Written by Erin Crawford Aug. 24, 2008

Your True Love: The one who ultimately hates you for the same reasons you hate yourself.

During my most recent breakup, I was given a list of reasons for the demise. Besides being told that he will love me forever and always care for me, the reasons he cannot accept being with me are: flightiness, recycling boyfriends, getting back with an old boyfriend during a break, lack of accountability/responsibility/self reliance, being divorced, being widowed, and occasionally being ill tempered. Surprisingly, it wasn’t one of the reasons you might find in Cosmo or any guide to self hatred girl/woman mag. You know, like weight, eyebrows, skin tone, stretch marks, roots, jiggly arms, legs, butt, boobs, face, forehead, breath, nose hairs, pimples, warts, hang nails, armpit hair, leg hair, butt hair, boob hair, face hair, opinions and the like. Now, those are reasons I can live with. In all fairness, I initiated this breakup (and the one before). Maybe I should add that to the list of reasons: I keep breaking up with him.

My logic behind the breaking up is twofold. One, I have never REALLY been broken up with. I had my share of unrequited love, snubs, and outright hostility in the meet and greet game, but I was usually the one whose boots were made for walking. Two, I was deathly afraid of losing this man I fell in love with in an insanely short period of time. It was all very whirl-windy and cosmic and mind altering. At least in my mind, and, to a degree, his. Throw in long distance, age difference, chemical imbalance, poor life/work skills, single parenthood, over-indulging and a long romantic history and you’ve got the ingredients for a Perfect Storm of shit. Albeit, an awesome Perfect Storm of shit.

I may have some deep rooted fears in regards to loss and trust. There is a chance it has something to do with the sudden death of my husband and the stress and heartbreak that followed. Though, I don’t think it is fair to myself or anyone in my life to constantly refer to that event as a devastating marker point, because it is so painfully obvious.

What I mean to say is I am not resting on my widowed laurels and blaming that for all the trouble that wrought forth in this particular relationship, I am much more evolved than that. It is obvious to me what the problem was and I am sure it was obvious to him what the problem was. In spite of our awesomeness and our like mindedness on many inanities and obscurities, I think what finally did us in - the proverbial straw that broke our camel’s back - was my forehead hair.