plus sleeping a lot. I know all this is something I should have told you when we spoke today instead of being here writing, but sometimes I’m better writing than speaking.

I want to know what you think about all this.

Te quiero <3.

That’s about as clear of a warning as you can get. Our situation didn’t change. She stopped calling me amor and saying “Te amo” as opposed to “Te quiero” two weeks after she sent that text.

Two weeks after that, we broke up.

~Wald

*The first time she asked, we were in a car, late at night, in the parking lot behind a large American supermarket. She asked me the same question, I gave the “right” answer, won that battle, took the spoils of conquest without a thought to the direction that the war just took.

In my mind now, my first responce to such a woman asking me about how I felt about the cessation of sexual healing would be another question of my own:

“How would you feel about me having sex with another girl?”